Ex-Pentagon Official: China’s Ecosystem Strategy Eclipses US AI Lead

Is America's AI lead already history? On August 2, CNBC ran an opinion piece with a blunt message: The US lead over China in AI is all but gone. We need a change in national strategy.

Facing a barrage of breakthroughs from Chinese AI companies, the article presses a harder question. The real issue isn't whether China can compete at the frontier. It’s whether Washington can adapt fast enough to a rapidly maturing Chinese innovation machine.

The author Dewardric McNeal is a former US Defense Department official from the Obama years, where he handled East Asia and China security. Now he's managing director and senior analyst at Longview Global, a consulting firm.

Ex-Pentagon official: US AI dominance is vanishing. We must learn from China's strategy.

Look at the buzz around DeepSeek, Moonshot AI's Kimi K3, Alibaba's Qwen models, Tencent's Hunyuan, Zhipu AI, and MiniMax.  It's solid proof that China has built an AI ecosystem that churns out world-class capabilities from not one, but many companies.

The Ecosystem vs. the One-Off Mindset

McNeal argues that China's AI ecosystem isn't just leading on model benchmarks. It's pulling ahead on cost, deployment, customization, financing, standards, developer adoption, and global reach. The US, meanwhile, is stuck in reactive mode. It's scrambling to respond to one breakthrough after another, rather than shaping the playing field.

China's AI breakthroughs aren't flukes. They stem from a deliberate, world-class innovation ecosystem.

That's a bigger deal than any benchmark score or model launch. Policymakers, tech CEOs, investors, and US allies should be paying attention. The competition has moved beyond individual companies. It's now a clash of entire innovation ecosystems.

The biggest misjudgment? Washington, according to the article,  still views China's AI advances through the lens of individual companies and single technologies. But China is building something far more formidable: a complete industrial ecosystem.

“Whether those advances emerge through original innovation, engineering optimization, open-weight collaboration, or from distillation of US models is increasingly beside the point. The larger strategic reality is that they are occurring across an ecosystem, while the US continues to evaluate them one company at a time and often responds as though each breakthrough were an isolated event rather than evidence of a broader structural transformation.”

In McNeal’s view, projects like DeepSeek, Kimi, and Tongyi Qianwen are not isolated cases. They are pieces of a coordinated whole.

Over the past few years, the US has consistently underestimated China's long-term tech investments and its ability to turn domestic industrial strategy into global competitive advantage. From rare earths to EVs, robotics, semiconductors, and now AI, the pattern is the same.

China's AI breakthroughs aren't flukes. They stem from a deliberate, world-class innovation ecosystem.

McNeal noted: “the analytical mistake has remained remarkably consistent.”  The US tends to assess China's progress product by product, dismissing each advance as “exceptional” or “unsustainable”. China, on the other hand, has pursued a patient, meticulous strategy. It's cultivating conditions for the entire ecosystem to innovate and deploy in sync.

McNeal points out that China's plan to become a tech superpower was set long before Biden's tech restrictions came into play. DeepSeek's R1 release in January 2025 was a wake-up call. It forced many to finally admit what China has been signaling for over a decade through industrial policies, five-year plans, and national science and technology strategies.

China's Full-Stack Strategy Goes Global

China’s ecosystem strategy aims to shape the competitive environment for technology R&D, financing, standardization, deployment, and ultimately promotion and application.

Together, a giant net is woven: industrial policy, finance, innovation, global standards, university curricula, state-supported developer ecosystems, diplomacy, and commercial expansion, bonded into a single coherent national strategy. The objective: lock in long-term technological leadership.

It doesn't compete company by company or technology by technology. It shapes not just the technology itself, but the environment and conditions for technological success.

AI is the strategy's clearest expression today. But it's hardly the only one.

The same logic runs through China's push in semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries, robotics, telecom, renewable energy, critical minerals, digital infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing. AI is no exception to China's industrial strategy, but the most refined version of it.

McNeal argues China is now taking this AI playbook global. It's pushing its technology outward through open-source development, international cooperation, and targeted promotion to developing countries. The goal: expand the reach of its tech ecosystem.

The old US playbook won't work here. Washington once squeezed Chinese telecom firms. But that model is much harder to replicate in AI. Why? Because AI adoption hinges on the autonomous choices of global developers, enterprises, and governments.

