Honestly, AI progress suffers because of these export restrictions. An open source model that can compete with Gemini Pro 2.5 and o3 is good for the world, and good for AI
Then look up Latin America’s history, where the US actively worked to install and support such violent dictatorships.
Some under the guise of protecting countries from the threat of communism - like Brazil, Argentina and Chile, and some explicitly to protect US company’s interests - like in Guatemala
Yes fuckups happened. But then for results Russian intervention see CCP and how many people died from their hands and policies
The lesson of present-day America is that democracy is too important to be left to the people.
And spare us the false equivalence bullshit that we all know is coming.
> trade labor, goods and services voluntarily
capitalism is using capital (money, materials, and employees/work) as inputs to produce finished products with the goal of re-investing those profits into said production or into other markets
simply trading or rendering services can be done without the need for constant growth/profits or investment as capital over time (e.g coops, traditional businesses etc)
This is an important point. The only way communism "works" is top down enforcement.
Lots of US companies got a lot of money out of those US-supported dictatorships, while destroying local businesses and torturing and killing people. Those were also the era of closed-off economies, hyperinflation and environmental destruction, so what the local people got out of it?
So yeah, thanks for protecting us from the dictatorship of the proletariat and fucking up our economies for decades. And I’m not also defending USSR and their imperialistic practices disguised as making the people as equal as possible - fuck them as well!
There’s an old book called “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” that gets into some details of how the US supported those dictatorships under Project Condor and other CIA programs. Is it 100% truthful? Maybe not, but the gist of it is.
The proles have let us both down. All my life, I was led to believe that a "dictatorship of the proletariat" would involve a bunch of morons wearing red hats, casting one last vote against their own interests to tear down the established order. So at least that turned out to be technically correct.
And on who you would support in such a conflict! ;)
Might as well talk about the probability of a conflict with South Africa, China might not be the best country to live in nor be country that takes care of its own citizens the best, but they seem non-violent towards other sovereign nations (so far), although of course there is a lot of posturing. But from the current "world powers", they seem to be the least violent.
China is peaceful recently, at least since their invasion of Vietnam. But (1) their post-Deng culture is highly militaristic and irredentist, (2) this is the first time in history that they actually can rollback US influence, their previous inability explains the peace rather than lack of will (3) Taiwan from a realist perspective makes too much sense, as the first in the island chain to wedge between Philippines and Japan, and its role in supplying chips to the US.
The lesson we should learn from Russia's invasion of Ukraine is to believe countries when they say they own another country. Not assume the best and design policy around that assumption.
If you want to read some experts on this question, see this: https://warontherocks.com/?s=taiwan
The general consensus seems to be around a 20-25% chance of an invasion of Taiwan within the next 5 years. The remaining debate isn't about whether they want to do it, it's about whether they'll be able to do it and what their calculation will be around those relative capabilities.
DeepSeek is not a charity, they are the largest hedge fund in China, nothing different from a typical wall street funds. They don't spend billions to give the world something open and free just because it is good.
When the model is capable of generating decent amount of revenues, or when there is conclusive evidence of showing being closed would lead to much higher profit, it will be closed.
(In before “whatabout”: maybe US-made models do the same, but I’ve yet to hear reports of any anti-US information that they’re censoring.)