Technological leadership in artificial intelligence matters only if American AI becomes the default choice for governments, companies, and developers, according to a new memo from the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), a nonprofit and nonpartisan initiative with a goal of making recommendations to strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness in artificial intelligence. The memo, titled “The Open Frontier: How America Wins the AI Diffusion Race,” warns that the United States risks losing the global AI race if it focuses only on building advanced models without ensuring their widespread adoption.
SCSP staff explain that open models will help determine which technology ecosystem becomes the global default. Although the U.S. led the world in wireless research, Huawei won the diffusion race and connected much of the globe by out-competing on cost, financing, and speed of deployment, and China is implementing a similar strategy with AI. Its capable, low-cost, downloadable models are drawing developers: the memo notes that developer adoption has shifted measurably toward Chinese open models. The advantage, the memo says, comes not from openness itself but from the adoption it enables.
The United States needs a strategy that builds on its distinctive strengths. While there are trust and security concerns regarding Chinese open models, the American response should be to strengthen its own open model ecosystem, according to the memo. Currently, leading U.S. frontier laboratories monetize access through subscriptions, enterprise products, and managed platforms. But a strong American strategy should also support open model developers and the researchers, startups, and businesses that build on their work.
The memo outlines three lines of effort: Build the AI Ecosystem America Can Win. Expanding access to compute, capital, and shared infrastructure will support the development of a thriving open AI ecosystem. Researchers, startups, and governments can then inspect, adapt, and trust American models. Turn Leadership into Adoption. Fund tools that show a model works for its purpose, aggregate and share working deployments, and measure cost, time to complete, and mission outcomes to accelerate adoption of American AI across society. Govern American AI Without Making It Inaccessible. Govern risk based on what models can do, how they are used, and their impacts and outcomes, not simply whether their weights are public.
Visit scsp.ai to learn more and to read the full report.