The article cites US Commerce Secretary Lutnick's earlier comments on chip export restrictions. He indicated that Washington wants to make global users unable to leave the American tech ecosystem. But the author pushes back, questioning whether the US technology ecosystem is really the best choice right now.

Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 is the latest Chinese model turning heads in the US tech world.

The Bottom-Up Battle Washington Can't Win

Forget the Huawei playbook. McNeal draws a sharp contrast. Steering countries away from Chinese AI, he argues, is a far tougher challenge than Washington's earlier crackdown on Huawei and ZTE.

Governments can regulate telecom infrastructure. But they can't stop millions of developers from weaving AI models, software libraries, and tools into commercial applications worldwide.

The reason? Technology adoption today is a bottom-up wave, not a top-down decree.

The article lands on a blunt conclusion. For the US, the real question isn't just whether American tech firms can keep building the world's most powerful AI models. It's whether Washington can craft a coherent national strategy.

Because once the fight shifts to ecosystems, success hinges on more than which model tops the leaderboard. It depends on which ecosystem global developers, researchers, entrepreneurs, universities, companies, governments, and investors choose to trust, adopt, and rely on.

Mao Paishou

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

China's moon shot just got real. Officials have confirmed the plan: Chinese astronauts will set foot on the lunar surface before 2030.

Three Astronauts, One Big Goal

The first crewed lunar mission will fly with three astronauts. Two will descend to the surface to carry out scientific surveys and technical tests. The third will stay aboard the spacecraft in lunar orbit, coordinating and supporting the landing.

China plans first crewed Moon landing before 2030

The details emerged on October 31, when 7th Manned Space Symposium convened at Beihang University in Beijing. More than 800 experts and scholars from human spaceflight fields gathered to discuss how digital and intelligent technologies can drive the high-quality development of crewed spaceflight.

Wang Xiang, deputy chief designer of the China Manned Space Program and chief designer of the lunar exploration project, laid out the mission profile at the conference. China's first crewed lunar mission will adopt a "two launches, one landing" approach, completing the entire mission through a lunar-orbit rendezvous and docking.

Wang Xiang, chief designer of lunar exploration

How the Mission Works

The flight plan is a two-rocket job. According to the plan announced so far, the mission calls for two Long March 10 carrier rockets, launched separately. The first rocket carries the lunar lander into lunar orbit. Then a second rocket sends the crewed spacecraft into space, where it rendezvouses and docks with the waiting lander.

Once docking is complete, the astronauts move from the crewed spacecraft into the lunar lander and separate. Riding the lander, they descend to the lunar surface to carry out scientific exploration and related technical tests.

The crew is expected to number three. Two of them make the actual descent to the surface. The third stays behind in the spacecraft, keeping operations in sync with the astronauts on the ground.

Getting home means running the sequence in reverse. After their work is done, the two lunar astronauts lift off from the surface aboard the lander, climb back to lunar orbit, and dock a second time with the crewed spacecraft that held station. Once the astronauts transfer back aboard, the spacecraft heads for Earth, closing out the crewed lunar landing mission.

China's lunar exploration enters new development stage

Beyond the Landing

China's lunar program just leveled up. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has completed integration and formally entered a new phase of development. Work on the lunar landing stage is moving steadily ahead, with one clear target: putting the first Chinese astronauts on the Moon before 2030.

But landing is only the beginning. The mission will also run lunar scientific surveys and related technical tests. The goal is to master the hard stuff: crewed Earth-Moon round trips, short stays on the lunar surface, and joint human-machine exploration. It must check off a full list of tasks, from landing and roving to sampling, research and return. Step by step, China is building the ability to explore the Moon on its own terms.

Lunar landing work advances toward 2030 goal

Meanwhile, China's space station is hitting its stride. The outpost has entered a phase of routine operations and high-quality development, and it is running stably in orbit. More than 200 science and application projects are already under way, spanning space life sciences, space materials science, microgravity fundamental physics, and microgravity fluid and combustion science.

And the station is about to open its doors wider. Its first foreign astronaut is on the way, along with visits from a low-cost cargo transportation system.

Mission uses two Long March 10 rockets

A Milestone in Sight

China's crewed lunar landing program is moving out of the lab and onto the launch pad.

The Long March 10 launch vehicle, the lunar lander and the crewed spacecraft are all pushing ahead in development. Put them together, and a first Chinese landing on the Moon before 2030 will stand as a major milestone in the country's space ambitions.