The analogy would hold if there were 2 or 3 calculator companies and all your calculations had to be sent to them.

If local models get good enough, I think it’s a very different scenario than engineers all over the world relying on central entities which have their own motives.

google/gemma-4-31B-it is honestly "good enough". It requires more than your current laptop for now, but it's not remotely inaccessible (especially if you're a SWE in the US)