In an escalating effort to give the federal government power over the AI industry, some members of the Trump administration have reportedly tried to implement a “de facto ban” on foreign-made open-source AI models. This ban would apply to any non-US-made AI model, but the goal seems to be to specifically target Chinese AI labs, which often release their models as open source. The recent release of the Kimi K3 AI model from Chinese developer Moonshot fueled these concerns. Kimi K3 matched and in some cases exceeded the capabilities of American-made AI models such as those made by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Its July release sent shockwaves through Wall Street – not unlike other AI model drops, but with one big difference. Kimi K3 was released as an open-weight model, while American AI leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic companies keep their tech closed with very few exceptions. Open-source AI typically refers to open-weight models. Weights are characteristics that tell the model how to behave – giving more weight to useful answers than incorrect ones, for example. Open-source advocates have said that to be truly open-source, AI companies should release or clarify their training data sources. AI companies haven’t been forthcoming; OpenAI and other companies are being sued by publishers and artists for allegedly violating their copyrights in AI training. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Open-weight models give developers more insight into how top models work. Nearly 80% of developers use open models, a recent Mozilla report found. “Open-weight models are everywhere in the industry already,” said Linda Griffin, vice president of global policy at Mozilla. “So a world without them would hit a lot of people.” Tech companies immediately