The Trump administration has framed artificial intelligence development as a zero-sum race between Washington and Beijing, with China as the only other competitor in the field. This position comes as US companies report saving 60-90% by switching to low-cost Chinese AI tools, which account for a notable share of enterprise workloads in 2026. The United States and China established an AI dialogue during the September 2026 summit between Trump and Xi Jinping, but Trump rejected deeper cooperation, citing risks of sensitive information leaks. US officials have accused Chinese firms like DeepSeek of large-scale model distillation, a practice they say copies American AI capabilities. Smuggling operations involving Nvidia AI chips and servers are estimated to exceed 2.5 billion dollars.
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