Control, Compute, and a Global Open-Source-Offensive: Beijing’s Blueprint for AI Dominance

The United States and China are increasingly locked in a competition over the future of artificial intelligence, but they pursue fundamentally different strategies. While the US channels massive private investment into the race toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), China focuses on three core pillars: maintaining political control over AI systems, achieving technological self-reliance in semiconductor production, and promoting open-source AI models as global alternatives to Western platforms. Through initiatives like the AI+ program and its latest Five-Year Plan, Beijing aims to integrate AI deeply into industry, infrastructure, and national security rather than concentrating solely on frontier AI research.

The Politics of Emergence: African Middle Powers and Strategic Cooperation on AI

The African Union (AU), in its first and only continent-wide AI strategy, turns to a familiar source of authority: an estimate of generative AI’s impact on global GDP by McKinsey. Somewhat arbitrarily, the AU extracts a neat 5 percent share for Africa and concludes that generative AI could add between $110 to $220 billion to African GDP a year. A striking figure, certainly. A very elastic one too. To dwell on the elasticity of these projections is, perhaps, to miss the point. Whether the figure is $110 to $220 billion is secondary to the conditions under which Africa’s AI gains might be realised.

China’s AI Talent Camps – and What Can Europe Do?

China has turned education into a geopolitical strategy, producing the engineers behind DeepSeek, ByteDance, and more. The question is no longer whether Europe has noticed. It is whether it can respond fast enough to matter.

(Analysis) China’s 2025 Military Parade: Progress, Ambition, and Strategic Implications

China’s 2025 military parade showcased its progress in modernization and self-sufficiency. Exploring implications for partnerships, arms markets, and regional security, and beyond.