DeepSeek V4.1 Flash open weights land as US and China build model fences
Commentary noting that the US barred civilian agencies from DeepSeek products and China proposed pre-approval for frontier model exports in the same week DeepSeek released 552B-parameter V4.1 Flash under MIT.
The Iron Curtain, Open-Sourced The U.S. published a Federal Register order barring civilian agencies from DeepSeek products while China proposed pre-approval before frontier models can be shared abroad — the same week DeepSeek released V4.1 Flash (552B params) under the MIT license. Open weights were supposed to be unfenceable; both superpowers just started building the fence. The abundance interregnum inherits an old pattern: whoever controls the press decides which thoughts are domestic and which are contraband. The Ordeal — the printing press parallel. DeepSeek is the first open-weights samizdat. This Iron Curtain will fortunately have the same fate all Iron Curtains have.