Remember how China turned its tech industry into a smoking ruin - make making them all submit to political priorities:<p>Ant Group: China halted Ant’s IPO and forced a restructuring<p>Alibaba: China fined and politically disciplined Alibaba<p>Didi: China punished Didi after its US listing by removing its apps, freezing users, forcing delisting<p>Tutoring platforms: banned profit from core school-subject tutoring.<p>Tencent gaming: restricted youth gaming froze approvals<p>NetEase and gaming companies: licence freeze stopped game companies from shipping games.<p>Meituan: fined Meituan and forced changes to its labour and platform model.<p>Huya/DouYu: blocked Tencent’s game-streaming merger, stopping commercial consolidation in a major entertainment market.<p>Boss Zhipin / Full Truck Alliance: froze new users after listging in the US<p>Crypto companbies: banned crypto trading and mining, forcing exchanges offshore.<p>Think it's not happening to the US?<p>tourism - people afraid to visit<p>tariffs - wrecking ball to all businesses<p>defence - why would anyone buy US weapons after Greenland and Canada<p>internet clouds - Greenland made Europe decide that the US clouds can't be trusted, now sovereign computing matters and MS/AWS/Google are feeling it<p>finance - no one trusts the US not to turn people into "non members of global society" by banning them from visa and credit card and banking systems
From my perspective curtailing Ant's plans was positive regulatory action.<p>Political priorities and good governance is why we have government.
Some of these were very good decisions imho, from someone who spent two months in Chineese rural area around ~2019.<p>- Tutoring platforms were a plague on Chineese youth that increased the weight of their already _very_ heavy load (tbh, i think and education reform might have been preferable, this is a stopgap, but at least it is something).<p>- Ant group was offering predatory consumption loans to rural China, which to me felt a lot like the "revolver credits" that plagued my country in the 80s and 90s and pushed to many to suicide (the surname cam from their english name, "revolving credit", and because my countryside had a lot of hunting rifle available to whomever). Considering how rural china is mistreaded by Chineese state and general government (and imho this is a real weakness in China politics), having this group by a huge fine for their practice and a general debt forgivness was great. Curtailing Ant's power is also good.<p>- Stopping consolidation is a great way to keep a market free.<p>- Crypto companies: mining diverted power from villages who couldn't compete on purchasing power to mining wharehouses in some state. The ban is great for the rural population at least. Also, if that can curtail the birth of Chineese cryptobros, great for the mental health of the country.
China tech industry is smoking ruin? On what planet are you living?
I suppose we should bookmark this for the next time that HN claims that the rise of China's tech industry is inevitable.
Tech crackdowns rid China of entrepreneurial capitalism
<a href="https://eastasiaforum.org/2023/09/12/tech-crackdowns-rid-china-of-entrepreneurial-capitalism/" rel="nofollow">https://eastasiaforum.org/2023/09/12/tech-crackdowns-rid-chi...</a><p>Why China crushed its tech giants <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/china-tech-giants-policy/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/story/china-tech-giants-policy/</a><p>Why Big Tech May Never Recover in China <a href="https://time.com/6973119/china-big-tech-crackdown-backfiring/" rel="nofollow">https://time.com/6973119/china-big-tech-crackdown-backfiring...</a><p>Beijing can’t afford another crackdown on its tech companies <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/11/china-cant-afford-another-crackdown-on-its-tech-companies.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/11/china-cant-afford-another-cr...</a>
US citizens to remain nonviolent at any cost, issue strongly worded internet comments, and find themselves a little less free every day.
So them banning Fable for only non-Americans is what we non-Americans should expect to be the norm going forward? Way to build even more resentment abroad.<p>I'm very pro-west, but at this point okay, I guess the rest of us have to side with China, not because we remotely like it, but because they don't try to be quite so antagonistic to us in everything they do.
>because they don't try to be quite so antagonistic to us in everything they do.<p>Just because the many headed dragon is trying to bite your sailors' heads doesn't mean you should pilot your ship into the whirlpool
Expect the US to sanction non-US-controlled models and put sanctions on individuals, companies and countries that use them? They already do this with other things like oil.
Can you cite any examples of a US citizen being sanctioned for <i>importing</i> foreign technology (not exporting)? Please don't cite anything OFAC-related, it does not apply here.
Oil isn't made out of information and cannot be transmitted via a speech act.
There is an assumption that everyone is making here - that China will not do the same. It is entirely possible, that China restricts their frontier models - as and when they are developed - to only Chinese citizens. And India follows along.<p>IMO AI is different from everything else. It is a weapon as potent as nuclear. It is only natural that it be treated as one.
"government needs to step in and regulate ai"<p>"wait, not like that"
Anth/OpenAI simply wanted the government to pull the ladder after them and ban models from China.<p>Seems it blew in their faces and probably the new frontier models will be available only to a select few. Many people predicted this, only a naive person would believe that access to something with these capabilities would be decided by some dude in California.
