How America can remain the world's AI superpower

[Zorro]

Staying ahead of China requires pioneering technology — and stopping Chinese AI from conquering the world.

“The future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled AI,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared in early December. It wasn’t hyperbole.

Just weeks later, the midnight raid that snagged Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was guided by artificial intelligence. The Pentagon reportedly used Anthropic’s Claude model, paired with Palantir’s command-and-control software, to map the physical and political landscape of that daring mission.

At the end of February, on the first day of Operation Epic Fury against Iran, U.S. planners again relied on AI to make sense of a sea of satellite imagery, drone feeds, signals intelligence and other data. The technology enabled over 1,000 precision strikes in the opening hours of the war, including some that killed top Iranian officials.

As Operation Epic Fury dramatically demonstrated, AI is increasing the speed, precision and lethality of conflict. The next great-power clash — a showdown, for instance, between the United States and China in the Taiwan Strait — could be decided by which side better integrates AI into its military arsenal and way of war.

Recent months have also revealed new AI-related vulnerabilities. Iran responded to Operation Epic Fury by targeting key parts of the AI “stack” — the infrastructure and capabilities underpinning the technology — on the territory of America’s Middle East allies, striking data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. It also threatened to destroy the regional facilities of Microsoft, Google and other U.S. tech firms.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/05/29/us-artificial-intelligence-supremacy-depends-taking-these-essential-steps/