Frantic U.S. and international efforts to prevent a full-scale Israeli assault on the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah have made little headway as Israeli forces press forward and thousands more Palestinian civilians attempt to flee the besieged city.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Sunday that a Rafah assault would kill many more civilians without dealing with the problem of Hamas or offering a post-conflict political and security settlement for governing Gaza. A defiant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists the offensive will continue until Hamas is destroyed. President Biden on Friday confirmed he is blocking all new offensive weapons to Israel, saying there was evidence the Israeli campaign in Gaza has violated international law — claims that Israel rejects.

Washington Times Foreign Editor David R. Sands writes that the partial arms embargo illustrates the political peril for Mr. Biden in the crisis. Liberal critics in his political base and students occupying university campuses have criticized the move as too timid. Pro-Israel Republicans and even some Democrats in Congress accuse the president of undermining a vital ally in a moment of maximum peril.

U.S. and Chinese officials will meet in Geneva on Tuesday to discuss artificial intelligence risks amid the rapid development of new tech tools upending work and war around the world.

While the meeting is the first of its kind between the rival powers, Biden administration officials have set expectations low. “The talks are not going to be focused on any particular deliverables but rather an exchange of views on the technical risks of AI and an opportunity to directly communicate on respective areas of concern,” one senior administration official said on a background call.

Officials declined to answer reporters’ questions about the specific risks that are expected to be addressed. Concern is high among U.S. lawmakers that China’s communist government seeks to use AI for disinformation operations that sow dissent in the United States and bolster Beijing’s autocratic style of government on the world stage.

Mr. Biden revealed plans for the U.S. and China to huddle on AI risks and safety upon meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November. Ahead of the meeting, rumors swirled that Mr. Biden would reveal a deal to ban the use of AI in various weaponry, including nuclear warheads. No such agreement has yet emerged.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is “becoming bolder and bolder in its attempts to steal American innovation,” Rep. Young Kim, the California Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Indo-Pacific, tells Threat Status in an exclusive “Influencers” video interview.  

In response to a question about Microsoft’s AI Research facility in China, Ms. Kim stressed that American tech companies should be “realistic” about the risks associated with maintaining high-tech research operations inside China, saying it is “very difficult” for the U.S. government to provide protections to those companies “if their facilities are based in China.”

“There is not much we can do … if their facility is raided. … We know the CCP has a long history of IP theft and they even use AI tools when they are hacking American companies,” she said in the wide-ranging interview, during which she also weighed in on the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine, and called on U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, in particular the Philippines and Taiwan, to “stay with us.”

American military aircraft in the Indo-Pacific region are vulnerable to missile attacks from China, which has constructed hundreds of hardened aircraft bunkers in apparent preparation for war, a group of Republican lawmakers said in urging stronger aircraft defenses by the Air Force and Navy.

American military bases in the Indo-Pacific “are under threat,” 13 Republican members of Congress wrote last week in a letter to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro. “The time to act is now.”

China‘s current strike weapons can attack all U.S. bases in the region, including Okinawa and facilities on Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the letter says. National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz has an in-depth look at the issue.

As it improves, artificial intelligence is going to transform our way of doing things on a scale that resembles the combination of electricity, chemistry and internal combustion engines around 1880, writes former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

“No one in 1880 could have forecast the scale and breadth of change coming — although a few futurist novelists such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells wrote fascinating fictional forecasts of the coming scientific and technological revolution,” writes Mr. Gingrich. “… We are at the edge of an enormous opportunity.”

Israel is still trying to kill an enemy that is “determined to wipe its people off the face of the map and Biden and the global governments and the politicians of the West are trying to tell Israel to stand down, strike a deal with the terrorists, and learn to live peacefully side by side with them. Love it or lump it,” writes Washington Times Online Opinion Editor Cheryl K. Chumley.

“This is where we’re now at in the war against Hamas,” writes Ms. Chumley, who argues that “this will be America’s great shame. Actually, according to biblical truths, this will be to America’s great detriment.”

• May 13 — The Way Ahead to Secure Taiwan’s Resilience, Wilson Center.

• May 13 — Strengthening the middleground of the defense-industrial landscape, Atlantic Council.

• May 13 — Implementing the US International Cyberspace and Digital Policy Strategy, Atlantic Council.

• May 14 — Mexico After AMLO, Hudson Institute.

• May 15 — U.S.-Nigeria Partnership in the Changing Global Arena: A Conversation with Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar, Wilson Center.

• May 15 — The Pernicious Impact of China’s Anti-Secession Law, Hudson Institute.

• May 15 — Panel Discussion and Reception on Nuclear Security Modernization, Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center: ANWA.

• May 21 — A Conversation with Former Algerian Foreign Minister Lakhdar Brahimi: Reflections on Diplomacy and Peace, U.S. Institute of Peace.