The launch of the latest AI model from a Chinese company — Moonshot AI’s Kimi — reignited debates around American competitiveness and open versus proprietary AI.
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed why this seems to be such a hot button issue. Beyond suggesting that certain folks should “touch grass” rather than spending their weekends arguing on X, Sean noted that in many ways, this “feels like we’re seeing repeats of prior freakouts,” with everyone in Silicon Valley “expecting that something is going to arrive and blow everything else away.”
And Kirsten noted that putting heavy restrictions on Chinese AI models could primarily benefit a handful of companies: “Are we accelerating and ensuring that Americans win the AI race, or are we ensuring that certain frontier labs do better than others?
Keep reading for an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Anthony Ha: For folks who have followed the discourse around Chinese AI, this will probably be very, very familiar from the launch of DeepSeek, where basically a Chinese model comes out; on some benchmarks, it does as well, or at least seems competitive with some of the frontier models; and a certain portion of the tech industry loses their mind.
Some of this [debate] got extra scrutiny because one of the people posting about it was [an executive] at OpenAI. But in general, there [is] this recurring question of: Can Chinese companies beat US companies, at least in some aspects, and do it much more cheaply and in a much more open way?
Sean O’Kane: Yeah, there are many elements of this that feel like we’re seeing repeats of prior freakouts. I think one of my favorites is: Everybody is so ready [for] and so expecting that something is going to arrive and blow everything else away. And I think my favorite example of that this past week was people showing off that “My gosh, Kimi made in 30 minutes an entire replication of macOS.” And yeah, it made a pretty impressive graphical reproduction of what macOS looks like, but it’s not an OS.
We keep seeing these things happen over and over again, where everybody’s so jumpy in the tech industry. And I think in particular, with some of the Chinese models that come out, there’s this expectation, and I think this gets to the core of why people reacted the way they reacted last weekend. (Also, by the way: Go outside, touch grass, it’s the weekend. Everybody in the industry was trading barbs on Twitter all weekend.) But this jumpiness is really interesting to me because we’re now a week out and I don’t think anybody’s feeling like the end is nigh like they were a week ago.
Kirsten Korosec: We have a really great story by one of our reporters, Tim Fernholz, who tries to unpack the psychosis around this here in the United States. He points to a number of reasons. And concludes — and I don’t want to conclude it for him, but I think that there’s one that rises more to the top than others.
There’s concerns that these Chinese open weight models might have an implicit bias towards China, there’s another worry about security risks and guardrails. But there’s also a pretty big idea here, which is protectionism, and who is going to quote-unquote “win the race”? Is it going to be the US or China? And that seems to be driving a lot of what the fear is.
I don’t know, Anthony, if you agree with that?
Anthony: I completely agree. I think the China aspect always adds this certain level of hysteria. And that’s not to say that people shouldn’t be concerned about how the U.S. stacks up against China across different industries. But it gets so amped up.
The other thing this reminds me of is the discussion around TikTok a few years ago. And again, it wasn’t that I thought that the concerns around TikTok were totally made up, but that the level of how panicked people got — it seems as soon as you add the word China to any discussion, things just ramp up dramatically. And then in this case, it’s linked to this discussion about open [weights] and this idea that AI is so powerful and so dangerous that the only way we can control it is with these proprietary models from these American frontier companies.
Obviously, most people saying this [have] reasons why they want to say that. David Sacks, who was the AI czar for the Trump administration [and] now has a different role in the Trump administration, was shouting on X about how, “I can’t believe people are opposing data centers, we’re tying ourselves in knots, there’s too much regulation.” And so it’s a way to argue for the positions that they already had around AI. “My gosh, if China beats us, that’s unthinkable, so you have to do what I want to do anyway.”
Kirsten: Right, and if you were to put across-the-board bans on Chinese open weight models — I’m not saying that there aren’t real concerns here, but let’s just play that out. If we were to do that, it would benefit models created by OpenAI, for instance, and it would force enterprises to use those as opposed to using models like Kimi.
So you really have to ask the question: Are we accelerating and ensuring that Americans win the AI race, or are we ensuring that certain frontier labs do better than others?
Sean: At this point, we should say a lot of this discussion really got kicked off by the head of strategic futures at OpenAI, Dean Ball, who was the first one to come out with this really long post mentioning some of these concerns.
