Navin Girishankar and Matt Pearl
In his first major policy speech, Vice President JD Vance outlined the administration’s initial vision for AI development. His remarks covered key elements of the AI stack from his perspective, including “high-quality semiconductor design and manufacturing facilities, reliable power, computing power, [and] frontier applications.” These are, indeed, key enablers of the stack that will be necessary for the United States to win the global AI race.
Vance’s speech, however, ignored another key enabler of the AI stack, and it is one on which the United States is vulnerable: the networks over which AI traffic travels. This oversight may be attributable to the fact that the non–People’s Republic of China (PRC) telecommunications equipment sector has faced challenges in recent years. When quarterly profits shrink, it is easy to adopt an out-of-sight, out-of-mind reaction. The irony in this development is that the reason for the Western telecom infrastructure industry’s issues is that the PRC undertook a systematic, years-long campaign to kill off non-PRC vendors. Thus, our neglect of a technology that may be critical to winning the AI race against the PRC is due, in large part, to actions by the PRC.
The United States underestimates the key role of networks—and the connectivity that they enable—in the AI race at its own risk, particularly when considering the centrality of networked infrastructure to the diffusion of previous technologies. To grasp this point, we need only try to imagine the Industrial Revolution without the railroad; the modern, global financial industry without the telegraph; or social media, e-commerce, or streaming without the internet.
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