A common belief among tech industry insiders is that Silicon Valley has dominated the internet because much of the worldwide network was designed and built by Americans.

But "trying to draw a line between what is military and what is commercial is exceedingly difficult," said R. David Edelman, a technology policy researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is difficult to put a "made in America" label on artificial intelligence. Research on the technology is often done collaboratively by scientists and engineers all over the world. Companies rarely hold on to the details of their A.I. work, as if it were a secret recipe. Instead, they share what they learn, in hopes that other researchers can build on it.