By Doug Kelly, CEO of the American Edge Project
The United States and China are in a fierce race for global technology leadership. Because the stakes are so high – the victor gets a decades-long advantage in security, prosperity, and global influence – the public sector must work hand in glove with private innovators to push through barriers to success.
But judging by headlines from just the past two weeks, only one country’s government is playing to win – and that’s China. Consider the following:
U.S. Tech Innovation Undercut by Overzealous Regulators:
- Federal judge rules that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in some online advertising technology. The April 17th ruling resulted from a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
- DOJ requests breaking up key parts of Google. This week, the Justice Department, in another case, will recommend that a federal judge force Google to sell its Chrome web browser as it kicks off a three-week hearing about how to address the company’s search monopoly.
- Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in court suing to break up Meta. This week, the FTC continues its three-month courtroom trial against Meta, asking a judge to unwind its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp – purchases the same FTC approved more than a dozen years ago.
- Amazon must face FTC lawsuit; Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) denies power expansion. Two weeks ago, federal judge rejected Amazon’s motion to dismiss FTC antitrust lawsuit. Separately, the FERC refused to allow additional power for a co-located Amazon data center connected to a Pennsylvania nuclear plant. This decision restricts the facility’s growth and raises concerns about grid reliability and public costs.
Certainly, fair competition is essential in any market. But targeting the very firms that are leading the global AI race – just as China accelerates – is a short-sighted, self-inflicted wound.
Meanwhile in China:
- China makes history in artificial intelligence (AI)-quantum integration. Chinese scientists used a quantum computer to fine-tune a billion-parameter AI model, overcoming the challenge of limited computing power for training massive AI systems. Separately, China’s Zuchongzhi 3.0 quantum computer hit 105 qubits, with computational speeds more than a million times faster than an American model in specific benchmark tests.
- China overwhelms U.S. in research and development (R&D) spending growth. An April report found that, despite a slowing economy, China’s research investment grew 8.7 percent in the latest data, outpacing the U.S.’s 1.7 percent, and helping fuel major technological advances.
- China adopts AI education nationwide. To boost innovation and train the next generation of tech works, China announced it is integrating AI applications into teaching efforts, textbooks and school curriculum, targeting pupils and educators across primary, secondary and higher levels.
- China’s integrating its AI models in key consumer techs. DeepSeek’s AI models are rapidly being integrated into Chinese consumer goods – televisions, appliances, smart vacuums, and automobiles. Many will be exported globally, further increasing adoption of Chinese AI models.
That’s a stark and worrisome contrast. As China executes a focused whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach to winning the tech race, backing its companies with massive R&D support and nearly $3 trillion in investment, American bureaucrats are trying to break up our country’s top greatest innovators and our best chances to check China global ambitions.
Meta, for example, is one of the few open-source AI American companies that can compete with China’s push to embed its open-source models into the global infrastructure. Similarly, Google is one of America’s leading closed-source AI companies and is at the forefront of American Al and quantum computing efforts, as is Amazon.
At the exact moment America needs strong, scaled, innovative tech firms to counter China’s rise, our own regulators are tying their hands. That’s not a smart strategy for a “Golden Age of American Innovation.” Instead, it’s a roadmap for surrendering our security, prosperity, and our influence.
If our government doesn’t get serious about winning the tech race and align actions with vision, then history won’t remember this era as America’s tech golden age, but instead as the moment we let victory slip away.
It’s time for policymakers to stop penalizing success, instead to start rewarding innovation, and rally behind America’s strongest tech champions – before it’s too late.
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