Winning the AI race with China is often framed in terms of expensive, long-term bets: bringing back chip manufacturing, pouring billions of dollars into data centers, and modernizing and expanding the power grid. But as we seek to win the Great Power competition of the 21st century, are we overlooking a crucial resource?
We spent our careers in uniform contributing to our country’s national security. We believe that artificial intelligence is the decisive battlefield of our age – and that the choices we make today will determine whether the United States ultimately prevails.
We often remember pivotal moments in history by focusing on dramatic decisions and famous leaders; D-Day was inconceivable without General Eisenhower’s decisiveness and bold resolve. Yet the success of that invasion and the follow-on campaigns also relied on little-known tactical and operational choices, like the decision to assemble prefabricated artificial harbors and the installation of covert fuel pipelines, which together paved the way for Allied victory in World War II.
The idea that tactical decisions can shape historic breakthroughs holds true today, as Washington focuses on the growing AI competition with China. In fact, the biggest threat to American AI leadership may not come from Hangzhou, home to Chinese AI labs like DeepSeek and Alibaba, but instead it could well come from our own American courts in the form of copyright lawsuits that could severely impact America’s ability to innovate and achieve the fullest from its AI endeavors.
Currently, the outcome of dozens of lawsuits threatens to blunt America’s innovative edge. The legal disputes hinge on the “fair use” doctrine, which permits in certain circumstances the use of copyrighted material. AI developers argue that training AI models, based on vast datasets, aligns with copyright precedent, which previously allowed copying to build out search engines like Google.
Recent cases, though, threaten to upend this understanding. If courts impose stringent licensing requirements, critical high-quality data will be removed from the training base, making it harder and more expensive to develop new AI models. U.S. startups and research will be severely impacted, handing China a massive win.
Data is the lifeblood of the development of AI. Treating AI training as violating copyright would significantly slow American innovation. Most alarming, it would harm national security by weakening models that support national defense. US models trained on constrained data sets will be less capable, which will have profound national security implications. We worry, for example, that these models may not be able to identify subtext in written communications by foreign agents and entities, or to recognize a key high value target from a satellite image.
On the other end of the world, China faces no such restraints. China’s AI developers operate without the privacy or copyright restrictions that bind their U.S. counterparts. They draw on vast troves of global copyrighted material and personal data—much of it collected without consent—to train increasingly sophisticated models.
At the same time, Beijing’s civil-military fusion strategy channels massive funding and talent toward AI research and deployment, all in support of Xi Jinping’s ambition to make China the undisputed AI leader by 2030.
Already, Chinese models with unrestricted access to data now lead the world in video modeling, a critical frontier for AI-driven robotic spatial reasoning. This unbridled approach also reflects the Chinese Communist Party’s priorities: tools like DeepSeek are programmed to omit any reference to the Tiananmen Square massacre and block criticism of Party officials, underscoring an emphasis on state control over truth.
Losing our AI edge to a power that compromises core values of truth and integrity would reshape the global order. Much of the world’s population will rally around whichever platforms arrive first to organize their economies and daily lives; and once that loyalty is won, it’s almost impossible to reverse. We cannot let China capture global allegiance by being first to market with superior or more affordable AI solutions, engineered to aid authoritarian political systems.
To maintain AI leadership, the US must harness the very same structures that have enabled us to lead in innovation for most of our history. US copyright law has consistently encouraged investment in new ideas—from literature and music to software and entertainment—by ensuring innovators can reap the rewards of their efforts. This incentive structure helped fuel both a creative content sector and a dynamic technology sector. It has proven resilient to successive waves of innovation. Going forward, we must persuasively argue in the American court system, and wherever policy decisions are made, for a fair use interpretation that’s balanced and reflects the geopolitical interests at play. The stakes have rarely been higher.
But to be clear, what’s at stake today is much more than the outcome of domestic legal debates. We should view and treat AI as critical infrastructure and a force multiplier for defense, intelligence, and cybersecurity. America’s lead is fragile. Policymakers must act decisively to protect intellectual property without stifling progress, and advance AI responsibly alongside allies who share our values of privacy and liberty. Failure to do so risks a world where Beijing’s AI models win the future while we fall irretrievably behind.
Daniel William Christman is a retired United States Army lieutenant general, former Superintendent of the United States Military Academy, and a Board Member of the American Security Project. Lieutenant General Norman R. Seip, USAF (Ret.) is President of the American Security Project, and retired from the United States Air Force in 2009 after serving for 35 years.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Ermell / Wikimedia Commons)
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