Are Russia and China Succeeding in Developing Global Principles for Artificial Intelligence ?
Afrasianet - Most people don't know that every time they ask a question on ChatGPT, they are inadvertently participating in the promotion of the monopoly of large monopolies on the global AI sector.
Ironically, this reality will not be different at all even if users resort to one of ChatGPT's competitors such as Gemini, as the influence of these companies extends to control the vast majority of smart chatbots, which derive their power from superchips, which are co-designed, produced, and distributed, 4 companies: Nvidia of the United States, TSMC of Taiwan, SK Hynix of Korea, and ASML of the Netherlands.
Despite the variety of names of AI platforms, most of them are fed by Nvidia's chips, which control about 92 percent of the chip market, which specializes in running AI models.
But even Nvidia, despite its enormous power, relies directly on three companies to produce its chips: South Korea's SK Hynix supplies Nvidia with high-performance RAM, while Taiwan's TSMC manufactures Nvidia's chips to the highest technical standards, based on advanced optical printing tools, manufactured by the Dutch company ASML It is the only one in the world capable of producing these advanced tools, of which the price of the machine reaches about $380 million.
According to a report published by "Bloomberg" and seen by the "Sky News Arabia" website, each of these companies has a semi-monopoly in its field, so when any user asks a simple question about smart chatbots, they have set in motion an entire economy led by a few who control one of the most expensive monopolies in history, where the market capitalization of Nvidia and its three main partners combined, exceeded $4 trillion, as of mid-March 2025.
Currently, NVIDIA alone accounts for 6 percent of the S&P 500 index of leading U.S. companies, while TSMC and ASML have become the most valuable companies in their respective countries. In many industries, this kind of dominance could prompt antitrust actors to threaten to break up these giant entities or impose severe restrictions on their practices.
As for market share, yes, the definition of "monopolies" varies from sector to sector, but in general, any market share of more than 70 percent is seen as a monopoly, especially if there are barriers to the entry of new competitors.
For example, monopolies become more dangerous when a company can exploit its dominance by charging higher prices to customers, which Nvidia and SK Hynix do because of the few or no alternatives available to buyers.
NVIDIA sells some types of chipsets powered by AI systems at a price of up to $90,000 per chip, and the company's financial results show that its profit margin is very high, exceeding 70 percent, after deducting the cost of production from revenue, as this figure is significantly high.
The four companies largely resist the idea of their monopoly on the market, and they do not see their dominance coming unfairly or due to the isolation of their competitors, with an Nvidia spokesperson saying in a statement, that the company competes with many cloud computing service providers and AI companies, pointing out that the company's customers appreciate the comprehensive solutions it offers.
Artificial Intelligence Giants Face Battle for Internet Data Control
In fact, the competition between the big AI companies has entered a more complex phase, as companies that built their models based on open internet data began to face the same challenge that websites and content platforms have faced for years: reusing their content from third parties without direct permission.
Companies such as Anthropic, OpenAI, andGoogle are now facing growing concerns about using the output of their models to develop competing models via a technology known as distillation, sparking widespread debate about intellectual property rights and fair use limits in the age of AI.
Distillation Raises Concern for Model Developers
The distillation technology relies on using the answers and outputs of an advanced AI model to train another, less expensive or more efficient model, allowing competing companies to benefit from years of research and development without incurring the full cost of building the prototype.
Major AI companies believe that this practice could reduce the value of their huge investments, especially as the cost of developing advanced models reaches billions of dollars, while competitors can benefit from the results of these models faster and less expensively.
The Internet repeats the same lesson
The report points to a striking irony, as AI companies themselves have relied over the past years to collect data available online to train their models, relying on the principle of "fair use" in many cases.
Today, these companies are facing the same problem, as their model outputs are available online and can be leveraged in ways they may not like, reflecting the open nature of the network and the difficulty of fully controlling the flow of digital information.
Double standards open a new debate
The development has reopened the debate over the standards governing the use of digital content, with observers arguing that AI companies' objections to the use of their outputs contradict their previous defense of using data published online to train models.
The debate is not just about the legal aspect, but extends to the future of innovation, with some fearing that tighter restrictions will slow the development of new models, while others argue that protecting investments has become necessary to ensure continued spending on advanced research.
Data has become a strategic asset
With increasing competition, data is no longer just a raw material for AI development, but has become one of the most important strategic assets for companies to compete for.
Data quality, accessibility, and the ability to protect data are just as important as computing power or the competence of engineers, prompting companies to reconsider their model-sharing policies and make their programming interfaces available.
The battle for digital knowledge control
Recent developments suggest that competition between AI companies is no longer limited to launching more sophisticated models, but has also moved to protecting the knowledge produced by those models.
