What did the US get for applying export controls to an
#AI model for the first time? šØš«
Two weeks ago Commerce ordered
@AnthropicAI to block foreign nationals from Fable 5 and Mythos 5. It couldn't sort users by nationality in real time, so it pulled both models for everyone. Within 48 hours,
Z.ai shipped GLM-5.2 under an MIT license, Rio released an open model on Qwen, and Sakana pitched "frontier capability without export-control risk." The ban is now reversed and Fable is back, but the trust damage is done.
In our new
@lawfare piece, Jon Rosenwasser and I argue US AI strategy rests on two false assumptions:
- āDenial keeps us aheadā It doesn't. Three years of chip controls actually narrowed the AI gap. Chinese open-weight models went from under 2% of OpenRouter traffic in late 2024 to ~61% of top-model usage today.
- We can't regulate at home because China won't. It already does. China has regulated AI since 2021, with 700 models reviewed before deployment. Beijing even steered its own labs away from H200 chips that beat domestic parts. Itās not a country sprinting to AGI at any cost.š”
The real risk isn't over-regulation. It's the bet: ~$725B in AI infrastructure in 2026, past $1T in 2027, while the physical stack tilts toward Beijing and the gains diffuse outward.
We need to keep US models open, govern with confidence at home, cooperate where stakes are shared, and build the safety net before the displacement arrives.
See full OpEd below.
@AsiaPolicy @StanfordHAI
Even with the reversal, the Commerce Departmentās decision to impose export controls on Anthropic's Fable 5 has created a loss of trust among AI users globally. Alvin Wang Graylin and Jon J. Rosenwasser explore the assumptions underlying AI policymaking this incident exposed.
