As Vice President JD Vance heads to Paris for the AI Action Summit, the Trump administration will be doubling down on the message that’s underpinned their first two weeks in office: “We’re not waiting for the rest of the world.”

Their approach to leadership is right on time because it’s clear our adversaries have been busy. Late last month, a small Chinese startup named DeepSeek stunned the AI world by releasing models that match the performance of industry leaders such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Even more surprising, they claim to have done this with far less computing power and without access to the latest American chips, due to export controls.

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