Some in the Trump administration are pushing for limits on foreign models. The emergence of powerful new open-weight Chinese models from Z.ai and Moonshot AI, which are cheaper to use than closed Western models, have reinvigorated efforts to effectively ban such tools, Axios reports, citing unnamed sources:
The Commerce Department last year considered adding multiple Chinese A.I. labs to its “Entity List,” which would effectively cut off U.S. access without a license, a source close to the administration told Axios.
The National Security Agency and White House Office of the National Cyber director also considered putting out an advisory on Chinese A.I. lab threats last year, practically discouraging U.S. companies from using their tech, the source said.
These voices have gained power in the administration, especially as critics of the approach — including David Sacks, the former White House A.I. czar; Sriram Krishnan, a top White House A.I. adviser; and Chris Fall, the director of the Commerce Department’s Center for A.I. Standards and Innovation — have departed.
Prominent industry figures are still pushing back, arguing that — contra the views of Amodei and Altman — open-source A.I. is good because it forces leading labs to compete on capability and price.
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“Lobbyists are urging Washington to treat open-model A.I. as a security threat. In fact, it is something more familiar: proper competition that should be welcomed,” Bill Gurley, the veteran venture capital investor, wrote in an opinion piece in The Washington Post
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“The leading closed labs, already a duopoly in terms of A.I. model revenue, want the government to eliminate their open source competition,” Sacks wrote on X.
China is reportedly weighing limits for its own models. The country’s commerce ministry has been considering ways to limit foreign companies from getting access to key A.I. and chip-making data or from acquiring important tech start-ups, The Financial Times reports, citing unnamed sources.
What to watch: The U.S. and China are set to hold talks in September over how to regulate their increasingly powerful models, according to Reuters.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The war in the Middle East threatens to expand. The Houthis, an armed faction in Yemen that’s backed by Iran, said they would blockade Saudi ships, a potential escalation of hostilities against international commerce. The biggest risk is to global energy prices, though Brent crude, the international benchmark, has held relatively steady at about $90 a barrel.
President Trump imposes new tariffs on Canadian products. Trump signed an executive order that will put a 50 percent tax on many goods from Canada in 30 days, claiming that the country is discriminating against U.S. motor vehicles, dairy products and alcohol. He cited a never-before-used provision of the Tariff Act of 1930 to impose the new tariffs, raising the possibility of a new trade war with one of America’s biggest trading partners.
