Chinese frontier AI models should be banned in the United States because they are built through unfair distillation, serve as CCP propaganda instruments, and allow foreign control of the American economy.
Despite running Lindy on DeepSeek, Flo argues for banning Chinese frontier models in the US on four grounds: (1) they're unfairly distilled from American models, (2) they serve CCP censorship and propaganda, (3) they give the CCP agentive influence over the American economy, and (4) even if fairly built, domestic AI champions need protection. He calls this position identical to Anthropic's publicly stated view. ✦ AI generated
Flo Crivello · The Cognitive Revolution · 2026-08-10 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 141:51
“Can you state your position on Chinese models given you're running your company on DeepSeek?”
I have something against Chinese frontier models whether they're open or closed source and here the the reasons are number one they're obviously distilling it's very clear and so you're putting American open source model companies in an unfair competition and and closed source in an unfair competition because they're not allowed to distill... Number two, very pragmatically. We don't want Chinese models operating in the US today... these models are eventually subject at the end of the day they are subject to CCP censorship and CCP policies you don't want those models this basically amounts to being the greatest instrument of foreign propaganda on American soil ever... Then these models are not merely just an instrument of propaganda. They're agentic. They're actually doing stuff in the economy. You don't want the CCP to run chunks of the American economy. Duh.
verbatim transcript · starts at 141:51
(01:41:28) "Oh, you're just anthropic shell." But look, I have timestamps like I've been tweeting my my position throughout the whole thing before anthropic clarify theirs and and my position is exactly the same. I don't have anything against open source. I may, but I'm undecided. I do think open source might increase existential risk. Let's put that aside. I'm undecided. This is not the crux of my position right now. God bless open
(01:41:51) source. Important for innovation, important for companies, including mind. Like, please open source. Okay. I have something against Chinese frontier models whether they're open or closed source and here the the reasons are number one they're obviously distilling it's very clear and so you're putting American open source model companies in an unfair competition and and closed source in an unfair competition because they're not allowed to distill you know it's just it's just
(01:42:19) contrary at the very least contrary to the terms of service and it may be legal if you if you've put in place technical measures to circumvent any protection that the model company put in place to prevent distilling which which the Chinese models obviously have done. So it's it's distilled and it's unfair right now. Some people say yes but the companies have also distilled on human data. That is not what
(01:42:38) distillation means. That's just not what it means. Like if you if you do that training on human data it's costing you billions of dollars like actually billions of dollars. If you do it on on AI data it's costing you hundreds of millions at best. So it's it's a huge unfair advantage and it's a significant enough portion of your cost to to to confill you an unfair advantage. That's