AI model launches are starting to look less like product launches and more like export controls

The latest OpenAI/Anthropic rollout drama feels like a category shift. For years, a new model launch meant: "Here are the benchmarks. Here is the API. Go build." Now it is becoming: "Here is the model. Access is limited. Government-approved customers first. Cybersecurity review. Wider rollout later." Maybe that is necessary for frontier systems with serious cyber capability. But it also creates a weird market structure where access to intelligence becomes a permissioned layer. That raises uncomfortable questions: Who decides which companies get access first? What happens to foreign researchers and startups? Does this push the rest of the world toward Chinese/open models? Is this safety, industrial policy, or both? I am not fully anti-oversight. But I do think unpredictable approval-by-customer is the worst version of oversight. Question: should frontier model releases be regulated like critical infrastructure, or does that hand too much power to governments and incumbents? Source: The Guardian, AP.