My guess is we're within a year of the first governments banning local LLM AI at any scale. Declare GPU's as munitions that must be registered and ban any card with more than X GB of RAM and more power than a 3060 or something like that.
That could be done with an executive order in the US, and it probably wouldn't take much to get it to pass congress.
Now, don't worry, businesses can still buy a lot more GPU compute than that, but they have to register and track their usage just like any other company making/buying weapons.
There is zero chance this will happen.
By banning the Chinese from accessing the latest and fastest GPU, this is somewhat happening now.
You only need to ban compute on a scale that can actually compete with frontier models, which is currently something like a $500,000 investment.
"Must declare any purchase of 10 or more GPUs" does not strike me as particularly implausible.
There's already plenty of jurisdictions where possession of certain tools is considered evidence of criminal intent.
I don't think any of this is good behavior on the part of our legal system, but I do not doubt the legal system's ability to regulate this if it so chooses - and Anthropic has already gotten slapped down by the Trump administration once before.