American AI is locked down and proprietary. It's losing.

American AI is locked down and proprietary. It's losing

Ben Werdmuller argues that US AI companies' closed, proprietary approach is losing to China's open-weights strategy. Models have little moat—switching costs are near zero—so China turned its GPU export disadvantage into a distribution advantage by releasing models openly. a16z partner Martin Casado notes an 80% chance any given startup is using Chinese models. Moonshot and Alibaba just released models they claim match OpenAI and Anthropic at a fraction of the cost. Werdmuller warns the US AI spending bubble could burst hard.

Why it matters: Opinion piece with concrete arguments (switching costs, GPU export controls forcing open strategy) and external citations (The Verge, a16z). Hits all three HKR axes. Deduction because it's a personal blog commentary rather than primary news, and the thesis isn't entirely novel...