An open letter to David Sacks

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• Responds directly to Trump’s former AI Czar David Sacks, who blamed US AI regulation for China closing the technology gap.
• Disputes that framing, arguing regulatory restraint isn’t the primary driver of the competitive gap, and pushes back on Sacks’s reading of a CAISI report on Chinese AI capability that Sacks cited to justify deregulation.
• Notes cheaper Chinese models create a cost disadvantage for Western labs regardless of US regulatory policy.
• Practical takeaway: urges the administration to consider working with China toward AI for global good rather than escalating into a new cold war, on the grounds that an AI arms race produces no clear winners.