Part of me thinks the reaction to this was because people disagreed with what Dean wrote. Part of me also thinks the reaction was driven by the fact that he kind of just said the thing out loud. He basically said the US should create regulatory FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — and muck up the ability for these open weight models to compete with the US. [Ball later backed away from this argument.]
And to me, I think you can read in some of the responses from folks, like, “You’re not supposed to say that out loud, Dean.”
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The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has accused the administration of President Bola Tinubu of turning Nigeria into a “full authoritarian state,” citing alleged erosion of democratic institutions, suppression of dissent and weakening of checks and balances.
The PDP made the allegation in a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Interim National Working Committee, Ini Ememobong, on Saturday.
The statement reads in full, “The report by the Human Rights Foundation, in its latest global assessment, classifying Nigeria as a fully authoritarian regime is a mere global confirmation of the local reality that Nigerians have been facing under the APC-led Federal Government. The report confirms the faulty electoral process, absence of protection for dissent, erosion of democratic safeguards and the obvious collapse of checks and balances on the executive by critical national institutions.
“The report published on the foundation’s Tyranny Tracker platform, tyrannytracker.org, shows that the country performed abysmally low on all the critical pillars of its assessment, indicating a full descent into authoritarianism, which is incompatible with democratic tenets.
“It is worthy of note that the assessment parameters of the foundation align with the theoretical frameworks that have identified, analysed and condemned authoritarian regimes-being the rule by a dictator and a small group, or a single party; the absence of institutional checks and balances; loss or apprehension of freedom of speech; opposition targeting; and weak and fake elections.
“It does not take any high degree of intelligence for anybody to agree with the report, because all the indicators of authoritarianism are present in Nigeria, under this Tinubu regime.
“A few examples from the numerous anomalies experienced by Nigerians will suffice here-the recent deployment of uncivilised and uncouth media attacks by officials of the administration to attack Cardinal Onaiyekan, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria, the Catholic Church and Christianity generally.
“This incident is one of many which eloquently attest to the absence of freedom of speech under this administration. What did the cleric say that is not the lived experience of Nigerians, except, of course, the few who are isolated from reality and their paid human megaphones?
“The complete failure of the National Assembly to offer any form of meaningful checks to the executive is not a secret-else how could an administration fail to execute the Appropriation Act for three years, and yet that administration gets commendation, instead of condemnation, from the legislature? A parliament that ignores or blatantly disrespects the country’s constitution and its own standing rules during critical legislative activities cannot offer credible oversight of the executive.
“What is left, which the administration has doubled down on, is the fact that the 2027 elections are designed as a mere formality, far from reflecting the people’s wishes through the ballot.
“We call on the Tinubu APC administration to immediately take critical steps to de-escalate the political tensions emanating from actions traceable to their officials and their proxies, in the interest of the survival of democracy.
“The continuous asphyxiation of the opposition, clear weaponisation of security agencies against real and perceived opponents, increasing signs of partisanship by the electoral umpire, and reckless deployment of combustible political rhetoric by the President and his handlers should cease.
“The President must realise that there are two contests embedded in the 2027 Presidential elections-the presidency and the country. An attempt to focus on winning the former at all costs may result in the loss of the latter; and only a free, fair, credible and peaceful contest can guarantee a win for both coveted prizes.
“We urge Nigerians to continue to demand accountability from their leaders at all levels, as this is the irreducible minimum that democracy provides.”
The African Democratic Congress, ADC, has faulted the selection of a presidential aide, to lead a delegation of state governors to a foreign mission.
In a post on X, the National Publicity Secretary of the ADC, Bolaji Abdullahi, said it was absurd for a personal aide to the president and and his Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila to lead elected governors on such a mission.
Recall that President Tinubu had approved a Federal Government delegation led by Gbajabiamila to represent Nigeria at the maiden Nigeria Diaspora Investment Economic Conference in Toronto, Canada.
The delegation includes Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum, Anambra State Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani, Plateau State Governor, Caleb Mutfwang and Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal, as well as some ministers.
In an outrage over the president’s decision, the ADC spokesman said, “Just when you think that you have seen the worst of this Tinubu government, they will just surprise you.
“How can the President’s Chief of Staff, an unelected personal aide of the president, lead elected state governors on a foreign mission. It is well,” he tweeted.
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