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Comment by jandrewrogers | Hacker News Reader

The authority under which this was done has been operative and actively used for several decades. It isn't a partisan issue, it is a policy of American governance. Anyone that has worked on frontier "dual use" technologies will be familiar with the legal regime.

The only thing that changed is people are writing articles about it in the news media.

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But it was applied using principles of the rule of law with clear regulatory frameworks. This is not that

I’ve dealt with these regulations across several administrations. Nothing about this is novel, it is just receiving more attention than usual. Anyone could have started caring about this decades ago. You are making an argument from unfamiliarity with the regulations as practiced.

If it takes Trump to force people to educate themselves on how the US government actually works then I guess that is at least one good thing to come out of this.

I am aware that the government has always been involved in these types of issues. Even a season finale of silicon valley shows pied piper being required to navigate government oversight when it became successful and implied it was a badge of honor / success.

But you have to admit this policy seems ad hoc and creates the impression of opening a wide door for corruption.

It isn’t ad hoc, it happens all the time in frontier tech, this particular instance just gained public notoriety. Historically, the government has preferred to keep this reality out of the public consciousness. This time they are either unavoidable or they expect some leverage by making it public.

This was absolutely predictable, and many people made that prediction. The patterns of what tech they apply export controls to is actually pretty legible. People have long tried to ride the gray area so that their tech is not subject to export controls. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. This was never not going to be subject to it.

This isn’t a pure export control restriction. It is granting access to “trusted partners” with no criteria of how a firm or person earns that designation. It is also unclear why these models in particular were subject to a restriction or at least evaluation.

I am simply arguing that there is a more effective approach to creating a regulatory framework here. It doesn’t have to take that much effort. But this random announcement with no prior or current guidelines seems ad hoc to me.

Jumping in to reflexively defend the admin again, I see.

Is there any policy from this admin you don't support?

I am making an observation of fact. My feeds are full of ignorant hot takes that clearly demonstrate people have no clue about current law or how the government actually works. Your response is a perfect demonstration of this. This is neither unique to the current administration nor supporters of a particular party.

I don’t support the admin but if you are unwilling to engage with reality then that is on you.

Make a case then based on Prior examples and why they are of the same nature and degree.

We are talking about the government giving exclusive access the the most transformative technology in human history to a select group of companies with no formal policy as to how you gain access, lose access, what you are expected to do with that access or commitment to transparency around any of this.

Also known as, the tu quoque fallacy. Just because politicians in both parties have been doing this for decades doesn't mean that this administration is not especially hypocritical for doing it after whinging so much about free speech and free markets.

The only correct reply.

If by correct you mean, inconsistent with the American tradition of the rule of law and commitment to equal protection of the law, and the emergence of an authoritarian kleptocracy that picks winners and losers. Then yes. Correct.

Which has been obvious trend the last few decades and is now being done openly and shamelessly like a tinpot dicator. Largely through a new populist protectionism ideology that is popular on social media. Which makes it much more public and well documented.

Usually companies do this stuff quietly with lots of small new rules via Congress creating barriers to entry or through national security angles like the Chips act which funneled money and tax breaks to huge weathy companies, or Boeing, or the car industry, etc.

Anthropic and OpenAI went hard in the paint pushing for AI safety and it backfired into hurting their companies rather than protecting their interests.

Stop with the false equivalence.

I’ve been critical of crony capitalism consistently on HN for a decade now. Many people just haven’t been paying attention because nobody cares to follow this stuff unless there’s a useful political angle.

If I bring a house cat to a party and you bring a tiger we could both be accused of bringing a pet to the party without asking. But only one of the pets will crush your throat and then eat your face.

I would love to see any examples of democrats being crony capitalist of the same degree as the current administration. They are selling pardons, hosting crypto dinners where the seating arrangement is based on how many coins you bought, seizing the equity of private companies like intel and the revenue of corporations in exchange for lifting export restrictions like to nvidia, holding up M&A transactions for rivals and approving transactions for allies, ignoring laws passed by congress (like the ban on TikTok) to let allies buy the assets.

I am not a favor of state capture by the capitalist class. But democrats are house cats.

>I would love to see any examples of democrats being crony capitalist of the same degree

No you wouldn't. You've established a subjective measure to the discussion by which you can refuse to acknowledge any example provided.

How about Biden leaving a bunch of equipment in Afghanistan so his weapons manufacturing buddies could get new manufacturing contracts?

How about Biden using the EPA to shut down eco friendly products in favor of his buddies' company's spill remediation that doesn't work nearly as well?

Oh well, those individually aren't "to the same degree" even if there are many more of them that cumulatively add up to a greater degree.

There are countless examples of this, as lots of others have pointed out to you across this thread. You're just choosing to walk them all back into a corner of "but it's not as bad because <insert additional criterion>."

Your opinion as given is entirely based around Trump, not government.

It's simple fanaticism. You've chosen a football team. Nothing will convince you that their quarterback sucks because he was just having a bad day every game of the season.

You can quickly stop doing this. Go research the counterpoints and see if you aren't being selective. It will require some honesty with yourself to do so. Most people find that very difficult.

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