Introduction
Welcome back to Laboratory. This week, our spotlight swings to America’s Open-Source Turn: why Washington just put open weights and open science on the national to-do list, and how that call reshapes the AI race with China from the stack up. Inspired by Clément Delangue’s argument, we examine where openness actually speeds things up, where it stalls, and what builders and investors should do next.
In this briefing, we’ll chart:
The Policy Shock: What the U.S. AI Action Plan really means for builders, agencies, and investors.
The Closed-Box Trap: The real risks of API-only AI for auditability, speed, and sovereignty.
The Velocity Equation: Why openness compounds experimentation, lowers barriers to entry, and improves security.
Strap in as we sift signal from noise, showing researchers, operators, and policymakers where openness truly moves the needle, and where the hard engineering still lies.
