Chapter 4 • Mid 2026Original AI 2027 Scenario MilestoneTrack: spine
Mid 2026: China Wakes Up (Tianwan CDZ Compute Nationalization)
Chip export controls pinch Chinese labs to ~12% of global AI compute; the CCP merges top talent and compute into a DeepCent-led Centralized Development Zone at the Tianwan nuclear plant.
Taiwanese/US chip export controls leave China with roughly 12% of global AI compute scattered across competing commercial firms. The CCP General Secretary creates a Centralized Development Zone (CDZ) at the Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant, pooling nearly 50% of China's AI-relevant compute under DeepCent and tasking intelligence agencies to steal OpenBrain's weights.
Verification Note: As of Nov 2026, state compute coordination and national AI cluster subsidies have intensified, though commercial labs (DeepSeek, Qwen, etc.) remain organizationally distinct rather than merged into a single Tianwan CDZ.
US export controls on CoWoS and EUV lithography rationally force Beijing to nationalize and pool its fragmented domestic compute into a single Centralized Development Zone ( ~12% global share).
While US hyperscalers control ~70% of global AI compute across 4–5 competing frontier labs, China's ~12% domestic + smuggled chip stock is initially split across dozens of commercial and provincial clusters. Centralizing 75%+ of that capacity at a nuclear-powered hub (like Tianwan) allows DeepCent to match the single-run training scale of a top US lab.