"What Exactly Would An International AI Treaty Say?" Is a Bad Objection

# "What Exactly Would An International AI Treaty Say?" Is a Bad Objection
By Davidmanheim
Published: 2026-03-26
I’ve heard a number of people say that it’s unclear what the technical contours of a global AI treaty would look like. That is true - but it’s not actually an obstacle to negotiating an international treaty. 

I’ll try to explain why this isn’t a good objection, but the short version is that if countries have clear goals which are largely shared, negotiations end up with strong treaties. So the important questions are not the exact rules. The critical questions are if there really is a joint global risk that requires action - and [experts agree there is](https://aistatement.com/), and whether verification and enforceability are possible - and [experts say they are](https://www.iaps.ai/s/Verification_for_International_AI_Governance.pdf). So the problem isn’t a technical issue, it’s a question of whether we can get to an agreement. And despite [facile](https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/every-debate-on-pausing-ai) “we can’t stop until they do” arguments, [we can and should try to do better](https://x.com/TheZvi/status/2033560628212764842).

In order to explain why we do not need to figure out the details first, it's worth talking about other treaties.

### The Pandemic Treaty (Task Failed Successfully)

I will start with the example I watched most closely, over the past five years. The Pandemic treaty was proposed in 2021, “when WHO member States agreed on the urgent need for a legally binding international instrument,” [per the UN](https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1162301). It was supposed to fix all the problems we had during COVID. Unfortunately, this didn’t include preventing pandemics, and past that point, no-one agrees on what things should have been done, or what to do next time. So, if we can’t agree on anything, what does the treaty do? Mostly, generic pandemic-stopping stuff - “commitment to a ‘One Health’ approach to pandemic prevention, stronger national health systems, setting up a coordinating financial mechanism, and creating a globally coordinated supply chain and logistics network for health emergencies.” 

How much of that was agreed about in mid-2021 when it was proposed by the European Council President? Basically none of it. What are the actual commitments? Well, that’s complicated, but the short version is that there aren’t any. The treaty insists that countries get to stay in control of their national health systems, and no-one could tell them what to do, or how - which sounds a lot like the failure that allowed COVID-19 to spread. Lots of people had different visions for what the treaty should do, from global vaccine justice to enhancing global public health to providing funds for response to climate change issues to supply chain resilience to considering animal and plant health in pandemic planning, and it ended up as a mishmash of random things that people proposed. But the failure here was one of vision - it w

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