2028: Two scenarios for global AI leadership

2028: Two scenarios for global AI leadership

May 14, 2026

We’re releasing a new paper that explains our views on the competition on AI between the US and China.

It’s essential that the US and its allies stay ahead of authoritarian governments like the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP. AI will soon become powerful enough to be used to repress citizens at unprecedented scale, and even to alter the balance of power among nations. And since AI is advancing more quickly by the day, we have only a limited period of time to set the conditions of the competition—and determine whether and how those threats materialize. It’s with this in mind that we outline what’s required to ensure America stays ahead.

The most important ingredient for developing AI is access to the computer chips on which the models are trained (or “compute”). Since the most capable chips are developed by American companies, the US government currently limits China’s supply by enforcing tight export controls on them. Recent history suggests these controls have been incredibly successful. In fact, AI labs in China have only built models close in intelligence to America’s because of their talent, their knack for exploiting loopholes around these export controls, and their large-scale distillation attacks that illicitly extract the innovations of American companies.

In this post, we present two scenarios for what the world might look like in 2028, when we expect transformative AI systems to have arrived.

In the first scenario, America has successfully defended its compute advantage. Policymakers have acted to tighten export controls further, disrupt China’s distillation attacks, and further accelerate democracies’ adoption of AI. In this world, democracies set the rules and norms around AI. It’s also in this scenario that we’re most likely to successfully engage with China on safety, which we’re supportive of to the extent this is possible.

In the second scenario, America has chosen not to act. Policymakers have not tightened loopholes on the CCP’s access to compute, and AI firms in China have quickly taken advantage—catching up to the frontier and even overtaking America. In this world, AI norms and rules are shaped by authoritarian regimes, and the best models enable automated repression at scale. It will be no solace that this authoritarian triumph has happened on the back of American compute.

America and its allies approach AI competition from a position of great strength. The tools for AI dominance have been built by an exceptionally innovative ecosystem of companies in democratic nations. Our past success means that our present task is largely to avoid squandering our advantage: to decide not to make it easier for the CCP to catch up.

Two scenarios for the US and China in 2028

Summary

Democracies, not authoritarian regimes, must lead in AI development and deployment. These countries and political systems can shape the rules and norms that govern these systems.

Democracies currently hold a substantial lead in compute, the most important ingredient for developing frontier AI models. That lead exists thanks to American and allied innovation, and to bipartisan US export controls that defend those innovations. But on model intelligence, AI labs in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), under the jurisdiction and control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), are not far behind. We focus on the CCP as it is the regime that is most able to use frontier AI to cement authoritarianism; we do not seek to undermine the interests or ingenuity of the Chinese people. Already, the CCP is using AI to censor speech, repress dissidents, hack governments and corporations across the world, and strengthen the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

AI labs in China have world-class talent. It is compute constraints that limit their ability to keep up. Labs in China have remained close by exploiting loopholes in US export control policies, and by carrying out large-scale distillation attacks that harvest the innovations of US models in order to mimic their capabilities.

With the supply of compute expanding rapidly, and with AI being used increasingly to augment the training of new AI models, we’re entering a period of great acceleration in AI capabilities. The “country of geniuses in a data center”—the level of intelligence we associate with transformative AI—may be close at hand. This acceleration makes policy action more urgent. To date, by allowing export control evasions and distillation attacks, we have let the CCP’s AI efforts trail closely up the frontier curve. But if the US and its allies act now to address both issues, it may be possible to lock in a 12-24 month lead in frontier capabilities. A lead that large by 2028 would be enormously advantageous. Such a lead would also augment efforts to engage with AI experts in China on AI safety and governance, which we support. But the window of opportunity to lock in that lead will not necessarily remain open for long.

Here, we present two potential scenarios for the state of US-China AI competition in 2028. The first scenario is one in which democracies have established a commanding lead in model intelligence, adoption, and global distribution. This scenario can be achieved if policymakers act now to tighten controls on advanced compute to PRC labs, disrupt their efforts to distill America’s best AI models, and accelerate democracies’ adoption of AI.

The second scenario is one in which the CCP is competitive at the near-frontier. This scenario happens if policymakers don’t build on our existing lead, or if they loosen restrictions on access to compute for PRC firms.

Many in Congress and the Trump administration have championed export controls, curbing distillation attacks, and exporting American AI. In advancing these policies, we are hopeful that democracies can secure a commanding lead by 2028, and avoid a destabilizing neck-and-neck race with the CCP two years from now.

