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In 1957, Washington went all-in on the development and production of intercontinental nuclear missiles for fear that Moscow was pulling ahead in the arms race. Using estimates of what Soviet factories could produce, the U.S. Air Force projected that the Soviet Union was on track to possess 500 intercontinental missiles by 1960—hundreds more than the United States planned to deploy.

Decades later, Washington’s approach to the race in artificial intelligence rests on a similar logic: If U.S. labs do not double down, China will pull ahead and be the first to reach the holy grail of artificial general intelligence—that is, cognitive abilities that match or go beyond human abilities. Maybe. In the 1950s, the U.S. count of Soviet missiles ended up being wrong. This time, Washington could be measuring the wrong thing altogether with its focus on technological benchmarks. Beijing instead measures the success of its AI rollout in terms of adoption and diffusion across its economy and beyond. This has a key safety implication: Beijing’s version of the AI rollout has no off switch.

In 1957, Washington went all-in on the development and production of intercontinental nuclear missiles for fear that Moscow was pulling ahead in the arms race. Using estimates of what Soviet factories could produce, the U.S. Air Force projected that the Soviet Union was on track to possess 500 intercontinental missiles by 1960—hundreds more than the United States planned to deploy.

Decades later, Washington’s approach to the race in artificial intelligence rests on a similar logic: If U.S. labs do not double down, China will pull ahead and be the first to reach the holy grail of artificial general intelligence—that is, cognitive abilities that match or go beyond human abilities. Maybe. In the 1950s, the U.S. count of Soviet missiles ended up being wrong. This time, Washington could be measuring the wrong thing altogether with its focus on technological benchmarks. Beijing instead measures the success of its AI rollout in terms of adoption and diffusion across its economy and beyond. This has a key safety implication: Beijing’s version of the AI rollout has no off switch.

Today, China lags behind in frontier AI but not by much. Since 2023, all frontier models have........

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