[President_Elect_Shang]

I haven't played the game; however, I wouldn't be surprised if the AI did cheat. I have read a number of times in the past that programmers will give an AI cheat or cheat like abilities. In each of the commentaries were this was admitted the designers would point out the same thing. Which is (basically) short of massive development, effort, space, and computing power there is no way to make a great non-cheating AI.