It is about destroying the industry which the West have a stronghold in. Giving it away for free, in the name of Open source also attract a lot of "common interest", those from Europe who want to break free of US, and those from US who wants US to fail, and companies who simply want another company to fail so they could gain competitive advantage. And China is very happy to help.
It has been blatantly obvious for the past 10 plus years yet most still see it as if it is new.
What "stronghold"? The science of LLMs is widely known, with everyone adding new small tricks everywhere. The main moat so far has been the availability of compute, and that's a leaky moat because inevitably more companies will find enough compute or make snappier models, or simply take more time to train them.
There is no secret sauce or moat , they ve been saying that for years, and it's still true. Being number 2 in the race is a losing position, so china probably thought they might as well give it away
Think: How did they target all of those Iranian scientists?
Most likely through their phones. They can just track you if they wanted to. Everybody knows it. This sentiment is part of why the USA will lose the propaganda war.
There is no amount of propaganda the USA can make to remedy this reality.
The US' software domination has really spooked a lot of people and nation states. No one really trusts US tech companies.
And sure, "everybody spies", but that in and of itself will bring a lot more competition and privacy focus, hopefully.
China will take advantage of that sentiment. They don't have to win the war personally, just the US has to lose it. India is already trying to develop its own phones, China will only keep going.
It has been blatantly obvious for the past 10 plus years yet most still see it as if it is new.