The U.S. Commerce Department ordered Anthropic to terminate worldwide access to its two most sophisticated AI systems on 12 June 2026, citing national security concerns. The government stated these systems were too advanced and ran the risk of being exploited by foreign nationals employed by U.S. companies. Due to the absence of adequate tools to distinguish American customers using the product from other customers globally, both models were taken offline throughout the globe within a few hours after the order was received.

One day later, a relatively obscure Chinese company in the tech community but virtually unknown to the vast majority of the public released GLM-5.2, a rival to Anthropic’s technology, and made it publicly available, free of charge, along with the source code containing detailed technical specifications regarding the development of GLM-5.2. Eighteen days after the Anthropic models were deactivated, the United States government rescinded its order and allowed Anthropic’s advanced models back online.

One should take time to consider the eighteen days indicated above as a single event where nearly all of the issues involved in the US-China artificial intelligence competition occur. This does not just tell a story of which country has more advanced technology. Instead, it tells of the fundamentally divergent theories of how technology works and, at the same time, of the United States learning that there are limitations on its ability to set rules unilaterally.

Two Different Theories of Power

Measurement of the US-China AI competition has frequently relied upon counting. Examples include counting the number of advanced chips each country produces, data center size, or model scores on standardized tests. Based on all aspects of measurement cited here, the US continues to lead China. In addition, the US continues to dominate what is referred to as the Frontier — a small number of the highest-performing AI Models worldwide. A recent report from Epoch AI states that the US company Nvidia manufactures close to 50% of the world’s installed base of AI chips and approximately 65% of the usable computer capacity; in contrast, Huawei remains the closest competition to Nvidia among domestic Chinese chip manufacturers, yet lags with respect to raw performance and therefore must expend significantly greater amounts of energy than Nvidia.

When you consider the chips as the whole game, you are counting them as you count them. Many detailed analyses have been conducted and........

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