How else do you propose selling the idea of giving a foreign company years of tax breaks in exchange for a minuscule number of jobs while slashing public budgets because there isn't enough tax revenue coming in?

No no, you see, for a government 'leading in AI' is just spending the most money on it.

For companies too, judging by the number of LinkedIn posts along the lines of

"Our 4-person team's AI bill this month was $100K and I've never been more proud of an invoice"

"If your $250K a year engineers aren't spending $250K a year in tokens, you aren't getting your money's worth"

"If you aren't using at least $500 of tokens a day, it's time for a performance improvement plan"