Looking at the comments on Korean political articles, the point is not so much whether SKT is actually related to China, but rather that the switch to cut off AI vendors is now outside the realm of model performance specs. Now, when foreign companies integrate AI into their workflows, they probably need to add a category for vendor continuity in their evaluation criteria. From a corporate standpoint, uninterrupted continuity is what matters, and with this case, Anthropic is likely to lose a lot of trust, contrary to its own stated policies.
Open source models are not immune to a different form of restriction either. I recently learned that China is restricting travel for AI engineers living in China.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-restricts-o...
It's going to be interesting to see how the AI arms races unfolds over time.