Breathe
By Cynthia Dávalos
Imagine a world where your fate is in the hands of tiny chips, smaller than a coin. It's not science fiction: in 2025, the battle between the United States and China over artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors is the new global chessboard. More than a technology race, it's a duel of power, fear and opposing visions of the future. What's at stake? Nothing less than the economy, security and the world we will inherit.
The U.S. obsession with thwarting China is a matter of strategic survival. Washington not only sees Beijing as an economic competitor , but as a threat to its global dominance and national security.
The heart and brain of power.
Semiconductors are at the heart of everything you use: your cell phone, the GPS in your car, even the missiles that no one wants to see in action. AI, meanwhile, is the brain that makes them think. Together, they are the key to technological supremacy. And the United States, which has reigned supreme in Silicon Valley for decades, is not about to relinquish the throne.
China was lagging behind: while Mao was driving the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, science was on the back burner. But everything changed with Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, when China began to modernize by leaps and bounds.
The "Made in China 2025" plan, launched in 2015, issued a clear challenge: to be the technological powerhouse by 2049, when the People's Republic turns a century old. For Washington, that was like setting off a fire alarm.
A high-stakes game
The board has a critical point: Taiwan. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, it produces 90% of the world's most advanced chips. China claims it as its own, and the U.S. fears that one false move either politically or militarily will cut off global supply. The result? An economy in check, from shuttered factories to iPhones impossible to manufacture.
Subscribe to read the full column...
