Artificial Intelligence packages expose Brazil’s dilemma in the dispute between the USA and China

Xi Jinping and Lula in China Ricardo Stuckert / Presidency of the Republic On July 23, 2025, Donald Trump signed an order to export “complete packages” of artificial intelligence, placing Brazil among priority destinations alongside Egypt and Indonesia. The measure intensifies the dispute with China for global technological influence. In the same period, Brazil signed a memorandum with Beijing and negotiates with Washington, while increasing dependence on foreign digital infrastructure. 📩 Subscribe to the g1 Shopping Guide newsletter with technology tests and tips Brazil is nominally on the list of priority destinations. Alongside Egypt and Indonesia, the country is among the emerging markets where the American presence needs to be consolidated, before Chinese influence becomes irreversible. To understand what this represents in practice, it is worth looking at what happened with Japan. In October 2025, during Trump’s visit to Tokyo, the two countries signed a “Technology Prosperity Deal”, an alignment agreement on AI policy that goes far beyond the purchase and sale of hardware. See the videos that are trending on g1 The document includes commitments on technical standards, governance frameworks, data flow and cooperation in digital security. Japan began to structurally integrate the American technological orbit, not only as a commercial partner, but as a regulatory partner. Washington wants to replicate this model at scale. The American logic is clear and, in a sense, legitimate. China exports AI technology in a model that analysts describe as “full-stack with built-in conditions”: subsidized hardware, software with black-box logic and governance frameworks that replicate Beijing’s regulatory model. Washington understood that competing chip for chip is not enough. It is necessary to export the entire ecosystem and, with it, the regulatory architecture that accompanies it. For Brazil, the problem is that both models come with foreign policy at the bottom of the contract. In 2025, the Lula government signed a memorandum of understanding with China to deepen collaboration in artificial intelligence. In the same period, Brasília advanced in talks with Washington about the AI ​​export program and received announcements of billions of dollars in data centers from Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle. From a diplomatic point of view, it is an admirable juggling act. From a technological point of view, it is a structural contradiction that will take its toll sooner than expected. The central issue is not who sells the chip. He’s the one who trained the model. The major language and decision-making systems that the Brazilian public and private sector already use, in credit analysis, policy screening, content recommendation and contract management, were developed mostly by American companies, according to American standards, with data that reflect American realities. Bias is not necessarily malicious. But it is structural. And it tends to deepen as Brazil supports its cognitive infrastructure on servers subject to the American CLOUD Act, the law that authorizes the US federal government to request data stored by American providers in any jurisdiction in the world, regardless of where the server is physically located. The regulatory debate itself reveals the ambiguity. The Brazilian Senate has been closely following the European AI Act as a normative reference for its national legislation, and the project under discussion creates an AI governance system under the responsibility of the National Data Protection Authority. In theory, it is sovereignty. In practice, the regulatory discourse points to autonomy, but implementation is operated by American multinational corporations. Brazil makes the law, but those who command the infrastructure on which this law affects are others. This is not an accusation. It’s a description of how power works in the 21st century. Brazil is the largest data market in Latin America. The good news is that Brazil has genuine cards at this table. It is the largest data market in Latin America, has one of the cleanest energy matrices in the world, which is immensely important for data centers, and produced PIX, one of the most sophisticated digital payments systems in operation on the planet. When Washington and Beijing compete for Brazil as an AI partner, they do not do so out of generosity. It’s because the country has what they both need: scale, energy and a connected population. Dependence, if it comes, will be chosen, not imposed. The question that the Brazilian public debate has not yet asked with the necessary seriousness is this: by accepting the complete American AI package, with its chips, its models, its governance standards and its compliance obligations, what is Brazil giving up in return? Not in commercial terms, but in terms of autonomy over decisions that, ten years from now, will be taken by systems that someone, somewhere, has already programmed.

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