This post was cross-published on the author's Substack, Threading the Needle.

Increasingly, the US-China AI race is taking center stage. To win this race, Washington and Beijing are rethinking a range of policies, from export controls and military procurement priorities to copyright and liability rules. This activity, under the vague banner of race victories, conceals a deeper lack of clarity on strategic objectives. The Trump administration's AI Action Plan provides yet another entry on what the US strategy might look like — but it shouldn’t be mistaken for an indication of strategic clarity, as US factions are still vying for dominance from decision to decision. All in all, Chinese and US AI strategies are both still nascent. This raises important questions: What will each country decide that “winning the AI race” means? And where does that leave the rest of the world?

The obvious answer to the first question [...]

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Outline:

(02:20) Open Questions on Grand Strategy

(02:43) 1. Military victory

(03:53) 2. Economic victory

(05:25) 3. A hybrid approach

(07:16) Technical Determiners

(07:32) 1. Military usefulness

(08:26) 2. Frontier capability gap

(10:10) 3. Compute supply trends

(12:10) What About Everyone Else?

(13:25) 1. Securitized world

(14:36) 2. Mercantilist world

(16:01) 3. World of clashing doctrines

(17:31) Outlook

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First published:

July 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://aifrontiersmedia.substack.com/p/in-the-race-for-ai-supremacy-can

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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Release Date: 23/07/2025, 01:00:00