What If China Wins the AI Race?

Technology executives, national security analysts, and U.S. officials all seem to agree that the United States must win the AI competition over China .

Recent breakthroughs by Chinese AI companies such as DeepSeek , Alibaba Cloud , Baidu , and Tencent suggest that American supremacy in AI is far from assured.

Washington has pursued a two -pronged strategy in its bid for supremacy.

U.S. AI firms may retain global lead on building foundational AI models, but pace of technological innovation could fall short of China 's or prove unsustainable as advancements at the frontiers of AI discovery become increasingly difficult.

Washington can find alternative strategies to ensure that the United States benefits from AI progress even if it does not win the innovation competition outright.

U.S. firms should build adjudication systems capable of comparing the responses of less powerful but trusted models and untrusted but more powerful models.

Washington should not rely on jingoistic calls to win the AI race while ignoring the possibility that the country’s early lead will not hold forever.