Americans are souring on artificial intelligence, so Washington is trying to convince them the old-fashioned way: by citing, ad nauseam, the China threat.

US President Donald Trump, flanked by tech executives at the White House late last month, warned voters that if they rejected data centres, companies would “be forced to go overseas”. He added that “whoever wins superintelligence wins” and that “you’re probably not gonna have a second place”. The implication was that detractors would be handing China the AI race.

He did not define winning, or say whether it would merely enrich the already very rich tech bros or also benefit ordinary Americans, many of whom fear losing their jobs to AI. More of them now reject the data centres of the so-called hyperscalers, which suck up electricity and water from their neighbourhoods while pushing up costs.

So more such projects are leaving American soil, but the profits stay American. Shareholders hope to get the best of both worlds: no data-centre controversy, more profits. The machines stand on someone else’s land, guzzle someone else’s water and strain someone else’s grid. As a recent Financial Times commentary pointed out, income at home from land and energy exploitation abroad has an old name: imperialism.

The political architecture is already going up. Pax Silica, the State Department’s AI supply-chain club, aims to lock members into America’s computing empire and out of China’s. The Pentagon’s new Economic Defence Unit has reportedly invoked the East India Company as its model. Pax Silica’s first outpost is a 4,000-acre (1619-hectare) “economic security zone” in the Philippines.

Washington reportedly sought US jurisdiction and immunity for its personnel there. Manila said no and insists the zone stays under Philippine law, though the project is proceeding.

Others are less accommodating. Southeast Asia is asking, “At what cost?”Thailand has paused projects and Malaysia faces grid pressure. In Kenya, a US$1 billion data centre stalled after Microsoft and its Emirati partner asked the government to guarantee purchases of its computing capacity. Mexico’s president said her country need not become the world’s data centre.

The Philippines, ever the dutiful vassal under President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr, rolls out the red carpet. Latin America’s rightward drift is producing similar hospitality. A letter to the Financial Times argued that the region is increasingly attracting data centres from the US, citing land, energy and nearshoring opportunities. It said more than 20 projects are on track for 2026. Brazil has introduced tax incentives, while Chile is exploring government land for sites. Investment or invasion?

Meanwhile, China is doing something less glamorous but far less offensive: building at home. The Open Data Centre Committee, whose members include Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent, China Telecom and China Mobile, met in Beijing to discuss unifying scattered data centres into one national computing network.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China had built 10.85 million standard AI stacks by the end of June, up 30.7 per cent in a year. Denied advanced US chips, builders are working around the limits. The committee’s He Zekun cited breakthroughs in inter-chip communication across clusters mixing foreign and domestic semiconductors, and predicted AI computing power would be ubiquitous in China. Beijing keeps its machines within its own borders. American sanctions are forcing China’s leading developers to pool resources and become self-reliant, just as the earlier chip curbs did.

The “superintelligence” race also has a financial sting. AI is spreading faster than any previous technology; many policymakers and investors treat it as a miracle cure, propelling tech stocks and exports from the US to Asia. Critics see a familiar bubble: circular funding loops, start-ups that make no profit, and retail and institutional investors heavily overexposed and buying every dip.

Ruchir Sharma, chairman of Rockefeller International, warns in Foreign Affairs that such reliance and speculative mania invite a severe correction. AI spending has so far shielded the global economy from recent geopolitical shocks, which is precisely why its unwinding would be so painful.

History suggests innovations inflate bubbles before settling into a durable economic ecosystem. But first the bubble bursts, and the world economy will be badly hit. Smaller economies, hosting the data centres, will suffer most without having enjoyed the boom years. Washington’s “winner takes all” rhetoric looks less like strategy or a sales pitch than a threat.

For now, expansion abroad is on a freelance basis, with companies cutting deals that host nations can still refuse. But Washington increasingly clears the ground, and a refusing government can expect to face its wrath eventually.

Like the capitalism of old, American AI breeds oligarchy at home and imperialism abroad.