Arguably the most controversial – and consequential – is the release of a Chinese AI model called Kimi K3 by Moonshot AI. But perhaps more interestingly, the Chinese AI models have one key strategic advantage: they are cheaper. By many measures, the number of tokens being used on Chinese AI models has surpassed those of US companies. Interestingly, when Hugging Face tried to counter the attack this month, American AI models proved unable to respond to the hacking because of US regulations about advanced AI models. Are AI models from China a new form of “soft power,” as the New York Times argues?