Anthropic Outlines 3 Measures to Keep US Ahead of China in AI
Anthropic has published a paper on the US-China competition in artificial intelligence (AI). It argues America can secure a 12-to-24-month lead over China with the right policy moves. The United States and China are engaged in an intense competition for leadership in AI development. However, Anthropic stressed that the US and its allies must maintain their advantage over the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Anthropic Pushes Washington to Cement a 12-24 Month AI Lead The paper noted that although export controls have helped preserve the United States current lead, the measures have not been sufficient. US vs China update. Stanford‘s AI Index put the US–China gap at 2.7%. Here’s what two years of real-world use from the Text Arena shows. Gap three years ago: +278. Today: +29.@AnthropicAI‘s Claude Opus 4.6 Thinking vs. Baidu’s@ErnieforDevs Ernie 5.1 at the top. The US… pic.twitter.com/gDt4hzRR8K — Arena.ai (@arena) May 14, 2026 The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lacks the capacity to produce enough advanced chips domestically or legally acquire them from overseas. Nonetheless, Chinese AI labs have remained competitive through two key workarounds. The first is illicit compute access, smuggling advanced AI chips into China and tapping into offshore data centers. The second is illicit model access, which includes distillation attacks on US frontier systems and