[KlayLay]

I wouldn't consider any country in particular to be 'good if push comes to shove,' given that most exist to promote an environment where companies can easily make money. If a state feels like its status may be in jeopardy, it'll do whatever it can to maintain that relationship (e.g., the Dutch government seizing control of Nexperia from its Chinese parent company Wingtech). Consequently, it really doesn't matter whether push comes to shove for the US, China, Europe, etc. since the actions taken will stem from the same root (e.g., the US won't let Intel go bankrupt).

This is part of why I really don't think authoritarianism is relevant to whether or not China will lead in AI. There are much better metrics for this, like the amount of resources poured into research vs. applications, or the kind of research being done (open source, more than just LLMs etc.).