June 23, 2026

Closing the Remote Access Loop

By: Michelle Nie

This article was originally published in Issues in Science and Technology.

As Asad Ramzanali argues in “Why the Cloud Needs Competition” (Issues, Winter 2026), cloud computing has become critical infrastructure for everyday American life and national security. It is also the primary platform on which frontier artificial intelligence, the leading edge of AI capability, is built and trained—and therefore central to US-China competition and securing American AI leadership. It’s time for the US government to govern it accordingly by addressing a glaring gap: the lack of appropriate oversight into operations on the cloud relevant to national security.

US cloud infrastructure could be supplying the missing puzzle piece for compute-constrained China to fulfill its AI ambitions.

Among the cloud’s many critical applications, none is more consequential than AI. Whoever leads in frontier AI shapes economic power, military capability, and whether defining norms are set by democracies or autocracies. The cloud is the primary platform on which frontier AI is built and trained. Yet the government lacks visibility into what happens on commercial cloud infrastructure. Cloud providers have no binding obligation to verify their customers or share that information with the government. Although it is likely that providers collect some customer information, particularly at large compute scales, this constitutes informal awareness and is insufficient compared with a structured verification and reporting regime.

Read the full article in Issues in Science and Technology.

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