Recently, Chinas embassy in Washington posted an AI-generated video mocking President s proposed Shield of the Americas summit. The point was to paint the United States as paranoid, overbearing and desperate to cling to influence in .
The video was cheap, Chinese Communist Party propaganda. But it was also revealing.
Beijing no longer feels the need to hide its contempt. It is comfortable jeering at the United States in public, and specifically its influence in the Western Hemisphere, a region Washington once treated as its uncontested strategic backyard. That shift should concern Americans far more than the video itself.
Today, under President Donald Trump and Secretary s leadership, an economically stable and secure Western Hemisphere is now a key national security priority of the United States. Most notably, that includes confronting and limiting the expansion of Chinese influence in the region.
China has spent years extending its  through ports, power projects, mining, telecom equipment and digital infrastructure. That influence is not just commercial but political. It creates dependency, builds leverage and gives Beijing a foothold in Americas backyard. It also creates significant national security threats to the American people.Â
Now add artificial intelligence to the picture.
Chinas use of is more than a gimmick. Its a reminder that Beijing sees this all-important technology not only as a business opportunity but as an instrument of state power.
Those are the real stakes. Not who posts the cleverest video on social media, but who builds the hardware, writes the standards, controls the networks and supplies the systems that everyone else will depend on in an AI age. Washington has started to grasp this, though not always gracefully. One sign is the way policymakers have begun looking at technology dealmaking through a national security lens.
Take Hewlett Packard Enterprises acquisition of Juniper Networks that the Department of Justice cleared and the U.S. intelligence community blessed. It received , as mergers should, but few antitrust concerns existed. However, the broader question was whether the United States could afford to hobble one of its own networking players while China continues backing its national champions with the full weight of the state.
That does not mean every merger should get a free pass because China exists. It does mean Washington has to stop pretending this is a normal market contest between firms operating on a level playing field. It isnt. American companies answer to shareholders and regulators. Chinese firms, in the end, answer to the state, their intelligence apparatus and its strategic ambitions.
That matters in telecommunications. It matters in AI. And it matters in , which is growing inseparable from 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 are not. They are the plumbing of power. Countries that control them shape the choices of countries that do not.
Beijing understands this well. Thats why it subsidizes key industries, protects its own firms, pushes its standards abroad, and uses to attack American initiatives before they gain traction.
The mockery aimed at President Trumps Shield of the Americas follows that pattern. It is not a serious argument. It is narrative warfare: make U.S. efforts look absurd, make Chinese expansion look normal and encourage the notion that America is in retreat.
That is how 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 Washington is too divided, slow or unserious to compete.
The answer is not to imitate Chinas propaganda machine. America does not need better AI taunts from its e
