Models aren’t everything. You need physical infrastructure at scale for inference, which is where the economic power comes from. Chinese hardware makes double the heat and needs at least double the energy input.

even if true, luckily for them, double the heat and double the energy input aren't an issue, and they have more physical infrastructure at scale too

And 3 years ago they were producing no heat and required no energy because they did not exist. Clearly they are catching up

It's like the ever closing gap between the smartest kid in class and the kid who sits behind him copying his work.

That's not a strategy that leads to actually being the best.

Exactly. And we better keep it this way. The fact that we can block them from copying us today means that they will try that much harder to come up with their own answers. Remember, they are miles ahead in manufacturing hardware and the software is not a problem anymore. Whatever moat cuda represented is gone now.