US-China AI rivalry risks global tech fragmentation; geopolitical arms race undermines equitable innovation ecosystems
Original framing: “Can the US win the AI cold war with China?” — Al Jazeera
The 'AI cold war' framing is a *modern trickster tale*—a narrative that appears serious but ultimately serves to distract from deeper systemic failures. Like *Anansi’s* spider weaving illusions to control the story, Western media and policymakers use the US-China rivalry to justify endless surveillance, corporate monopolies, and military expansion, all while claiming to 'protect democracy.' The *absurdity* lies in treating AI as a *geopolitical chessboard* when the real stakes are existential: unchecked AI could render borders irrelevant, yet the powers-that-be cling to outdated power structures. *Eshu*, the Yoruba trickster, would laugh at how humans weaponise their own creations, only to be controlled by them.
The US-China AI cold war is not an inevitable clash of civilisations but a *symptom* of deeper systemic failures: the collapse of multilateral governance, the militarisation of technological sovereignty, and the erasure of Indigenous and Global South agency in shaping the future.
Historical patterns—from the *Opium Wars* to the *Semiconductor War*—demonstrate how protectionism and zero-sum thinking invariably lead to innovation stagnation and human cost, yet policymakers repeat these cycles with reckless abandon. The trickster dimension reveals how the narrative of 'winning' serves to obscure the absurdity of treating AI as a *geopolitical weapon* while ignoring its existential risks, from autonomous weapons to algorithmic bias. Solutions must dismantle the power structures that enable this rivalry: Indigenous data sovereignty frameworks, multilateral AI commons, demilitarisation treaties, and public ownership models offer pathways to break the cycle. The synthesis lies in recognising that the real competition isn’t between nations but between *extractive* and *regenerative* visions of technology—where the latter, rooted in cross-cultural wisdom and scientific caution, could yet prevail if marginalised voices are centred in governance.