The state of openness in the hardware that enables computation is and has been pretty much 'not open' for a long time. The idea that any modern computer is really secure or private only goes so far [0], and generally that's been working fine for most consumers.
With RISC-V, ARM64, and the rising Chinese semiconductor industry, the x86 duopoly is broken up. Economically and in terms of viable IP. With the cost of creating software being driven to 0, maybe there will be real CPU's that are free. Instead of 'security for me and not for thee'.
Ironically, so long as discrete GPU's are available as neutral accelerators for certain kinds of computation, local+open LLM's are actually a reality. Nvidia of any company producing models is probably the very best with Nemotron, which also has had open training data [1]. If the development and release of 120b models of either Chinese or American origin continues into 2027, the capability compared to the cost of hardware is going to be insane.
I don't think it will be possible for the powers that be to manipulate the market in order to make the means of computation, including inference appliances, out of reach financially for average folks indefinitely.
Obviously, I view this all with a very geopolitical bent, because that's what I think is really happening. I can't make sense of the AI build out otherwise. And whatever is going to happen I think most of it will happen in the next 2 years, since the pace of AI research and the next election seem to be on track for a spectacular moment in history.
Not sure I'm making sense but ramble for ramble. :)