America Is Staying Ahead of Europe

All of a sudden, everyone is talking about artificial intelligence. But while most public conversations about AI center around productivity and jobs, the race to dominate technology is in fa…Show morect a primary geopolitical concern. AI is already impacting warfare and deterrence, and the immense amount of computing power required to stay ahead of the curve is driving foreign-policy choices for major economies.
Who will win the AI race? What does it mean for critical minerals and mining? How will it impact global trade, sanctions, and great-power competition? To discuss his lead essay in FP’s summer print issue, “The Scramble for AI”, join FP’s Ravi Agrawal in conversation with Paul Scharre, author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to the White House this week for a state dinner, politicians and TV anchors will recall familiar platitudes about how India and the United States…Show more are the world’s two biggest democracies and uniquely share values and interests in an otherwise turbulent and rocky world order.
The rhetoric may have felt promising a decade ago. Today, it feels dated. After all, democracy has faced challenges in both the United States and India; and New Delhi has pointedly diverged from Washington’s foreign-policy objectives by not only refusing to sanction Russia for its invasion of Ukraine but also increasing its imports of Russian crude in the last year by orders of magnitude. As the United States has sought to build a coalition to punish Russia, isolate China, and, more broadly, align democracies against autocracies, India hasn’t quite followed the script. Instead, it has expressed a more individualistic approach, picking and choosing the best deals and partnerships for itself depending on its circumstance and specific perceived need.
Ashley J. Tellis, a former U.S. policymaker and longtime watcher of U.S.-India relations, made a splash recently with a Foreign Affairs article titled “America’s Bad Bet on India.” (He has since told FP the headline itself was “melodramatic” and overstated his argument.) But his larger point was that Washington may be hoping for too much of its friendship with New Delhi—that if it expects India to get involved in a potential future conflict with China, it will end up being disappointed. In other words, India will do India.
Is Washington expecting too much of New Delhi? Is India somehow taking advantage of a moment when the United States is preoccupied with competition with China? Ahead of Modi’s visit to the United States, FP’s Ravi Agrawal interviewed Tellis on FP Live. Tellis is the Tata chair for strategic affairs and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Over the last few years, the United States has moved to limit China’s technological rise. U.S.-led sanctions have imposed unprecedented limits on Beijing’s access to advanced computing c…Show morehips. In response, China has accelerated its own efforts to develop its technological industry and reduce its dependence on external imports. 
According to Dan Wang, a technology expert and visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, China’s tech competitiveness is grounded in manufacturing capabilities. And sometimes China’s strategy beats America’s. Wang writes a widely followed annual letter of reflections; here are links to his letters from 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Where is U.S.-China tech competition headed? How are other countries being impacted as a result? In what ways are they reassessing their relationships with the world’s largest economic superpowers? Join FP’s Ravi Agrawal in conversation with Wang for a discussion about China’s technological rise and whether U.S. actions can really stop it.