Last week I found myself writing two separate pieces. One focused on the US AI Action Plan, the other on what unfolded during Washington's so-called Crypto Week, where three bills related to digital assets were rushed through Congress. At first, I saw them as distinct exercises. Different topics, different politics, different technologies. But with some distance and a bit of reflection, I'm beginning to think there's more tying them together than we might first assume.
The contrasts between approaches are striking. The EU is trying to build order. Its AI Act is dense, layered, and designed to sit neatly within its legal and institutional traditions. The crypto framework, MiCAR, took years to finalise, with every scenario walked through and every risk carefully boxed in theory. It is ambitious, cautious, and rooted in the idea that rules create trust. There’s something almost architectural about it. You can picture the committees, the drafts, the meticulous attention to edge cases.
Across the Atlantic, the US has taken a completely different route. The AI plan reads less like regulation and more like a mobilisation order. It does not create categories or assign risk levels. It does not mention a registry or anything resembling European-style oversight. Instead, it speaks about compute capacity, frontier models, open-weight systems. It wants AI integrated across the federal landscape and it wants it quickly. The language is one of deployment, not compliance.
Crypto followed a similar pattern. The three bills that moved through Congress are not connected by a unifying philosophy. One deals with stablecoins, another clarifies regulatory jurisdiction, and the third blocks a digital dollar altogether. Yet when taken together, they reveal something clearer than any single bill on its own. The US is not planning to rebuild its financial system from the centre. It wants innovation, but it wants it rooted in private enterprise and backed by the existing dollar. That’s the angle I explored in Crypto Clash: US Speed vs EU Structure, published in the Sunday Times of Malta.
This is where the link between the AI and crypto shifts starts to become visible. It is not just about styles of regulation or underlying ideology. The US is leaning into what it already owns.
Consider the infrastructure landscape. Most global cloud services run on Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. The largest AI models are trained on American chips, funded by American capital, and deployed on American platforms. Stablecoins remain overwhelmingly backed by the US dollar. Venture funding flows through ecosystems with familiar names. Even open-source AI models, which feel decentralised on the surface, are usually built with foundations, tooling, and infrastructure that trace back to American firms.
You do not need a digital dollar when most of the digital economy already prices itself in dollars. You likewise do not need to regulate platforms when you own the platforms. Influence is already embedded in the structure. This is not only a matter of convenience. It is also a quiet reinforcement of the dollar’s primacy. By allowing private markets to issue stablecoins backed by existing reserves, and by ensuring that most global digital infrastructure is priced, settled, and deployed through dollar-denominated systems, the United States is defending its monetary influence without creating a central bank digital currency.
The logic is familiar. If you own the rails, the currency that moves on them tends to follow. What appears to be technological neutrality is in fact a monetary strategy, one that exports the dollar not by mandate but by market architecture.
The European approach is principled. Legal clarity is important. The protection of fundamental rights matters. Institutional coherence brings strength. Yet there is a growing risk that regulation arrives after the fact. By the time new frameworks are agreed and enforced in Europe, the underlying technologies may have already moved on and the innovation prospers and keeps its relentless momentum across the Atlantic.
We are already seeing this in the pace of model development. AI systems, which are predominantly in the US, are updating faster than regulatory texts can be agreed. Deployment cycles are counted in quarters, not years. Stablecoin networks, will likewise shift rapidly across jurisdictions depending on policy signals. If Europe continues building comprehensive legal regimes while others embed their standards through code, stack, and infrastructure, then the EU may govern with elegance, but on diminishing ground.
There is little need for cautious regulation when the very infrastructure others rely on is already yours. Other countries and regions plug in not because they are compelled to, but because the systems work and are already in place. It is simpler to build on AWS than to construct an alternative. Easier to use dollar-backed stablecoins than to design a new monetary architecture.
The path of least resistance runs through American systems. The EU is not wrong to seek rules. It is not mistaken in wanting coherence, transparency, and accountability. But while Brussels is still refining its frameworks, the underlying infrastructure continues to shift.
That is not to say the American approach is flawless. It has its risks. Speed can overlook consequences. Market-first innovation often leaves public interest scrambling to catch up. But what is emerging is not chaos. It is a deliberate direction. A push to export infrastructure, define the default pathways, and keep digital systems humming in the currency America already controls.
The more I think about it, the more these feel like complementary parts of the same strategy. Perhaps not tightly coordinated, but certainly aligned. The AI plan reinforces the dominance of US platforms in the next wave of digital technology. The crypto bills shore up the dollar's centrality in digital finance. Both manage to avoid regulatory drag that might slow momentum or open the door to meaningful alternatives.
So yes, these were two pieces. One on AI, the other on crypto. But what is emerging now is a third question. One that does not sit neatly in either topic. It is about the way systems shape power. About whether we are building the next phase of global infrastructure, or simply responding to what has already been built by someone else. About whether we are designing the future, or regulating its shadow.
That is where my thoughts have landed. No conclusions, only reflections. But they feel worth sharing. And worth continuing.
Article by Dr Ian Gauci