The global AI debate often fixates on models: Which ones are faster, which ones can do more, which ones are cheaper. The rise of these brilliant, cheap AI models diverts attention away from a fundamental truth: So long as the U.S. controls the underlying infrastructure that enables AI ecosystems, it will stay dominant. But frontier AI depends on a far broader, capital-intensive system: Hyperscale data centers, cloud computing infrastructure, AI servers, and the underwater fiber-optic cables that connect them. Nvidia's AI ecosystem and American tech hegemonyIf you want to understand how the U.S. dominates the AI ecosystem, look at Nvidia's business model. The world's most valuable company owes its strength to its graphics processing units, the chips required to train frontier AI models, of which it controls roughly 85% of the global market.