> You can't hold up the US as some kind of beacon of freedom from state control anymore

100% agree. I never said that America is a beacon of freedom. To be honest, its Europe for me which still has overall more freedom and less blatant corruption than America's blatant corruption right now

I was just merely stating that these are on a scale though. European freedom (think proton or similar,yes I know proton's swiss but still) > America's freedom > China's freedom

Its just that in my parent comment I had mentioned America models solely because they are still better than China's in terms of freedom.

Europe already got mistral but an European SOTA model does feel like it would have advantages.