Nathan Lambert argues the open-weight cyber risk debate is missing trade-offs

Nathan Lambert argues that policy debates on open-weight model cyber risks lack nuance, because banning open models may not reduce risk and could weaken American competitiveness.

He says closed frontier APIs have been tied to most documented cyber attacks, and that restricting open models while closed models keep advancing could widen the offense-defense gap.

He also argues that Chinese labs' safety practices are shaped by their own government and society, and that the claimed risk of models like Claude Mythos has been overstated.