A recent article on CNBC has Brad Smith playing Maxwell Smart.

Hopefully, you know who I am talking about. Get Smart was one of my favorite shows as a little kid. The agents of Control vs Chaos. The chief, Max and 99, the robot Hymie and the cone of silence. What a show. One of my favorite Max shticks was that he would stare at an obvious scheme unfolding in front of him and declare, “So it’s the old so-and-so trick, huh.” Cue the music. Cue the laugh track.

Smith’s version of the line? “So it’s the old Chinese subsidies of their companies trick, huh.” Microsoft and others have been playing this script for years, if not decades.

Let’s start with the facts before we get to the punchline, though.

Speaking to CNBC on the sidelines of the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Smith said American tech companies have to compete with Beijing’s government-backed subsidies. He acknowledged the U.S. advantage in access to the most powerful chips in the world and broader innovation leadership. But he warned that China’s use of state money — including a roughly $8.4 billion national AI investment fund, compute vouchers offered by cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen, and access to cheaper energy for power-hungry AI infrastructure — gives Chinese firms a structural edge.

Smith pointed to history. He referenced how China disrupted the telecom market by backing companies like Huawei and ZTE with state support. American firms disappeared. European stalwarts like Ericsson and Nokia were thrown on the defensive.

Now, Smith says, the same playbook could unfold in AI. Lower-cost Chinese AI models could become highly attractive across the developing world. Data centers from Huawei and Alibaba are already deployed globally. Add subsidies to that footprint, and you have the ingredients for what one economist described as a potential “China tech sphere” dominating much of the Global South within five to ten years.

Microsoft, for its part, announced it plans to invest $50 billion by the end of the decade to help bring AI infrastructure and reskilling to developing nations.

That’s the backdrop.

This is where Agent 86 walks into the phone booth.

There was a time when American executives warning about unfair Chinese state support would land with moral clarity. China doesn’t play by the rules. China props up its champions. China distorts markets. The U.S., meanwhile, believes in free enterprise.

That narrative used to work.

But today? Sorry, Max. That dog just doesn’t hunt anymore.

Not when the U.S. government is writing checks the size of small countries’ GDPs to subsidize semiconductors, AI research, energy infrastructure and data centers. Not when Washington openly picks “strategic industries” and pours billions into domestic champions. Not when federal dollars flow into private AI labs and chip manufacturers while taking equity stakes; with tax credits, loan guarantees and policy protections attached.

And certainly not when both the feds and the tech bros wear the same hoodies and SnapBack flat-brim trucker hats.

Let’s not kid ourselves. The line between public and private in American tech has blurred beyond recognition. We have industrial policy now. We just don’t call it that at cocktail parties.

The U.S. government restricts exports of advanced AI chips to China. It incentivizes domestic manufacturing. It backs large-scale AI initiatives tied to national security and economic competitiveness. We are in the game — fully in the game — using the levers of state power to shape outcomes.

So when Brad Smith says we should “worry a little” about Chinese subsidies, he’s not wrong. Of course, we should worry. Subsidies distort markets. They can tilt global competition. They can help flood emerging markets with low-cost alternatives that undercut Western providers.

But let’s drop the pretense that this is a morality play and we are the innocents playing by a different set of rules.

This is not CONTROL versus KAOS.

This is two industrial superpowers using every tool at their disposal to win the defining technology race of the century.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: If China is subsidizing AI compute, cheap energy and model deployment in the Global South, and the U.S. is investing to counter that influence, then we are not debating fairness. We are competing for digital alignment.

The stakes are not just economic. They are architectural.

Whose cloud stack runs in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America? Whose AI models shape local language interfaces, financial systems, healthcare diagnostics and government services? Whose standards and security frameworks become embedded into the next billion users’ daily lives?

That’s the battlefield.

Smith is right to invoke telecom history. Huawei’s rise was not just about cheaper routers. It was about strategic presence, long-term financing and government-backed patience. Once infrastructure is laid, it tends to stick.

AI infrastructure will be stickier still.

Playing the Maxwell Smart card, though, just rings hollow today.

We can’t credibly cry foul about government support while simultaneously celebrating our own strategic investments. We can’t pretend we are pure free-market monks while our Treasury and Commerce departments are actively shaping supply chains and capital flows.

We are in a new era of techno-industrial competition. Call it AI Cold War. Call it digital sovereignty on steroids. Call it whatever you want.

Just don’t call it a level playing field.

The moral high ground erodes when both sides are standing on the same kind of hill.

And maybe that’s fine.

Maybe the adult conversation is this: in a world where AI will define economic growth, military capability, social influence and national resilience, governments and corporations are aligned because they have to be. The stakes are existential enough to justify coordination.

If that’s the world, then let’s own it. But please spare me the pearl-clutching self-righteousness.

Let’s admit that subsidies, tax incentives, sovereign funds and public-private partnerships are part of the modern playbook. Let’s acknowledge that complaining about the other guy’s strategy while running a similar one at home rings hollow.

And let’s focus less on theatrics and more on execution.

Because in this new landscape, the winner won’t be the country that complains most eloquently about unfair advantages. It will be the one that deploys infrastructure fastest, builds ecosystems deepest and earns trust widest across emerging markets.

Shimmy’s take?

It’s a new world where governments and their corporate partners are on the same team. The AI race is no longer just company versus company. It’s nation-backed ecosystem versus nation-backed ecosystem.

The stakes are too high for nostalgia about some mythical free-market purity.

And they’re certainly too high for people in glass houses to throw stones. Excuse me now as I lower the Cone of Silence and dial up someone on my shoe.