AI is making software easier to produce. China already did this to hardware

I saw the recent discussion here about AI companies having fewer traditional moats, and it overlaps with something I’ve been trying to work through myself. I’ve spent years building software and have also built a few startups. What feels different now is that AI is not just making developers faster. It is lowering the cost and difficulty of getting a decent software product into existence. That does not mean software suddenly has no moat. It means that simply being able to build the product is becoming less of one. The comparison I keep coming back to is China and hardware. China’s manufacturing ecosystem did not make hardware companies worthless. It made the ability to manufacture, prototype, source parts, and iterate much less rare. The companies that stayed defensible had to own something beyond simply knowing how to make the product. I think AI is starting to do something similar to software. If software itself becomes abundant, more of the value probably moves into things that are harder to regenerate. Proprietary data from real usage, distribution, switching costs, customer relationships, regulation, physical operations, and control over the actual workflow. I ended up writing a longer essay trying to work through this comparison and where I think the moat moves from here: https://mehmetmhy.com/posts/modern\_moat/ I’m curious where people think the comparison breaks. Not whether AI can write code, but whether making software much easier to produce actually changes where long-term defensibility sits.