Anthropic Wants America to Win the AI Race. Its Strategy Makes That Impossible.

China Spends 23x Less on AI. Its Models Are Almost as Good. And They’re Free. That’s the Problem Anthropic Won’t Solve.

Photo by Steve A Johnson on Unsplash

On May 14, 2026, while Donald Trump was shaking hands with Xi Jinping in Beijing with the CEOs of Nvidia, Apple, Tesla, and BlackRock standing behind him, Anthropic published the most aggressive policy essay the company has ever written. The timing was not an accident. The title gives it away: “2028: Two Scenarios for…