Few things prompt as much anxiety in science and the wider world as the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and the rising influence of China. This spring, these two factors created a rift at the European Geosciences Union (EGU), one of the world’s largest geoscience societies, that led to the firing of its president. The whole episode has been “a packaging up of fear of AI and fear of China,” says Michael Stephenson, former chief geologist of the United Kingdom and one of the founders o...