content: Probably not that much better. The great thing about AI (and the recent enormous improvements in facial recognition are almost exclusively a result of leaps in AI) is that the only barriers to entry are educational. The power of government is in money. They can spend a basically infinite amount of money developing and researching whatever they want. However, AI is not being held back by money - it's being held back by brains and the top talent in software is very rarely going to end up headed to government roles. Government contracts are obviously still a thing, but the software industry worldwide is in a heated race on a variety of fronts including AI. Not many would be willing to intentionally cripple themselves, and all of humanity in the process, just to give some random nation a year or two of exclusive access to do nothing of real relevance with.