OpenAI previews GPT-5.6 but limits its strongest model to 20 government-approved groups

A flagship model that only twenty vetted groups can touch is a strange kind of launch, and it signals the frontier is quietly splitting into a gated tier and a public one. OpenAI framing the restriction as something it does not want normalized is telling, because it suggests the labs feel the gate closing from the outside. The open question is whether the best models increasingly ship first to governments and only later, if ever, to the rest of us.