Nathan Lambert publishes prepared remarks for a Congressional briefing on open-weight models

Sources: primary, discussion
Summary: Nathan Lambert published the expanded form of remarks he prepared after being invited to brief Congressional members and staff on the balance of power in open-weight models. He reports that Chinese open-weight models account for more than 80% of open-model usage on OpenRouter. He also reports they appear in more AI papers than American open-weight models.
Why it matters: Chinese open-weight models hold over 80% of OpenRouter open-model usage and appear in more AI papers than American ones, which shapes which weights teams can build on.