The U.S. government is planning to send “Tech Corps” volunteers abroad to promote the adoption of American artificial intelligence, as Washington competes with China for global AI dominance.
The program was announced on Friday, as part of the Peace Corps, a decades-old program that sends volunteers to help developing countries with education, health and economic development.
Although American proprietary models such as OpenAI’s GPT-5 and Anthropic’s Claude are widely used by enterprise users in developed countries for their top-notch performance and reliability, Chinese products can be attractive to users in the Global South for their cost efficiency, Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Rest of World.
Open models from Chinese companies have surged in popularity globally because they are customizable, cheaper to access, and can be run entirely on local infrastructure.
I don’t think any degree of persuasion or handholding from the U.S. Tech Corps volunteers would be able to overcome the sheer economic challenges.”
Chinese models, including Alibaba’s Qwen3 series, Minimax’s M2.5 and Moonshot’s Kimi K2.5, are among the most downloaded models on developer platform Hugging Face. Three of the most popular models on cloud inference service OpenRouter are Chinese models.
Chinese cloud providers are also expanding abroad to offer low-cost AI services.
For the U.S., deploying personnel alone will likely not be sufficient to promote American AI adoption. “I don’t think any degree of persuasion or handholding from the U.S. Tech Corps volunteers would be able to overcome the sheer economic challenges and needs of a lot of businesses, individuals and organizations outside the developed markets,” Chan said.
The Tech Corps volunteers will spend one to two years abroad to support the exports of American AI, according to the program’s official website. They may build AI capacity, help identify areas for AI adoption, or implement AI applications on farms, in hospitals or in schools, the website says.
Volunteers are required to have STEM degrees and foundational technical skills. On-the-ground service will begin as early as this fall.
The Trump administration has, over the past few months, ramped up plans to counter the influence of China’s AI products. Although U.S. companies have led frontier AI research, Chinese companies are catching up fast, especially with open-weight AI models that can run at lower computing costs.
In July, the U.S. government announced an AI action plan, which includes pledges to export the country’s AI technology stack, including hardware, models, software, applications, and standards, and build an American AI alliance.
The Tech Corps will facilitate these AI exports, with the tagline “American tech. Global good.” In one sample scenario listed on its website, volunteers will help integrate an American AI healthcare system into a local hospital’s workflows, train medical and administrative staff, and help customize the system to the local language.
The Tech Corps initiative also comes at a time when the U.S. is rolling back its aid programs that are traditionally a pivotal part of the country’s soft power push. The Trump administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) early in 2025, which led to the shutdown of health, education, and other humanitarian projects that disrupted the lives of millions.
The Peace Corps, created by President Kennedy in 1961, has sent 240,000 volunteers abroad to help with projects covering agriculture, education, and youth development. It has also faced threats of funding and staff cuts under the Trump administration.
