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The modern conversation about artificial intelligence often feels dominated by headlines, PR stunts, and fast-moving market events. To see the full picture you have to widen the lens. Think of AI not as a product category but as a contested, generational arena — a 21st-century version of the Great Game where influence, industrial policy, and technology investment determine long-term advantage. At the same time, cultural work such as films and games that depict ancient warfare shape how societies imagine strategy, leadership, and endurance.
These twin threads — geopolitical strategy around AI and cultural narratives about conflict — reveal similar lessons: durable plans outlast spectacles, and attention to detail matters when translating systems into public understanding. Below I unpack why Beijing’s industrial playbook, Washington’s current responses, and a parallel discussion about Roman combat in cinema all offer practical insights into how nations and storytellers plan for the long haul.
The geopolitics of ai: long games, not quarterly wins
When observers call AI the century’s defining contest, they mean something precise: it is a competition where stakes are economic and structural, timelines are generational, and victories accrue to those who sustain investment in talent, hardware, and institutional capacity. China’s recent policy documents — including its 15th Five-Year Plan — signal a methodical approach, prioritizing chips, quantum research, robotics, and an explicit emphasis on open-source AI as a strategic lever. That combination is designed to reduce external dependencies and to seed a broad industrial base.
Contrast that with the louder, shorter-term moves in the United States: public pledges, high-profile meetings, and market-driven maneuvers. A recent White House gathering produced a voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge signed by major cloud and AI firms — a political moment more than a binding industrial policy. At the same time private actors pursue financing and public listings in ways that often prioritize liquidity over sustained competitive posture. Those actions feel like AI theater: visible, dramatic, and not necessarily aligned with a national strategy to embed AI into sectors that create jobs and resilience.
Open-source strategy and the displacement of hardware dependence
One of the clearest strategic inflection points is the elevation of open-source AI as national policy. For states that cannot assume perpetual access to foreign GPUs or cloud capacity, developing open ecosystems and domestic toolchains is a way to scale competence across many industries. Open ecosystems also democratize experimentation and cultivate talent outside a handful of private labs — an investment that compounds over years rather than quarters.
What winning requires
Winning this long contest demands answers to three basic questions: who trains the workforce, where does compute live and what rules govern it, and how does AI diffuse into the real economy — manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, and infrastructure. Without coherent answers, public gestures and market froth will leave strategic gaps. A national approach does not require uniformity or central planning like a Five-Year Plan, but it does require coherent national priorities and durable institutions that survive election cycles and market swings.
Swords on screen: how film and games shape historical understanding
Cultural narratives about conflict perform a related function: they teach how tactics, organization, and morale are imagined. Dr Jeremiah McCall — known to students as DMac — illustrates this in his book Swords and Cinema and earlier work on games in the classroom. A teacher at Cincinnati Country Day School with a PhD in Ancient History, McCall combines scholarship with pedagogy. His publications include The Cavalry of the Roman Republic (2002), The Sword of Rome (2012), Clan Fabius: Defenders of Rome (2018), and Rivalries that Destroyed the Roman Republic (2026), plus the classroom-focused Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History (2026).
In interviews and talks he dissects how films like Gladiator, HBO’s Rome, Centurion, and The Eagle handle formations, weapons, and the lived experience of soldiers. McCall draws attention to technical concepts — the phalanx and the manipular army — and why certain cinematic choices misrepresent or illuminate historical realities. These analyses matter because they shape popular literacy about strategy and institutional change, much as technical policy shapes public understanding of AI.
Pedagogy and popular narratives
McCall’s work shows that games and films can be productive teaching tools when used critically: they motivate interest, surface assumptions, and invite evidence-based correction. Understanding the Roman army’s evolution from a phalanx-style system to a more flexible manipular force is a detail that changes how viewers interpret a battle scene — and similarly, understanding the infrastructure and incentives behind AI changes how the public reads policy announcements and corporate press releases.
Conclusions: from spectacle to strategy
Both the AI debate and cinematic portrayals of ancient war point to the same central truth: spectacle without systems is shallow. Nations and cultural institutions that invest in the foundational work — training, tooling, rules, and honest storytelling — build advantage over decades. Short-term theater grabs headlines; long-term strategy shapes history. Recognizing that distinction is the first step toward a more grounded public conversation about technology, policy, and the stories we tell about conflict.