25 January 2026

America Can’t Win the AI Race by Retreating

Bob Dees

The U.S.–China AI race in 2026 is clearly a contest over whose technology will underpin the global economy and set the digital standards other nations will follow for years to come. In that contest, leadership will not be secured by trying to wall the rest of the world from American technology but by ensuring that the world’s AI ecosystem continues to run on it.

Yet while Washington has too often treated technological dominance as something that can be maintained simply by restricting exports, history suggests otherwise. When competitors are cut off from U.S. platforms, they do not stop innovating; they redirect investment, accelerate domestic alternatives, and erode the very supply-chain leverage that once gave the United States a strategic edge.

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