Western AI Builders Depend on Chinese Open Models Through Distillation

The essay argues that Western companies increasingly rely on Chinese open-weight models like Qwen and Kimi for post-training, while Western labs cannot lawfully distill from American frontier models.

It says Qwen's share of new open-model fine-tunes rose from 1% in January 2024 to 69% by February 2026, citing ATOM's Report. The authors propose controlled teacher access and tighter enforcement against foreign distillation as a domestic alternative.