>they have access to their own in-house secret sauces.

I remember some feature lauded by Gemini was reverse engineered by the open weights guys in < 30 days.

If they dont publish some technical information its hard to protect in the US, but conversely, once it is published smart people from outside the copyrightosphere can start working to reverse engineer it.

>3. The frontier labs are also investing more and more in building an ecosystem around their models.

Theres nothing there that isnt immediately replaceable.