Schmidt and Ferguson Argue China and the U.S. Are Building "Empires of AI"
marigo · x · 2026-10-21
Eric Schmidt, historian Niall Ferguson, and Lisa Klaassen have published a major essay in Foreign Affairs (Nov/Dec 2026): "Empires of AI: The Rise and Fall of a New Global Order."
Their core argument: in just a few years, China and the United States have each assembled what future historians might recognize as a new kind of empire—one whose dominion extends beyond territory, trade routes, and airspace to knowledge itself. By controlling the large language models, chips, physical infrastructure, and capital that underpin advanced machine cognition, Beijing and Washington are not only attaining new heights of economic performance and power projection; they are also setting the terms of all future scientific and intellectual progress.
The authors argue the term "AI superpowers" no longer captures the influence and reach these rivals wield, which is forming even without active alliance-building. The full article is subscriber-only.
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