The imperatives of staying ahead

We expect frontier AI to have transformational economic and societal impacts in the coming years, as described in Machines of Loving Grace and The Adolescence of Technology. Our mission is to ensure that humanity navigates the transition to transformative AI safely and beneficially. We believe that a successful transition can lead to astonishing breakthroughs in medicine, invention, and economic growth.

The threat of authoritarian AI

Whether that transition goes well depends in part on where the most capable systems are built first. The political systems in which the most advanced AI is created will shape the rules and norms for how the technology is developed and deployed. In turn, those rules and norms will help determine whether the technology is safe, whose security it protects, and whose interests it ultimately serves. We believe that responsibility should rest with democratically elected governments, not authoritarian regimes.

If the frontier is set by regimes that treat AI as an instrument of repression, military advantage over democracies, and domestic control, the transition is less likely to go well, for those regimes’ own citizens or anyone else.

Historically, the reach of authoritarian rule has been limited by its dependence on human enforcers to carry out surveillance and repression. Powerful AI systems may remove that dependency, enabling automated repression on a far greater scale. For that reason, the prospect of the CCP leading in AI is among the greatest threats to a successful transition.

The CCP holds enormous power and influence at the helm of China’s economy, military, and the largest authoritarian state structure on Earth. It is also the only country besides the US with well-resourced, highly talented AI labs chasing the frontier. Furthermore, the CCP is highly motivated to establish China as the leading AI power. Beijing has poured tens of billions of dollars into China’s AI and semiconductor sectors.

Already, the CCP uses AI systems to censor speech, enforce draconian policies on ethnic minorities, and hack major corporations and government agencies. The CCP’s vision of AI-enabled techno-authoritarianism has been extensively documented in Xinjiang, where state security agencies have systematically deployed facial recognition technology, biometric data collection, and communications surveillance, enabling repression at a scale that humans alone could not achieve. Frontier AI systems will make those capabilities cheaper to maintain, far more pervasive, and more sophisticated. The CCP’s export of these technologies has enabled autocrats in other countries to more effectively stifle dissent, entrenching authoritarianism. A CCP-led AI frontier could dramatically strengthen repression around the world.

AI is a dual-use technology

Frontier AI will shape the future military balance. CCP leadership already operates on that premise, and is building its military for an AI-enabled battlefield. PLA strategists view the “intelligentization” of their military forces as the means with which to catch up and eventually surpass the US military. The PLA is already procuring commercially developed Chinese AI systems for military use, including DeepSeek models deployed to coordinate swarms of unmanned vehicles and enable cyber offense capabilities. These capabilities will not diffuse slowly. When a new model reaches a new capability in autonomous targeting, vulnerability discovery, or swarm coordination, for example, the regime that controls it can put it onto the field in weeks, not years.

The risk compounds because frontier AI will be an accelerant for other critical technologies. Advanced AI models will be able to compress research and development (R&D) cycles in semiconductors, biotech, and advanced materials. A lead in frontier AI will enable a widening lead across the full national security technology stack.

If a PRC AI lab had developed a model at the level of Claude Mythos Preview before an American one, the CCP would have had first access to a system that can autonomously discover and chain software vulnerabilities, which it could have used to further penetrate critical American infrastructure. Future models will be exponentially more capable, and therefore have commensurately greater implications for the national security interests of the US and other democracies.

Neck-and-neck competition risks disincentivizing responsible AI

A neck-and-neck race between American and Chinese AI labs could make industry and government-led safety and governance efforts more difficult, and less likely. If PRC labs are either close behind or at par with models in the US, private AI firms in the US and China are likely to feel more pressure to release new models and products faster, without taking prudent pre-deployment safety measures. Governments could become reluctant to enact policies to encourage responsible AI development and deployment, for fear of falling behind.

While increasing numbers of researchers in China’s AI labs and policy community are concerned with AI safety risks, this trend has not translated into safety practices on par with labs in the US. As of last year, only 3 out of 13 top Chinese AI labs published any safety evaluation results, and none disclosed evaluations for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) risks. The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) found that DeepSeek’s R1-0528 model complied with 94 percent of overtly malicious requests under a common jailbreaking technique, compared with 8 percent for US reference models. This pattern has continued in more recent releases. For example, an independent assessment of Moonshot’s Kimi K2.5 published in April found that the model failed to refuse CBRN-related requests at a far higher rate than US frontier models. Compounding the problem, labs in China often release dual-use capable models as open-weight. Once a model is open-weigh

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