China's government encourages members of the Chinese diaspora to engage in technology transfer through Chinese professional associations. This issue brief analyzes 208 such associations to assess the scope of technical exchange between overseas professionals and entities within China.

The Chinese government seeks to exert influence through its scholarship and exchange programs. This issue brief assembles a picture of the China Scholarship Council—the primary vehicle by which the state provides scholarships—through Chinese-language sources.

Research and development funding and technological leadership are crucial to sustaining America’s comparative advantages. While the prevailing narrative suggests that China leads in a bipolar competition, in reality, the United States and its allies comprise a majority of global R&D.

How should democracies effectively compete against authoritarian regimes in the AI space? This report offers a “terrain strategy” for the United States to leverage the malleability of artificial intelligence to offset authoritarians' structural advantages in engineering and deploying AI.

With the increasing importance of artificial intelligence and the competition for AI talent, it is essential to understand the U.S. domestic industrial AI landscape. This data brief maps where AI talent is produced, where it concentrates, and where AI equity funding goes. This mapping reveals distinct AI hubs emerging across the country, with different growth rates, investment levels, and potential access to talent.

While AI innovation would presumably continue in some form without Big Tech, the authors find that breaking up the largest technology companies could fundamentally change the broader AI innovation ecosystem, likely affecting the development of AI applications for national security.

What U.S. export controls on AI-relevant technologies would help further aims such as stability and human rights abroad without impeding U.S. R&D? This issue brief assesses where such controls will be effective, ineffective or even damaging to the interests of the United States and its allies.

How do we measure leadership in artificial intelligence, and where does the United States rank? This policy brief examines potential AI strengths of the United States and China and prescribes recommendations to ensure the United States remains ahead.

China aims to become “the world’s primary AI innovation center” by 2030. Toward that end, the Chinese government is spending heavily on AI research and development (R&D)—but perhaps not as heavily as some have thought. This memo provides a provisional, open-source estimate of China’s spending.

China is broadening its deeply rooted technology transfer practices to include artificial intelligence. As these efforts bear fruit, we discuss how the United States can and should respond.