Frontier AI access is fracturing. Token scarcity, stricter KYC requirements, and compute controls are concentrating cutting-edge model capabilities inside a shrinking circle of major firms and allied governments. The gap between haves and have-nots is not theoretical, it is already being structured into pricing tiers and security policy.
The mechanics of this concentration are worth understanding in detail. Distillation and Mythos offer partial workarounds, but recent pricing shifts signal that even those paths are narrowing. The piece traces exactly how security hardening and selective data-center buildouts translate into geopolitical leverage, not just commercial advantage.
The most valuable part of the original is its treatment of middle-power contingency strategies, the specific policy options available to countries that are neither the US nor China. International compute partnerships and rapid infrastructure buildouts are named as live responses, not wishful thinking. Read it to understand which moves are still on the table and for how long.
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