S8 Ep680: Josh Rogin describes a high-stakes AI competitionwhere the U.S. leads in innovation and Large Language Models, while Chinadominates in robotic factory automation and manufacturing scale. The U.S. faces hurdles such as ITAR regulations, which can restrict
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 4 minutes
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Summary
Josh Rogin describes a high-stakes AI competitionwhere the U.S. leads in innovation and Large Language Models, while Chinadominates in robotic factory automation and manufacturing scale. The U.S. faces hurdles such as ITAR regulations, which can restrict technology sharing with allies, and is currently attempting to use AI to "leapfrog" China’s manufacturing advantages to stay competitive. (4)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is John Batchel. A conversation with colleague Josh Rogan about artificial intelligence, |
| 0:06.3 | a Valley and Hill forum that meets every year in Washington to look how government can work with Silicon Valley, |
| 0:13.1 | identifying that the U.S. is leading AI in terms of innovation, consumer use of AI, not humanoids, but in fact the way of talking about better methodology, |
| 0:26.9 | innovation, entrepreneur, discovery. |
| 0:29.8 | China is using AI to multiply the ability of its factories to outproduce everybody else. |
| 0:37.1 | As Josh says, these are not the same AI, but America has the advantage with large |
| 0:43.2 | language models. China has the advantage with the robots. And he ends by saying the race is on. |
| 0:50.1 | Here's Josh to explain. Yeah, we have a ton of American companies getting into this space. |
| 0:55.8 | Some of the big ones, like Lockheed Martin and North Corman, they all have their programs. |
| 1:00.3 | Andoral Industries is very big on drones, although they tend to build the bigger, more expensive ones. |
| 1:06.4 | And then you've got 20 or 30 other companies who are doing also, you know, drone boats, drone submarines, drone torpedoes, you know, drone helicopters, drone bombs. |
| 1:15.6 | And, you know, you could just see where that goes. There's the, the demand far outstrips the supply. And in that gap lies huge opportunity. But, you know, time is not on their side. And, you know, again, |
| 1:30.9 | most of these things depend on components from China. And those are hard to come by. |
| 1:34.2 | All right. Here's the government. I-TAR, international traffic arms regulations. What is that? |
| 1:40.0 | And it sounds like a villain, is it? Yeah, it does sound like a villain. It's, it's sound like a villain it's it's those are the rules |
| 1:46.1 | that keep uh the united states from sharing its advanced technology with other countries which |
| 1:50.9 | in many cases is a good thing but when you're trying to catch up to the chinese russian iran |
| 1:55.9 | uh you know programs uh maybe we need to share more. Maybe we need to help countries like |
| 2:01.6 | Ukraine, uh, by telling them what we know so that they can use their, you know, know how and |
| 2:08.3 | combine them. We can, we can actually start to win this thing. And, uh, that's a bureaucratic mess that I |
| 2:12.8 | think a lot of people, both in tech and government are trying to get around. But, you know, |
| 2:16.8 | it's just one of, just added to the list of things, reasons that, you know, |
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