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- Hacker News
- Becoming such a sore loser. Historians will probably look this as the most shameful period of the American empire.by MaxPock
- Gonna skip over the chattel slavery and native genocide in future histories?by kasey_junk
- Is it still an empire?by chadgpt3
- In the 1990s, web browser SSL encryption was export restricted, classified as a munition because it involved cryptography. That was under Clinton.
For all the current admin's insane, ridiculous, corrupt, and criminal flaws, it's not clear to me how much of this particular issue is just the US government doing what it's always done, knee-jerk react to tech it doesn't understand by passing stupid laws.
by antonvs - > the American empire.
When the dust settles it won't even be a single page in history books, my local bakery is older than the "american empire"
by toasty228 - Because they have held off on adding these companies to the list in order to avoid increasing tensions with China?
ETA from the first paragraph of the article: "The U.S. has held off... to avoid escalating tensions with Beijing."
by jtbayly - The US government exists to defend capital interests. It's why we can't buy BYD cars. It's why we can't import any cars unless they're 25 years old. It's why a Tiktok sale was forced. It's why the US is seeking to block states from banning prediction markets. It's why the federal government is seeking to block states from blocking data center projects.
As soon as DeepSeek came out I realized what was going on: China was going to make sure that no US company was going to "own" AI. It is an issue of national security. It's why the US essentially blocks US tech companies to maintain sovereignty.
I'm reminded of the browser wars of the 1990s that led to the antitrust suit against Microsoft. Microsoft used the "commoditize your complement" strategy [1] against Netscape. The US has blocked the export of not only EUV lithography but high-end chips to China. China doesn't want to be dependent on US platforms or policy.
So China is going to make sure there are open source models available and the US government is going to try and stop them to protect US tech companies.
by jmyeet - The reason we can't buy BYD cars is because if we allowed it without restrictions, it would utterly and completely destroy the United States auto industry. That's terrible public policy, and we should not allow it.
Before anyone starts talking about the free market, there is no free market here whatsoever. The fact that BYD's cost structure is what it is is the direct result of Chinese industrial policy.
Unilateral surrender in a core aspect of statecraft, which involves maintaining our industrial power and skilled labor force, is absolutely insane. I hope my government never gets convinced by market fundamentalist idiots to do such a thing, any more than it already has, to our great detriment.
The Chinese don't make these kinds of idiotic mistakes, which is how they have amassed the power, wealth, and influence that they have.
by CPLX - Chinese have a wider outlook on it.
Politically they believe AI belongs to humanity, which is why they are basically the only ones left publishing research in the open. That's probably part of their socialist nature.
But also a financial one. They believe that models are commodities, that you can swap one for the other and that the only thing that matters are the applications built upon them.
So they want to make sure that the world, and their own companies, are not limited in their business and application by a protected US commodity.
They will keep releasing in the open no matter what for quite some time.
It's quite impressive how the latest years I have found more and more to empathize with China than many of the western counterparts.
But it's increasingly clear that since the last decade protectionism and nationalism is taking the place of globalization, even though globalization has been a terrific success in lifting billions out of poverty and making the US thrive.
by epolanski - Those data centers that "states" want to block: the CCP was directly tied to funding the protests and movements to weaken the U.S. technologically. Kevin O'Leary exposed it, in collaboration with the White House.by hereme888
- I'm happy that China is doing that. US cannot be trusted anymore.
Not saying that China can be trusted either, but I think having more actors is better for all of us.
by heyheyhouhou - > It's why a Tiktok sale was forced.
I think that has more to do with controlling narratives that the USG doesn't like.
by krunck - Seems like interests of US government and US capital (monopolize and corner markets, jack up prices, extract economic rent in perpetuity) run strictly against interests of the broader US consumers and overall global populationby bijowo1676
- The reason why some Capital Interests want to blacklist DeepSeek in the US is so that you are forced to buy Claude/GPT/Gemini, which will feed revenue into an industry that requires revenue (or it’s a big problem).
The reason why some Capital Interests don’t want to ban DeepSeek is so companies that utilize AI have more options, and running your own DeepSeek cluster acts as an independent cost comparison for enterprise inference contracts.
The raising AI valuation is giving more weight to those that want to blacklist DeepSeek. The AI Safety narrative is strong. I see a path where any institution with enough compute might be watched in a similar was chem labs are observed by the DEA.
by bitmasher9 - Deepseek is awesome for home projects, I have used it quite a bit and the 10 bucks I loaded is yet to run out. Quality is close enough to Sonnet that with a bit of extra focus, I am not complaining.by noisy_boy
- IMHO, models by US companies are the biggest security risk so I'm fine with using models on this "blacklist."
- Why?by trunnell
- Part of the security risk also is the number of different models. I’ve been tempted to try some other models, but how many do I want to give access to SSH or even my repo? Obviously there are ways to work with this, but it’s gonna run through some people‘s heads.by dvduval
- Wait, can't this be reduced to:
"American AI is already trillions of USD underwater, so let's use US gov to build us a moat by making competition illegal"
by gosub100 - These bastards already prevent me from buying a BYD car, and a xiaomi phone, and they are adamant about me not using a chinese AI model. I hope they do not succeed.by sergiotapia
- Well, I guess you can use a third-party provider, maybe even the US-based one. At least, you can do this at the moment of this writing...by dryarzeg
- I am using a Xiaomi phone. The hardware is fine, the camera is very good compared to the average, the software absolutely sucks, bootloader unlocking is not possible and it comes full of spyware and adware that you can't disable.by chadgpt3
- If Chinese LLMs are successfully making people in the west defend China, then I think we have all the evidence we need to explain why they are giving away their models.
The next step of course will be to get people using that ungodly cheap AI on Chinese servers. Which will also be defended because "I would never trust an American Lab".
by WarmWash - The next step of course will be to get people using that ungodly cheap AI on Chinese servers.
Step one of this was perhaps DeepSeek's incredibly low cache hit pricing ($0.0036/M) which no-one else seems to be able to match.
by petercooper - As a European, I trust Chinese AI providers more than American. Cloud act did it for me.by miroljub
- The smallest violin in the world for Sam Altman, and Muskby impalallama
- > get people using that ungodly cheap AI on Chinese servers.
These open weights models are also hosted outside of the US and China. That's a very important difference.
- It’s not like this is a new tactic, china has been very successful at wiping out competition by undercutting them using state subsidies in many sectors of the economy.by FuckButtons
- I think the next step is for China to start selling Huawei (and other) GPUs around the world, because everyone appreciates the risk of giving either of the two superpowers their data. The US is no longer in a position to pressure other countries to bad imports from Chinese companies.
This is the beginning end of the hyperscaler era, not a shift from US hyperscalers to Chinese hyperscalers. Taking Nvidia's extremely lucrative market is the goal.
by bashtoni - > If Chinese LLMs are successfully making people in the west defend China, then I think we have all the evidence we need to explain why they are giving away their models.
Right, and if "The West" wants people to defend them, they better get in on the free action too.
In fact, they have no choice - tokens are soon going to be a commodity, if they aren't already. Most everyone is going to be happy paying 1/20th of the cost for 80% of the value.
Oh, yeah, before I forget, hear the worlds smallest violin, playing for those token suppliers in "The West" whose repeatedly stated goal is to replace human knowledge workers...
by lelanthran