In this episode, Jeremie and Edouard Harris, co-founders of Gladstone AI and national security advisors, join us to break down the real score in the U.S.–China AI race.
We unpack what it actually means to “win” in AI: from cutting-edge model development and compute infrastructure to data center vulnerabilities, state-sponsored espionage, and the rise of robotic warfare. The Harris brothers explain why energy is the hidden battleground, how supply chains have become strategic liabilities, and why export controls alone won’t save us.
This is not just a geopolitical showdown - it’s a race for superintelligence, and the clock is ticking.
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
1:05 AI race: who's ahead?
4:41 Framing AI as an arms race
12:58 Gov't awareness of AI conflict
20:38 AI reports feel like sci-fi
24:44 China vs US: model race
29:11 Shift to inference-time compute
31:19 China’s software vs US hardware
34:28 Open vs closed source politics
38:56 China’s energy dominance
43:32 America’s electric grid lag
47:55 Supply chain vulnerabilities
56:30 US chipmaking onshoring
1:01:08 U.S. lead in chips
1:04:00 DUV vs EUV bottlenecks
1:08:26 Manufacturing gap in robotics
1:11:53 Fear vs optimism in culture
1:17:26 Coordination vs dynamism
1:22:10 Bot-driven opinion warfare
1:25:58 China pushing degrowth narratives?
1:29:05 National security recommendations
1:33:36 Co-op or conflict endgame?
1:37:27 Closing
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RESOURCES
Jeremie Harris
https://x.com/jeremiecharris
Edouard Harris
https://x.com/harris_edouard
America’s Superintelligence Project
https://superintelligence.gladstone.ai/
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