The Anthropic safety position may be counterproductive to US AI competitiveness.

Between China and US theres a defacto unequal distillation environment. China has no qualms about distilling off other labs outputs. US labs actively avoid it for legal reasons. Whatever the actual legalities, US labs have a relative hand tied behind their back. If they didn’t, it’d be easier for Grok, Gemini, and Meta to catch up.

If we care about US competitiveness, then one solution could be either OpenAI/Anthropic enter distillation agreements with other US labs. Or we decide to make distillation public domain / legal.

Until then the only models Anthropic/US Govt could realistically regulate would be in the US market. And that’s as much a losing game as tariffs.