If China has 1mm AI workers, for the U.S. to match that, only 0.3% of its population would need to be AI workers.

If the U.S. wanted to catch up, they could have, for 1 year, increase their H1B immigration quota to 800k instead of 80k, last year (the well is probably too poisoned under the current administration), for AI workers and they would have exceeded China’s number in a year, because I suspect a lot of those 1mm Chinese AI workers would have been the first to take advantage.

But also, since the U.S. recruiter (or at least used to), from the entire world and only a handful of China’s workers are immigrants, the US would get (or used to get) the best of the best in the entire world, so they wouldn’t even need to match China.

Heck, thanks to having recruited the best of the best fork the entire world for the past few decades the U.S. is ahead, or at least on equal footing even with this tiny fraction of people.