Today’s U.S.-China AI race is often framed as the defining technological competition of our era. It is marked by a su rge of subsidies\, tax credits\, and public-private investment\, as governm ents commit billions to AI\, data centers\, and semiconductor infrastructur e in pursuit of technological advantage.
This cutthroat competition m ay seem like a new dynamic. But the United States has seen a version of thi s before—and not with Beijing. At the start of our current tech age\, U.S. states competed against one another\, offering tax breaks\, subsidies\, and deregulation to attract high-tech companies\, each aiming to become the ne xt Silicon Valley.
Dr. Nur Laiq is an Emerging Technology & Geopolitics Fellow and an Ernest May Fellow in Hi story & Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. She is writing a book on the politics of the contemporary tech age that treats policy not as background noise but as the real engine of the tech economy. Laiq is also a Non-Reside nt Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation and the International Peace Institute\, where she advises on AI governance policymaking. She has worked in the public policy arena for over 15 years\, with the UN\, governm ents and think tanks. She has a DPhil from Oxford on Silicon Valley’s polit ics.
Dr. Marc Aidinoff is a historian of science\, t echnology\, and the state\, as well as a public policymaker. An assistant professor in the Department of History of Science at Harvard University\, A idinoff researches the interplay between digital technologies and domestic policy in the United States.
CATEGORIES:Speaker/Panel LOCATION:Berkman Klein Multipurpose Room (Room 515) GEO:0.000000;0.000000 ORGANIZER;CN="Jessica Weaver":MAILTO:jweaver@law.harvard.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://hls.harvard.edu/events/move-fast-break-things-the-pol icy-origins-of-todays-ai-race/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://hls.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Laiq-Aidinoff_16x9.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 DTSTART:20260308T070000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR