Imagine if during World War II, protesters had gathered outside factories making tanks and planes, and tried to shut them down. Or that just before Pearl Harbor, when American industry was "hyperscaling" its defense infrastructure in order to make the country ready for war, cities and counties had placed restrictions on new plant and shipyard openings and tried to dictate what could be produced where — as long as it wasn’t near them.
Any commonsense observer in 1940-1941 would know the only beneficiaries of these obstructionist tactics were our nation’s enemies.
That was one kind of war. Today we face another kind, an artificial intelligence (AI) war with China. The aims of both combatants, in looking to dominate the technology that will rule the future, couldn’t be more different. While U.S. companies and the Trump administration see AI as a tool to make the world more prosperous and individuals freer and more autonomous, China’s goal in the AI sector is developing the tools to further enslave their own population while shaping a global hegemony "with Chinese characteristics," i.e. total control by Beijing.