7 June 2026

The AI Competition Will Be Won in the Intelligence Layer

Real Clear Defense  |  Jason Rathje

The U.S. Tech PATH Act highlights the urgent need for the United States and its allies to establish trusted digital infrastructure before Chinese technology defaults, especially their AI model ecosystems, become entrenched. Artificial intelligence increasingly interfaces people and data, shaping critical decision environments. Chinese-governed systems, even subtly, can implicitly frame how institutions interpret their own data, becoming trusted ground truth without overt user awareness.

Effective technology strategy requires robust financing, procurement, and partnerships for secure allied AI infrastructure deployment, not just innovation. China's integrated offerings, like Huawei's, often surpass fragmented Western alternatives. The American approach must offer a superior system for technology adoption, ensuring data sovereignty by allowing nations to control data storage, model training, output generation, and audit processes. This necessitates specialized, decentralized AI architectures, keeping data close to users on trusted devices and sovereign networks, coordinating via shared standards, enabling allied control and secure collaboration.

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