We are in a race to superintelligence. The first country to AGI will be the first to superintelligence, and the first to superintelligence will have de facto control over the world and the future of humanity. They will also be able to prevent others from reaching superintelligence.
Of course it's in the US's best interest to slow down China. You aren't zooming out and looking at the big picture, you're taking models as slightly useful tool, not what they will soon turn into.
As well, it is a false equivalence to say that local models are only Chinese and otherwise we would use cloud models, but there are American or European ones, so a ban would simply force companies to use these, even if they are inferior to Chinese ones. It's simply a matter of national security to the US government, and they will not care what random people in media say.
I don't know what part of this you guys are having trouble with, but it doesn't get a whole hell of a lot more emphatic on "what the US Government thinks" than who the Pentagon is in court with to avoid doing business with that party.
Mr. Hegseth is the representative of the administration in the AI usage policy of the largest bureaucratic organization in the history of civilization. He has emphatically rejected at least one black box American AI megalab and President Trump has endorsed this action on Truth Social.
The government's stated position is not what you among other commenters are stating or implying as the government's position.
And you mention Hegseth but it was Lutnick at the Department of Commerce who banned Fable, so there are many competing parties in the government. Again, it is not just Anthropic who'd benefit from a Chinese model ban.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/17/us-deepseek-blacklist-cxmt-n...