Earlier this month, Chinese President Xi Jinping argued that China’s more open-weight AI approach offers a fairer alternative to closed American models. The possibility of a ban on Chinese open-weight AI has exposed a split inside the US tech industry. Notably absent was Anthropic, one of the leading AI companies and the only major AI lab to decline to sign. Supporters of closed AI systems see things differently, particularly when it comes to cybersecurity. The debate over open-weight AI is about more than software.