When algorithm replaces warhead: SALT I written for age of AI
From Moscow 1972 to Washington 2026: first treaty of the post-bipolar order
By Hossein Kazemi
International affairs analyst
On May 26, 1972, Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev signed a document in Moscow that few people today remember beyond scholars of international relations, but which gave the bipolar world a form of “managed” order. SALT I did not eliminate the bomb, nor did it completely tie the hands of either superpower. But for the first time, it acknowledged that the weapon determining the balance of the world had to be jointly restrained.
Nearly half a century later, on September 26, 2026, at the end of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s three-day visit to Washington, a similar scene unfolded, but with different players and different tools. This time, the issue was not warheads and launchers; it was the algorithm.
Order written by bomb
To understand the significance of this moment, we must go back to the logic of the post-World War II order. The bipolar structure of that era can be read through its arms control treaties: SALT I and II, START I and II, and New START. They were all about one thing: the number of launchers, strategic bombers and nuclear warheads, and how to limit them. The reason was simple. The atomic bomb was the principal balancer of the international system, structurally determining the gap between the two superpowers and the rest of the world. Every other country was effectively playing in a different league when it came to strategic power.
These treaties met divergent fates, and that in itself is telling. SALT II (1979) never made it through the US Senate following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
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