✨ America's AI lead over China: Here's why it will continue

Sometimes no plan beats master plan

My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers,

If it’s true, as US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner once said, that “plan beats no plan,” then China should be the hands-down favorite in the AI race versus America (setting aside anything like superintelligence). No contest.

I mean, Beijing definitely has a pricey plan, a massive, multifaceted one: subsidies, state-backed labs, data-sharing platforms for firms and government, and special AI-friendly policy zones that are all part of a comprehensive techno-industrial roadmap spanning semiconductors to humanoid robots.

Yeah, it’s a lot.

Still, Beijing’s whole kit and caboodle might not be enough. The 2020s could end with America maintaining its AI leadership — with China still a close second — despite appearing to lack any coherent Geithnerian plan. The problem for President Xi Jinping and the rest of the Chinese Community party isn’t a failure of government effort. Rather, there are important structural constraints that even the most ambitious state intervention cannot easily overcome.