ASP in the News: Courtney Manning in the Washington Examiner on American AI Leadership
The American Security Project’s AI Imperative 2030 Director Courtney Manning was featured in the Washington Examiner this week in an op-ed discussing China’s increasing encroachment on U.S. global AI leadership. The article argues that Washington must refocus away from ineffective export and import controls and recenter on evidence-based drivers of innovation and technology diffusion, including improving trade partnerships abroad and investing in basic research at home.
According to Manning:
Without trade barriers, Chinese firms would have continued to use U.S. AI technology and design software on U.S. AI infrastructure. Now, Chinese innovators are exporting Chinese software tools that work best on Chinese hardware—a double win for Beijing. And despite a messy web of trade controls spanning memory chips, lithography machines, automation software, and more, America’s frontier AI lead over China has shrunk from one year in 2024 to a mere two months today. This approach is the opposite of a winning strategy.
Manning also identified how innovators outside the U.S. and China need accessible, market-ready innovations at every level of the AI stack. Focusing on just models and chips degrades U.S. AI leadership by allowing China to race ahead in other areas, including firmware and software frameworks that make demanding AI workloads more efficient.
According to Manning:
China’s sophisticated alternatives to U.S. offerings challenge a familiar Washington adage: “America seeds, China spreads.” The United States might not have a digital silk road, the theory goes, but at least it has a free-market ecosystem whose cutting-edge exports are irresistible to buyers. Sure, up to 67 percent of global AI tokens were spent on Chinese models last month. But can those models solve novel problems in theoretical mathematics?
The unfortunate truth is: if they can’t now, they soon will. If we don’t build an AI ecosystem that both innovates at the cutting edge and makes its offerings more accessible to buyers, Chinese innovators could become the planters and pollinators of the most globally significant technology of the 21st century. That scenario could leave the U.S. and its allies in the dust.
To read more, please see the full article at the following link: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/op-eds/4763279/china-chipping-away-america-ai-advantage/
