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The Great (ai) Game vs AI Theater
“The game is so large that one sees but a little at a time.”
To understand AI, its stakes and its long-term impact, you have to step away from the cacophony of headlines. And instead take the time to think of it as the Great Game.
The Great Game was the 19th century strategic rivalry between the British Empire and Russia over Central Asia. Subsequent versions of this have played out over control of oil, for example. Then there was the Cold War, arguably the greatest game, with global nuclear annihilation at stake.
The game changes. The playbook doesn’t.
Neither side wanted direct war. Both wanted dominance. So they competed through proxies, influence, positioning, and long-horizon maneuvering. It was about who controlled the board, not just who won the battle.
Great Game is how we describe any era-defining geopolitical competition where the stakes are civilizational, the timeline is generational, and the weapons are economic and technological as much as military.
AI is the new Great Game.
If AI is the great game of the 21st century (and it is), then winning requires what great games always require. Long-term strategy, sustained focus, and the discipline to play beyond the next quarter, the next news cycle, the next fundraise.
China understands this. The United States, at this moment, seems scattered, or at least that’s what this rube can see from the outside.
This week, Beijing released its 15th Five-Year Plan, laying out its ambitions to aggressively adopt AI throughout its economy and dominate emerging technologies. This is a continuation of a deliberate, compounding strategy. China spent the last five years targeting robotics, EVs, and post-industrial manufacturing. They planned their way into dominating everything from renewable energy to automobiles. They want to do the same with AI, with or without Nvidia GPUs.
Open-source AI is the new flagship strategy for China. They see it as a competitive advantage against the United States. They’re already playing the game. And we are raking chief executives over the coals.
On our end, we have what I’d call AI theater.
I am yet to read a clear, comprehensive outline of what our long-term strategy is to win the great game. Instead what we have is virtue signaling on all sides, vapid commentary, a lot of words, deals that go nowhere, or don’t mean much in the larger scheme of things. This new deal about energy prices is a good example.
Yesterday at the White House, the President gathered the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Oracle, OpenAI, and xAI to sign something called the “Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” a voluntary promise not to raise your electricity bill. A pinky promise dressed up as policy, timed perfectly for the midterms.
And then there’s OpenAI. They are taking four weeks of revenue, multiplying by twelve, sprinkling some pixie dust on the result, and fast-tracking to a public offering. Cash in before the party ends? Or cash in and end the party? Either way, this isn’t a company executing a strategy to win the great game. This is an opportunist executing a strategy to get as much from the public markets as it can, so there isn’t much left for its rivals, Anthropic and SpaceX.
Neither is a plan.
The contrast isn’t really about authoritarianism versus democracy, or central planning versus markets. I don’t want a Five-Year Plan with Xi’s name on it. But I do want to know what America’s long-term strategy for winning actually is. Who trains the talent? Where does the compute go, and for whose benefit? How does AI get woven into the industries that actually employ people, manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, infrastructure?
Right now the answer is simple. Let the companies figure it out. Let the politicians take photos with the companies. And hope the voters don’t notice the electricity bill going up anyway. I know we don’t do long term, but maybe like with everyone else who is going to adapt for AI, the thinking about AI itself has to evolve.
From the outside, it seems China has a better game plan. The question is when, or whether, Washington will have one too.
“When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before.” — Mahbub Ali, Kim (1901)
Why I wrote this piece:
- Trump meets tech giants on energy pledge ahead of midterms Seven tech giants signed a White House pledge to cover data center energy costs and not pass them to consumers. Voluntary, unenforceable, and timed for the midterms. (Reuters)
- China vows to accelerate technological self-reliance in AI push Beijing’s 15th Five-Year Plan commits China to AI dominance across its economy, with targeted investment in chips, quantum computing, humanoid robots, and open-source AI as a deliberate national strategy. Oh, they got the game. (Reuters)
- The Pro-Human AI Declaration A broad coalition including those with no clue about AI calling for human control, accountability, and limits on AI concentration of power. AI theater at its best. (Human AI)
My Related Writing:
The Great Game framing is the right one. The uncomfortable part is that markets can’t coordinate long-horizon strategy by design. The US is betting that decentralized competition produces better outcomes than deliberate planning. That bet may be right. But right now it just looks like no one’s steering.
We don’t have a good enough leadership in place to run this US approach. Everyone is going for what they can get, not the entire long term strategy.
I feel privileged that you’re using the Great Game reference I coinecd 2 years ago https://danafblankenhorn.substack.com/p/the-great-game-of-ai Glad I was on the right track, because you so often are.
We are of the age where we read books and appreciated the history for what it was. A map for thinking about the future.