As distillation technologies continue to become more pronounced and their efficiency improves, it is expected that companies will increasingly attempt to put in place technical and legal controls that limit the reuse of their outputs, as the industry continues to seek a balance between protecting innovation and keeping the internet open.
Do American companies control artificial intelligence?
Behind the rhetoric, marketing competition, and headlines about the AI war in Silicon Valley, a completely different landscape is forming, and the behind-the-scenes of partnerships, mergers, funding, and investments reveal that the boundaries between big tech companies and startups are blurring, forming a kind of interconnected entity.
This cross-border tech conglomerate is reshaping the concept of monopoly, transforming supposed competition into a mutual benefit that makes it impossible to separate one company's success from another.
Alliances that go beyond traditional competition
For many years, startups have been the driving force behind the destabilization of big tech companies, but it seems that the verse has been reversed in the age of artificial intelligence, and today the goal of any AI startup is to absorb it into the ecosystem of a big tech company, away from the competition.
Partnerships in Silicon Valley are no longer just transient collaborations, but have morphed into a strategy of mutual survival, with AI startups becoming more like the external labs of big tech companies.
The most obvious example is Microsoft's investment in its citizen OpenAI, which turned into a strategic partnership that reorient the industry's trajectory toward collaboration rather than competition, and these partnerships evolved over time into a more complex network, with the two companies swapping roles between the investor, supplier, and customer.
AI startups get billions of dollars from big tech companies, but most of it goes back to big tech companies in exchange for the use of the cloud.
Billions of dollars are exchanged within the systems of these companies, enhancing the power of the unified entity and holding innovation hostage to the interests of the infrastructure owners. This entanglement has created a state of collective monopoly, where there is no real competition in favor of integration, making the entry of a new competitor nearly impossible.
Saeed Al Dhaheri, Director of the Center for Future Studies at the University of Dubai and President of the UAE Robotics and Automation Association, believes that this interconnection narrows the space for independent innovation but does not inevitably eliminate it, but rather reshapes it from basic innovation in models and infrastructure, to layered innovation in applications, specialized data, and sector solutions.
In a deeper analysis of this financial model, digital transformation consultant Fadi Amrouche reveals a regulatory phenomenon known as circular spending, and explains that cloud infrastructure companies do not only invest in startups, but also redirect this funding to them through mandatory spending commitments on their cloud services.
Amrouche adds: "We are facing a closed cycle, funding that enters the startup and then quickly returns as an operating expense for the benefit of the provider itself. This creates ostensibly high valuations, but it weakens the actual economic independence of the startup, which loses its bargaining power because moving to another provider is technically and contractually costly, weakening the startup's bargaining power."
Amrouche warns that the coincidence of high valuations with the difficulty of moving between suppliers will eventually lead to a monopoly bubble.
Circumventing monopoly laws
As regulatory oversight has tightened, big tech companies have moved to models that Amroush describes as more fraudulent, such as hiring acquisitions, where the startup's core team and founders are attracted without buying the legal entity and entering into intellectual property licensing agreements, as Microsoft did with Inflection AE.
"What is happening is a formality of legal compliance with actual economic control, where companies are not breaking the laws, but are reshaping the market in ways that go beyond the speed of the evolution of legislation designed for traditional buybacks, not for these indirect ways of control," the digital transformation consultant comments.
This method turns the startup into a blank structure and makes potential competitors merely departments within big tech companies, effectively ending the competitor's existence without the need for approval from antitrust bodies.
These conglomerates impede innovations that could threaten the profits of big tech companies, and this extreme centralization could artificially slow the development of artificial intelligence that is beneficial to humanity, in favor of developing tools that serve the direct profitability of the parent companies.
For his part, Al Dhaheri warns, the fundamental question here is not only "Are there startups?" but "Can they remain independent and capture fair economic value?" He said the answer tends toward pessimism under the control of infrastructure owners.
When the global AI infrastructure is concentrated in the hands of several linked U.S. companies, any technical or ethical decision made in Seattle or Mountain View becomes law for the rest of the world.
The scary race.. Who controls AI before it gets out of hand?
The summit between Trump (left) and Xi Jinping reflects a growing realization that artificial intelligence is no longer just an economic tool but has become part of the global national security equations.
At a time when global competition for the development of artificial intelligence technologies is accelerating, warnings are mounting that the field could become an open arena of geopolitical conflict between the United States and China, amid growing fears of losing control over systems that may exceed the limits of human expectation.
This is stated in reports published by the American newspapers Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, as part of a broader research on the future of artificial intelligence and the limits of its regulation globally.
