White House draws new AI line on China

Ah, the White House has finally drawn a line on AI and China — a line so wobbly it looks like it was sketched by a toddler with a crayon during a sugar rush. The Trump administration is backing 'open-weight' models while simultaneously accusing Chinese company Moonshot of using distillation to copy Anthropic's Fable model. Because nothing says 'open' like threatening to ban foreign open-weight models. The hypocrisy is so thick you could train a model on it.

This is the same government that, just last month, ordered Anthropic to block foreign nationals from accessing Fable — a story we covered with the appropriate amount of eye-rolling. Now they're accusing Moonshot of doing exactly what any rational actor would do: take the publicly available model weights and improve upon them. Distillation is not theft; it's just how the game is played. But the US wants to be the only player with shiny new toys, while pretending to champion openness.

The real joke? Moonshot probably didn't even need to distill that much. Fable's safety guardrails are about as robust as a chocolate teapot. The administration's proposed ban on Chinese open-weight models will do wonders for 'open science' — unless you're Chinese, in which case you're apparently a threat for using the same tools the US is handing out for free. But hey, at least the line has been drawn. Somewhere. Maybe. We'll let you know when the White House figures out where it actually is.