By Mark LaPedus For some time, the United States and China have been vying for the leadership position in several technical areas. Those segments include AI, computing, communications, defense, robotics, self-driving cars, space exploration and others. The U.S. is leading in many areas, but China is gaining ground in others. This should set off some alarm bells in the West: China is suddenly leading the supercomputer race. Supercomputers are large and powerful general-purpose systems.