A similar logic applies to the concern that authoritarian governments might build AI models more powerful than America’s and use them to entrench permanent military superiority or deepen domestic repression. But preventing China from reaching advanced AI capability is likely to prove ephemeral. Closed AI models, the tech giants argued, are not inherently safer. Open models, by contrast, let a broad community of researchers examine behavior, find vulnerabilities, and build safeguards in public. A government with that much at stake is a poor candidate for deliberately unleashing a catastrophic AI pathogen it cannot contain.