The US and China's open-source AI showdown is coming

China’s AI companies have become a huge threat to their US rivals with their more open models, with the likes of Kimi K3, GLM-5.2 and Qwen 3.8 now almost rivalling Anthropic and OpenAI’s best efforts. The Trump administration will soon need to make a decision about how or whether to try to control those Chinese models and the open-source AI movement in general – and China will need to consider whether the many benefits of open AI are worth the risks. Tech Gets Real is a show about staying in control in a time of rapid technological change, presented from a European perspective. I'm veteran tech journalist David Meyer, and I've been covering tech policy for two decades. If you like this, please hit like and subscribe, and share it with others who might find it useful. REFERENCES: Reuters on US-China AI talks https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-china-hold-ai-talks-september-sources-say-2026-07-21/ Hugging Face on its hacking incident https://huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026 The Diplomat on the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization https://thediplomat.com/2026/07/chinas-new-ai-club-the-world-artificial-intelligence-cooperation-organization/ Xi Jinping’s open AI speech http://english.scio.gov.cn/topnews/2026-07/18/content_118605932.html Financial Times on China considering open AI controls https://www.ft.com/content/6049a031-9e9b-464c-97bb-414da04d5a6a?syn-25a6b1a6=1 Thinking Machines Lab on its Tinker release https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/introducing-inkling/ Ben Thompson’s Stratechery post on the US’s choices https://stratechery.com/2026/whos-afraid-of-chinese-models/ David Sacks vs Dean Ball https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2078826291638522127