After the arrival of the Chinese AI tool DeepSeek in January, this month has seen a flurry of conferences on artificial intelligence (AI). At the AI Action Summit in Paris on 11 February 2025, attended by global leaders like EU President Ursula van Leyden, French President Macron and Indian Prime Minister Modi, US Vice President JD Vance made four major US policy points on AI.

First, the Trump Administration “will ensure that American AI technology continues to be the gold standard worldwide, and we are the partner of choice for other foreign countries and certainly businesses as they expand their own use of AI.” Second, “we believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off.” Namely, the US wants more AI deregulation. “Third, we feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias, and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship.”

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And, “fourth, the Trump administration will maintain a pro worker growth path for AI.” Trump 2.0 does not fear job losses as AI is seen as a tool for job creation. The current daily tornado of Executive Orders and speeches by key American officials on global issues suggest that despite the sound and the fury, the key signal of Trump 2.0 is to transactionally create fortress America, defended by tariff and migration walls, aiming to achieve the gold standards in energy, AI/technology, military power and the dollar. Tariffs on Canada and Mexico, claims on Greenland, and ending the war in Ukraine only prove Henry Kissinger’s dictum, “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” No country has experienced such a bitter........

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