Microsoft's Brad Smith sounds alarm on China's state-backed AI push

Microsoft’s Brand Smith is well-known for his diplomatic voice as the executive has spent years navigating Washington’s security instincts and Silicon Valley’s global business. That’s why his latest warning landed with unusual weight: US tech companies, he said, should “worry a little bit” about China’s state-backed AI subsidies. In a market that often treats subsidies as background noise, Smith is arguing that they are the strategy, and that the telecom playbook could be repeating itself in AI. AI’s Huawei moment Smith’s core analogy was blunt: China has run this movie before. In an interview with CNBC at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, he said subsidies were “the core strategy” China used to disrupt telecommunications, helping firms like Huawei…