From hardware to algorithms, and from regulation to values, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a core domain of strategic competition between the United States and China.
In early 2025, Chinese startup DeepSeek released an open-source model that quickly gained favor among global developers due to its high performance and open nature. This move was seen as a symbol of China’s rapid rise in the AI race.
The United States responded swiftly. In late July, just six months into its term, the returning Trump administration released an ambitious national AI strategy. This policy blueprint, titled “Winning the AI Race: The American AI Action Plan,” along with three executive orders, was widely interpreted as a systematic policy package to address new challenges in the AI field.
The blueprint directly points to China, explicitly stating a goal to “counter China’s influence in international governance institutions.” The “Action Plan” emphasizes that the US will leverage its position in international diplomacy to promote technical standards that “reflect American values” and to “resist authoritarian influences.”
Lucia, head of the geopolitical practice at the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, analyzed that an ideological-driven US-China AI algorithm war is imminent. She told the BBC that this “makes it clear that [the US] is going to confront China’s algorithms in the competition for the Global South.”