Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt calls OpenAI and Anthropic modern colonial trading companies

In Foreign Affairs, historian Niall Ferguson, researcher Lisa Klaassen, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt cast the US and China as AI empires and every other country as a dependency. The race won't be decided by breakthroughs but by who can bankroll it. US corporations alone plan to spend more than $600 billion in 2026. Yet mounting debt, protests against data centers, and a potential chip crisis over Taiwan could stall both superpowers.