I work in the energy industry. Any future containing widespread use of AI will require a hard electrical infrastructure upgrade equivalent to the initial deployment of electricity and phone lines. The intersection of AI and the electrical grid is a hard and as-yet-unsolved problem. Either way, power infrastructure will drive our destiny as much or more than AI.

Why? The transmission system is used to span distance to bring energy from large producers to large concentrations of consumers. Traditionally power consumption was concentrated in and around cities while power generation happened away from cities.

Datacenters require relatively few people to operate so do not need to be located in or near population centers. Sites are chosen on this basis - DCs are sited close to generation or significant transmission system nodes

Even if we did manage to achieve such an upgrade, we would still have to successfully manage to secure the rare earths required for electronics manufacturing. Extracting and processing these resources is becoming more and more complex. Especially when you consider we would need these resources not only to sustain our current infrastructure, but also to improve it.

So basically China has the infrastructure & raw materials for properly utilizing AI & America doesn't.

I really wonder if America will wake up because China crushes us under their feet. I kind of doubt it.

We beat the USSR due to their style of government being absolutely terrible. China's form of authoritarianism has proven far more adaptable. Not to mention that America's governance is showing risks of sliding towards corrupt authoritarianism as well. If both forms of government suck from an idealistic perspective, then China's manufacturing, rare earth metals, growing naval capacity, experience in stealing IP, & energy infrastructure seem to give it the advantage.

The only thing that I think that America has going for it right now is possibly control of space through SpaceX.