As entertaining as the sheer Schadenfreude of the situation is, this is terrible for foreign peasants like myself. It no longer makes any sense to pay for America's frontier AI models. I'd be funding the training of models I will never be able to use.<p>GLM 5.2 is competitive with Opus 4.6. If the best model I'll ever get is Opus 4.8, then the choice is clear. I'll miss Opus.
Without access to leading models, I think open source LLM development will also slow down. I'm not sure which portion of their success right now is due to RLAF and distillation but it's certainly not zero.
Why do I get the feeling the administration is doing this to buy a position in the AI companies before they go public.<p>If non US citizens shouldn't have the models - wouldn't that cause both Anthropic and OAI to fire non-citizens?
> wouldn't that cause both Anthropic and OAI to fire non-citizens?<p>They would do what the thousands of other companies do with their tens of thousands of engineers handling ITAR/EAR-regulated software/hardware every day: compartmentalize their workforces, buildings, and access.
because the administration has been repeating the same patterns over pretty much its entire existence.<p>Dont worry though, the rest of the entire world gets access to better chinese models :-), once they get a taste for those the US has lost their little trade game and the future truly belongs to China.<p>Its almost like they are serving it up on a silver platter.<p>ofc they are not, they are just betting all in their models will be better, which is unlikely. (just look at the chinese law and all the names atop of advanced AI papers...)
Open source is looking great right now
This isn't going to save you unless you're ok being a criminal. There is nothing stopping the government from making open source versions of these models equally controlled.<p>And given how willy-nilly they are operating I see no reason they won't clamp down on open source. All it takes is someone with connections/political contributions wakes up one day and realizes that open source is a threat to their power or bottom line and it will be declared an imminent threat with no oversight or debate.
It’s looking very fragile from a legal point of view. Ownership of compute and software freedom will be next k the chopping block after control of networks that’s occurring at the moment.
It's looking good until you start to see the US gov forcing cloudflare to block hugging face and others.
They'll just make it a crime to run the models unless they authorize you (classifying it as a munition, like they tried to do with encryption), and if your power bill is suspicious you'll find yourself in jail.<p>Any company providing the models will be deemed a threat to national security.<p>No need to block the download.
Citizens were and are free to use the technology (cryptography and every other export-controlled item); your "power bill is suspicious, go to jail" FUD doesn't really track with history.<p>> Any company providing the models will be deemed a threat to national security.<p>Any company providing specifically-controlled models to <i>foreigners</i> would hypothetically be prosecuted.
There's a famous poem called "First They Came" about how slippery this slope can be in a heated political climate.<p>I don't believe for a second this ends with "foreigners", this is about setting up infrastructure for controlling the technology. Foreigners are just the current excuse.<p>Note that TFA mentions they are supposedly hand-picking access to whoever they want, based on whatever criteria they want, already.
Ah, invoking Godwin. "First they came" in 1976 when ITAR was first passed, or maybe "first they came" in the 1940s when we didn't export Proximity Fuzes, right?<p>Countries are free to prevent exports of technology, sorry if this is upsetting. Equating export controls with the Holocaust is disgusting.
Why do they need to "force Cloudflare" to do anything?<p>Why wouldn't they just tell Hugging Face that they need to abide export restrictions directly - they're an American company?<p>Doesn't sound dystopian enough without a second compelled entity?
seriously, ordered more hardware this week, as it gets more dystopian every week<p>wondering when more people will raise their voice and get engaged
It's the year of the open source AI model is the new 'It's the year of the Linux Desktop'. It's not and never will be for 90% of people
That’s not true at all. While not as good as proprietary models they are still very good and can do A LOT, certainly more than their cost would make it seem.<p>It’s only a matter of time before companies start to acknowledge the huge cost of tokens and look for a cheaper alternative with basic cost-benefit analysis.<p>My F500 company is getting local infrastructure going to host open models and I’m sure many will just switch to bedrock + the best open models.<p>It’s foolish for companies to let three companies dictate the price of tokens, I just don’t think they are aware of this now by and large.
GLM 5.2 is competitive with Opus 4.6.
Well if us gov would block people from using windows or macos, then it may well be.
In a scenario where some breakthrough in fusion energy will be discovered I envision:<p>- instant, total world war if it's not coming from USA<p>- let's finish all oil's reserve first otherwise
Source: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-administration-asks-openai-stagger-release-new-model-information-reports-2026-06-25/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-administration-asks-o...</a>
This will be the end of the US's short-lived AI supremacy. OpenAI and Anthropic are already wildly unprofitable, cutting off the world-wide income stream is just fucking bad business.
Thanks to the US government for helping kill Anthropic and OpenAI by preventing them from recouping any R&D money from new models. Doing god's work.
