As President Xi Jinping prepares for a visit to the United States, experts warn that China is actively challenging American global supremacy in artificial intelligence through a strategy that bypasses traditional military competition. According to analysts who spoke with Fox News Digital, Beijing’s approach relies on extracting logic from advanced U.S. models, flooding the market with free open-source software, and deploying AI for cognitive warfare, rather than waiting for a futuristic confrontation involving autonomous weapons.
The warning highlights a shift in how national security experts view the AI competition. While public discourse often focuses on potential military applications like autonomous drones or bioweapons, the immediate threat is described as economic and informational. The strategy involves leveraging China’s state-supported distribution of free models to undercut expensive U.S. proprietary systems, while simultaneously using techniques like knowledge distillation to replicate American research capabilities at a fraction of the cost.
What the Right Is Saying
Conservative commentators and China experts view the situation as a deliberate, state-directed economic tactic that mirrors previous strategies used by Beijing in other industries. Gordon Chang, a China expert, argued that the deployment of free AI models is intentional, comparing it to China’s approach with solar panels. 'This is a tactic that China used with solar panels,' Chang said, noting that Beijing aims to drive out American models on cost and availability to dominate the global AI market. He warned that this economic strategy is coupled with a threat to democratic sovereignty through 'cognitive warfare.'
Chang emphasized that China’s use of AI-enhanced propaganda poses a direct threat to U.S. decision-making processes. 'They're very good at cognitive warfare, and they can enhance their capabilities with artificial intelligence,' Chang stated. He argued that the U.S. faces a risk where elections and critical national security decisions could be influenced by Beijing, stating, 'We do not want our elections determined in China. We do not want our critical national security decisions being made in Beijing. And that's not impossible.' This view underscores the urgency for the White House to treat these non-cinematic threats as central to national security policy.
What the Left Is Saying
Progressive analysts and national security experts argue that the U.S. strategy of relying on expensive, proprietary technology has created a vulnerability that China is exploiting. Leah Siskind, an AI research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, stated that framing the situation as a simple 'race' is inaccurate, describing it instead as a 'multi-front war' where the U.S. is losing ground in specific areas. Siskind noted that because American tech is costly and the U.S. sector has largely neglected open-source investment, many Fortune 500 companies are financially incentivized to adopt Chinese models.
This perspective emphasizes the risks inherent in adopting Chinese open-source software without sufficient transparency. Siskind questioned how the U.S. can ensure these models are free of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censorship or hidden backdoors, stating, 'We can't be—we just wouldn't know. And that's by design.' The argument suggests that the current market dynamics, driven by cost savings, are inadvertently opening the door to potential censorship and long-term global dominance by Beijing, undermining American technological sovereignty.
What the Numbers Show
Data provided by experts highlights a significant disparity in physical infrastructure but a narrowing gap in model efficiency. The U.S. possesses a commanding lead in computing infrastructure, with over 5,400 data centers compared to China's roughly 450, along with superior microchips. However, Chinese labs are utilizing 'knowledge distillation' to close the gap. This process allows a smaller model to interrogate a larger American model to copy its logic, effectively bypassing the massive hardware and energy costs required for training AI from scratch.
The efficacy of this strategy was demonstrated in 2025 with the release of the Chinese model DeepSeek. According to Siskind, this release was 'seismic news' because it showed China was competing with cutting-edge American models while investing a fraction of the resources. The Department of Homeland Security recently issued a joint cybersecurity advisory confirming that Chinese companies are conducting 'industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns' to extract proprietary capabilities from U.S. frontier models, validating the concerns raised by analysts regarding the extraction of American research value.
The Bottom Line
The core issue identified by experts is that the U.S. advantage in AI is being eroded not by superior Chinese computing power, but by a strategic combination of cost undercutting and data extraction. The immediate threat is not the deployment of autonomous weapons, but the integration of 'embodied AI' into global supply chains and the use of AI for influence operations. Siskind pointed out that China's physical priority is embedding AI into real-world infrastructure like factory automation and commercial drones, while Chang warned of the impact on democratic processes.
As President Xi Jinping arrives in the U.S., the experts urge the White House to recognize that the competition is already underway. The challenge for U.S. policymakers is to address the economic incentives that drive American companies toward Chinese open-source models and to develop strategies that counter the 'industrial-scale knowledge distillation' without stifling innovation. The situation requires a nuanced approach that balances the benefits of open-source technology with the national security risks associated with relying on systems developed under a different regulatory and political framework.