The global competition over artificial intelligence is increasingly framed in stark and dramatic terms, often compared to the Manhattan Project, a new arms race, or a moonshot project requiring incredible resources to attain a difficult, if not, impossible goal. These analogies all suffer from a common flaw: they point us toward the wrong goal. AI is not a discrete project with a clear endpoint, like building a nuclear weapon or landing on the moon. It is a long-term, society-wide effort to develop powerful tools and ensure their benefits reach classrooms, battlefields, factories, and start-ups alike.
The country that leverages advances in AI to establish and maintain substantial economic and military advantages will not necessarily be the one that develops the most advanced models in the shortest amount of time. The United States is not going to win the AI race against China, for example, simply because U.S.-made OpenAI models beat Chinese-made DeepSeek or Kimi K2 models on capability benchmarks. Instead, countries that learn how to bridge the gap between invention and widespread societal adoption will reap the most crucial benefits in the long term.
By taking a longer view, the United States can make smarter decisions about how to align technological progress with national security and public welfare. If it continues to frame AI primarily as a short-term sprint toward technical milestones, it risks falling behind global peers and adversaries.
A Whole-of-Society Approach
Gaining and maintaining a long-term competitive advantage in AI will require more than technical superiority. It demands reorienting education and workforce training, modernizing institutions, and setting a national vision based on broad public engagement. By adopting this strategy, the United States can accomplish what other countries may struggle to replicate: a whole-of-society approach to AI.
When other nations experience widespread “techlash” from rapid job displacement, the U.S. labor force can remain resilient and flexible due to its AI literacy and access to ongoing education. When U.S. peers struggle with rigid, outdated institutions undermining AI diffusion, the United States can point to its schools, small businesses, and civil society organizations as early adopters of the latest models. And when AI is crucial for winning and fighting wars, the United States can ensure a decisive advantage due to its deep expertise in the defense and private sectors.
This vision may seem out of reach only because Americans have been conditioned to think of AI as a race to win today, rather than a system to build for tomorrow and a contest that has to be won continually—now and for as long as AI remains a strategic competitive advantage. The benefits of long-term planning are clear. The United States must stop running as if this were only a 100-meter dash and start acting like a strategic marathoner: moving with urgency, clarity, and sustained commitment.
Building National Security Through AI Literacy
Widespread AI understanding and adoption offer two major, often overlooked, advantages for national security.
First, a more knowledgeable and technologically fluent workforce will expand the talent pool available to the U.S. national security establishment in the future. The more the average American knows about how and when to use AI — and, equally important, knows when AI may not be the best tool in the toolbox — the less training required to jumpstart new generations of incoming military and intelligence personnel. This is essential to address the current AI talent shortfalls that the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Intelligence Community (IC) have repeatedly flagged. In its 2021 final report, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence went so far as to label the DOD and IC’s lack of AI talent as one of the greatest barriers to being “AI-ready” by 2025 (a deadline that neither the DOD nor the IC will meet).
Raising the national baseline of AI literacy, from early education through retirement, would make recruitment and retention in critical sectors much easier. This will not be accomplished in a single year. It will require sustained, incremental reform across large bureaucracies that tend to resist change. But the earlier this work begins, the sooner the United States can build momentum and generate broad support.
Second, a more AI-aware and skilled population can better recognize and counter the tsunami of increasingly realistic mis- and dis-information. According to OpenAI’s recent threat report, threat actors around the world — including China, Russia, and Iran-linked cyber operatives — have leveraged AI tools to run dangerous scams, mislead job applicants, and generally sow discord and friction. Google has similarly documented use of its tools by threat actors to augment their information operations. With advanced audio and video generation now widely accessible, it is increasingly difficult to know what to trust. Things may get worse before they get better.
Here, a good defense is the best offense. Though existing efforts to train individuals to spot deceptive messages have mixed results, those shortcomings must never lead to surrender or sense of futility. A combination of education and policy changes, such as labeling AI-generated content, has the potential to improve collective resilience to information campaigns like those flagged by the major labs. As one example, Finland has demonstrated promising results by educating students in early grades about how to recognize and counter Russian-generated misinformation.
Investing in Economic Resilience
A long-term investment and focus on AI literacy will also bolster U.S. economic security. Estimates of the magnitude and timing of AI-induced job displacement vary wildly. On the one end, catastrophic forecasts warn that half of entry-level jobs may disappear in a matter of years. On the other, far more sanguine predictions contend that it is significantly harder to eliminate a job, as opposed to merely automating or augmenting a part of that job, than many allege. Still, a workforce that comprises a much greater percentage of people who understand how to match workplace needs with existing or future AI tools, and who are more receptive to exploring how best to integrate humans and increasingly smart machines, will be better prepared to adapt to the accelerating digital age. At the same time, this kind of AI upskilling will enhance workforce resilience during the inevitable economic downturns.
The aggregation of these benefits will also increase the legitimacy, effectiveness,and longevity of U.S. governing institutions at a time of tremendous unrest and uncertainty. Economic prosperity has a way of quelling political squabbles, or at least reducing their likelihood. “Without jobs,” notes Sheila R. Ronis, “the quality of peoples’ lives deteriorates to a point where society itself can disintegrate. It can also lead to strife on many different levels.” A stable and peaceful national security environment similarly allows for the allocation of more resources and political will to solving domestic problems.
From Invention to Adoption
These outcomes depend on a major policy shift. For too long, the United States has celebrated inventors and breakthroughs while neglecting the importance of vertical and horizontal integration and access. This mindset explains why we remember Alexander Graham Bell but not Theodore Vail, and why innovation is rewarded while adoption is undervalued.
Under the current model, AI adoption is hampered by public anxiety and confusion. Just 17 percent of the public thinks AI will have a positive effect on the United States over the next 20 years. In China, that number is as high as 83 percent. Around 25 percent of U.S. teachers argue that AI does more harm than good in the classroom. This skepticism undercuts the diffusion of AI and slows the very progress national security depends on.
That mindset can and must change. Several programs that allow the public to meaningfully engage with reliable AI tools intended to address specific public problems can serve as an initial step toward changing the broader AI narrative. In the same way that the Rural Electrification Administration hosted events in the 1930s across rural U.S. regions to show the safety and utility of electricity and applications such as the refrigerator, libraries should host regular AI demonstrations that allow everyday Americans to see positive and transformative uses of AI. And, just as the government has worked with private stakeholders to build out high-speed Internet to rural communities, it should support and reward companies that make their tools readily available to the Americans that stand to benefit most from their adoption. For example, communities with too few specialists may be in dire need of AI-based diagnoses of uncommon ailments that would otherwise require travel and incredible expense.
These sorts of initiatives would mark the beginning of a cultural shift in which Americans are not just passive and often disgruntled recipients of AI, but active and enthusiastic participants in shaping its development and use. In a democracy, new technologies must be adopted with public understanding and consent. That public consent has been missing for too long.
It is time for a nationwide conversation about AI that involves every sector, every community, and every level of government. U.S. national security and economic power depends on ensuring that all Americans, especially those working in critical sectors, have access to AI tools and the education needed to use them well. This will only be possible with a sustained national commitment to AI literacy, education, and empowerment.
