What does the term "AI race" even mean, beyond wooing clueless VCs and soon retail investors ? It's not like the LLMs are some super-secret technology. Any economy willing to sink in copious amounts of money and resources can get it to some level - the question, what's the actual payoff? We have yet to see anything really useful, on the level of step change, besides Johnny who can now spin up demo projects quicker.
Not if they cannot get the GPUs.
If China can't get the GPU's they'll build them. If they can't build them they'll smuggle them, and either way, eventually they will take over Taiwan, and then the US will be wondering what they can cook with leftovers.
Opinions are easy.