[throwaway_32u10]

I'm kind of tired of the entire narrative that "US good, everyone else bad", as if only US deserves to hold powerful technology because it will be used for "the greater good", rather than employ it in military applications, as if Anthropic didn't partner with Palantir.

And it amazes me how many people can't seem to see past the "US is good, everyone else are bad" smoke mirror.

[dang]

I'm sure most of us agree with you, but independently of that, please don't take HN threads on generic tangents, and certainly not generic nationalistic flamewar tangents. The problem is that it's tediously repetitive and inevitably turns nasty.

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

[parsimo2010]

First- the author of this blog post is the CEO of Anthropic, an American AI company. Of course they are going to argue for export controls if it can hurt their competition. They get to benefit from anticompetitive practices with none of the legal risk! So it's not even about keeping the "bad guys" from having things, it's really about making more profit. Also, you can typically assume that anything a CEO publishes is in a pursuit to raise stock prices, it has nothing to do with morality. If CEOs were moral people most of them wouldn't have become CEOs (there are probably a few CEOs that are truly good people, but I'll bet there are more "wolf in sheep's clothing" CEOs that use an image of morality to improve their company's reputation).

Second- aside from the specifics of this post, you don't have to believe that the US is good to see the logic of export controls. There are a number of countries that are openly hostile to the US (Iran and North Korea), and also some that are semi-privately working against the US (like China). These countries will take any advantage that they can- they will steal IP and use the US's development resources to catch up to the current state of the art at a reduced cost. So you don't have to put this in terms of good vs. bad, just think of it in terms of things that benefit the US and things that don't benefit the US. Whether you think people are evil is irrelevant, it is very logical for the US to put export controls on things that it doesn't want to give away for free. The US wants to preserve its advantage and make it as costly and difficult for these other countries to catch up.

[BizarreByte]

[flagged]

[dang]

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell, and certainly not nationalistic flamewar hell. It's repetitive and evokes worse from others.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[k1m]

Absolutely. Chinese companies shouldn't have chips because their government has "committed human rights violations, has behaved aggressively on the world stage". And the US government hasn't?

[Fernicia]

To say the two are remotely comparable is either insincere or naive. Like I'm not saying the US always acts utterly virtuously, but they aren't running concentration camps and chemically castrating entire ethic groups.

They also aren't imprisoning people for speech, which is important when we're discussing who we want controlling AI in the future.

[danielpeach]

Do you remember when the US lied to everyone about WMDs and then caused the deaths of at least 100k Iraqi civilians?

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

Or overthrew democracies in South America, leading to the refugee crisis it now refuses to take responsibility for.

The entity that is least problematic (of the available options) and should be entrusted is the European Union.

[_t9ow]

> overthrew democracies in South America

Don't forget Central America and Iran; supporting military dictators in Southeast Asia (Marcos in the Philippines and Suharto in Indonesia); invading Haiti and raiding it of the entirety of its gold reserves, condemning its people to poverty -- one could go on and on.

[etblg]

I mean hell, one of the states (Hawaii) didn't even join willingly, it was annexed by President McKinley by force.

[kklisura]

DeepSeek model not providing answer on the Tiananmen Square and ChatGPT providing answer on ethnic cleansing of Palestine are two sides of the same coin.

[astrange]

ChatGPT can't provide answers on any current events because it has to be updated first.

[k1m]

I made no such comparison, but if you really want to start comparing government crimes and human rights abuses, I think you'll find we can make a stronger moral case arguing for chip bans for US companies than Chinese companies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BOBKTmaQ9M

[guerrilla]

> To say the two are remotely comparable is either insincere or naive. Like I'm not saying the US always acts utterly virtuously, but they aren't running concentration camps and chemically castrating entire ethic groups.

They absolutely did directly and indirectly several times in their history. A few of those times were recently:

> In September 2020, it was revealed that ICE had performed mass hysterectomies on immigrant women in several detention centers, reminiscent of the long-standing US policy of sterilization of black and brown women. 2

> The US currently operates a system of slave labor camps, including at least 54 prison farms involved in agricultural slave labor. Outside of agricultural slavery, Federal Prison Industries operates a multi-billion dollar industry with ~ 52 prison factories , where prisoners produce furniture, clothing, circuit boards, products for the military, computer aided design services, call center support for private companies. 1, 2, 3

> In the present day, ICE (U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_Enforcement), the police tasked with immigration enforcement, operates over 200 prison camps, housing over 31,000 undocumented people deemed "aliens", 20,000 of which have no criminal convictions, in the US system of immigration detention. The camps include forced labor (often with contracts from private companies), poor conditions, lack of rights (since the undocumented aren't considered citizens), and forced deportations, often splitting up families. Detainees are often held for a year without trial, with antiquated court procedures pushing back court dates for months, encouraging many to accept immediate deportation in the hopes of being able to return faster than the court can reach a decision, but forfeiting legal status, in a cruel system of coercion. 1, 2

> During the 2020 coravirus pandemic, it was found that a law that empowered police to arrest those for not social distancing, lead to 80% of those arrested being black and latino.

etc., etc., etc.

https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities...

