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In the Review’s November 5 issue Julian Gewirtz writes about the new terrain of global hegemony—artificial intelligence:

Beijing recognizes a strand of American thinking that has received too little attention in the US: the conviction that advanced AI may bring the return of American global primacy.…

Twentieth-century visions of American primacy rested on overwhelming military and economic power, but the new AI primacists imagine something more drastic: a winner-take-all technology that could allow American power to increase faster than rivals can catch up, making its primacy permanent.

But as with many contests for global supremacy, “the primacist vision is remarkably imprecise on fundamental questions” such as “a clear test for when the race has been ‘won.’” Instead, Gewirtz argues, the “winner-take-all vision” has kept both Democrats and Republicans from regulating the AI industry, blind to the risks posed by the technology.

Below, alongside Gewirtz’s essay, are five articles from our archives about the US’s perennial anxiety that it will be overtaken by Asian superpowers.

Julian Gewirtz
The Dream of AI Primacy

The US drive to win the AI race against China now feeds a fantasy of permanent American dominance in global affairs.

Julian Gewirtz
When the Chips Are Down

President Trump’s reversal of a ban on sales of advanced semiconductors to China undercut the strategic logic behind years of American policy that was meant to keep the US ahead in the race to develop AI systems.

—February 26, 2026

Jessica T. Mathews
Can China Replace the West?

Powered, above all, by China’s economic dynamism, Asia is stronger than it has ever been. At the same time, the United States and much of Europe are struggling with deep challenges to their democracies. The EU faces what may be existential threats from Brexit, from populist, right-wing parties, and from member states in Eastern Europe that have turned away from democracy. NATOis in disrepair. The US is more divided now than it has been at any point in the past century, with no discernible path out of what appears to be a political dead end.

—May 11, 2017

Robert Skidelsky
The Chinese Shadow

The “rise” of China has suddenly become the all-absorbing topic for those professionally concerned with the future of the planet. Will the twenty-first century be the Chinese century, and, if so, in what sense? Will China’s rise be peaceful or violent? And how will this affect the United States, the current “hyperpower”? In fact, China has been “rising” for some time.

—November 17, 2005

Murray Sayle
Japan Victorious

By the time the last car and calculator, machine tool and videotape recorder are totted up, Japan’s trade surplus with the United States for 1984 is going to be close to $36 billion, nearly double that of 1983 and the biggest ever recorded, anywhere.… The sections of American industry that are feeling hard pressed, i.e., most of them, charge that the Japanese success is owed to dumping, cheating, lying, sweated labor, and other unsavory and un-American practices. The Japanese say that they have been maligned and misunderstood.

—March 28, 1985

Tetsuo Najita
Must We Copy Japan?

It may well be that Americans need to be taught a few lessons, as they tend to be a parochial lot. The dollar is falling while the yen rises, and yet Americans—who usually show little interest in trying to understand other nations in Asia or the West—still complacently feel that the US economy is naturally superior. If a foreign competitor gains an advantage, whether in automobiles, television sets, or machine tools, Americans generally assume that there has been foul play.

—February 21, 1980

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