But how is it relevant to the EU right now? It seems like sitting it out and spending that money on weapons is a better option for EU money as it solves an immediate danger.

Why would we need to worry about China getting far ahead of US models given the spending trajectory of US companies? If China does get ahead, US companies will just keep pumping more money into the problem to keep the race going. But to what end? LLMs are not going to morph into AGI, that will be a new paradigm.

For most people, the best LLM is the one that is cheapest to them, as models are incredibly good. I'd wager ~90% of people using AI today wouldn't be able to differentiate GPT Sol from GLM 5.3 Flash in their day-to-day usage. The models are already good enough today for most workloads, next year's model won't change that.