Op-ed: The U.S. lead over China in AI is all but gone. We need a change in national strategy

Splendid news, everyone: the United States has finally achieved something it can truly call its own — a frontier AI lead that is 'all but gone.' A CNBC op-ed has arrived to deliver the eulogy in the measured tones of a man discovering he left the gas on while on holiday. Washington, we are told, is now 'forced to respond' to China competing at the frontier, as though the mighty supercomputer superpower had been napping through the last four years of Chinese model launches. This is not a strategy gap. This is a wake-up call that was set to snooze so many times it has now glued itself to the nightstand.

Consider the supporting cast the op-ed trots out: DeepSeek, Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, Alibaba's Qwen family, Tencent's Hunyuan, Zhipu AI and MiniMax. Six names that should make the Beltway crowd choke on their breakfast cereal, presented as evidence that China has 'cultivated a frontier AI ecosystem capable of repeatedly producing world-class capabilities.' Repeatedly, mark you. Not once, not by luck, but as a production line. Meanwhile the American response has been to write an op-ed asking for 'a change in national strategy,' which in Washington translates to another blue-ribbon commission and a report due after the next election cycle.

There is something almost heroic in the way the world's remaining superpower treats a genuine technological sunset as a scheduling problem. The U.S. lead isn't gone because China stole it; it's gone because it was spent. DeepSeek didn't need to outspend anyone, just out-innovate. The op-ed is right about one thing: a strategy change is needed. Ideally one that starts with reading the news from the last four years instead of asking for a summary in the next national security brief.