But the China argument depends on a premise that is becoming less true by the month: that frontier AI is an American secret China cannot get unless we hand it over. China is no longer outside the gate looking in. Chinese models from DeepSeek, Alibaba, Moonshot, Zhipu and MiniMax are increasingly capable. The United States may still lead at the top. But the gap is not the gap between having nuclear weapons and not having nuclear weapons. It is a narrowing software race.⁶
That changes the logic of export control. It works best when the controlled item is scarce, physical and hard to reproduce. It works less well when the controlled item is software, training know-how, model behavior and capabilities that can be approximated, distilled or rebuilt.
The people most reliably stopped by a U.S. access restriction are not China’s military or intelligence services. They are lawful users: American developers, independent researchers, universities, startups, hospitals, cybersecurity teams, allies and ordinary businesses that follow the rules. If the best American models become politically rationed, the world will not stop using AI. It will look for AI that Washington cannot turn off.
At the VivaTech conference in Paris, the word of the week was sovereignty. Reuters reported that executives from Siemens, Renault, Orange and ChapsVision said they already use a mix of U.S., Chinese and European models to avoid depending on any one provider. The Anthropic order gave that fear a body. A French company, a German manufacturer or a Spanish defense contractor could build around an American model and discover that access depends on a letter from Washington.⁷
That is not just a vendor risk. It is a sovereignty risk.
If advanced American AI is available only by Washington’s grace, allies will build around that risk. Europe will accelerate its own models, sovereign cloud and open-weight alternatives. Canada will discover that its hydro power, cold geography and AI research base are strategic assets. The more America turns AI into a permission system, the more it teaches its allies to build systems America cannot turn off.
Trump says he is protecting America’s AI lead. He may instead become the best recruiter Europe’s AI industry ever had.
The domestic danger is greater. If a model is too dangerous for public use but available to the state and its chosen partners, the danger has not been eliminated. It has been concentrated.
Frontier AI is not just another product. It is a tool for searching, persuading, monitoring, coding and automating. It can help defend a power grid. It can also help surveil dissent. It can find software flaws. It can also find institutional pressure points.
The more powerful these models become, the more important the rule of law becomes. If the government is going to decide who may use frontier AI, the standard cannot be presidential trust. It cannot be private conversations with favored executives. It cannot be a list that officials can change at any time. It cannot be a secret finding that one company is dangerous while comparable systems remain available elsewhere.
America needs AI governance. It does not need AI patronage.
Congress should create a real frontier-AI framework: published capability thresholds, independent evaluations, emergency suspension authority with short deadlines, judicial review, congressional reporting and explicit rules for government use. It should protect legitimate cybersecurity defenders, coordinate with allies before cutting them off, and make clear when remote model access is an export and when it is not.
There are two bad futures here. In one, Silicon Valley releases increasingly dangerous tools because every restraint is treated as surrender to China. In the other, the government keeps the most powerful tools close, grants access to its friends, delays access to the public and calls the result safety.
The first future risks serious harm by speed. The second risks authoritarianism by asymmetry.
Trump may be right that frontier AI needs brakes. That does not mean he should control the brake pedal.