The problem is misrepresented in online discussion. For example, typical argument is that EU doesn't have TOP10 companies by market cap and US has half of it but when you think about it market cap doesn't mean much and even if it did it would have ment capital concentration which is not a good thing by European culture. We don't want to have some ultra rich giant companies when everyone else tries to survive by the scraps, we actively try to redistribute wealth and are proud of our better gini coefficient. Europe is so not into this stuff that the "startup guys" of Europe on social media who are raving for accelerationism are just small businesses with a revenue of a restaurant on a high street but they think that they are early stages of Musk or Bezos. They just don't get it.

IMHO just look at the stuff you care about and forget using proxies like GDP or market value etc. For example, US has the largest companies by market cap but they are excited to have Taiwan opening a plant in USA that will produce chips on a few years old tech when Taiwan and Korea have the cutting edge stuff.

Examples are numerous, it goes above and beyond everything. China is not behind US in AI, in fact in some areas US is already trying to catch up. Tesla has enormous market cap but Chinese brands already displaced them in actual product sales. Americans think that self driving cars will be ready to go mainstream soon when China already has those disrupting their taxi sector. Apple is about to become $4T company but Chinese and Koreans have all the cutting edge tech and Apple is faltering.

In military front USA boosts about how much money they spend on military only to find out that they are just paying more than they should and can't match Russia on ammunition.