The political drumbeat could help create a national consensus around the critical nature of AI, says Jon Bateman, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Pentagon strategist. Still, there is an "asymmetry between the United States and China," says Tarun Chhabra, a senior fellow at Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. "[T]he Chinese Communist Party's whole technology worldview is driven, not merely charged, by the imperative of consolidating social control and emerging dominant in geopolitical competition." That means the Chinese government can direct companies to work on a problem it decides is pressing, while the U.S. has to convince companies the problem is worthy of their investment. The political drumbeat could help create a national consensus around the critical nature of AI, says Jon Bateman, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Pentagon strategist.

As the world descends into geopolitical competition, other powers increasingly challenge European countries' ability to defend their interests and values. Russia is willing to weaponise energy supplies, cyber capabilities, and disinformation; China invests strategically and uses state capitalism to skew the market; Turkey instrumentalises migration; Saudi Arabia leverages its energy resources. And the Trump administration is willing to exploit European dependence on the transatlantic security alliance and the dollar to achieve short-term policy goals. What unites these disparate powers is their unwillingness to separate the functioning of the global economy from political and security competition. The EU has the market power, defence spending, and diplomatic heft to end this vulnerability and restore sovereignty to its member states.