The race for AI supremacy between the US and China has been framed as a neck-and-neck competition, with both nations pouring resources into maintaining technological parity. However, 2026 could mark a critical inflection point where the dynamics shift fundamentally. Rather than a single race with shared rules, they may increasingly operate under divergent strategic frameworks—divergent in technology stacks, governance models, and application priorities. The gap isn't necessarily widening in raw capability; it's that each is optimizing for fundamentally different outcomes, making direct comparison increasingly meaningless.