(The Epoch Times)—OpenAI on Aug. 5 released two open-weight language models, the company’s first such release since GPT-2 in 2019.
Open-weight models make their training parameters, or weights, publicly available but tend not to provide access to the source code or datasets. Open-source models typically include access to the source code, weights, and methodologies.
With weights publicly accessible, developers can analyze and fine-tune a model for specific tasks without requiring original training data.
The weights for the new gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b models are free to download for developers to fine-tune and deploy in their own environments, OpenAI said.
“These open models also lower barriers for emerging markets, resource-constrained sectors, and smaller organizations that may lack the budget or flexibility to adopt proprietary models,” OpenAI said in an Aug. 5 statement. “Broad access to these capable open-weights models created in the US helps expand democratic AI rails.”
Amazon announced on Aug. 6 that OpenAI’s open-weight models are now available on its Bedrock generative AI marketplace in Amazon Web Services. It marks the first time an OpenAI model has been offered on Bedrock, Amazon said in a statement.
In May, Meta announced a collaboration with Red Hat to advance open-source AI for enterprise.
American AI companies and the Trump administration have been in broad agreement about the need for the United States to dominate the AI space, which requires the wide adoption of the American AI stack, including the hardware, models, software, applications, and standards.
On July 23, the White House released its AI action plan, which involves removing barriers for companies to accelerate innovation and build out infrastructure, along with using diplomacy to set AI standards internationally.
Chinese AI companies currently dominate the open-source space. Republican senators recently signed a letter asking the Commerce Department to examine data security risks and potential backdoors in Chinese open-source models such as DeepSeek.
Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei told Chinese state-run media in June that Chinese AI development will include “thousands upon thousands of open-source software.” Chinese state-run media Global Times on Aug. 7 published an editorial opining that US efforts to curb China’s AI strategy would fail, as “China has embraced an open-source approach” to meet its vast needs.
Beginning in the 2000s, the Chinese communist regime built open-source software alliances and directed its tech sector to enter the open-source community with the goal of reducing dependency on American proprietary software.
Over time, China has moved from consumer to contributor. According to a 2024 report by GitHub, China was the third biggest contributor of open source software on the platform. Though it is still far from leading in AI globally, it maintains a strong presence in AI open-source software.
Among the concerns about Chinese-run AI models are data harvesting, including for espionage purposes, and a lack of safeguards, which could allow for malware dissemination or the generation of harmful content.
OpenAI notes that once an open-weight model is released, “adversaries may be able to fine-tune the model for malicious purposes.”
To counter this, it fine-tuned the two new models “on specialized biology and cybersecurity data, creating a domain-specific non-refusing version for each domain the way an attacker might” and tested the models to see if they would continue to operate within safety guardrails.
“These processes mark a meaningful advancement for open model safety,” OpenAI stated. The company is also inviting third parties to find and report novel safety issues in its models for a chance to win a $500,000 prize.
Vetting Software for Security
Chris Gogoel, vice president and public sector general manager at mobile app security firm Quokka, says the proliferation of AI apps, especially AI assistant apps, has increased security risks for users exponentially.
It used to be that users would rely on different apps for different functions, segmenting the data collected and permissions given, but AI apps tend to be “do-everything” apps, Gogoel told The Epoch Times.
That elevated data collection translates into more inherent risk, he said. The data collected can also be more sensitive because users may be feeding the apps long passages or instructions revealing in-depth thoughts, intentions, and rationale, rather than simply having access to raw files.
With more data collected, the apps could be bigger targets of a potential breach to extract the data over a network or from a device. The bigger risk is if these apps come from sources that have not been proven to be secure. OpenAI has adopted an approach that values security, but there are plenty of other unvetted AI apps that have been downloaded millions of times, Gogoel said.
“‘What are these applications doing with our data?’ is a very serious question,” Gogoel added.
“The verification of what happens with that data, and where it goes, how it’s protected, becomes even more important, because if that data is misused, on accident or on purpose, you have a serious, serious problem,” he said, pointing to abuse of data being used to create deepfakes and phishing attacks.
Gogoel notes that the declarations a developer makes about what data their app collects may not be what the app does.
Sometimes, the developer might not know this is the case as they are often trying to jump on trends and launch apps in time to rise in the rankings, leading to mistakes like not using proper encryption, he said. They may fail to invest in security, perhaps using open-source software that contains flaws. App stores do not currently require verification of a developer’s declarations, and Gogoel advocates moving to a verify-first approach.
One bad app can spoil the bunch, he said.
Quokka, which began working with the Pentagon around its founding in 2011, provides mobile vetting services to the federal government and other clients, which led the firm to examine TikTok and ByteDance in 2018.
It found that TikTok not only requested ample permissions, but it would also connect with other apps on a user’s device to obtain permissions the user did not explicitly give. So, data collected by trusted applications for legitimate purposes may still present security risks if they come in contact with unvetted apps.
“It’s not something that we should be looking back after something has exploded and the fire is already raging, so to speak, and there’s tens of millions of users. We’re trying to enable, in our work, the ability to verify at every step,” Gogoel said. “Verify as soon as something hits the store, as soon as something hits your device, as soon as this brand new service comes out … that it does what it says on the tin and nothing else.”
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.