HN user
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Even if a certain large Asian country has carefully constructed a pretext to do do out of confected historical grievance, and entitlement to 'rise' at the expense of others?
I'm wondering what the grift here is.
Usually, the pattern is that we see a tsunami of planted "China number one" stories boosted by hordes of Chinese "internet commentators", and then the world trembles for a few days until the scam mechanics are revealed.
My would be either: crippling limitations on the model, vast, unfair, and/or illegal subsidies by the CCP regime as a mercantilist attack on Western capabilities (as we've already seen in iron smelting and clean energy), sanctions-busting, gamed benchmarks, outright theft -- or a combination of the above.
These days, Amazon do a lot of print-on-demand which gives bootleg quality, and there's no way to tell if you're going to get it, and there seems to be no way to avoid it.
Not correct. Sodium-ion batteries were invented in the United States in the 1970s.
Wars and self-destruction, if they happen, will be purely the responsibility of the Chinese side, who have been caught numerous times hacking, spying, copying and stealing the hard work of Western countries. China's conduct of the last 40 years has been the greatest illicit transfer of wealth in the history of the world.
NONE of this Chinese malfeasance has been 'consensual' or about 'free trade'
Please enlighten me -- if a robber pulls a gun on me in the street and demands my wallet, or if a burglar robs my house, then in what way must I blame myself? Normal human beings with common decency and honour would blame the criminal, not the victim.
China's predatory and anti-competitive trade practices, undervalued yuan, hacking, espionage, IP theft, etc., need to be formally recognised and penalised. They have lied, cheated and robbed their way to the top, and the West is in serious danger of being subdued by thugs who have seized control of the world by acting like criminals.
Back in the days of their entry into the WTO, we _knew_ the Chinese Communist Party were literally thuggish peasant bandits in suits. Wiser heads knew they absolutely could not be trusted. Yet weak minds, including the Harvard MBA class got greedy little dollar signs in their eyes and thought they could make money. They were led like pigs to the slaughter by people who have never been anything but our adversaries.
De jure one-party system. No other political parties are permitted.
The NSA have Congressional oversight and are held accountable for their (mis)deeds, more or less.
The Chinese MSS and the Chinese Communist Party itself aren't even accountable to God.
The people who raised concerns about the awful things the Chinese Communist Party has done in the process are unfortunately unavailable for comment.
The extreme downvoting of certain viewpoints that are less-than-flattering about China's conduct in the AI race is quite telling.
They seem to have given themselves license to do what they like, but _God forbid_ they're called out for acting less-than-honourably.
Most adults around the world can associate actions and consequences. The incomprehension and entitlement here speaks volumes about the moral and emotional maturity of the Chinese Communist Party and their political system.
The Spanish government trusting the CCP over Palantir is wild.
The CCP's intolerant, cruel and authoritarian nature is a direct threat to humanity in ways that Peter Thiel could barely imagine in his darkest dreams.
The lack of perspective on show here is astonishing. They are destroying trust with vital Western allies -- trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets -- and Lurch and his dodgy friends are clearly out of their element.
So what is being described here? Scratch-built self-replicating nano-machines inspired by biology? That itself seems significant.
I'm sorry - did I trigger you?
On one hand -- I read the opinion of one anonymous random on the internet posting a Russian-accented sneer, trotting out the usual Russian disinformation talking points, on one hand -- and the combined weight of decades of intelligence estimates of 50+ countries decrying the very real and serious hybrid warfare being waged by this out-of-control rogue state on the other.
So who should I believe? You tell me.
I'd go further (as a parent of kids of school age):
It takes a village to raise a child. It's all well and good for childless techbros to say "Raise your kids" properly, and be subject to the tender mercies of the tech giants, but we stand a fighting chance if parents, schools, child development specialists etc, rally to get some common-sense controls in place.
The internet is a free fire zone today. This needs to change, and techbros just saying "Be a better parent" is a lazy, cynical cop-out.
I did think it was interesting to read that Steve Jobs banned his kids from having screen in their rooms on day 1.
Zuckerberg apparently does the same.
What do the billionaires know that we don't?
Most continential Europeans, like in Spain and France, have mandatory strong ID. I have never seen "paper please" there.
This argument simply doesn't work.
(This comment is addressed to peer comments, not the parent post.)
It's silly to say "Get better at parenting", when parents who have no specialist training, are literally facing off against trillion-dollar companies with thousands of industrial psychologists and data scientists hell-bent on making their products as addictive and profitable as possible.
There are huge information- and power asymmetries at play here. Just shouting: "Parent your kids" better is simplistic, stupid and wrong IMHO.
Techno-libertarianism was always a con. I'm convinced it was an information operation organised by enemies of the West to "prep the battlefield" to enable revisionist state aggression against the West in the cognitive domain.
We mustn't forget that the Russians claimed that the internet was created by the CIA to attack Russia and steal its resources -- after a Russian clairvoyant told Vladimir Putin she read Madeleine Albright's mind and said that the US is plotting to weaken Russia and "steal its resources". We also must not forget that Russia is corrupt from top to bottom, and that Russian intelligence and organised crime have effectively merged into a lawless juggernaut that threatens the entire civilised world.
Today, Russian information-warfare specialists and gangsters have turned the Western information space into a free-fire zone. And there is literally NOTHING we can do about it, because weak minds and fifth-columnists on our side demand we unilaterally disarm and NOT enforce mandatory strong ID for activity on the internet.
It's time to see this aggression for what it is.
"Project Green"
There are some sly word games happening there.
Although to be fair, it does roll off the tongue better than "Project Jeff Wants Another Yacht".
Ordinarily, we wouldn't have issues, but seeing as the US is now a full-blown kakistocracy, being run into the ground by know-nothings and mental cases, I don't have much hope of seeing a competent response.
Spotted the intellectual.
Ad-hominem attack.
Can you do better?
Whataboutery (also known as whataboutism) is a debating tactic used to evade accountability. Instead of directly addressing a criticism, the accused responds with a counter-accusation or brings up a different, usually unrelated issue (often starting with "What about...?") to distract from the original argument.
I do see this a lot from pro-Russian trolls arguing in bad faith -- and using dirty rhetorical tricks to do so. Please don't stoop to their level.
Exactly. Russians seem to understand the word "Nazis" is a less-literate way than the rest of the world.
"Nazi" -- in Russia -- means anybody that Russia hates, resents, is jealous of, or otherwise dislikes. Anybody not explicitly in Russia's thrall is "anti-Russian", considered an enemy, and is hence labelled a "Nazi".
Coincidentally, this "Whoever isn't with us, is against us" thinking is a hallmark of fascist regimes like the actual Nazi Germany, where it was an article of faith.
Interesting: the Russians are calling "our partners", "our would-be enemies" now. They're not even pretending anymore. Given that this steady parade of seemingly-planted and promoted derogatory anti-Western stories that has been happening for years originates from You Know Where, it's a revelation that the Russian establishment and secret services are not even pretending anymore.
It should also be pointed out that Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church have been understood to have been cat's paws for Russia's notorious KGB successor agencies for a very long time now.
Is there an establishment in the room with us right now?
Let me know, because I want to make sure that I'm aligned with this mystical Western Atlantacist Anglo-Saxon (insert Russian propaganda snarl-word du jour) hive mind.
The PE vultures are deliberately targeting business sectors with high barriers to entry. It's part of the grift.
Capitalists are selfish, and have short planning horizons. For a capitalist, slavery is absolutely rational. The only reason why they don't do it today is because it's illegal.
America has a proud tradition of offering college students a very broad education. Unfortunately, this trend doesn't seem to have made it to the techbros -- the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world -- who are not only spoilt, sheltered rich kids and uncultured philistines in their own right, but are also college dropouts; shamelessly so. That lack of culture drives their wanton disrespect for others' artistic output.
The entire AI wave is built on the shameless wholesale theft of the hard work of others. This exploitative, extractive business model is really no different from the legalised banditry operated by PE value extraction outfits like Vista and their ilk -- just on a vastly greater scale.
Late stage capitalism stopped building value years ago. It's now all about building wealth pumps and toll booths all over the economy to immorally extract as much value as possible, from as many different people as possible, as efficiently as possible.