CONCEPT
Power Transition
The horizontal redistribution of capability between states within the existing international system — distinguished from power diffusion — and the analytical category through which the U.S.–China AI competition is typically framed, often inadequately.
Power transition is Nye's term for the horizontal redistribution of capability within the existing international system — the kind of shift analysts typically describe as "the rise of China" or "American decline." It operates between entities of comparable organizational scale and can be managed through traditional diplomacy: alliances, deterrence, negotiation, the balancing mechanisms the international system has developed over centuries. Nye distinguished power transition sharply from power diffusion, arguing that both were occurring simultaneously in the information age and that conflating them produced strategic errors. Applied to AI, the conventional framing of a U.S.-China transition captures one dimension of what is happening while missing the vertical diffusion that may prove more consequential.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The U.S.-China AI competition dominates strategic discourse. Analysts track research papers published, patents filed, compute capacity deployed, engineers trained, and frame the competition as a bilateral contest whose outcome will determine the international order. This framing captures something real: the two nations