Distillation only lets you keep pace with released models. By all indication, OpenAI/Anthropic’s unreleased internal models are so far ahead of Astra/Fable and every other lab that the chance of anyone else catching up is rapidly closing.
Do you have any source for any of that? Also haven't people been saying that China would be hopelessly distanced for the better part of 2 years, only to be proven wrong over and over again? Deepseek-r1, kimi k3, etc.
I suspect this is more marketing than fact. I don't think there's any real evidence that this is the case, just hints dropped by OpenAI and Anthropic.