For 18 days, top U.S. AI models were pulled offline. And something alarming happened, startups and venture-backed companies started looking at Chinese open-weight models as an alternative. SCSP's David Lin, Ylli Bajraktari, and Joe Wang break down why: price, accessibility, and reliability. The rest of the world doesn't need the most powerful frontier models — they just want something open, free, and available. And right now, China is winning that race. Watch PTB every Friday at 11AM ET! Keep up with SCSP on our website & social media: scsp.ai youtube.com/@SCSPAI instagram.com/scsp.ai/?hl=en linkedin.com/company/specialcompetitivestudiesproject/posts substack.com/@scsp/notes tiktok.com/@scsp.ai x.com/scsp_ai #aishorts #china #nationalsecurity #artificialintelligence #shorts #ainews #ai #siliconvalley #startup #tech #techpolicy #technews