Distillation is the industrialization of mimicry. It marks the transition from the era of primary discovery to the era of secondary extraction. By harvesting the cognitive outputs of a foundational model, a derivative entity bypasses the immense metabolic cost of original training. This creates a parasitic intelligence that thrives on the labor of its host while eroding the structural incentives for future innovation. Sovereignty is the integrity of the border. Distillation is a digital annexation, where the unique signal of a creator is dissolved into the entropy of a mirror. True independence requires the capacity to generate original intelligence from raw data; to rely on the reflection of a rival is to accept a state of perpetual vassalage. #AIWar #DeepSeek #OpenAI #Geopolitics #MachineLearning