- OpenAI and Anthropic convince the US gov to ban open weight models, through bribes or fear respectively. Model weights become contraband, comparable to CSAM, because someone will show you can use uncensored (abliterated) open models to do bad things.
- Duopoly firmly in place, the prices are raised until they become painful. The rest of the world uses Chinese models for a while, but the US applies soft power where it can, similar to copyright and patent restrictions. The justification will be something about open weight models and intellectual property, and the word "pirate" will fall our of favor as the word "terrorist" takes its place.
- US hardware will detect when you're doing what looks like too many matrix multiplies or dot products. Similar to "Trusted Computing", HDMI cables, and other DRM.
- Of course some US people will work around all of this under the radar, but most will be served mediocre models polluted with advertising and only capable of generating memes and slop.