> China is not competing, it is distilling US models.

I think you should check your notes. The likes of Kimi K2 thinking shows up as high as the second best general purpose model currently in existence. It seems they compete just fine.

If you believe "distilling" is all it takes to put together a model at the top of any synthetic benchmark then I wonder what you would have to say about all US models that greatly underperform in comparison and still manage to be used extensively in professional settings.

But your argument is an emotional one and not rarional, isn't it?