American AI is locked down and proprietary. It's losing

China is gaining ground in AI competition by releasing open-source models that are increasingly competitive with American proprietary systems, leveraging a distribution advantage where openness typically wins in infrastructure adoption. While the US imposed GPU export controls to maintain its AI lead, this strategy backfired by pushing Chinese companies toward open-source releases, which now dominate startup adoption and are closing the performance gap with American frontier models. The article argues that American companies' reliance on locked-down, proprietary services creates a fundamental vulnerability against China's more open, accessible ecosystem approach to AI.