America already lost one AI race | TWiAI Ep 23

This Week In Startups is made possible by:PAYPAL OPENToday’s show:This week, our panel of AI experts — Anand Kannappan (Patronus AI), Ori Goshen (AI21 Labs), and Alex Finn (Henry Intelligent Machines) — join special guest host Lon Harris to debate whether Washington will move to formally limit powerful foreign AI models like Moonshot’s Kimi K3 and Z.ai’s GLM-5.2.What does “winning the AI race” actually mean on a practical level? Why is cybersecurity, not benchmarks, likely the actual battleground. And why did Hugging Face have to use GLM-5.2 to investigate their recent breach rather than a frontier US model like Fable 5?PLUS why agents still fail so much on long horizon tasks, why proper model routing has such a HUGE impact on enterprise AI bills, and we take a look at Alex’s hacked digital typewriter he uses to code without distractions.Guests:Anand Kannappan on X: https://x.com/anandnk24Patronus AI: https://www.patronus.ai/Ori Goshen on X: https://x.com/origoshenAI21: https://www.ai21.com/Alex Finn on X: https://x.com/AlexFinnAlex’s Vibe Coding Academy: https://www.skool.com/vibe-coding-academy/aboutRelevant Links:Axios: “The Secret Trump Administration Battle to Fight Chinese AI”: https://www.axios.com/2026/07/20/ai-us-china-open-source-kimiChamath post on US AI options: https://x.com/chamath/status/2079457219892871458?s=20Brian Armstrong post on spend vs. token usage: https://x.com/brian_armstrong/status/2070670644577280109Hugging Face: Security incident disclosure: https://huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026VentureBeat Hugging Face coverage: https://venturebeat.com/security/safety-guardrails-blocked-hugging-faces-defenders-not-the-attacker-when-an-ai-agent-breached-its-systemsDavid Sacks post on cyber guardrails: https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2078984980588531855Databricks Unity AI Gateway: https://www.databricks.com/product/artificial-intelligence/unity-ai-gatewayRamp’s Router: https://ramp.com/router/Timestamps:0:00 Will the US limit foreign open source models?5:40 Are the American frontier AI labs in danger of bankruptcy?7:15 The risks of over-regulating AI10:20 What does it mean to win the AI race?17:08 Is self-hosting agentic Chinese models safe?20:08 Why agents still fail when models are so smart25:28 Simulating the digital world for agents36:51 Why picking the right model for the task is so hard46:29 Alex is developing &quot;ambient intelligence&quot;52:35 What we know about the Hugging Face breach53:46 Are safety guardrails kneecapping our best models?Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple:<st