Stalled at home, US AI models face global competition

 

The capability gap between the US’ AI models and China’s is now approximately equal to the distance between your desire for a long weekend and the impending July Fourth holiday.

That’s the vibe after researchers announced over the weekend that China’s AI can, in some scenarios, match Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, which the US government forced offline earlier this month. Zhipu AI, which matches Mythos on some tasks, is available to the public worldwide.

Doing their level best. China hasn’t leveled up to Anthropic and OpenAI yet, but its rise highlights the social and financial perils of AI being governed differently around the world:

  • Some industry watchers say that the US banning AI models while continuing to sell semiconductor chips to China enables it to create competitive models.
  • US businesses are turning to Chinese models, like those from Zhipu and DeepSeek, to get powerful tools more cheaply.
  • Even Microsoft is reportedly exploring how to offer Chinese models to consumers on its platforms.

Accelerated braking

On Friday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick allowed Anthropic to restore Mythos access to “certain trusted partners,” according to Semafor. The same day, Anthropic rival OpenAI released its newest model, GPT-5.6, to a small number of recipients approved by the government:

  • In a blog post, OpenAI wrote that this process should not “become the long-term default. It keeps the best tools from users, developers, enterprises, cyber defenders, and global partners who need them.”

Next up: The Trump administration will soon allow Anthropic to bring its Fable 5 model, the weaker “cousin” of Mythos, back online after also forcing it off, per Axios. Earlier this month, Fable 5 was offered via Claude for three days, during which it was the most powerful AI model available to the public.

An immodest proposal. Austria declared that Anthropic should move to the EU, where it would receive “legal certainty, market access, capital, and a set of values that suits this company.”—HVL

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