What happened
RAND's Center on AI, Security, and Technology built and analyzed a novel cross-national dataset of AI developer firms headquartered in the United States and China, which the authors say "fills an important gap in the literature" that has "largely relied on anecdotal evidence or official policy statements rather than systematic cross-national comparison." Authors Jon Schmid, Prateek Puri, Vitor Melo, and Anthony Hakim examined firm counts, commercial orientation, and technical approach across both ecosystems. Key takeaway, quoted verbatim: the two developer-firm populations are "structurally more similar than commonly assumed," with "the largest divergence" being "physical embodiment versus software" orientation.
Why it matters
Provides an empirical corrective to competitiveness and export-control debates that assume sharp structural divergence between the U.S. and Chinese AI sectors, offering a data-grounded basis for policy design rather than anecdote-driven assumptions.
Action needed
Incorporate the dataset's firm-level comparative findings into internal China-AI-competition risk assessments and export-control policy briefings.