Are Chinese open models being oversold as reaching the frontier? We’re back with another vibe check episode with @arimorcos and @_RobToews. These are a ton of fun to record and this was a particularly meaty one given everything going on. We hit on: ▪️Did Chinese open models catch the US frontier? ▪️How much does distillation explain China's progress ▪️Reactions to Anthropic Backlash ▪️What a Stuxnet style backdoor in model weights looks like ▪️The OpenAI and Hugging Face breach ▪️xAI and Cursor ▪️Prediction check-ins 0:00 Intro 2:41 China's Open Source Models Catch Up 7:42 Does Distillation Explain China's Rise? 13:54 The Geopolitical Risk of Chinese AI Models 20:28 Should the Government Restrict Open Models? 22:06 What Are the Labs Really Learning From You? 29:22 Future of Government Regulation 40:50 The OpenAI-Hugging Face Hack 47:59 Grok, Cursor, and the Value of Real Data 56:52 SSI and OpenRouter 1:02:52 Venture Capital's Return to Deep Tech 1:05:16 Quickfire YouTube: Spotify: Apple: