And yet all sorts of people are advocating for using Chinese LLMs because they are less expensive. It seems like a very risky move to save a few dollars.

It'd be interesting to know how much of that is truly organic support versus what the CCP pushes out across the internet as agitation/propaganda.

Are they cheaper? They are open-weight, so in theory, they are cheaper to run and do with them as you wish.

The problem is that they come from a place with a long and storied history of attacking digital assets in the US and the West in general.