China's free models have Trump's AI world at war with itself

moonshot ai released kimi, a free, open-weight model matching us capabilities, triggering a public dispute among top trump advisors. former ai czar david sacks slammed anthropic and openai for demanding government protection against open-source rivals, while pentagon officials like emil michael advocate for strict national security vetting. the conflict highlights a strategic failure: despite chip export controls, chinese models are now competitive and undermining us ai dominance. this puts the administration in a bind, forcing a choice between protecting national champions through regulation or allowing free competition that strengthens chinese ai.