# geopolitics

Word from Washington that officials are weighing a ban on US companies using Chinese open weights models. A batch of tech companies signed an open letter backing open weights, and some accused Anthropic of pushing a ban to protect its own business. Dario Amodei denies it, and lays out the three things he actually supports: control the chips, stop industrial-scale distillation, and mandate testing for every model powerful enough to matter. The deepest passage is buried in footnote five — what has kept humanity safe so far may not be the defenders.

Anthropic lays out two 2028 scenarios for AI leadership: the US and its allies preserve their compute and model lead, or a CCP-controlled AI ecosystem catches up near the frontier. The essay centers on compute, export controls, model distillation, and whether democracies can set the rules first.

Andrew Ng reports from Davos WEF that US export controls and America First policies are pushing countries toward Sovereign AI. DeepSeek and Qwen adoption is rising globally. For Taiwan, the question is sharp: you make the AI chips, but do you own AI sovereignty?