In February, Michael Kratsios, one of Donald Trump’s top advisers on technology, gave a short speech at a Washington think-tank that revealed the White House’s thinking on artificial intelligence. The US had not yet reached its “potential” in the field, despite being the global leader, he said. This meant it had to “embrace new discoveries so that future is made in America, by America, and for the benefit of our great American people”.

But Mr Kratsios’s vision was also about defending America’s gains against global competitors such as China. “We will not allow adversarial nations and bad actors to steal our ideas, copy our technology and cheat their way to leadership, in a field central to our nation’s security,” he told the audience at the Center for a New American Security.

Yet while the awareness of the challenges facing the US on artificial intelligence has reached the upper ranks of the American government, it is far from clear that Donald Trump’s administration is embarking on the right policy path to match the stakes. “The US still retains a lead in some areas, but that lead is diminishing over time, and more than that, it is clear that China is accelerating its investments in AI while the US has no concrete plan on how it is going to handle this,” says Daniel Castro, vice-president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington.