Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt calls OpenAI and Anthropic modern colonial trading companies

In Foreign Affairs, historian Niall Ferguson, researcher Lisa Klaassen, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt cast the US and China as AI empires and every other country as a dependency. The race won't be decided by breakthroughs but by who can bankroll it. US corporations alone plan to spend more than $600 billion in 2026. Yet mounting debt, protests against d

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  1. The Imperial Analogy and Strategic Divergence: Schmidt, Ferguson, and Klaassen compare current US AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic to colonial-era East India Companies, suggesting these firms act as proxies for national power. While the US leverages proprietary 'closed' systems to enforce political loyalty, China promotes 'open-weight' models to establish global technical standards.
  2. Financial and Geopolitical Constraints: The competition is defined by a 'trilemma' where nations struggle to balance defense spending, social welfare, and AI leadership amidst rising interest costs. Furthermore, the reliance on concentrated chip production at TSMC is identified as the central bottleneck for the global AI supply chain.

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