Cutting off the global open source development can only result in diminished innovation, and long-term strategic vulnerability. Doing so imposes severe costs on domestic technological progress. This is a similar problem to the one faced by closed-source companies, but at a far greater scale. Open source amortizes the financial burden of research, development, and maintenance across a worldwide community. For example, technologies like Linux are maintained by thousands of developers and organizations globally, reducing costs for all participants. A nation that opts for closed, proprietary systems must shoulder these expenses alone, diverting resources from other sectors such as education and infrastructure. This problem is particularly acute in fast-evolving fields like AI or cybersecurity, where reinventing the wheel is prohibitively expensive. Developers worldwide find bugs, implement features, and adapt tools to new use cases, accelerating progress exponentially.

Countries that engage with open source will have easier time attracting skilled developers and researchers. By contrast, isolationist policies are likely to result in brain drain, as experts migrate to environments where they can collaborate globally. Startups and enterprises also depend on open source to reduce costs and scale rapidly. Restricting access to technology stifles domestic tech ecosystem, putting the country at a disadvantage with its peers.

Another big aspect here is who gets to shape emerging technologies and standards. Nations that participate in these networks gain early access to breakthroughs and will influence the direction of these critical technologies. Projects like RISC-V are already defining the future of their industries. Countries that isolate themselves forfeit this influence, ceding control to foreign entities. Locking industries out of global supply chains will inevitably lead to incompatibilities and make it difficult for these homegrown technologies to compete on the global market.

Ultimately, isolation is a recipe for technological stagnation. Closed systems will always be at a disadvantage compared to open ones. Over time, this will lead to dependence on legacy technologies that will be surpassed by the rest of the world. Meanwhile, open source adopters will continuously evolve, integrating global advancements. In a world where technological leadership determines economic and geopolitical power, cutting oneself off from the global community is suicidal. Open source provides a strategic advantage, enabling countries to pool resources for common prosperity. Those that cut themselves off will face higher costs, slower progress, and irreversible decline in the global race for technological supremacy.

It would also ban the transfer of any AI models to China, so it would effectively criminalize the entire open-weight AI field in the US. This would effectively kill AI research in universities (it might even ban the release of academic papers on AI) and would wipe out most AI startups as well (as they rely on open weight releases to garner investment interest).

The governing broligarchs don’t like competition.