How the White House defines the AI race with China
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Illustration: Rebecca Zisser/Axios
AI policy proposals, and even many AI investments, often are rooted in the concept of a "race with China." Rarely is there follow-up about what the race course or finish line might look like.
Yesterday, however, we got into some of the particulars during an Axios AI+ Summit conversation with Sriram Krishnan, the longtime tech exec and venture capitalist who now serves as the White House's senior policy advisor for AI.
Krishnan argues that the "race" is about the entire AI tech stack — chips, models, and applications — and ensuring that most of the world is utilizing the American stack.
- The imperative, he adds, is both about economic dominance and national security.
- In terms of winning, he says, "the metric is market share."
One major complication, of course, is calculating such market share. Krishnan says one way may be to track token inferences, although that's much easier said than done — particularly when trying to measure Chinese stack usage. Consider it to be aspirational.
There's also the issue of U.S. chip exports to China, in which the Trump administration has been somewhat looser than was the Biden administration.
- One argument, made earlier in the afternoon by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, is that selling U.S. chips to China is self-defeating when trying to own stack market share, since they can help improve Chinese models. Even if the chips are older generations.
- Krishnan's counter is that such exports restrict revenue for Chinese companies like Huawei, which retards their technological growth. And it may be an argument that Beijing has taken to heart, given that it just told its own tech giants to stop buying Nvidia chips.
It's also worth noting, however, that the Trump administration's focus on AI market share isn't entirely consistent. Namely, in its requirement that chipmakers like Nvidia give the U.S. government a cut of any export sales to China.
- If Chinese tech companies can build faster with more money, so too could U.S. tech companies — and the White House is quite literally taking cash off their balance sheets.
The bottom line is that White House policy is being viewed through a business and tech optimism lens. Or, put more simply by Krishnan's boss, David Sacks, "let them cook."
Watch the full conversation:
