Is the development of AI really a “race”?

Stephen Grenville’s excellent column on the US critical response to Dan Wang’s bestseller Breakneck: China’s quest to shape the future Leads me to recommend Wang’s China Letter 2025, published in late December. These annual reflections are always worthwhile, but the 2025 letter is particularly good. Wang’s book compares China and the United States, while the 2025 letter compares China and Silicon Valley.

This addresses a question I’ve had for most of 2025 regarding how artificial intelligence development is being managed in the US and China. Specifically, it is often seen as a race. This has never seemed to be a fully satisfactory metaphor, for it suggests that there is a finish line, that there will be a winner and a loser, and that the former will even have a decisive advantage over the latter. Dan Wang’s letter addresses this very issue; I will quote him at length (emphasis mine):

It’s easy for conversations in San Francisco to get bogged down in AI. At a…