Why national security – not market forces – will define the US-China AI race

IN A recent commentary carried in The Business Times, “When the disruptor gets disrupted: How Chinese open-source AI is eating its own industry”, veteran economic affairs columnist Vikram Khanna astutely shows how Harvard professor Clayton Christensen’s theory of “disruptive innovation” is visibly under way.

In short, Khanna said that the US artificial intelligence labs are being overtaken by the Chinese ones, because models from China are cheaper to use and perform almost as well as their Western competition.

Yet disruption theory on its own cannot account for Beijing’s decision to block Meta’s US$2 billion acquisition of Manus AI in April 2026.