They're at the frontier of last year. They compete with Opus 4.5. They don't yet compete with current frontier models.

They'll presumably catch up, there is no monopoly on talent held by the US. And, that's more true than ever now that the US is actively hostile to immigrants. Scientists who might have come to the US three years ago have little reason to do so now.

It's kind of hard to say this unless you go out of your way - the scaffolding for interacting with the raw model is a lot better now for many tasks. Is it that 4.7 is so much better than 4.5 or claude 1.119 is so much tuned to squeeze utility out of the LLM despite the hallucinations and lack of self awareness etc. Certainly the current products are great, but I think it's hard to separate the two things, the raw model and the agent workflow constraining the model towards utility.

Nit: scientists have the same reasons to do so now, the same as ever. They just have additional reasons to not do so.

But even that distinction is only temporary, since we're determined to piss away any remaining research lead that draws people in.

Hopefully the next administration will work at actively reversing the damage, with incentives beyond just "we pinky-promise not to haul you at gunpoint to a concrete detention center and then deport you to Yemen".