[horsawlarway]

I find this line of reasoning a whole lot less convincing now than I would have 2 weeks ago, and it wasn't all that convincing two weeks ago.

When the controlling party of the US is discussing concentration camps for immigrants while also happily calling to revoke birthright citizenship and deport citizens of the US that criticize Trump or the Republican party (eh - who am I kidding - it's the maga/heritage party now)...

It feels like we have no legs left to stand on here, and the support was DAMN shaky to begin with, seeing as we were routinely knocking over governments that we see as inconvenient in our geopolitical sphere of control for the last 100+ years.

Essentially, I think your argument is about 3 elections stale.

[mardifoufs]

True, providing complete military support, with special deliveries of bombs and ordinance to Israel, knowing full well that it will go towards obliterating a city and killing tens of thousands of civilians is more humane. It's not genocide if an ally is doing it!

[guerrilla]

Indeed, the US has committed human rights violations pretty consistently.

https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/main/us_atrocities...

[MiiMe19]

Note how interesting it is that you can read about these on the internet in the US on US hosted servers by US companies. At least we own up to it and don't just throw you in a mental asylum like they do to anyone who dares to stand up to the CCP.

[guerrilla]

There's a big difference between allowing the information to exist and "owning up to it." The US just has a different strategy for dealing with it.

[MiiMe19]

And that strategy, notably, does not include camps or asylums for people like you and me.

[CuriouslyC]

Just wait. By year 2 of Trump 2.0, China is going to be the global good guy that Europe and Latin America make their new best friend.

[rcarmo]

Year 2? We're almost there at _month_ 2.

[CuriouslyC]

Oh, people are thinking it now for sure, but it takes a while to retool your relationships and build out a new trade network so you can safely tell a major trading partner to fuck themselves to threats of 100% tariffs.

[rcarmo]

Well, the British did it to Europe, so I'm pretty sure Europe can emulate their winning strategy :)

[bnj]

Isn’t it like… week 2?

[rcarmo]

You're right. It's been that intense - or I've actually been feeling the shift since the election ended, not the inauguration.

[MiiMe19]

If Europe and Latin America want to buddy up with the concentration camp gang, I really don't care. We do not need fascists and communists as our partners.

[CuriouslyC]

Funny you mention fascists. As for China being a concentration camp gang, that's not going to matter when their former big brother/ally is just relentlessly bullying them and trying to extract all sorts of concessions under duress, and the alternative has demonstrated to be a reliable ally and partner.

[MiiMe19]

Once again, I don't really care if Europe decides that is who they want to be friends with. If your country thinks that trade is more important than the country currently directly committing a modern holocaust, I don't want us to be allied with you at all.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

As opposed to the country openly supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza, which would not be possible without its help?

[CuriouslyC]

Ironically, if Trump keeps running this playbook, it's going to end with a USA/Russia/Israel bloc and a Europe/LatAm/Africa/China bloc. Which one of those sounds like the evil empire to you?

[CamperBob2]

He's unlikely to be writing from a genuinely ideological point of view. He's playing a zero-sum game, in that every chip that goes to China is one that Anthropic and/or its cloud provider doesn't get its hands on.

So it makes sense to him to argue for export controls using whatever rhetorical flexes and flourishes he can come up with.

[astrange]

There's no zero sum games in a growing industry like this.

[CamperBob2]

As long as the semiconductor fabs are running at capacity, yes, it's one big zero sum game. If you win one chip, I lose one chip, and vice versa.

This situation is temporary, of course. China previously had a large incentive to get their own leading-edge nodes into production, and now they have a Manhattan Project-size incentive.

[astrange]

They aren't running at full capacity on AI chips though - TSMC's main customer is iPhones as far as I know. So you could take away production time for them, though it's still zero-summy.

But TSMC is building new leading edge fabs right now.

[dark_glass]

I live here, so I want it to be the best.

[marricks]

I'm not sure how that relates to original comment. Do you mean you want everything that is or could be better than American technology banned/destroyed so we stay the best...?

Like, any global hegemony will be increasingly corrupt given the power that gives, IMO.

[itishappy]

Same. Be nice if we were the best by our own merits though, not by holding back our peers.

[sitkack]

In a zero sum game kinda way, the game that America understands.

[StefanBatory]

I mean, in the end, USA is still better than the alternative.

[femiagbabiaka]

U.S. and Chinese hegemony are just different kinds of bad. We could put the pros and cons up and debate it endlessly, but in the end ranking them is pointless, humanity should just be trying to make a better alternative

[rcarmo]

The civilizational alternative is Europe. The economic alternative, that we can debate...

