While talking on the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi final month, White House science and expertise adviser Michael Kratsios introduced the launch of Tech Corps. Positioned as “bringing America’s historic Peace Corps into the 21st century,” this system guarantees to supply hundreds of American volunteers and advisers with technical and scientific backgrounds the chance to assist accomplice nations undertake American AI expertise.
Kratsios urged the initiative will assist to present “last-mile support in deploying powerful AI applications for enhanced public services” in sectors together with well being, training, and agriculture.
But the Tech Corps additionally serves one other objective: steering international locations towards American AI {hardware} and software program, and away from the Chinese equivalents because the Trump administration sizes up an ongoing U.S.-China AI race. Given the administration’s perception that AI will “define the future of economic growth, national security, and global competitiveness for decades to come,” the deployment of U.S. AI expertise could also be important to assist the promotion of American geopolitical, financial, and safety pursuits.
“The United States has recognized that it has to compete on the unit economics of AI,” American Enterprise Fellow Ryan Fedasiuk advised The Dispatch. “American AI can’t just be the best in the world in terms of quality, it has to be the most accessible.”
In his speech on the summit in India, Kratsios additionally talked about financing initiatives to assist assist companions constructing on the U.S. tech stack (on this case the parts wanted to run AI techniques), in addition to a “National Champion Initiative” that might work to assist corporations in accomplice nations with American expertise. (It’s unclear which international locations will take part, however India will possible be amongst them, given it not too long ago joined the Pax Silica—a U.S.-led worldwide initiative aiming to safe trusted provide chains for superior applied sciences.)
The introduction of the Tech Corps is the most recent of a variety of measures and proposals beneath Trump’s administration aimed toward diffusing the complete American AI stack overseas. In July, the administration launched its flagship AI technique doc, “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” which argued that to reach world AI competitors, the U.S. should “drive adoption of American AI systems, computing hardware, and standards throughout the world.” Two weeks later, Trump signed an executive order to coordinate a nationwide effort for “promoting the export of full-stack American AI technology packages,” which was formalized in October beneath the Commerce Department’s “American AI Exports Program.”
The Tech Corps can thereby be seen as the most recent push to assist the promotion of the American AI stack overseas.
Where China sits relative to the U.S. when it comes to deploying its personal expertise stacks world wide varies. While the American AI stack stays the default infrastructure for a lot of the world’s AI growth, Chinese open supply fashions, and to a sure extent cloud service suppliers, are “increasingly competitive particularly in the Global South, due to a combination of cheaper pricing and [architectural] efficiency gains” in accordance to Center for A New American Security analysis affiliate Ruby Scanlon.
When it comes to exporting AI chips, information facilities, and deep studying frameworks (the software program toolkits that builders use to construct and practice AI fashions), America stays far forward of China. Yet following the release of DeepSeek R1 in January 2025, a wave of Chinese open-weight fashions started to seem in the marketplace—fashions by which the underlying code and skilled parameters (the “weights”) are made publicly accessible for anybody to obtain, modify, and deploy. Dominant American fashions resembling ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, are closed fashions, functioning extra like non-public property, made accessible for public use by licensing agreements. While higher performing, they’re additionally usually dearer, making cheaper Chinese open-supply fashions extra alluring.
“Chinese models are very strong, especially on benchmarks, but still behind the best U.S. models. They are likely serving the models in ways that make it cheaper and more accessible at a lower price point, because if they are competing at the same price point they’d get killed,” Allen Institute for AI researcher Nathan Lambert advised The Dispatch.
Chinese models are reportedly being utilized in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, but to what extent that is the case, and the way it compares to the diffusion of U.S. AI fashions stay unclear.
Yet analysts warn of the significance of prioritising the U.S. AI stack, fearing Chinese infrastructural lock-in, and safety dangers.
“We are at risk of repeating the experience of Huawei’s dominance in 5G equipment, in AI models today in 2026,” Fedasiuk mentioned. His newest report discusses potential Chinese safety dangers, information exfiltration, intelligence assortment and censorship, when counting on the Chinese AI stack.
The U.S. closed infrastructure is actually robust. According to a latest RAND report, the U.S. accounted for roughly 93 p.c of worldwide massive language mannequin web site visits, and as of the second quarter of 2025, 90 p.c of Fortune 500 corporations reportedly utilized OpenAI expertise.
Yet Chinese open-weight fashions resembling Qwen, Kimi, and Minimax stay standard. According to a latest MIT study, such fashions have surpassed U.S. open-weight fashions in complete downloads, and on Hugging Face—the primary platform the place AI researchers and builders share, obtain, and construct on one another’s fashions—Alibaba’s Qwen mannequin has reportedly been downloaded greater than 700 million occasions, making it probably the most downloaded mannequin on the positioning. A reporter assessing the statistics from the developer platform OpenRouter found that Chinese open-weight fashions grew from simply 1.2 p.c of worldwide AI utilization in late 2024 to highs of practically 30 p.c by late 2025.
There are caveats, although. The geographic areas of customers stay unclear. Closed fashions proceed to dominate, averaging 80 p.c of complete utilization regardless of increased costs.
“There could be a world in which the U.S. provides a lot of the low-margin things around the infrastructure, and then China comes along and builds profitable applications on top of that, that actually reaches the end user and manages the surplus value,” Anton Leicht, a visiting scholar on the Carnegie Technology and International Affairs Program, advised The Dispatch. A method to forestall that might be to ship technical consultants overseas by initiatives such because the Tech Corps.
Unlike the U.S., China sends people overseas to assist assist and monitor world diffusion of Chinese expertise. A 2021 report from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology found that Chinese science and expertise diplomats function in 52 international locations, stationed in Chinese embassies, and work to monitor technological breakthroughs and determine funding alternatives for Chinese corporations.
But the U.S. solely has a “small sprinkling in select embassies of technology-focused foreign service officers,” Scanlon mentioned. In 2023, Ambassador at Large for Cyberspace and Digital Policy (CDP) Nathaniel Fick described the State Department’s aim of getting simply a single skilled cyber and digital officer in each embassy world wide by the top of subsequent yr. But these roles were cut in 2025.
While he helps this system and initiatives aimed toward exporting the American stack, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Chris McGuire sees such applications as “on the margin moves, when we are facing a very significant strategic challenge” of getting world corporations to construct on the complete U.S. stack. He sees export controls on superior semiconductor chips—which the Trump administration is eschewing— as more practical in curbing Chinese AI stack deployment. “We need not only positive inducements to push countries to use the U.S. AI stack, such as the Tech Corps, or financing program, but also sticks that will prevent them from using U.S. tech to make or support untrusted infrastructure.”
International growth efforts might also face some challenges, together with balancing business incentives with world growth objectives. Scanlon famous that the introduction of the Tech Corps is a “pretty striking divergence from the original intent of the Peace Corps program,” given its clear business and geopolitical incentives.
Others additionally concern that the Tech Corps program might not catch on overseas. Meicen Sun, an assistant professor on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an MIT affiliate famous that China has amassed a vital buyer base within the rising markets for greater than a decade. Over time, this has helped them construct up “local connections, business ties, and consumer trust.” Sun notes that these benefits are arduous to quantify, however supply vital benefits.“Much of it’s social and political capital that doesn’t present up within the books,” she advised The Dispatch.