The race between U.S. and China to powerful AI is a real thing, but we’re thinking about it the wrong way, and that can cost us everything. The U.S. lead is significant, but efficient AI gains are flattening its power.

In order to plan for this rivalry we must understand how Beijing thinks.

In “The Fog of War” Robert McNamara talks about a heated discussion with an aged general from the North Vietnamese Army, who protested they had resisted China for 1000 years and the Domino Theory was wrong. Roughly 50,000 U.S. servicemen killed, millions with traumatic stress and over a million Vietnamese killed, for an incorrect theory.

McNamara talks about understanding your opponent to make the best foreign policy, something echoed through history in misunderstandings that lead to massive wars. Our Domino Theory is the idea that Superintelligence is easily controlled and that China desires it.

The more boring truth implied by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) posture and the Trump administration’s 2026 AI publications and positioning towards Anthropic: the White House and the Politburo are not SuperAI believers like AI CEOs. Everyone seems to think AI is a spicy technology like nuclear weapons for cyber, bio and intel — not the end point of human history.

Chinese researchers have pioneered a generalization-to-specialization approach. The result is that a Qwen model running on a $1000 card can beat........

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