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Comment by tcp_handshaker | Hacker News Reader

>> Not sending data to known IP thieves, state actors, and competitors in China (or Russia or Israel) seems very rational.

As opposed to sending data to known IP thieves, state actors, and competitors in the USA ? Which one is the most irrational?

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You can legally act against one, not against the other.

Not exactly a hard question.

Looking forward to the outcome of those legal processes againt the CEOs, that sit behind Trump at the inauguration. After they stole all the knowledge in the world to train their models. And the current administration is drunk on SpaceX pre IPO shares...how did they get them?

"Trump Officials Held Millions of Dollars of SpaceX Ahead of IPO" - https://news.bloomberglaw.com/texas-brief/trump-officials-he...

Given how little voting power these "shares" have (they are effectively SpaceX trading cards/NFTs) perhaps they were simply printed on SpaceX letterhead? If Musk says a person has "shares" who at spacex is in a position to disagree?

I would consider editing this while HN still allows it :-)) Or otherwise it may remain here for ever...until the black holes evaporate, as calibration point for the difference between confidence and comprehension...

Nothing will happen to anyone.

Biden preemptively pardoned his cronies, and so will Trump.

This is an argument against pardons, except that Trump has used instruments of state power against his perceived enemies (Comey James, Schiff, military occupation of Tim Walz state, etc etc).

I meant to look for an example of Musk losing a lawsuit and I accidentally came upon another two.

Here and elsewhere you are just running propaganda, knowingly or not.

Musk and companies have so far over 950 lawsuits and legal processes for criminal or unethical activity (yes I researched this). Even his data centers and gas turbine deployments are illegal!

Lost one lawsuit against the same AI mafia, and if you look at the legal details reason was for filling the claim too late.

He publicly called a hero a Pedophile, and got away with it...in court.

Now...who do you work for?

[1] - "EPA rules that xAI’s natural gas generators were illegally used" - https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/16/epa-rules-that-xais-natura...

No one is forcing you to use either.

Technically yes, practically, good luck.

You can act, but the only winner will be the lawyers.

No, in very real terms you cannot hold an American corporation responsible for anything any more than you could a Chinese or Russian one.

Individual citizens simply do not have the means, and the consequences for trying are life-alteringly severe. In fact the situation is even worse. If you tried to sue a Chinese company as an American citizen, you'd be laughed at and nothing more. If you tried to sue an American corporation, they have the option to either counter-sue, or drag things out so long that the legal fees bankrupt you, or win the case with their armies of lawyers and demand compensation from you that bankrupts you.

A private American citizen simply cannot hold an American corporation responsible. Our legal system is designed to ensure this.

This has nothing to do with the discussion. Do you have a HN poster bot just acting like an annoyed teenager with gripes about everything? 20 day old new account, what happened to the previous ones?

You can't really act against neither, as the case of Meta "stealing" books, torrenting on the truly industrial scale, sharing books while torrenting, etc, etc, was ultimately deemed okay.

In the se country where downloading an album can get a person in debt or worse.

We as Americans at least have some amount of influence over American corporations, and enforcement mechanisms for those breaking the rules.

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I suspect the recent space X S&P decision had something to do with public perception.

The decision was to do nothing, though. That's not much precedent for going out and punishing lawbreakers.

I think the odds of that are low. It's not like decision maker(s) are watching social media and going with the vibes, but it's almost certain that there's a rich conversation going on behind the scenes in opaque channels, especially with regards to the AI-only companies. And those conversations are likely what drove their decision.

> It's not like decision maker(s) are watching social media and going with the vibes,

What do you mean? They are all on twitter! It’s the most engaging activity for billionaires

Lol, fair point! But I'd argue two things. The first is that few to none of them are changing their opinions due to the proles. The second is that public vs private opinions often differ, sometimes extremely, especially with influential people. For an example there I think it's fairly certain that some chunk of the people pushing AI believe it's a bubble, and are motivated solely by trying to squeeze the boom window for all they can personally extract. And so their public positions on things, and their private ones may different radically - especially in domains where they stand to win/lose as a result of those issues.

I'm pretty sure those corporations have much more influence over american politicians, regulators, lawmakers, etc. than eg. russian or chinese ones.

Well sure they do, thank Citizens United and others for that. But that doesn't mean we can't appropriately categorize them as also hostile actors alongside russia, china, whoever.

It's undo influence over politics against the best interest of the American people that's the issue. Company, foreign nation, it doesn't matter.

Citizens United did a lot to effectively legalize foreign influence as well, since the mechanism is opaque transfer of money

But regardless, most people's threat models should discount based on geographic and political distance. All else being equal, chinese surveillance is a bigger threat to you if you're in china than if you're in the us, and vice versa

> Citizens United did a lot to effectively legalize foreign influence as well, since the mechanism is opaque transfer of money

Here's hoping Hawaii blazes a path forward.

https://natlawreview.com/article/hawaii-governor-signs-first...

So the Honolulu Star-Observer (a corporation, or “artificial person”) only has those rights & privileges that it has been granted by the State of Hawaii?

This is going to end up being a nice little windfall for the attorneys and otherwise just clog the Federal court system.

"the day the law goes into effect, it strips each Hawaii entity of the powers it held the day before. The new law asserts that “[t]he creation and continued existence of a corporation is not a right but a conditional grant of legal status by the State and remains subject to complete withdrawal at any time. All powers previously granted to corporations under the laws of this State are revoked in their entirety."(TFA)

The meaning is pretty clear, don't try to influence politics in favor of the corporation or you will go away. Simple as.

Yeah, that’s clearly unconstitutional. The government can’t grant or withhold rights and privileges to, say, a newspaper publishing corporation, based on whether the newspaper content is what the government wants it to be.

Transfer of money from whom to whom?

Citizens United was about spending money on electioneering communications, and whether there was a First Amendment right to do so even if you’re associating in a corporation like the New York Times Company or Apple or Citizens United or the Sierra Club.

Our thieves are better than their thieves. :)

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