Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt calls OpenAI and Anthropic modern colonial trading companies

In an essay for Foreign Affairs, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and co-authors characterize leading AI firms like OpenAI and Anthropic as modern colonial trading companies. They argue that the global AI landscape is evolving into a geopolitical competition between the United States and China, where nations without domestic compute infrastructure become dependent on foreign providers. This perspective frames the future of the technology not merely as a matter of research breakthroughs, but as a contest determined by which powers can sustain the immense capital investment required for dominance.