In a report on the race for artificial general intelligence (AGI), the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has openly floated military strikes against Chinese data centers as a policy option. From export controls and personnel restrictions to cyber infiltration, Washington has repeatedly escalated its efforts to contain China's technological rise, yet those measures have failed to halt the rapid pace of innovation and deployment across China's AI ecosystem. As familiar rules and sanctions lose their bite, some strategic voices in Washington are now contemplating something far more dangerous: armed sabotage. By turning civilian computing infrastructure into a target in military confrontation, such a move would expose the hollowness of Washington's claims of "fair competition."
This is no fringe rant from a lone scholar. Rather, it reflects a growing anxiety among parts of the US strategic establishment as traditional containment tactics repeatedly fail to deliver the desired results. Over the past few years, Washington has restricted the export of advanced Nvidia GPUs to China and placed hundreds of Chinese technology companies on the Entity List, becoming increasingly reliant on "chokepoint" tactics to preserve its technological advantage. But on the AI front, blockades have failed to stop innovation. Chinese models such as DeepSeek have continued to push the boundaries of algorithmic efficiency, while intelligent connected vehicles and industrial robots are being deployed at an accelerating pace. China is finding ways through the technology barriers by pursuing a development path that places greater emphasis on efficiency and practical application. When administrative restrictions can no longer stop technological progress, some in Washington appear to be losing patience—to the point of contemplating military force against their rival's infrastructure. Ultimately, the problem is not simply competition. It is that those accustomed to technological dominance are struggling to accept the prospect of being caught and overtaken.
More alarming still, this rhetoric of framing civilian tech infrastructure as a battlefield is posing enormous risks to global security. Data centers are the public bedrock of the digital economy. Putting them on a military strike list not only blatantly crosses the baseline of international law protecting non-military facilities, but will also fatally poison global scientific and technological cooperation. William Hartung, a defense analyst at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), put it bluntly: launching an attack on the civilian infrastructure of a nuclear-armed power based solely on the "possible future uses" of its data centers is "the height of recklessness." A single misstep, he warned, could plunge tech competition into the abyss of a shooting war with "tragic consequences for all concerned." While Washington touts the establishment of "safe and responsible AI standards," it is simultaneously plotting to take out its rival's computing hubs with missiles. This extreme hypocrisy and double standard will only reduce the international rules it claims to champion to a laughing stock.
The greatest irony of the report is that it exposes a deeper weakness at the heart of American technological dominance. When a country that claims to be leading the future has to contemplate missile strikes to slow a rival's technological progress, it sends an unmistakable message: it is no longer confident that it can win on a level playing field. Military coercion cannot substitute for technological innovation, nor can it preserve a monopoly indefinitely. If anything, resorting to force would only reveal to the world how far the US-led rules-based order has strayed from the principles it claims to defend.
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