America bets anti-China AI strategy on government that funded 421 fake infrastructure projects

I grew up in a country where “ghost projects” is a phrase everyone understands without explanation.

In 2025, government auditors confirmed 421 of them among roughly 8,000 flood-control contracts inspected — infrastructure that existed only on paper while public money vanished into it.

I’ve watched this pattern my whole life as a student journalist covering […] ...