California Governor Gavin Newsom has this week attracted attention for a rather unexpected change of heart: it seems that he is now aligning with common sense. Despite his demanding day job, the Democrat has managed to find time to launch a second podcast. While none of his constituents asked for it, his latest endeavor, This is Gavin Newsom, aims to “change the conversation” by engaging directly with individuals whose political views differ from his own.

In the inaugural episode with Charlie Kirk, a conservative political activist and co-founder of Turning Point USA, Newsom deviated from the prevailing view in the Democratic Party. The longtime champion of the LGBTQ+ cause admitted that the participation of transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports is “deeply unfair”.

Kirk referenced a controversial case in California last month, where a trans high school student won a girls’ triple jump event. He urged Newsom to take a definitive stand: “Get better ideas, Governor. You should come out and state that the young man who is about to win the state championship in the long jump in female sports — that should not happen. You, as the Governor, should step forward and say, ‘No.’” Newsom responded: “I think it’s an issue of fairness; I completely agree with you on that. It’s deeply unfair.”

As a likely contender for his party’s 2028 presidential nomination, the California politician is the most prominent Democrat so far to openly question or oppose the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s and girls’ sport. His comments have come as a surprise to many Democrats, as he has traditionally been on the Left of the party. He first gained national attention in 2004 when, as mayor of San Francisco, he issued same-sex marriage licenses in defiance of state law. As Governor in 2022, Newsom signed legislation making California a sanctuary state for youth gender-affirming healthcare and a refuge for children from other states seeking to undergo transition procedures.

Newsom appears to acknowledge the challenges currently facing his party, which suffers from a lack of clear leadership or a cohesive vision. The dominance of far-Left ideologies within the leadership have led to significant losses among key voting blocs, including men, the working class, and minorities. This pivot towards a more “moderate” stance may be a strategic move to advance his longstanding presidential ambitions.

The Governor admitted that the trans issue has been a particular sore spot on the Left, as progressive opinion has become more removed from that of the average voter. A recent Ipsos poll conducted for the New York Times revealed that nearly 80% of Americans oppose the participation of transgender-identifying males in women’s sports. Unsurprisingly, Newsom’s comments quickly invited opprobrium from those on his own side. The California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus issued a statement yesterday, saying it was “profoundly sickened” by the “anti-transgender” remarks.

But losing support among the fringes of his own party may be a risk that Newsom is willing to take. He is term-limited and will depart office in 2026, leaving him with a two-year gap before any potential presidential run. This period may present a challenge for maintaining political relevance, and he no doubt views this podcast as a means to bridge that gap. By turning his back on his past progressive zeal, Newsom may be seeking to distinguish himself from the current frontrunner to succeed him in California, former vice president Kamala Harris. Both have similar political backgrounds, emerging from San Francisco, and — until now — both have prided themselves on their sympathy for intersectional politics. The Democrats, following a historic November defeat in which they lost all seven swing states, will be doubting the electoral viability of Californian progressivism. Newsom, by distancing himself from this, suddenly becomes the party’s center-left standard-bearer against Trumpism.

On bread-and-butter issues, the Governor of California has the executive authority to prevent boys from competing in girls’ sports. Actions speak louder than podcasts, and it remains unclear whether Newsom will translate his remarks into meaningful policy changes. Yet, if his sole mission is to stay relevant and stir up controversy, he certainly seems to be succeeding.

China is trying to catch up with America on artificial intelligence. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Zhipu AI — one of China’s six “AI tiger” LLMs — has released a new model that can rival leading US systems, including Anthropic’s Mythos, in cybersecurity tasks such as pinpointing security bugs. While this marks a milestone in China’s drive to catch up with Western AI capabilities, strong performance on a single benchmark does not mean it has taken the lead. Chinese models still lag behind their Western counterparts in broader capabilities, such as autonomous operation. Skepticism is therefore warranted before resorting to hysterical conclusions, but complacency about the geopolitical implications of China’s AI advances would be an even greater mistake.

On the infrastructure side, Chinese AI is still constrained by access to advanced chips, with American labs way ahead in computing capacity as well as investment. Analysis from earlier this year suggests that Chinese models are likely to be at least a few months behind those in the US. But they are still continuing to make progress, or that the geopolitical importance of AI will be decided only by whose LLM has ventured deeper into the technological frontier. The practical applications of AI, countries’ to capture foreign markets, and the application of AI into the real economy will matter just as much.

Here, China may hold an advantage. As with its dominance across many critical supply chains, Beijing may not need to produce the most advanced AI systems — only those that are affordable and widely deployable. In doing so, it could consolidate global influence by supplying functional, low-cost AI at scale.

Beijing seems to be pursuing exactly that path, developing an AI “open-source” strategy that offers affordable, widely available AI models for companies and individuals to use and modify as they wish. The production of the DeepSeek AI model, which matched the performance of Silicon Valley tools such as ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost for users, created goodwill among Chinese models with developers.

The four most popular models on OpenRouter, an AI hardware platform for developers, are now all Chinese. The goal for China is not only to win the frontier-model race, but to make its systems the default layer of AI adoption across industries and global markets. For most economies, the choice is increasingly between an affordable tool they can deploy now and a more robust one that may be out of reach.

And while the countries adopting Chinese models may be exposed to political pressure and cyber threats from Beijing, safer and more capable alternatives matter little if they are unaffordable. American AI companies are already under pressure to monetize products whose operating costs are rising. If Chinese open-source models become the cheap default for startups, universities, governments and businesses across the developing world, then America’s AI lead will be eroded from below.

Perhaps more concerning for America in the long run is how AI can give Chinese manufacturing even more strength, through the ongoing integration of AI as a general-purpose technology. China’s new Five-Year Plan mentioned AI more than 50 times and includes an “AI+” action plan aimed at spreading AI across the economy.

Beijing has been pioneering automation of its critical infrastructure for years, with promising recent results in increasing warplane production capacity. In that regard, China’s open-model strategy and manufacturing dominance will reinforce each other. Cheap, adaptable models accelerate deployment across the real economy while those deployments generate real-world data and use cases that can feed back into further model improvement.

The United States should not dismiss the importance of its lead in the AI race. That lead worries Beijing, not least because a more automated Chinese economy would also become more vulnerable to AI-generated cyber threats. But nor should Washington assume that China cannot catch up with American capabilities over time.

This AI competition represents part of a broader struggle over tech supply chains and geopolitical influence. Decisions over whether to adopt US or Chinese models could produce a more fragmented global reality, with different regions relying on different cloud providers, chips and security structures. The result will likely be a global economy which is divided into competing spheres, rather than one which produces a single winner.

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Miquel Vila is a political and geopolitical risk consultant focusing on industrial strategy, critical infrastructure and global supply chains.

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