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There is no "West" anymore, at least not in the sense it was used in the last 50–70 years. There is now Europe/Canada/Australia on the one side, and the USA as an adversary on the other, and that won't change in the foreseeable time.

What we need is frontier open weight models in the EU, Canada, and Australia.

Give it two years more then it changes again.
It won't. That's the point many people don't seem to get: The people who wanted everything that is happening now don't just go away. There is no guarantee they won't vote for a narcissistic grifter again, and thus any long-term decisions building on mutual trust and stability can't be made. How could you justify investing into a factory that relies on a 20 year ROI window when tariffs could be changing every day? Why would you want to use an AI model that could be restricted to US citizens or taken away entirely without notice?

Big, slow wheels have turned everywhere around the world. They won't turn back so easily.

Meh. No matter which side gets in power it’s almost certainly a narcissistic grifter. Who wasn’t over the last twenty years? The current one is a bit of a long term aberration, that doesn’t have to be the norm going forward.

In fact you could argue he was a response to some of the more extreme positions on the Democrat side.

I’m hoping things move more towards the center. But that may be only a fools hope.

why?
Reasons include, but are not limited to:

a) broad competition is good

b) jurisdiction diversification (you don't want to be dependent on the regulatory winds of a single jurisdiction)

...but you're not dependent on anyone?

If I'm running a Kimi model on my local cluster, the CCP can't shut it off.

It's not like the Finnish government has veto power over Linux.

You're not necessarily wrong for now, but that framing might be too narrow.

It is not beyond imagination that a government can limit availability to future frontier versions of the open weight models produced within their jurisdiction.

It pays to be a little paranoid and have a diversified portfolio of options to choose from. Anything that can have major geopolitical consequence is especially susceptible to such structural risk.

This has nothing to do with any particular government/country/jurisdiction except insofar as said country is a leading power and hence has immense leverage across a very wide range of dimensions. Said more plainly, it is safe to assume that a country with immense power is unlikely to be willing to cede or distribute such power to others.

If you're hung up on my choice of "the West", consider that I mean it geopolitically and economically, so broadly includes North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea. I could have also said the Global South, but I think it is a fair statement that none of those countries have the means, but I'd be totally cool and happy if I'm proven wrong!