Chapters 1 and 12, the second route

The test. Supported if the leading American-controlled system, or the allied stack behind it, sustains a lead of more than fourteen months over the strongest Chinese system with the gap widening, both at once. Undermined if the lag is fourteen months or less. The lag is a proxy for the machine, not a measure of it. It stands in because the lead the wager needs is a lead in what the models can do, and a superior machine serves the wager only if it yields one.

a mixed or partial reading Leaning to undermined: China’s frontier has trailed America’s by seven months on average since 2023, on Epoch’s count of January 2026, in a range of four to fourteen.

From The AI Compute Race. Read the book

Falls due

31 August 2028

Read on

The Scorecard’s China-lag thresholds, on Epoch AI’s count

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@misc{dryburgh-chapters-1-and-12-the-second-route-2026,
  author = {Dryburgh, Lee S.},
  title = {{Chapters 1 and 12, the second route}},
  howpublished = {In \emph{The AI Compute Race}, DRYBURGH},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests/2028-2},
  note = {Accessed 2026-11-01}
}