Google Deepmind is headquartered in the UK and has R & D in multiple countries. How would the US ban non-nationals from using something that is largely developed outside the US by people who are not US nationals?
Mistral might be a bit behind but this might give them a lot more business.
Most of all, a lot more people will switch to Chinese models. They will catchup, soon enough.
I have not had much of a chance to try Fable, but it did not seem better than Opus for what I tried it out on. Maybe its better on bigger jobs/vibe coding type tasks which is not something I do anyway.
The US can create sanctions with legal repercussions, the same way they've done with Iran or Cuba in the past.
Certainly to stop people with US businesses from doing business with Iran or Cuba. To stop an American owned British company from doing business in the UK? To stop a French company doing business in France? To stop either doing business with the rest of the world? To stop anyone doing business with China?
Its really not comparable.
They absolutely can impose sanctions on foreign companies by restricting their access to US markets, investments and penalizing US banks doing business with them.
For some EU companies this is irrelevant, but for global companies this becomes a problem.
So did they stop any Iranian companies doing business with Iran? Did they stop China or Russia doing business with Iran? If Google Deepmind has to stop doing business with non-US citizens what will they do with their R & D in the UK and other countries? Will Mistral stop doing business in France? Will the Chinese AI companies stop doing business with everyone else (including China?) to retain access to US markets and banking?
The likely end result of this is that it will shrink the market to which American companies have access by more than it will shrink the market for anyone else.
There is an example of this and you can probably dig deeper if you're truly curious instead of just assuming things.
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/u-s-forces-raid-ship-s...