Donald Trump launched his political career by insisting that free-trade deals had sacrificed the national interest in the pursuit of corporate profits. One wonders what that version of Trump would make of his most recently announced trade policy. On Monday, he declared on Truth Social that the United States would lift restrictions on selling highly advanced semiconductors to China. In doing so, the president has effectively chosen to cede the upper hand in developing a technology that could determine the outcome of the military and economic contest between the U.S. and its biggest geopolitical rival. The U.S. is currently ahead in the AI race, and it owes that fact to one thing: its monopoly on advanced computer chips. Several experts told me that Chinese companies are even with or slightly ahead of their American counterparts when it comes to crucial AI inputs, including engineering talent, training data, and energy supply. But training a cutting-edge AI model requires an...
learn more
