The Man Behind US AI Race

Microsoft isn't winning the AI race with better technology—they're winning by embedding Copilot into 400 million devices people already use daily...

Author

Jordan Belfort
October 15, 2025

👋 Want to close more deals? America spent two years "protecting" AI with regulations while China built everything we refused to sell them—proving the fastest loser in any race is the one who never leaves the starting line.

Read time: 3 minutes | 771 words

STORY 

🤖 Self-Taught Programmer Saves America's AI Future

While career politicians debated AI safety committees, a 42-year-old who learned to code from used textbooks walked into the White House and tore up two years of policy in 90 days. Sriram Krishnan got the job because he understood what Washington missed: You can't regulate your way to winning a technology race.

Chennai, India, 2001. A middle-class kid convinces his dad—who worked the same job for 40 years—to spend a year's paycheck on a Pentium 3 computer. No mentors. No bootcamp. Just dial-up internet that only worked after 10 PM when phone lines were free, and used programming books his mother saved money to buy.

The pattern that would repeat: Someone noticed. A Microsoft executive saw a blog post. One cold email later, the 22-year-old who barely spoke English was on his first plane ride to Seattle.

The résumé that shouldn't exist:

  • Found a bug in code written by the greatest programmer of the 20th century (didn't get fired).

  • Built Facebook's ad network from $0 to $1 billion in three months (saved the stock price).

  • Watched Twitter's algorithm get weaponized by politics (learned how "safety" becomes censorship).

  • Became a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz investing in SpaceX and Scale AI (built the pattern recognition).

💣 The Moment Everything Changed

January 23, 2025. Three days after Trump's inauguration, China drops DeepSeek—an open-source AI model that matched America's best, cost 1/10th to train, and spread globally in 72 hours.

Krishnan asks San Francisco developers: "How many are using Chinese AI models?" Nearly every hand goes up.

Biden had spent two years "protecting" America by banning open-source AI, blocking chip sales to allies, and assuming China would give up without our technology. Instead, China built everything we refused to sell them. Our allies started buying it.

🔧 The 90-Day Reversal

Week 1: Killed Biden's 200-page rule blocking allies from American chips. Launched partnerships: We sell you slightly older GPUs, you invest billions in American infrastructure. (Every chip we sell is one Huawei doesn't.)

Week 3: Released official strategy opening with: "We want American open source to win." (China was already using our models—banning them just stopped us from improving.)

Week 8: Cut nuclear permitting red tape. Fast-tracked data centers. Removed environmental obstacles. (China doesn't care about permitting. We needed to move faster.)

🎯 The Revelation

Most countries appointed committee-approved bureaucrats. America bet on a guy who learned to code because his dad trusted his weird teenager to do something worthwhile with a year's salary.

The outsider saw what insiders missed: You don't win by regulating harder. You win by building faster and making your platform so good everyone uses it first. Biden spent two years making AI "safe." Krishnan spent 90 days making American AI everywhere. One accidentally helped China. The other might be why we're still in the race.

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INSIGHT + ACTION

3 Lessons From the $385 Billion AI Race

The winner isn't who builds the best AI—it's who gets used first. Microsoft didn't have the best OS in the '90s. They just got Windows everywhere before competitors could blink.

1. Distribution Beats Product Quality

Google's AI isn't the smartest. But it touches 8.5 billion daily searches. DeepSeek isn't better than GPT-5, but it's free and spreading globally while American companies debate pricing.

Action: Stop perfecting your product. Get your current version in front of more people faster than your competition can.

2. Lock Them Into Your Ecosystem

Microsoft wins because Copilot lives inside 400 million Office installations. Once customers use AI in Outlook, Word, and Excel, switching becomes painful. Apple embeds "Apple Intelligence" into 2 billion devices.

Action: Don't sell standalone products—sell ecosystem entry points. Integrate with tools customers already use daily. Make switching to competitors expensive.

3. Speed Kills Perfection

China scores 100/100 on speed with zero red tape. America scores 40/100. DeepSeek launched globally in 72 hours. US nuclear reactors haven't been approved in 30 years.

Action: Ship the 80% solution today, not the 100% solution in six months. Fast and good-enough beats slow and perfect.

MEME