In fall 1957, Americans looked up at the stars and were able to see with the naked eye a real-time reminder that the Soviet Union was taking the lead in space. Nikita Khruschev successfully launched Sputnik, the first artificial Earth satellite.

Sixty-seven years later, you don’t have to look up for a wakeup call that the new great power sprint for innovation — competition with China over artificial intelligence — is as contested as it is consequential.

A Chinese firm just rolled out “DeepSeek.” It is supposed to be a “reasoning model” on par with American technology, except that it refuses to acknowledge inconvenient historical facts or conundrums ranging from the Tiananmen Square massacre to a potential invasion of Taiwan.

This is AI’s Sputnik moment, and it underscores why the incoming administration must wrestle with this issue, which will shape the future. Adversaries such as Vladamir Putin salivate at the prospect of a world where the most advanced technology is driven not by Silicon Valley’s innovative spirit, but by Beijing’s civil-military fusion strategy.

How will we respond?

AI is the most critical geopolitical battleground of this century, and revisionist powers know it. The warnings hide in plain sight; China is exploiting the U.S. innovation ecosystem to align its........

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