David Sacks Says Using Regulatory Uncertainty Against Chinese AI Is 'Completely Unacceptable'
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Former White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks criticized the use of regulatory uncertainty as a tool to discourage adoption of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) models, arguing that AI policy should promote evidence-based decisions and open competition.
Sacks Challenges AI Regulatory Pressure Strategy
On Sunday, Sacks responded on X to a post by researcher Dean W. Ball, who outlined a possible strategy for creating regulatory pressure around Chinese open-weight AI models.
Ball suggested that the government could discourage companies from using Chinese AI systems without issuing a formal ban by directing agencies to release warnings that create regulatory uncertainty.
"You don’t need to ‘ban open source,’" Ball wrote.
He added, "You just need to direct every agency to issue soft law that creates FUD," referring to fear, uncertainty and doubt.
He further said that companies could become hesitant to adopt Chinese models if they believed future regulatory risks were possible.
Sacks Defends Open-Source AI Competition
Sacks pushed back against the idea, saying, "the weaponization of regulatory uncertainty as a competitive tool should be completely unacceptable."
"Regulatory decisions should always be well justified and grounded in facts, logic, and evidence, not the deliberate exploitation of fear and uncertainty," he wrote.
He argued that creating doubt around open-source AI models without strong evidence could undermine trust in the regulatory process and lead to future misuse.
Sacks also warned that major closed AI companies could benefit if policymakers moved against open-source competitors.
He said leading AI labs with proprietary models "want the government to eliminate their open-source competition" and called on Silicon Valley to support open competition.
Chinese AI Adoption Accelerates
Chinese AI models reached a record 58% of tokens processed by U.S. firms on OpenRouter, surpassing U.S. models as developers increasingly adopted systems from companies such as DeepSeek.
Their usage share has nearly tripled since January, while U.S. models declined significantly.
Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for international cooperation on AI at the 2026 World AI Conference, saying the technology should be a shared global effort.
China also pledged support for AI research and training programs in developing countries.
Earlier, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE:BABA) also strengthened its AI position, with its Qwen model family surpassing 700 million downloads on Hugging Face as open-source Chinese AI models gained wider industry adoption.
Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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