The US-China AI war heats up

Published May 15, 2026 6:37am ET | Updated May 21, 2026 9:13pm ET



The agenda at President Donald Trump’s Beijing summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping included trade, tariffs, rare-earth metals, Taiwan, Iran, religious freedom, and various other topics, but one pressing matter attracted little attention from the leaders of the world’s two most powerful countries: their escalating race to dominate advances in artificial intelligence.

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