Yeah and one of the fundamental assumptions around statements like “let’s make AI a licensed regime” is the idea that we
know what AI even is. This idea is banking on current technology being the best algorithm or method to produce “AI” and the whole lesson from the “we have no moat” crowd is that this is actually quite uncertain. Even if they succeed in getting some class of model like LLMs under “regulatory capture” - the technology they are working with today is likely to be undermined still by something cheaper working on weaker hardware and with smaller datasets and it’ll probably happen
faster if they seek this market capture.
So yes it is quite comparable to the export restrictions of the 90s.
But since Microsoft is involved and we are all of course thinking about Windows vs Linux, I think another good comparison is the worst assumption Microsoft made in the 90s: “we know what an operating system is and what it is for.”