THE QUANTUM INTELLIGENCER

Every embargo sows the seeds of its own bankruptcy: when Portugal expelled Muslim cartographers in 1506, Lisbon thought it had locked up the spice-route maps; within a decade those same maps were being copied in Antwerp, funded by German bankers, and shipped back to Lisbon at a premium. Fast-forward five centuries: Washington’s October 2023 GPU ban aimed to freeze China at AI-2.5 while America races to AI-4. Yet the embargo instantly birthed a Hong Kong–Shenzhen pipeline where “used” NVIDIA chips—legally exported for Saudi smart-city projects—are re-routed across the border in server racks labelled “edge-computing appliances.” History’s joke is that the middleman city always ends up mastering the technology faster than either protagonist: Antwerp became the printing-press capital of 16-century Europe, Hong Kong is already home to more AI patent filings per capita than San Jose. So the real question is not who wins the U.S.–China AI contest; it is which tiny, apparently neutral port will own the standards when the dust settles—because that is who will sell the next embargo to whoever believes they can still keep secrets. Sources: Geopolitical Implications of U.S.-China AI Competition: Strategic Insights for Business Leaders (https://www.chamber.org.hk/en/events/whatson_detail.aspx?e_code=W251009TD)