| Maybe the disconnect in our perspectives comes from your belief that the issue is China vs the US. So when I criticize the US government in response to your criticism of CCP, you interpret that as a contest between two authoritarian powers. But my point is that the underlying rivalry is between the international ruling class and their people. When I criticize the US, my intention is to broaden the picture so we can identify the actual conflict and see how the NIST propaganda works contrary the national security interests of US and Chinese people. Actual whataboutism would be arguing that US authoritarianism justifies Chinese authoritarianism. My argument is the opposite: it’s consistently anti-authoritarian in that it rejects both the NIST propaganda and Chinese censorship. > As for this particular case, I haven’t read the NIST report, nor plan to. Ugh - at least read the first page of what you’re defending. It summarizes the entire document. > But DeepSeek is also a hosted service. Which you can also run it yourself. That’s precisely its appeal, given that ALL major companies vacuum our data. How many people actually rely on the DeepSeek service when, as the NIST report itself notes, there are so many cheaper and better alternatives? And if your concern truly is data collection by cloud capitalists, how can you frame this as China vs the US? Do you not acknowledge the role of US companies in the electronic surveillance state? The real issue is our shared subjection to ALL the cloud capitalists. The antidote to cloud capitalism is to socialize social networks and mandate open interop (which would be contrary to the interests of the oligarchs). The antidote to data-hoarding AI providers is open research and open weights. (And that is precisely what makes Chinese models appealing.) Thankfully, we are not yet at war with China. That would be disastrous as we are both nuclear powers! War and rivalry are only inevitable if we accept the shallow framing put out in propaganda like the NIST report. Our rulers should be de-escalating tensions, but they risk all our safety in their reckless brinkmanship. Now, you are right that’s it’s wise to acquaint oneself with propaganda like the NIST report - which is why I did. But taking propaganda at face value - blithely ignoring the way that chauvanism serves the ruling class - that is foolish to the point of being dangerous. |