China is pulling ahead in the AI and chip race, and it's using rare earths and now helium to squeeze the US — bad for American tech companies, good for China's global position.

• Chinese open-source AI models (Kimi, Moonshot) are now cheaper and more powerful than US ones, and China trains far more AI researchers.
• China has cut rare earth exports to near zero and just banned all helium exports worldwide, choking off materials the US needs to make chips.
• The US controls 42% of helium and Qatar 33%, while China has under 2% — so China is racing to build storage reserves and lean on Russia as backup.
• US chips are getting pricier (Arizona costs 20–50% more than Taiwan, TSMC raising prices), pushing even Apple to buy cheaper Chinese memory chips.
• The bigger goal is dedollarization: if China supplies the world's chips, it plans to demand payment in yuan instead of dollars.

Outlook: Expect China to keep tightening supply-chain pressure while the US answers mainly with more sanctions and heavy debt-funded spending on data centers.