Analyst Questions Why China Allows Kimi to Release Open Frontier Models
A popular post on X argues that Beijing's tolerance for open model releases is strategically odd, and the replies split over whether that means China is careless, confident, or playing a different game.
In a widely shared post on X, the account @tenobrus said they do not understand why Xi Jinping is "still allowing Kimi to release such powerful open models," arguing that it makes little sense for China to leave frontier AI capability easily available to other countries. The post frames that as a puzzle rather than a reported fact and suggests two possibilities: Chinese leadership has not moved to stop it yet, or the line for intervention sits further ahead.
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Analyst Questions Why China Allows Kimi to Release Open Frontier Models
A popular post on X argues that Beijing's tolerance for open model releases is strategically odd, and the replies split over whether that means China is careless, confident, or playing a different game.
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38 posts
@tenobrus Isn't the value capture advantage in power? That's their current advantage
Lmao Dean That's laying it on a bit too thick. Winning "the AGI race" for the state-affiliated Economy Devourer with well-known UBI proposals is not mere self-interest, but the tragic defense of Capital, Freedom and Merit; Atlas' last stand. Huh.
Some observations on Kimi: 1. It's a very good model! I don't think its performance can be explained away by distillation or anything like that. In agentic coding sessions, it seems pretty much on par with the best public models of Q1 2026. In my fairly limited use, it also seemed very token hungry. It's not obvious to me that this model is actually that cheap to run. 2. I am personally surprised the Chinese state continues to allow the open sourcing of models this good, given potential risks. To be clear, I *myself* might be fine with models presenting this level of marginal risk being open weight, but I am surprised that China is fine with it. I suspect the reason they are is 75% explained by strategic blindness/lack of AGI-pilledness (the CCP is very Yann Lecun-y in its views of AI). The other 25% or so is their lack of compute for customer inference (making China's open-weight strategy an unintended byproduct of US export controls) and the normal Chinese strategy of aggressive exports. For the companies, as opposed to the government, the decision to open source is partially ideological and partially because they are behind, and they know that very few people would pay for sub-frontier models from China. 3. Open-weight models are inherently decelerationist, and I'm continually surprised to see the so-called "accelerationists" so excited about open-weight models. I suspect the reason they are is that they know open-weight models are effectively ungovernable, and they simply like the overall cloak of ungovernability open-weight models create over the whole of AI. It's not a bad strategy; it reminds me of James Scott's recounting of the hill people in "the art of not being governed." Still, in the end, open-weight models deter further AI capex. 4. One probable outcome of an open-weight-model-dominant world is full AI communism, which is precisely what China proposes: rather than a market product, AI is a "public good" which will ultimately be provided by the state as a kind of "digital public infrastructure." This future strikes me as a dystopian hellscape, but I've never met an open-weight models advocate who doesn't ultimately concede this is where things end. You'd be surprised how many 'accelerationists' lobbied me, while I was in government, to support an eleven or twelve-figure federally funded data center so that startups could train models at a subsidy and then give them away for free. There was no other way for AI to progress, they said. Perhaps this is the logical end state of things. Nonetheless, I find myself surprised to see supposed accelerationists excited about such an outcome. I think many of them just don't know what they're doing. Many accelerationists do not view the creation and serving of frontier models as a legitimate business. 5. I would guess that the Trump Administration will at some point realize that their best strategy here would be to create large amounts of regulatory risk around the use of open-weight Chinese models. You don't need to "ban open source" (one of the dumber motifs of AI policy discussion). You just need to direct every agency to issue soft law that creates FUD. "A Federal Reserve Advisory Bulletin found that there may be backdoors in Chinese AI models." It needn't be that well justified. You just create enough regulatory risk that every regulated enterprise backs off. You probably don't want to create so much regulatory risk that you scare off the hyperscalers from serving Chinese models; this will just drive startups to sketchier providers. There's a happy middle ground here. I'd assume they will do some version of this. 6. It's probably true that open-weight models of this capability make the world a bit more dangerous, but not so much more that you'll really notice. At some point the models will be capable enough that you will notice. "A nonliving, invisible, dangerous, and infinitely self-replicating agent escaped from a Chinese lab," you say? Color me shocked.
I should write a longer piece on this, but: it's really funny how export control bros are confused by Chinese open sourcing. In fact they're being very courteous; the CCP *should* open source cyberweapons. Consider: 1) you have a fixed compute budget for R&D, training, inference, and special defensive projects like Glasswing 2) you won't sell them chips, tools, or even high-end tokens. You already try your best to render their state irrelevant roadkill in the next technological paradigm. 3) you are explicitly building a cyberweapon in the form of Mythos, Dario is salivating at the thought of how it'll make democracies invincible and end the CCP 4) In China, compute is scarce, overpriced and accounted for, internet is largely isolated from the outside, densely surveilled, full of circuit breakers, providers have Party minders, and virtually no private citizen has a realistic chance of doing much damage (at least to China) with a 3T model no matter how good it is 5) the world outside China is quite chaotic, has plenty of misaligned actors, and much easier time standing up a node of 64 GPUs 6) do you see where I'm going with this? They lose very little commercially and they gain strategically by proliferating frontier capabilities they don't have resources to inference at scale. They want Glasswing and other safety measures to consume your compute advantage. The more you have to dedicate to defense, the slower your takeoff, the narrower the gap, the worse your negotiating position. Of course, this logic only holds so long as you're irredeemably hostile locusts, have a vast compute overmatch, and stronger models intended for offensive use against China anyway (so that enabling smaller non-aligned actors basically does no marginal damage to their security). In this model, your best hope to negotiate the end of Chinese open souring is offering them semiconductor tool relief (GPUs won't be enough, I"m afraid). This is not policy advice. I think you can proceed. Just one thing to keep in mind.
Same feeling here. I am expecting an imminent closing of the Chinese frontier. https://twitter.com/tenobrus/status/2077837467722629600
@tenobrus for takes by people who have been thinking about china ai policy for more than 15 minutes https://www.chinatalk.media/p/chinas-mythos-moment
@deanwball all of this seems a bit copish tbh.
Start paying attention chump SUPERINTELLIGENCE AS A UTILITY is coming I suspect Xi isn't asleep, he legit thinks this is a good idea #AGIForEveryone #路长而歧行则将至 #我心匪石不可转也
registering confusion: i don't really understand why Xi is still allowing Kimi to release such powerful open models. this is something i've publicly said i expect to stop soon. it doesn't make sense to me that the CCP would want open frontier capability easily available to other countries. it could still be that Xi is asleep at the wheel, or that K3 is just a cycle of capability behind where they start to take serious notice. but if things don't change soon then i'm just wrong / missing something.
