Behind the race for artificial intelligence lies something familiar: the logic of the Cold War. Anna Rosenberg of Amundi Investment Institute says the same forces that once drove nuclear and space spending now fuel an expensive, open-ended struggle for technological supremacy.
Forget rockets and moon landings. The race shaping this century is fought with algorithms, data infrastructure and quantum computing. For Rosenberg, head of geopolitics at the Amundi institute, these are the instruments that will determine not only economic advantage but also geopolitical strength.
“The US and China,” she told Investment Officer, “have to keep on spending to control this technology. This is the new space and technology race that you saw during the Cold War reimagined.”
“It’s about who gets there first,” Rosenberg said. “Quantum computing gives you very decisive power. It would allow you to crack intelligence and codes from your enemies. Whoever cracks this first would become the imminent superpower.”
Endless competition
There is no clear endpoint to this rivalry. The United States is constructing an AI ecosystem it can control, surrounded by allies and closed to China. Beijing is building something different, faster, cheaper, open to others and backed by its state-led industrial drive.
The two superpowers are locked in what Rosenberg calls an “expensive equilibrium” and “tense understanding”. Both know they cannot slow down. “Governments cannot stop spending on defense, on AI, with populations that are already unhappy,” she said. The result is a form of permanent competition, sustained less by ambition than by necessity.
The difference from the Cold War of the last century is that the two sides are not separated by ideology, but joined by dependency. “At the moment, what both sides have realized is that they depend on each other,” Rosenberg said. “The US depends on the rare earths from China. China depends on global trade flowing because that is what keeps Xi in power.” It is a rivalry that feeds itself but cannot break apart.
“Europe is not a geopolitical heavyweight in its own right. But what Europe has is a network of diverse trade relationships and partnerships.”
Europe stands in the middle of this contest. It lacks the technological and military scale of the United States or China, yet it remains the largest single market in the world. Its strength lies not in force but in connection, Rosenberg said.
“Europe is not a geopolitical heavyweight in its own right. But what Europe has is a network of diverse trade relationships and partnerships.”
That diversity may now be Europe’s advantage. The instinct to balance relations with Washington, Beijing and a widening circle of partners from India to Indonesia has been criticised as indecision. Rosenberg however sees it as a form of insurance: Europe’s way of keeping options open in a world that no longer has a clear centre.
Rosenberg describes the world taking shape as one of “controlled disorder”. The system still functions, but it is fragile. Alliances shift, tensions flare, yet the structure endures because it has to.
Midterm elections
Rosenberg is already looking to the 2026 midterm elections in the United States. What happens around that vote, she said, could prove as important as the result itself. Having just returned from Washington, she describes a country marked by quiet unease. “People are afraid for their democracy,” she said. “Institutions are being eroded.”
Public debate, once vibrant, now feels muted. Few are willing to speak openly about politics, and many look instead to artificial intelligence as a neutral source of hope. The technology promises productivity gains and economic renewal, yet it also distracts from a deeper erosion of confidence.
This is the paradox Rosenberg sees at the heart of America’s story. The nation’s faith in technological progress is rising even as its political faith weakens. “The more important part,” she said, “is not necessarily what comes out of the election, but what happens around the election.” Investors, she added, are caught between those two forces: the optimism of innovation and the anxiety of democratic decline.