An unprecedented race
In her analysis published on Bloomberg, author Barmi Olsson argues that the current AI race is unlike any previous tech wave, as it combines rapid commercial innovation with security and political risks at the same time.
Major companies such as Microsoft, Google and Elon Musk's projects have already begun collaborating with U.S. authorities to give them early access to AI models to test them in terms of security, a move that reflects the beginning of a more visible government intervention in the sector.
Absence of a capable regulator
But Olson at Bloomberg argues that the main problem is the lack of a regulator capable of enforcing effective and independent oversight. The United States, despite its technological leadership, faces a challenge in separating the interests of giant companies that develop artificial intelligence from the state's supposed role in setting rules for it.
Some of the proposals within Washington include involving the companies themselves in the formulation of regulatory frameworks, raising questions about conflicts of interest.
This fragile regulatory model is becoming more complex as AI politicizes the U.S. file, where tendencies for "ideological neutrality" have emerged in smart systems, opening the door to debate over how these systems deal with sensitive political issues such as elections, wars, or major social issues.
On the other hand, Olson points out that a US institution involved in testing AI models suffers from a lack of funding and capabilities, which makes it unable to keep pace with the speed of development in the sector.
This institutional weakness is matched by a different model in Britain, where the Artificial Intelligence Security Institute in London has emerged as a key center for assessing the risks of advanced models.
A British centre that has become an international reference
The British institute has become increasingly trusted by major global companies, with some tech institutions giving it access to their most sophisticated models before they are officially launched. It has also become an international reference in assessing the risks of artificial intelligence, especially in relation to its use in cyberattacks or information manipulation.
In a parallel context, the Wall Street Journal reveals in a report by Lingling Wei that Washington and Beijing are exploring the possibility of launching a formal dialogue on artificial intelligence, in an effort to avoid their technical competition turning into an international security crisis.
This development comes amid a growing realization on both sides that intelligent systems may become capable of making unexpected decisions or causing crises that cannot be easily contained.
The proposed talks could include sensitive files such as the use of artificial intelligence in the military, or the possibility that it could be exploited by non-state actors to carry out large-scale cyberattacks using open-source tools.
Permanent communication mechanisms
The establishment of permanent communication mechanisms between the two sides, which may develop into a "hotline" for crisis management in the future, is also being discussed.
But the newspaper quotes national security experts as saying that the effectiveness of these channels will depend on the extent to which China is prepared to respond effectively in moments of crisis, noting that previous experiences have shown that the use of communication lines between the two countries is limited during sensitive incidents, such as air accidents or military crises.
The Wall Street Journal adds that this new dialogue comes as an extension of previous attempts that began during the administration of former US President Joe Biden, but did not achieve significant results due to the difference in priorities between the two sides, in addition to the lack of direct technical representation in some negotiating delegations, which limited the depth of the discussions.
Becoming part of national security
The inclusion of AI at the summit level between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reflects a growing realization that this technology is no longer just an economic tool, but has become part of the global national security equations.
In the Wall Street Journal's analysis, what is happening today can be seen as a new phase of "strategic competition management," as the two countries try to balance the continuation of the technological race with preventing it from collapsing into an uncontrolled confrontation.
While Bloomberg argues that the solution lies in building strong regulatory institutions capable of enforcing global safety standards, the Wall Street Journal asserts that minimal stability may depend on channels of political and security dialogue between Washington and Beijing, even if technological competition remains fierce.
UN Efforts
In February, UN Secretary-General António Guterresannounced the formation of a new international panel of experts seeking human control of AI, while the United States rejected the move, calling it the "global governance" of AI.
Speaking at the Artificial Intelligence Conference in New Delhi, Guterres explained that the United Nations General Assembly has approved the appointment of 40 members to this group, which he called the "Independent International Scientific Group on Artificial Intelligence."
The United States, on the other hand, has declared its categorical rejection of any global governance of this technology. White House technology adviser Michael Kratsios stated that the Trump administration rejects the subordination of artificial intelligence to "bureaucracy and centralized control," warning that an excessive focus on speculative risks, justice and climate issues could be justified for authoritarian purposes, impede competitiveness, and isolate developing countries from participating in this economy.
Ultimately, it seems that the title of the next phase will not only be who wins the AI race, but who can manage its risks before it turns into a global crisis that is difficult to contain.
Russia and China seek to develop global principles for artificial intelligence
In an effort toestablish a new international organization that aims to coordinate the development of artificial intelligence and promote its use in a human-centered approach, Russia and China have joined more than 20 countries to participate in this effort.
The new organization is called the World Cooperation Organization for Artificial Intelligence (WAICO), an intergovernmental body that will be based in the Chinese city of Shanghai. The list of founding countries includes 29 countries, including 10 African countries and 12 Asian countries, in addition to Russia, China, Belarus, Serbia, Cuba, Brazil and Venezuela.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres witnessed the signing ceremony of the agreement. According to Xinhua, the organization aims to uphold the principles of the United Nations and promote the mutual benefit of the development of artificial intelligence, as well as establish global governance that ensures that this technology is safe, fair and beneficial to humanity.
Why are calls for AI regulation increasing?
The rapid development of artificial intelligence has raised growing concerns, even within Western tech giants. In January, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodi warned that these technologies could lead to serious risks, ranging from large-scale job losses to the emergence of authoritarian regimes to existential threats to humanity.
Potential risks include AI-powered cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, privacy breaches, and the use of technology for mass surveillance and propaganda.
WAIICO is not the first international initiative in this area, with the United States last year announcing the Pax Silica project, which aims to create a global technology supply chain that supports the development of artificial intelligence technologies.
Why is China pushing for cooperation?
In recent years, China has become one of the major powers in the field of artificial intelligence, driven by a rapid pace of research and development, with an approach based on international cooperation rather than technological fragmentation.
Chinese companies such as DeepSeek , Qwen, GLM, and Kimi have launched advanced models, adopting a competitive pricing policy and making parts of their technologies open source, allowing researchers and companies around the world to benefit from and develop them.
In contrast, Beijing faces increasing U.S. restrictions on access to advanced technologies, including AI chips. In September 2025, the U.S. Commerce Department blacklisted 32 foreign entities, including 23 Chinese companies, for allegedly being linked to the manufacture of high-end chips.
Washington has also imposed restrictions on the export of advanced AI chips, such as Nvidia's H200 chip, citing national security concerns. Beijing, in turn, accuses the United States of politicizing trade and undermining global supply chains, prompting it to accelerate the development of a domestic AI chip industry.
Russia's Role
Russia is one of the countries that has developed its own large language models, such as YandexGPT, Alisa AI from Yandex, as well as GigaChat developed by Sberbank.
Russian companies have also invested in practical AI-based solutions, especially in the areas of healthcare, financial services, education, transportation, and digital government. The Russian health sector currently uses more than 60 AI-powered diagnostic services to help doctors analyze medical images and diagnose diseases.
President Vladimir Putin has announced that Russia intends to contribute to a global initiative to develop artificial intelligence, stressing that the country has important components, including a strong scientific base, an advanced education system, and sufficient energy resources to support data centers and high-performance computing.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova pointed out that qualifying current and future workers to use artificial intelligence is a major task for the Russian government.
The statement was made during a session titled "The Labor Market: The Dictatorship of Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of Skills and Professions" during the Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Golikova said that artificial intelligence is capable of increasing production by 21% to 33% by 2032.
"These are very large numbers," she said. Given this, our real mission, and it can be considered a big one, is to teach current and future workers how to use AI."
She stressed that artificial intelligence does not always lead to a reduction in job opportunities, denying the common assumption that automation and new technologies inevitably lead to the displacement of the human element.
Golikova spoke about the problem of employing graduates who have studied undemanded majors in the labor market, explaining that 36% of graduates who only pursued a university degree without considering the need of the market, end up working in jobs that do not require their academic qualifications.
"Having access to education in disciplines that are not in demand in the labor market forces young people to work in sectors with low qualification barriers," she added.
The head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, also revealed that Russia has the ability to provide the world's cheapest source of electricity to serve artificial intelligence applications.
The statement came during a panel discussion entitled "The Economy of the New World Order: Structural Transformation, Challenges and Opportunities" held within the framework of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Dmitriev, who is also the Russian president's special representative for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries, said: "Russia can be the cheapest energy source in the world to power artificial intelligence. If we look at our potential, we could be three to four times cheaper than other sources of energy for AI. "This is, quite frankly, perhaps our most important competitive advantage in the rapidly changing world of technology."
This advantage gives Russia important geopolitical advantages, as it can, by relying on low-cost energy, attract and build partnerships in the field of artificial intelligence on its territory, he said.
Earlier, Sberbank Chairman German Greif said that Russia is among the top five countries in the world in having the competencies needed to develop national models of artificial intelligence. Greif pointed out that the gap between Russia and China is estimated to be only about 6 to 8 months, describing it as non-critical, and attributed the main reason for this gap to the lack of computing capabilities.
Ultimately, it seems that the title of the next phase will not only be who wins the AI race, but who can manage its risks before it turns into a global crisis that is difficult to contain.
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Source: Bloomberg + Wall Street Journal + Specialty Websites – Agencies & News Sites
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