Our intelligence agencies accused China of widespread IP theft through “distillation,” where Chinese AI labs train their models off US models. In response, China claimed the US was pursuing a “monopoly of the AI industry.” They are quite right—we are. However, so is China. I would even argue that we must pursue a monopoly when the stakes are this high, because whoever wins the AI race owns the future.

There are two key reasons why we should believe China is pursuing a monopoly of its own.

First, look at past behavior: China deliberately displaced Western competition in critical green technologies, like solar panels and wind turbines. They systematically captured these markets from early pioneers, driving many US companies out of business. Repeated across strategic industries, this demonstrates a clear, intentional pattern. China freely acknowledges this strategy—openly celebrating how rapidly it captured the global EV market in just five years, sidelining Western competitors who spent decades building the industry (see video below).

Second, the core physics of the AI race favors a winner-take-all outcome. In Jack Trout and Al Ries’s book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Rule #8—The Rule of Duality—states that every market eventually becomes a two-horse race. In the AI race, China and the US are the two competitors. But does this rule hold for general artificial intelligence, where the leader takes the entire market rather than sharing it with a second-place competitor?

The reason for this is straightforward: a singular lead in general intelligence grants absolute dominance across defense, economic productivity, and critical technological infrastructure. This leaves zero room for a runner-up. Controlling the underlying foundation platform gives the leader the leverage to absorb or block every rival asset before a competitor can bridge the gap. To say that it’s anything other than a zero-sum game is to deny reality.