CNBC Television Sep 25, 2026
With Jason Rathje, President of Public Sector at webAI, previously Director and Co-founder of the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital
China is leading the development of open-source AI models, Jason Rathje said, and those models are cheaper and almost as effective as the closed frontier models built in the US.
Most of the American debate about AI has centered on closed models judged by accuracy on benchmark tests. Rathje said adoption is the other measure, and that the US needs continued investment in open models to compete on it.
"You don't centralize intelligence, you distribute it to the edge."
Jason Rathje, President of Public Sector at webAI, on CNBC Television, stood up the Defense Department's Office of Strategic Capital, which the anchor said has become a major funding source for defense-industrial and energy deals.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 4 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
China leads open-source AI with models that are cheaper and almost as effective as closed frontier models
Adoption, not only benchmark accuracy, is how Rathje said AI should be judged
webAI builds open-source models it pitches as an American alternative
A data center is a single target in a war, and Rathje cited Iran bombing data centers
Smaller, distributed models are less exposed to centralized attacks, he said
Without a domestic supply chain for chips and rare earths, AI could follow electric vehicles, an industry the US created
1. The US Frontier vs. China
The anchor asked for his takeaways from the week's global debate about AI.
AI is central to US-China talks
"We know AI is a central part of the strategic dialog between China and the United States." — Jason Rathje
He described a split between the two countries' approaches. The US is pushing the scientific frontier, while China is putting open-source AI into wide use.
"And I think what we're hearing is this really dichotomy between the US pushing the scientific frontier, where China is really pushing this kind of a more open source approach, where they're pushing AI into the hands of people and organizations." — Jason Rathje
The US negotiates from a position of strength
"But it is encouraging to hear the US continuing to push from a position of strength to drive the technological frontier forward, to ensure that the US can maintain a position of strength in the negotiations that are happening and are certainly going to continue to happen." — Jason Rathje