[StefanBatory]

We are not alternative to anything. We are so hopelessly behind USA, and it doesn't seem it can be changed.

Choice is - USA or China. And I certainly know in which world I'd rather live.

[slaw]

Europe, especially UK, France and Germany degraded so much it is no longer any alternative.

[rcarmo]

Economically, perhaps. Brexit certainly didn't help Europe as a whole, and German, French and Italian politics have been off-kilter for years, but it's still, by and large, an ethical and civilized place to live in.

I will freely grant that Euro money goes to completely obsolete heavy industries and luxury items rather than technology innovation (and blame all politicians for missing out on technology), but there are outliers like ASML that almost make up for the whole thing...

[slaw]

UK, German and French cities are no longer civilized places to live in.

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

I was in Berlin three weeks ago, what are you even talking about?

[HeadInTheClouds]

With respect this is a fairly daft comment

[HeatrayEnjoyer]

How so?

[tuyguntn]

USA is still better for whom?

Can't remember which countries where bombed by China in last 50 years, but I can give you plenty of examples for the USA

[krapp]

I don't know. Living in a country where being able to shoot people is an absolute, immutable, inalienable right granted by God himself (more so than anything else in the Bill of Rights) but where access to food, shelter, healthcare and education are all expensive privileges subject to the whims of the free market, and where half of the population doesn't even believe viruses are real, and where you don't even need the popular vote to elect a President (it's just nice to have) because the electoral system is a series of 18th century compromises to keep slavers happy... doesn't seem like the best of all possible worlds to me.

[hellojesus]

> Living in a country where being able to shoot people is an absolute, immutable, inalienable right granted by God himself (more so than anything else in the Bill of Rights)...

2A provides access to weapons. It doesn't allow people to murder one another.

> but where access to food, shelter, healthcare and education are all expensive privileges subject to the whims of the free market,...

Article 1 Section 8 doesn't enumerate Congress the power to provide any of those things.

What's more, I beieve the Federal government shouldn't. Rights should only ever be negative unless being a counterparty to positive action taken by the government (e.g., it makes sense to provide public defenders since it is reactionary to the government trying to take away your rights).

Healthcare, education, etc. are better served by the private sector with charity as the supplement for the less fortunate.

> and where you don't even need the popular vote to elect a President (it's just nice to have) because the electoral system is a series of 18th century compromises to keep slavers happy...

The electorial system is designed to prevent tyranny of the majority and is biased towards inaction. This seems better than a pure democracy to me because most government action is bad: inefficient, introduces moral hazard, etc.

In a system of pure democracy, the bottom 51% can vote to tax the top 49%'s income away. Then the next iteration the new bottom 51% can vote the same. Eventually this could lead to purely even distributions. That seems wildly worse for society: all incentive to produce would be void.

[krapp]

Most people - even most Americans - aren't libertarian minarchists who believe everything the government does is harmful by default and that free market capitalism is an unalloyed moral good. History has shown that the kind of governance you want rarely works out well for anyone but oligarchs.

[hellojesus]

I don't believe everything the government does is harmful. Personally I'm quite fond of the FAA despite the many that complain about TSA.

But most of what the government does introduces dead weight to economic transactions or moral hazard. This is especially true when the government tries to provide social benefits beyond taking over a product or service that could perfectly well be provided by the private sector.

I would have little argument against the government regulating that private healthcare providers cannot discriminate on the basis of preexisting conditions. It would increase costs uniformly across the industry. I do have arguments for providing healthcare on the basis of income, as I believe the program would be better served by private charity. Those who argue the contrary do so only because they want to force all citizens to contribute to the private charity (run publically) of healthcare-for-the-poor, because they want to solve someone else's problem but don't want to have to bear the burden themselves.

[rcarmo]

It does if you're quickly converging into the Handmaid's Tale universe. May the odds be ever in their favor - I'm quite happy we don't carry guns to make it through the day...

[MiiMe19]

You do not have a right to other people's work. I should not be forced to give you food because you are too lazy to do it yourself. If you do not work, you do not eat, just like Jamestown.

[krapp]

Yes, all the poor are simply lazy, and you yourself have never ever benefited from the collective labor of society.

[MiiMe19]

You do not deserve to eat just by existing (unless you are disabled or medically cannot work). Saying this is true implies that you have a right to other people's labor, which you do not.

[femiagbabiaka]

Land, water, air and light used to produce food are not owned by any particular human either. The monopolization of that land (at the point of a gun most often) is the beginning of the issue. The overuse of that land, often subsidized heavily by taxpayers, in order to generate exorbitant profit for the few is a rot in human society. Those owners are the actual ones who don't work and expect a reward for it

[astrange]

You forgot "are a child".