Recently, the Chinese embassy in Washington posted an AI-generated video mocking President Donald Trump’s proposed Shield of the Americas summit. The point was to portray the United States as paranoid, overbearing, and desperate for influence in Latin America.
The video was cheap propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party. But it was also revealing.
Beijing no longer feels the need to hide its disdain. It is comfortable to publicly berate the United States, and especially its influence in the Western Hemisphere, a region that Washington once considered its undisputed strategic backyard. That shift should concern Americans much more than the video itself.
Today, under the leadership of President Donald Trump and Secretary Marco Rubio, an economically stable and secure Western Hemisphere is a major national security priority of the United States. This includes, in particular, confronting and limiting the expansion of Chinese influence in the region.
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China has spent years expanding its reach in Latin America through ports, energy projects, mining, telecom equipment and digital infrastructure. That influence is not only commercial, but also political. It creates dependency, increases power and gives Beijing a foothold in America’s backyard. It also creates significant national security threats to the American people.
Now add artificial intelligence to the image.
China’s use of AI propaganda is more than a gimmick. It reminds us that Beijing sees this vital technology not just as a business opportunity, but also as an instrument of state power.
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Those are the real stakes. Not who posts the smartest video on social media, but who builds the hardware, writes the standards, controls the networks, and delivers the systems that everyone will depend on in an AI age. Washington is beginning to understand this, albeit not always gracefully. One sign of this is the way policymakers have begun to view technology deals through a national security lens.
Take Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s acquisition of Juniper Networks, which was approved by the Justice Department and blessed by the US intelligence community. It faced regulatory scrutiny, as mergers should, but few antitrust concerns. The broader question, however, was whether the United States could afford to hobble one of its own network players while China continues to back its national champions with the full weight of the state.
That does not mean that every merger should be given a free pass because China exists. It does mean that Washington must stop pretending that this is a normal market battle between companies operating on a level playing field. It’s not. American companies are accountable to shareholders and regulators. Chinese companies ultimately respond to the state, its intelligence apparatus and its strategic ambitions.
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This is important in telecommunications. It’s important in AI. And it matters at every layer of the digital economy, which is inextricably linked to geopolitical power.
The same logic applies to semiconductors, cloud capacity, export controls and secure communications networks. These are often discussed as technical policy issues. They’re not. They are the conduits of power. Countries that control them determine the choices of countries that do not.
Beijing understands this well. That is why it subsidizes key industries, protects its own companies, imposes its standards abroad and uses state media and diplomatic channels to attack US initiatives before they gain ground.
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The spot aimed at President Trump’s Shield of the Americas follows that pattern. It’s not a serious argument. It’s narrative warfare: make US efforts seem absurd, make Chinese expansion look normal, and encourage the idea of ​​America’s retreat.
This is how the influence erodes. Not all at once, but piece by piece. The real threat facing the American people is a global political and cultural elite that believes Beijing is the future and that Washington is too divided, slow or unserious to compete.
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The answer is not to imitate the Chinese propaganda machine. America doesn’t need better AI taunts from its embassies. Strategic seriousness is needed.
That means investing in domestic technological strength, building reliable alternatives with allies, and ensuring regulators understand that market structure and national power are no longer separate issues. It also means recognizing that America cannot defend its position in the world and at the same time treat the technology sector as if it were politically neutral.
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The Chinese joke only works because Beijing believes the United States still does not fully understand the nature of the struggle. It’s time for the US to prove them wrong.
Because the countries that build the systems of the future will not only dominate the markets. They will shape the political, military and economic order of the world in the coming decades.
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