There's only so far you can push things before you need breakthroughs that give new approaches and when that happens it is often a new playing field.

The person I was replying to was asserting the the EU could never approach China and US levels in AI even if they made a major effort to do so because by starting N years later they would always be N years behind.

But that is only true, it seems to me, for things that do not plateau. For things that plateau those who start N years late catch up to the leaders N years after the leaders hit the plateau.

ICE cars plateaued a long time ago, and so the EU, the US, and China are all about the same level. They might concentrate more on different market segments, but technologically they all pretty much equally capable.