Benchmark investor Bill Gurley and former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky are making waves on X by framing US limits on Chinese AI models as a self-inflicted cage that could lock American users and companies out of the world's most competitive price and performance options, ultimately handing global momentum to Beijing instead.
This is 💯 right. You might as well put a high-fence around the United States. We wouldn’t be locking other people out — we would be caging ourselves in. & using AI with price/performance that isn’t globally competitive. No need to protect the fastest growing company of all time.
Banning or restricting Chinese models in the US would backfire and cede the global AI ecosystem to Beijing
the new AI paradox: slowing America, speeding China
Both argue that barriers like access restrictions or open-source curbs repeat old mistakes from encryption fights, where controls only sped up foreign self-reliance and fragmented the ecosystem that US players rely on.
No details have surfaced yet on the exact scope of any proposed bans, licensing rules, or rebuttals from officials, and the posts stop short of naming current performance gaps or market-share numbers.
Many users agreed US restrictions on Chinese AI models would backfire by cutting off fast innovation and open-source competition, while others dismissed the warnings as lame or dumb and called for bans anyway.
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Banning or restricting Chinese models in the US would backfire and cede the global AI ecosystem to Beijing.
It would send the US to the Stone Age of innovation.
It would be the worse single regulatory capture event failure in history.
Banning or restricting Chinese models in the US would backfire and cede the global AI ecosystem to Beijing
the new AI paradox: slowing America, speeding China
@dee_bosa Ban and restrict business with any company that uses a Chinese model. Easy.
@dee_bosa The argument that the U.S. banning Chinese AI "could backfire" is logically invalid.
China will do a full court press to be the alternative to U.S. AI no matter what. They're already doing it. A U.S. ban doesn't change anything about China's calculus outside the U.S.
@dee_bosa All these models will converge-capability will be nearly the same. Commoditization- price reductions. Banning foreign models will lead to artificially high prices in US
@bgurley Chinese companies innovated and operated like startups at scale. And moved fast enough to catchup and maybe even get ahead in some areas. We don’t need to regulate these models, we need innovation to ship better/faster models
@BenO6O1199O @dee_bosa They would just say. Hey, we are not giving any rare earths to you anymore. Let’s see who’s economy deplodes first.
Since US is financialized much more, whitout being able to create anything it would implode and never recover.
@bgurley this is irony, closed-source from democratic state, and open-source from an authoritarian state
@bgurley Exactly. If the goal is to stay competitive, cutting ourselves off from the best price/performance curve seems like the surest way to fall behind.
@ASankarraman Same in EVs. Blocking is using the late 1900 European playbook. Will have same effect.
@dee_bosa The US has to be careful unless it wants to become the next EU.
@corleonecapital What allies?
@dee_bosa A ban seems unlikely, but the friction we are seeing now will certainly lead to a different path forward.
I have an idea. The hyper scalers should invest in their own ~frontier models and charge ~cost, or whatever makes sense to compete with the frontier.
It’s been obvious for a long time we would eventually ban Chinese models. These things are so complex we don’t understand them. Stands to reason we might not want to let a fox in the hen house, by having our American companies depend on that sort of tech stack
@Nabilkeano Nope. They will use free AI.
@deepanshusharmx Open source is a powerfully competitive tool used by non incumbents to be successful. Good news is it leads to disruptively low price for consumers. And less monopolists. All good stuff.
@bgurley It won't just be in US...all allied states will follow suit or force too..many smaller vulnerable dependent countries will also be forced too..it's happening in other sectors and resources..same will apply..ban..sanction..tariff.. blacklist
@sukdnb @dee_bosa Yep. Gotta clean up the rare earth supply chain which America is currently doing.
@dee_bosa my entire ai stack right now is chinese,
glm, qwen, kimi, deepseek
kimi code, deerflow
@bgurley They’re going to ban ours too. Allies will line up behind their guy. Actually makes a lot of sense if one starts from the point of, “these things are dangerous tools”
