It's equally signaling that other US-based labs can't provide reliable access to their closed-weight models.

Yes, because they’re so bleeding edge and powerful.

Whether you believe that is another thing. But that’s the signal. It’s amazing marketing for them, even if a pain in the ass for customers rn

This is signaling to US companies that non-US providers cannot create cutting edge capabilities for their models.

Major alarm bells should be ringing for anyone not using a US-based LLM.