Bi-Weekly Discussion - The Chip War & AI Race

Details

This is going to be an online meetup using Zoom. If you've never used Zoom before, don't worry — it's easy to use and free to join.

Click on the link above at the scheduled date/time to log in...

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UNDERSTANDING THE "CHIP WAR" & "AI RACE" BETWEEN THE U.S. & CHINA

INTRODUCTION:

In this discussion, we'll look at the growing technological race between the United States and China as it relates to semiconductor chip manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing data centers. Originally, I also wanted to cover the "5G race" (i.e. the deployment of 5G networks) and concerns about America's "connectivity gap" with China, but I just didn't think we'd be able to do justice to the 3 aforementioned issues if we tried to also tackle a 4th issue.

In the 1st section, we'll look at the strategic problems with the world's current dependence on Taiwan's semiconductor industry, the Biden-era CHIPS Act which aimed to simultaneously promote domestic chip manufacturing and limit China's access to the most advanced chips, and how these policies have fared so far under the second Trump administration. This is all part of what Tufts University historian Chris Miller calls the "Chip War", the title of his best-selling 2023 book.

In the 2nd section, we'll look at the way in which the development of artificial intelligence has become a national security concerns in recent years, leading to an AI race between the U.S. & China that loosely resembles the space race between the U.S. & USSR during the Cold War. We'll also discuss whether or not the debut of Deepseek's chatbot that was comparable to ChatGPT but much cheaper constituted a "Sputnik moment" back in January 2025

In the 3rd section, we'll look at the importance of cloud computing data center to the tech race between the U.S. and China, both domestically as each country seeks to build these data centers more quickly as well as the electrical power generation needed to run them, and internationally as each country helps build friendly data centers in other countries in what Jared Cohen, president of global affairs for Goldman Sachs, refers to as "data center diplomacy" -- or what Chris Miller calls the "cloud war".

Thankfully, this topic isn't nearly as politically polarized as other geopolitical contests with Russia and Iran, and there's been a high level of bipartisan support for U.S. efforts to win the tech race with China that's led to a lot of continuity in the types of tech policies favored by the first Trump administration, the Biden administration, and the second Trump administration.

However, this broad agreement on winning the tech race masks political disagreements on several important sub-issues ranging from certain clauses in Biden's CHIPS Act mandating union labor & DEI policies, differing political preferences for regulating AI (often related to broader concerns about Big Tech, inherent biases in AI, the use of "deep fakes" to spread misinformation, and AI's role in technological unemployment), and NIMBYism that blocks the development of chip fabrication plants & data centers due to how they cut into the local supply of electricity and water for cooling. As we'll see, all of these factors complicate a "full speed ahead" position in the tech races with China.

All that said, although China may not struggle with NIMBYism and DEI initiatives, it has its own internal rivalries and bureaucratic inefficiencies that may slow its technological progress in different ways, as we'll discuss.

RELEVANT MATERIALS FROM PAST MEETUPS:

Back in March 2022, we had a meetup entitled "Are We Headed For World War 3?" In the 2nd section, we discussed the political scientist Graham Allison's theory of the "Thucydides trap" and how it predicts conflict between a rising power and a ruling power, as well as the shift from Hu Jintao's "Peaceful Rise" policy to Xi Jinping's more aggressive "Wolf Warrior Diplomacy".

Back in Feb. 2024, we had a meetup entitled "The Future of Work After COVID & ChatGPT" The most relevant part for today's talk is the 4th section which covered differing predictions about the effects of AI and automation on workers and addressed the question of whether we're facing the process of widespread technological unemployment - and if so, what to do about it.

Also in Feb. 2024, the Philly Skeptics meetup hosted a discussion entitled "Are We Approaching the Singularity?" where they addressed the inherent difficulties in explaining, predicting & measuring innovation, as well as Moore's Law and how it fits into Ray Kurzweil's "Singularity" thesis. They also covered the Turing Test & how it relates to the Eliza Effect (the illusory projection of human consciousness onto a chatbot), the difference between Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), and the debate over AI takeoff speeds.

Aside from these meetup, I also linked a couple third party discussions of US-China rivalry in the spring of 2024 such as the Cato Institute's talk with IR scholar Ketian Zhang about her book China’s Gambit: The Calculus of Coercion (2023) and the Braver Angels' discussion with Col. Grant Newsham about his book When China Attacks: A Warning to America (2023).

DIRECTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE FOR OUR DISCUSSION:

The videos & articles you see linked below are intended to give you a basic overview of some of the major debates over technological competition between the US & China in the realms of semiconductor chip manufacturing, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing data centers. As usual, I certainly don't expect you to read all the articles prior to attending our discussion. The easiest way to prepare for our discussion is to just watch the numbered videos linked under each section - the videos come to about 56 minutes total. The articles marked with asterisks are just there to supply additional details. You can browse and look at whichever ones you want, but don't worry - we'll cover the stuff you missed in our discussion.

In terms of the discussion format, my general idea is that we'll address the topics in the order presented here. I've listed some questions under each section to stimulate discussion. We'll do our best to address most of them, as well as whatever other questions our members raise. I figure we'll spend about 40 minutes on each section.

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I. GLOBAL DEPENDENCE ON TAIWAN'S SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY, THE GROWING "CHIP WAR" BETWEEN THE U.S. & CHINA, AND THE IMPACT OF THE "CHIPS ACT"

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1a) Chris Miller, "How an AI Chip War Could Destroy the Global Economy" (video - 16:35 min)
https://youtu.be/foYWzdvajvo?si=SRyPT-Bzjcua6yIy

1b) CNBC w/ Chris Miller, "CHIPS Act is already having a major impact on investment and chip manufacturing" (video - 6:59 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrpwQXtEwD4

Orange Wang, "Tech war poll shows US set for ‘commanding position’ in chip race with China"
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3274798/tech-war-poll-shows-china-against-world-while-us-commanding-position
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Matt Egan, "Red states are big winners of Biden’s landmark laws [IRA and CHIPS Act]:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/14/business/manufacturing-jobs-biden
Matt Cole & Chris Nicholson, "DEI killed the CHIPS Act" https://thehill.com/homenews/4517470-dei-killed-the-chips-act/
Jordan McGillis, "A Culture of Safetyism [i.e.Environmental & workplace regs] Chains the CHIPS Act" https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-culture-of-safetyism-chains-the-chips-act
Joel Dodge, "In Defense of Everything-Bagel Liberalism: Critics warned that the Biden administration put so many conditions on the grants it offered to semiconductor manufacturers that the centerpiece of its industrial policy would fail. Those conditions turned out to be key to the program’s success." https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/04/24/in-defense-of-everything-bagel-liberalism/

II. THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RACE BETWEEN THE U.S. & CHINA AND CHINA'S DEEPSEEK AS A "SPUTNIK MOMENT"

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2a) Bloomberg Originals, "China's Race for AI Supremacy" (video - 14:29 min)
https://youtu.be/zbzcZr_Nadc?si=WUCsS6uvp8b-TBsU

2b) Simon Whistler, "Was DeepSeek Really China’s Sputnik Moment?" (video - 9:23 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajTFSiko2Qw

John Bailey, "The AI Race Accelerates: Key Insights from the 2025 AI Index Report"
https://www.aei.org/uncategorized/the-ai-race-accelerates-key-insights-from-the-2025-ai-index-report/
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Patrick Tucker, "AI has a political problem: Left-leaning media outlets are more skeptical of artificial intelligence"
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/11/ai-has-political-problem/392323/
Derek Robertson, "AIPI Poll: AI is looking more partisan"
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2024/01/23/poll-ai-is-looking-more-partisan-00137296

III. THE IMPORTANCE OF CLOUD COMPUTING DATA CENTERS & THE LOOMING "CLOUD WAR" (A.K.A. "DATA CENTER DIPLOMACY")

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3a) Hype Files, "China’s AI Power Advantage: Why U.S. Data Centers Face a Grid Crisis" (video - 7:16 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjYXp83i1fY

3b) The AI Show w/ Paul Roetzer & Mike Kaput, "Global Chip War Evolving Into a Cloud War" (video - 11:29 min, listen to 2:45)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtfohL3VBrk

Eva Roytburg, "AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over:
https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/
Martin Stansbury, et al., " Can US infrastructure keep up with the AI economy? The AI age is expected to require scaling data centers, grid capacity, and supply chains. Deloitte’s 2025 AI Infrastructure Survey examines gaps and solutions."
https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/power-and-utilities/data-center-infrastructure-artificial-intelligence.html
Chris Miller. "The global chip war could turn into a cloud war: Security hawks in Washington worry that infrastructure deals risk the future of AI"
https://www.ft.com/content/202c3240-fa20-4081-a2a7-8470b7f12110
Jared Cohen, "The Next AI Debate Is About Geopolitics: Data might be the 'new oil' but nations—not nature—will decide where to build data centers."
https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/10/28/ai-geopolitics-data-center-buildout-infrastructure/

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Bi-Weekly Discussion - The Chip War & AI Race

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