IFP report: US AI lead over China is only ~6.5 months, and existing policy could double it
fiiiiiist · x · 2026-10-20
A 23k-word IFP report with an interactive model quantifies the US-China AI gap: China's top models trail the US frontier by 6.5 months (Epoch Capabilities Index). Using existing authorities, the US could roughly double the lead to 13+ months by end-2027. China's AI chip access will double next year, with overseas data center chips making up half its 2027 compute. Countering distillation (+62%) beats chip controls (+25%) short term, but only compute controls matter long term against the current 16x US training compute advantage.
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