US says Canada can build sovereign AI, but not at the expense of American tech

A US Embassy official in Ottawa told Global News on Friday that while the United States is behind Canada in its quest for sovereign AI capability, it cannot be done at the expense of superior US technology. The embassy held the briefing on background, so the official could not be named while discussing Washington’s AI policy candidly. The official said, “I see no issue with Canada promoting Canadian companies,” drawing the parallel to Washington’s own AI export plan.

The caveat came immediately after. Where Canadian firms lead a niche they should sell globally, the official argued, and where US companies are stronger the two governments should be selling jointly as allied partners. Washington backs Canada’s AI sovereignty with limits The briefing pointed to two areas of existing alignment.

One is export controls, aimed at keeping AI technology and intellectual property out of the hands of rival states. And the other is China, where the official says closer cooperation will work to offset the influence of China within multilateral standard-setting organizations, to make sure that China does not set the conditions for how others use AI technology. The AI strategy issued by the Trump administration in July 2025 attempts to reduce regulations and speed up approvals for very large data centers, while ensuring that the United States maintains its leadership in the technology and export it to its allies.

Canadian firms have already signed onto American-led export consortia, selling hardware into the same deals as US suppliers, the official said. The official also argued that a fully domestic build across hardware, models, and software is not a rational goal for a country Canada’s size, warning that the cost and the timeline would both run high and that Canada’s AI sector would end up trailing. Canada-US split on who should police AI Canada is moving on privacy and online harms legislation that could carry steep fines for AI companies that fail to comply, and those penaltie