The Race to 6G ... and the Future.

Good morning. China’s decision to ban domestic firms from purchasing Nvidia’s chips is more than a trade skirmish. Beijing is showing how committed they are to build and control the entire AI tech stack. Today, John McKinnon shares how the next generation of telecom networks will determine whose infrastructure runs the everyday intelligence of the modern world.

John was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal for 25 years, where he covered tech policy. We’re thrilled to share his perspective here .👇

-Sparks

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The Race to 6G ... and the Future.

Let's start with the bad news: China is beating us at 5G.

The good news is that the race for 5G—the much-ballyhooed current generation of wireless communications technology—turned out to be just a warmup.

The more consequential contest will be over the next wave, 6G. And that race, America can win.

Next-generation 6G hasn't gotten much attention yet in the mainstream media. It could be because 5G promised so much—but delivered so much less—that everyone lost interest.

But the emerging truth about 6G is that it is far more likely to deliver on 5G's futuristic promises.

Why is 6G so different? Because of its higher speeds and capacity, and especially because of the emergence of artificial intelligence as an integral part of 6G networks.

Consider the case of autonomous vehicles. They can operate fairly effectively in a 5G world. But the best systems for running autonomous vehicles, known as "vehicle-to-everything" (V2X) communication, will only be possible in a 6G world, with its ultra-low latency, massive bandwidth, integrated sensing features, and AI analytical abilities.

As a result, 5G is already looking more like the end of an era than the beginning.

Autonomous vehicles are just one of many innovations that 6G will enable. Simply put, 6G will be the first wireless infrastructure stack that is AI-native.

The networks of the future will be built on AI infrastructure, will incorporate AI into the functioning of the network, and will deliver AI services to consumers.

This new direction provides a critical opportunity for the U.S. to rewrite its latest chapter on wireless connectivity.

To pull it off, though, we need to be taking this contest much more seriously. This is a significant moment in history—possibly bigger than the U.S.-USSR space race, given the immense potential of cutting-edge computing.

But unlike our triumph over 70 years ago, we're relying on a highly decentralized approach that requires seamless cooperation—among our allies, our leading companies, even our own government agencies. A lot of things have to go right.

That starts with leadership from the White House. President Trump recognized the importance of 6G early on, tweeting in 2019 that he wanted the next network "as soon as possible."

Crucially, his administration also has pushed for the U.S. version of 6G to be open and interoperable, enabling a broader set of hardware vendors to compete. That's proving to be an effective way of getting more companies in the game, increasing competition, and massing our R&D firepower.

For those who tuned out on telecom, it turned out that 5G's biggest promised benefits depended heavily on expensive new infrastructure—lots of it. That's because the higher-frequency radio waves needed for 5G's higher speeds and capacity also have shorter ranges, and are easily blocked—by, like, a wall, or fog. That meant that 5G networks had to be made much denser than previous generations, with many more of the base stations that receive and deliver consumers' radio signals.

Also, U.S. telecom carriers became so focused on solving this base-station buildout problem that they often chose not to replace their networks' 4G cores with 5G cores. That further limited 5G's benefits for consumers.

Perhaps the most visible limitation of 5G was that companies didn't develop compelling use cases for customers. So no one was making money on it.

Not surprisingly, 5G developed relatively slowly in the West, particularly in Europe but also in the U.S.

In China, the 5G story was very different. Because it’s so hardware-intensive, China's big telecom equipment makers, notably Huawei and ZTE, were well positioned to take advantage. Thanks to heavy government subsidies, they helped the country build what are likely the world's most extensive full-on 5G networks.

Preferential access to the Chinese market also gave Huawei an economy of scale to be able to sell cheaply, even at a loss, around the world, successfully creating vendor lock-in in global markets.

By some estimates China has provided nearly 60% of global base stations for 5G. Through its Belt and Road Initiative and Digital Silk Road Huawei is also prevalent in many countries in Africa and the Middle East, and some European countries (although European reliance appears to be dropping amid U.S. warnings about security risks).

Unsurprisingly, China is using this telecom expertise to push for 6G dominance. It is already operating 6G research centers around the world and has launched satellites to test out the spectrum bands that 6G would use.

China clearly views 6G and AI as a base to expand its global reach. As AI and wireless infrastructure converge, the first to 6G deployments will drive consumers and developers into these native AI ecosystems.

And yet, the race for 6G is far from over.

One of the great things about free markets is that they adapt and figure out solutions relatively quickly. This is happening now with telecom.

As opposed to 5G’s dependence on expensive hardware, much more of the 6G technology will be software-based, reducing the need for expensive hardware. And a lot of this software also will be made more efficient by AI.

For the U.S. and its allies, these are good things. We are generally good at making software and we’re quite good at artificial intelligence—from both an infrastructure and models perspective.

At least in the West, 6G also is going to be much more open, allowing networks to be built using multiple equipment providers. This means that Huawei and ZTE won't have quite the size advantage they currently enjoy over individual Western firms, like Finland's Nokia or Sweden's Ericsson. (One problem for the U.S. is that its homegrown equipment manufacturers such as Lucent fell victim to the boom and bust that followed telecom deregulation in the 1990s.)

Instead of China's top-down, state-centric and surveillance-heavy approach, U.S. firms and their partners emphasize a secure, collaborative and commercially-adaptable approach. The U.S. vision of 6G is aiming to take telecommunication to another level, allowing users to benefit from AI's capabilities—without giving up their autonomy.

Taken together, the U.S. and its allies can still win—by developing an AI-native 6G tech stack that the world will want to buy and use. One example of the current ferment: a coalition of leading-edge American companies developing and deploying an AI-native 6G solution that other countries could use.

The alternative is allowing an authoritarian state like China to begin building and controlling the planet's intelligence. And, well, that’s unthinkable.