For decades, America criticized China for walling off its digital economy. When it comes to AI, the roles may be starting to reverse — and the wall America is building may end up trapping us, not them. Chinese labs are releasing capable open-weight models like Kimi, Qwen and DeepSeek. American AI companies see a threat and are asking Washington for protection. Alan Shimel argues we should take the security concerns seriously — and reject the proposed solution.The real risk isn't Chinese AI getting in. It's American developers, researchers and businesses getting locked inside a protected market while the rest of the world builds with whatever models work best. In this episode, Alan connects the argument to the thesis of his forthcoming book, The Indispensability Trap: the AI incumbents want the rewards of becoming indispensable without accepting the market and regulatory pressures that follow. Open models, policy and public demand aren't creating that trap. They're springing one the industry set for itself.