Washington is framing the AI race with China as an existential one, a warning aimed at both chip rivals and Americans blocking data centers in their towns.

• Treasury Secretary Bessent said that if China wins the AI race, there is "no tomorrow" for the US, and even a huge defense budget would not save it.
• The remarks target growing local opposition to building big data centers, which Trump has also called a threat to the economy.
• China's open-weight models are the real worry: they cost users very little and nearly match American models, despite US efforts to block advanced tech.
• The US accused Alibaba, DeepSeek, Moonshot and other Chinese AI firms of pulling billions of tokens out of Claude, Gemini and Grok since late 2024.
• The FBI, NSA and CISA said this was likely done with the Chinese government's knowledge.

Outlook: Expect more pressure to fast-track data center construction and tighter rules on how foreign firms can access US AI models.