Outrunning the Dragon Means Running Together

Author’s Note

This essay opens my new series, Toward a Trusted Tech Alliance, exploring how democracies can move from fragmentation to common cause in the digital era. At its core is what I call a Digital Steel Accord — in other words, a foundational agreement on data and AI standards, narrow enough to be practical yet strong enough to grow outward into broader alignment. The series begins with U.S.–EU divides but will expand to Tokyo, Singapore, the OECD, and beyond, showing why democracies must run together if freedom is to shape the digital future.

You’ve probably heard the old story: two hikers see a bear. One starts running. The other says, “You can’t outrun a bear.” The reply? “I don’t have to outrun the bear—I just have to outrun you.”

In the strategic competition of our era, it’s not the Russian bear we’re racing. It’s the Chinese dragon. And here’s the twist: if the world’s democracies waste their energy trying to outrun each other, the dragon wins—without having to run any faster.

In this race, fragmentation is failure. Treating our closest allies as industrial adversaries while the real strategic competitor surges ahead is a sure way to lose. As the old adage warns: we must all hang together, or we shall surely hang separately.

The Instincts Holding Us Back

Winning the digital future means confronting two deeply ingrained reflexes that often work against our long-term interests:

1. The Protectionist Urge
   • Protecting “national champions” by default, rather than by merit.
   • Designing standards that shut out even trusted allies, creating tech silos instead of interoperable ecosystems.
   • Example: Overly restrictive semiconductor export policies that risk alienating the very partners we need to scale trusted supply chains.
2. The Sovereignty Reflex
   • Over-interpreting “digital sovereignty” as a mandate for self-reliance at all costs.
   • The EU’s AI Act is well-intentioned, but its compliance burdens, approval bottlenecks, and penalties have contributed to an exodus of top tech talent—many of whom now work in the U.S.
   • At the AI Action Summit in Paris, I was struck by how readily some European colleagues acknowledged their role in American AI success, without reckoning with why their own innovation ecosystem was thinning.

Even when we align on values, there’s a dangerous tension between trust and innovation. If we smother innovation with overly rigid safety regimes, we risk enabling the dragon to win on speed, scale, and deployment—especially in markets that value rapid rollout over perfect safeguards.

Why Alignment Alone Isn’t Enough

Let’s assume the best-case scenario: the U.S. and its allies coordinate perfectly—harmonizing standards, sharing intelligence, bridging regulatory divides. Could we still lose?

Yes—because 85% of the world’s population and landmass lies outside our alliance.

That’s where the real battleground lies. The dragon doesn’t need to persuade Washington, Brussels, or Tokyo. It only needs to wire Lagos, Jakarta, Hanoi, São Paulo, Cairo, Riyadh, and Nairobi.

In doing so, it shapes the digital defaults of the next billion users—defaults that determine whose values govern the flow of information, whose companies benefit from network effects, and whose governments can see the data.

Data Is the New Geopolitical High Ground

Control over infrastructure isn’t just about hardware. It’s about data flows—the lifeblood of AI, economic intelligence, and security insight.

If personal, commercial, and institutional data from the 85% flows primarily through Huawei, ZTE, or other authoritarian-aligned systems, Beijing gains:

• Training advantages for next-generation AI models optimized for the Global South.
• Sectoral dominance in industries from fintech to health tech through hyper-localized product design.
• Near real-time visibility into communications, transactions, and movements worldwide—including those of our own diplomats, companies, and citizens operating in wired regions.

This isn’t hypothetical. Germany still uses Huawei equipment in parts of its telecom network. On a recent trip to Rome, I stood in Piazza Navona—surrounded by centuries of Western history—and saw a massive Huawei billboard towering over the square. It was the only advertisement in the plaza. The symbolism couldn’t be clearer: authoritarian technology isn’t just arriving—it’s making itself at home in our cultural capitals.

The Cost of Wasting Time

Every month we spend in trade disputes with allies over minor market share issues is a month the dragon spends laying fiber, installing 5G, and embedding surveillance-friendly smart city platforms in growth markets.

And once defaults are set, they are hard to dislodge. Infrastructure isn’t like a phone app you can uninstall—it’s baked into the physical and digital architecture of cities, economies, and governance systems.

Three Steps to Running Together

To keep pace—and ultimately outrun the dragon—we must:

1. Treat Allies as Multipliers, Not Competitors
   • Prioritize interoperability over industrial policy one-upmanship.
   • Recognize that in the AI era, standards scale fastest when multiple major markets adopt them simultaneously.
2. Balance Trust with Innovation Speed
   • Move from “perfect before rollout” to “safe enough to scale, then iterate”—while keeping democratic safeguards in place.
   • Coordinate regulatory approaches so companies don’t face duplicative or contradictory requirements.
3. Compete Globally, Not Just Locally
   • Match China’s infrastructure financing pace in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
   • Offer turnkey, scalable solutions that are transparent, rights-respecting, and cost-competitive.

The Real Finish Line

The finish line in this race isn’t who gets there first among democracies—it’s making sure the dragon doesn’t define the route, write the rules, or own the infrastructure the rest of the world runs on.

The biggest danger in the U.S.–China tech race isn’t that they outrun us—it’s that we waste our energy outrunning each other.

The choice is clear: run together, or get burned.