Samreen Ahmad · · 5 min readChips, cars, and AI power plays
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Hello reader,
I originally come from the state of Bihar in India, a place often described as one of the country’s political hotbeds.
But it took me years to realize that politics isn’t confined to rallies or parliaments. It’s in everything, from the food on our plate to the clothes we wear, even the air we breathe.
Image credit: Arsal Ysfin
AI is no exception. Geopolitics has quietly become the new front in the AI race, with the US and China locked in a duel over chips, models, and global influence.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently warned that China “will win” the AI race. He later clarified his remarks, saying that he believes “it’s vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide.”
But his initial comment exposed the underlying paradox at the heart of the AI rivalry: The export bans by the US are meant to protect its technological dominance, but they could end up fueling China’s drive for AI self-reliance.
Case in point: Jill Shen writes about how bike-sharing firm Hello is reinventing itself as an AI-driven mobility player. The Chinese company is betting on a large language model-inspired system to power the next generation of autonomous vehicles and give Tesla a run for its money.
That tension between the US and China is also spilling over to the rest of Asia. As my colleague Elyssa reports, businesses across the region are now choosing their AI partners with geopolitics in mind. Some are dropping Chinese LLMs to avoid future scrutiny, while others are embracing them for their low cost and strong performance.
From chips to cars, AI has become the new political battlefield. As it turns out, there is truly politics in everything.
Samreen Ahmad, journalist
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