Eric Schmidt said he worries that most governments will use Chinese AI models

"This produces a bizarre outcome where the biggest models in the United States are closed source and the biggest models in China are open-source,"

"The geopolitical issue there, of course, is that open source is free and the closed source models are not free."

"So the vast majority of governments and countries who don't have the kind of money that the West does will end up standardizing on Chinese models not because they're better, but because they're free,"

Open-source AI models are freely available for anyone to use, modify, and redistribute, while many leading U.S. models remain closed-source and monetized. Cost differences will likely drive most governments and lower-income countries to adopt Chinese open-source models despite potential security or quality concerns. Popular Chinese models such as DeepSeek and Alibaba's Qwen3 have raised concerns about data privacy, national security, and competitive advantage. Calls for sovereign AI emphasize national control over AI technologies, data, and infrastructure. Tech executives and policymakers advocate building domestic AI systems to avoid dependency on foreign models and protect sensitive data.

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