By Collins Chong Yew Keat

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia: President Donald Trump’s strategic move in rejuvenating the U.S. technological edge and supremacy by gathering all its top tech giants in September in the White House, remains a brilliant chess move in regaining its prowess, and preventing Chinese dominance.

He orchestrated an unprecedented gathering of 33 Silicon Valley power players, showcasing the prowess of the U.S. Big Tech comeback. These include Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, OpenAI founder Sam Altman, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

The administration's new Artificial Intelligence Education task force has also been set up, chaired by first lady Melania Trump.

Trump’s move is a brilliant strategic craft. By bringing together fierce industry competitors to be under a synergised umbrella of U.S. strength,  he revamped and consolidated the strength of U.S. tech into a united front, promoting cross institutional synergy and reducing frictions, in bringing out the best combined firepower of its tech dominance.

By getting these tech moguls to mend fences and to pool strength and resources, Trump has unleashed the core of U.S. innovation and creativity, as Oracle’s Safra Catz has concurred.

The emphasis on regulatory cooperation and government consolidation, create the fundamental facets for U.S. technological leadership.

This is also acknowledged  by tech executives and also acknowledged that by teaming up with the government, they could combine the best niche expertise to ensure the US stays dominant in tech and artificial intelligence (AI), also bringing positive impact to their companies with a widened spectrum of support system and technological innovation, with governmental support and incentives.

Trump’s business-friendly environment provided the impetus and the confidence to these tech companies to invest heavily at home, thus edging China and bolstering the goal of Trump in securing tech self-reliance and dominance.

Trump has secured billions in corporate commitments to drive construction of AI infrastructure.

Sam Altman is collaborating with the White House on a US$500 billion project to build more AI infrastructure, called Project Stargate, and this is just one of the many tech moves in the near future in consolidating America’s unmatched prowess in the field.

The U.S. Department of Defense also awarded OpenAI a US$200 million contract to develop AI tools for military and national security applications.

As Mark Zuckerberg stated, all the companies gathered under Trump’s foresight are building huge investments in the country in order to build their data centres and infrastructure to power the next wave of innovation. This essentially puts China’s efforts to amplify its own AI race to a grinding halt.

Earlier this year, Tim Cook also pledged to invest US$600 billion in US manufacturing during Trump's push for tariffs.

Trump’s foresight has enabled major investments to return to the U.S. in key advanced manufacturing, ensuring key innovation and tech supremacy staying in the country.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai also announced that the company will commit US$1 billion to education and job training in the U.S., reinforcing Trump’s efforts to return jobs, tech, expertise and manufacturing back to the country.

Trump has also amplified efforts to consolidate U.S. tech synergy, and announced negotiations with AMD and Nvidia, including a proposed 15 percent levy on graphics processing unit (GPU) exports to China.

This new strategic alignment between Washington and Silicon Valley represents a bold new step forward under the bold and strategic foresight and vision of Trump, with the smart move to reduce internal friction and tensions among U.S. tech powerhouses and to better galvanise their combined strength to strengthen U.S. dominance and leadership.

A Strong Message to China in the AI Race

The efforts by Trump sent an unwavering message to China: that U.S. will always stay ahead in the AI race. It signals to Beijing that both the US government and the private sector are aligned as never seen before, with the aim to maintain U.S. dominance in cutting-edge technologies.

China has long boasted itself to be the leader of tech and AI, and even suggested that it is now at least a decade ahead of the U.S., China unveiled a national strategy in 2017 with the ultimate goal to become the world leader in AI by 2030, pouring massive state resources into AI research.

The AI Action Plan rolled out in July 2025 is the answer from Trump, in a competition where the US must win.

Bringing all the titans of tech together is itself a powerful message and a strategic show of force to China by Trump. It sends this message: that U.S. leading AI companies, which are also the world’s best, are firmly united under the banner of Team USA.

The U.S. will remain the home ground for the future of AI and digital tech, and prevent the transfer of advanced tech and expertise to China.

The AI Action Plan maintains strong export controls for AI systems to be developed in America and by American companies, and reflects U.S. values. 

Those investments in the U.S. mean that talent and intellectual property remain enshrined on US soil instead of migrating to China, and coupled with the blockade of access to the world’s most advanced chips, China is losing the AI momentum.

Unrivalled AI Dominance

The U.S.  dominates in AI funding. In 2024, U.S. private investment in AI reached $109.1 billion, which was nearly 12 times bigger than China’s $9.3 billion.

In 2023, the U.S. attracted about $67 billion in AI private capital versus China’s $7.8 billion. This means that U.S. firms have far more resources to develop advanced AI systems than Chinese firms.

U.S. is also home to the world’s leading AI labs and talent, whereas China’s biggest AI players like Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba still trail in global influence.

A total of 73 percent of the world’s large language models are developed in the United States, compared to just 15 percent in China.

The U.S. employs 57 percent of top-tier AI researchers, with higher salaries and opportunities and producing more breakthrough AI models.

Most importantly, the U.S. controls the bulk of the world’s AI computing power, running on high-performance chips whereas China currently has access to only about 15 percent of global AI compute capacity, with the U.S. controlling 75 percent.

The U.S. has an unparalleled data centre infrastructure, with 5,300 data centres (the most in the world), compared to only 450 in China.

This computing power edge is crucial  as AI supremacy is determined by the capacity of bigger and faster computers to train the most advanced models.

The U.S. tech ecosystem remains the most vibrant and lucrative on the planet, being the leader in AI startup funding and venture capital by far.

Trump’s Game changing Vision

Trump’s approach to artificial intelligence has single-handedly propelled U.S. AI leadership, far greater than the CHIPS Act under Biden.

Rather than prioritising heavy regulation, Trump has pursued a pro-innovation, pro-investment framework designed to accelerate U.S. AI leadership, in creating a business-friendly policy environment.

Trump has rolled back sweeping AI regulations, arguing that excessive oversight would stifle innovation, and this open style approach actually propelled  new inventions and innovation.

His AI Action Plan focuses on removing regulatory roadblocks, supporting open-source development, and protecting free speech, all reinforcing the notion that the US remains the most fertile ground for AI development in the world.

Economic incentives and targeted tax breaks reinforce this stance, providing incentives for AI firms to offset R&D costs and creating high value local jobs.

Trump has paired deregulation with a large-scale infrastructure and research and development push to create signature initiatives such as Project Stargate and creating a supportive and free environment for U.S. firms to thrive without pressure and with the strongest government support.

By restricting Chinese access and technological leap at the same time, Trump’s strategic chess move has consolidated U.S. tech supremacy to what it does best under the very environment that unleashed its brilliance; old school capitalism and deregulations with healthy competition, and now this is pushing up a notch further, with synergy of strength among the top firms. Beijing is feeling both the jitters and pressure. 

*Collins Chong Yew Keat is a foreign affairs and strategy analyst and author in University of Malaya.*