The a16z Show · Sunday, July 26, 2026
Ben Horowitz drew a parallel between the current debate over open-source AI and historical attempts to ban cryptography, suggesting that such efforts are ultimately futile and counterproductive. He argued that banning open source would prevent legitimate users, like Hugging Face, from accessing beneficial tools.
“And it reminds me of, you know, years ago when I was at Netscape, they tried to ban cryptography. And like, there's, you know, the math is out there, like you're not going to ban it. It's not actually possible. But you can prevent the good guys from using it.”
“And that's what would happen, I think, in the case of an open source ban is, you know, the threats would be, well, you can't look at the US government if you use open source. So, you can't do this. So, a company like Hugging Face, uh, would not be able to actually use the products. So, that, you know, would be bad.”