Capable models should be required to pass pre-release testing, binding open weights and closed APIs alike.

Who asserts it

• Our position on open-weights models dario-amodei-position-open-weights-models-2026-07-27
• Regulation and Messaging — Dario Amodei's X Reply to Gavin Baker dario-amodei-regulation-messaging-x-thread-2026-08-15
• Oversight of A.I.: Principles for Regulation — Full Hearing Transcript dario-amodei-senate-testimony-open-source-2023-07-25
• We Must Pace the Frontier dario-amodei-we-must-pace-the-frontier-2026-09-12
• Jensen Huang: The Doomer Hoax, Superintelligence is Here, and The Future of AI (ft. President Trump) jensen-huang-allin-summit-doomer-hoax-2026-09-14
• Mark Zuckerberg: Open Source AI Is the Path Forward — Full Manifesto mark-zuckerberg-open-source-ai-manifesto-2024

Distillation does not allow the CCP to obtain equivalent or superior AI capabilities to the US, but it can bring the Chinese frontier to within a [few months](https://www.anthropic.com/research/2028-ai-leadership) of the US frontier. It is true that many of the companies carrying out these operations release open-weights models — but the open weights are far less relevant than the fact that the operations are backed by an authoritarian state seeking to overtake the US at the frontier. We should have policy interventions to deter this behavior.

This brings me to the [open letter](https://images.nvidia.com/pdf/Open-Weights-and-American-AI-Leadership.pdf). I agree with much of it: open weights expand access to the AI economy, they strengthen competition at least for some use cases, and they give customers greater control. Concerns about distillation should be addressed through targeted legal and commercial frameworks — the same measure I described above.

I think this idea is actually close to a consensus: I have been heartened both that the Trump administration has moved in this direction in recent months, and by [recent industry proposals](https://demishassabis.substack.com/p/a-framework-for-frontier-ai-and-the-dawning-of-a-new-age) that would apply such testing to the most capable models regardless of their country of origin or whether they are open or closed (while exempting less capable models, such as those from startups and academia, entirely).