Episode

The US is losing its lead in AI

Podcast
The Vergecast
Published
Jul 20, 2026
Duration seconds
2058
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/257/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP7661424141.mp3
Audio
https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/257/traffic.megaphone.fm/VMP7661424141.mp3
JSON
/v1/public/podcasts/the-vergecast/episodes/the-us-is-losing-its-lead-in-ai
Markdown
/podcast/the-vergecast/the-us-is-losing-its-lead-in-ai.md

Actions

  • POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-vergecast/episodes/the-us-is-losing-its-lead-in-ai/transcription-requests
    Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
  • GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-vergecast/the-us-is-losing-its-lead-in-ai.md
    Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

Summary

Since the beginning of the AI revolution, a few companies have claimed to be building the best and most powerful AI models. All of them were American. More recently, a few Chinese companies seem to have caught up, shipping models that are much cheaper and maybe also just as good. The Verge's Hayden Field and Lauren Feiner join the show to explain how China made so much progress, the threat that progress represents to US companies and the US government, and what might happen next. Further reading: ⁠China and the US are battling to become the world’s first AI superpower⁠ ⁠Trump’s Anthropic shutdown just made the case for non-American AI⁠ ⁠China delivers a one-two punch to America’s AI dominance⁠ Subscribe to The Verge for unlimited access to theverge.com, subscriber-exclusive newsletters, and our ad-free podcast feed. We love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices