Using national security concerns to push for banning Chinese open-weight models is self-serving when it comes from executives at US frontier labs who benefit from reduced competition.
Rory criticizes OpenAI's Dean Ball for suggesting AI communism rhetoric and tighter restrictions on Chinese models, arguing it's naive and self-serving for a closed-source provider to advocate for banning cheaper competitors. ✦ AI generated
Rory · 20VC · 2026-07-23 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 5:42
“Do you think Washington should move to restrict access then to these Chinese models? Or is Bill Gurley right in suggesting that we should let free markets do what free markets do best?”
if you make the expensive closed source product that sells for, you know, 10, 20 bucks and the Chinese are shipping something for two bucks and you say, 'Well, totally independently, just speaking as a common citizen, I think they should ban this shit.' You got to expect that a whole bunch of people are going to say, 'Dude, you're not talking as a common citizen. You're talking as the provider of the company who will jack up our rates the minute the stuff gets banned.'
verbatim transcript · starts at 5:42
5:43trying to remember is it Dean B his name? >> It's Dean B and he is current I think it's out of policy or communications director for open AI. He just started there two weeks ago. before that he's at the Trump ad part of the administration kind of on AI policy and before that a bunch of Hoover Institute type stuff and he you know he set off a firestorm with
6:02the tweet and then he did a little bit oh I can't really post because I'm now an open everyone was mean to me because I posted a bunch of stuff and I was frankly a little naive comment because the two comments about the tweet one is you're in a senior role at open AI one there was a hysterical tone to it right he used the word um AI commun ism and it
6:22was very kind of overexaggerated. And then secondly, you know, when you start even hinting about I mean we saw this when Sarah fire did it. When you start hinting about significant regulatory hinting at regular changes that will massively benefit you, you got to expect that everyone's going to say, "Dude, of course you're going to say that. You're you know, that's your side." And if you start, if you make the expensive
6:46closed source product that sells for, you know, 10, 20 bucks and the Chinese are shipping something for two bucks and you say, "Well, totally independently, just speaking as a common citizen, I think they should ban this shit." You got to expect that a whole bunch of people are going to say, "Dude, you're not talking as a common citizen. You're talking as the provider of the company who will jack up our rates the minute
7:07the stuff gets banned." So, you know, it was it was a little naive not to expect that level of blowback. >> Well, we we'll see at some level. First of all, I think that guy at opening had been there like two weeks, right? Two weeks. >> Whether this was whether he used that as a reason to go on this or >> as they say in the meme, Jason, two
7:26weeks so far. >> Yeah. So far, >> um, listen, I I can't I'm not a total expert. difficult for me to imagine the federal government's ever going to use a uh a China built model at this point in the US, right? It's difficult and and and anything adjacent to that, it's difficult to imagine. Uh just just simply I mean there's always in our whole history at tech the ability of
- ·OpenAI's Dean Ball pushes tighter restrictions on Chinese open-weight models
- ·Closed-source providers benefit from banning cheaper competitors
- ·Rory: 'You're talking as the provider, not as a common citizen'
- ·US closed-source models: $10–$20 per unit
- ·Chinese open models: ~$2 per unit
- ·Banning the cheaper option protects premium pricing