+1 point to China!<p>In all seriousness, I can’t believe the AI firms are abiding by this peacefully. If I truly loved my company, and I felt we were on the bleeding edge of incredible, life changing products, why would I allow my company to be set up for failure by remaining somewhere that clearly wants control over the sovereignty.<p>The US gov sees these AI companies as bartering power, not as innovation. Wouldn’t you as a parent always want what’s best for your child, not for yourself?<p>It also feels like they can’t just relocate out of the country, as the administration will surely sanction anyone from business within the country again. These firms are so over inflated with evaluations and opex, they’ve dug themselves into a corner.<p>This is not to say regulation does not exist in any other country, but it’s clear now after what’s happening at Anthropic + OAI that the US gov has taken these companies hostage.<p>This is only further playing into the hands of open source and the outside models; the US gov is going to be to blame for when they all lose the race to low cost/free.
> +1 point to China!<p>Which, like the US, uses export controls when it finds them advantageous: <a href="https://nam.org/china-imposes-export-controls-on-u-s-minerals-defense-firms/" rel="nofollow">https://nam.org/china-imposes-export-controls-on-u-s-mineral...</a><p>> In all seriousness, I can’t believe the AI firms are abiding by this peacefully. If I truly loved my company, and I felt we were on the bleeding edge of incredible, life changing products, why would I allow my company to be set up for failure by remaining somewhere that clearly wants control over my sovereignty.<p>So, locate in China, where every company of importance is essentially required in practice to maintain ties to the CCP?<p>I personally think the US has gone too far with its use of export controls and sanctions as a political tool, but it's foolish to believe that it's different anywhere else on the planet.<p>In China, it has even been reported that top AI talent is restricted from overseas travel.<p><a href="https://www.thinkchina.sg/technology/china-tightens-control-over-ai-experts-private-firms-will-backfire" rel="nofollow">https://www.thinkchina.sg/technology/china-tightens-control-...</a><p>Bottom line: if you're working on cutting-edge technology that is deemed to be of critical national security importance and has military or dual use implications, you're going to be a hostage no matter where you go.
You wrongly assumed I implied these firms relocate to China. We are all aware of how China operates and controls its assets.<p>AI has long existed in many countries around the world without this type of behavior from the government. Deepmind in the UK, Mistral in France, DeepL in Germany - the governments don’t seem to be forcing employees to get their deploys approved by a government official.<p>My argument is that the US gov does not like that these companies have too much influence which they do not feel they can mandate. It’s slowing the entire country down at a very critical sink or swim inflection point in this tech.
I think it’s pretty clear why they’re abiding by this:<p>-the US is the only place where you can raise the kinds of money you need to run a lab like this.<p>-a government that won’t let you sell products to customers abroad will probably object even more to you <i>moving</i> abroad.<p>Even if you made the move abroad, that government might no longer let you access US data centers.<p>-This basically affects OpenAI and Anthropic, which make the only LLMs most people consider frontier nowadays. Since most open weights models rely on distillation of frontier models, it may genuinely entrench those companies more.<p>It may be playing into the hands of open source OAI/Anthropic dependencies start to look more dangerous, but it also makes building better OSS models harder.<p>The advantages the AI labs rely on might be less durable than a proprietary process in industrial manufacturing, but it’s still meaningful.<p>I think the bigger reckoning will come from a different angle: tokens will eventually need to cover cost.<p>That will likely mean multiplying prices compared to today. And companies already complain now!<p>Model orchestration and smaller models that can run locally or cheaply will become more important in my opinion.<p>Right now, you can still default to GPT/Claude and it’s kind of fine, but that will have to change.
The elephant in the room is that the US AI firms should not be as valuable as they are. They should not require the sort of capital they are seeking, the amount of employees, the amount of offices and resources..but they are so steeped in investor interests - why stop being fed?<p>Many Americans want AI to fail. The US gov wants to control AI. The AI companies are running out of things to do, and are shipping product after product after product to keep the perceived productivity narrative alive.<p>At this rate I would not be surprised to see an OAI/Anthropic merger just to throw everything AI the US has to offer to the global markets.
> I can’t believe the AI firms are abiding by this peacefully.<p>They literally asked for this.
> AI firms are abiding by this peacefully<p>What are they going to do about it? Might makes right.<p>They've already done what little they can: pull access to their models wholesale rather than adopt an export compliance regime.
This will be exactly as effective as the BBC's efforts to ensure only UK taxpayers are allowed to stream Doctor Who from BBC servers on Christmas morning.
So, that DeepSeek thing, you are saying it's not that bad?
GLM-5.2 is currently the best open-weight model for development. It's not as good as the current American SOTA models, but if you wrote code with US SOTA models four months ago, you can write code with GLM-5.2 today.<p>DeepSeek 4 is a good model for many tasks, but I think it currently lacks the post-training required to become a genuinely great coding model.
This is for the preview period, but it's not a good sign. Opus 4.8 may be the last frontier model available to the masses...
From US companies that is.
If it's the case then software engineers still have the same place as pre-ClaudeCode era, because 4.8 and 5.5 are damn good at algo but notoriously bad at architecture and coordination.
Yes, we will get a crippled version of Mythos, 5.6 and future models, while the chosen few will have unfettered access.
Thousands of American engineers all over the country (most of whom probably aren't on Hacker News) work with ITAR/EAR-regulated software and hardware every single day: these regulations are really not difficult to abide if you're a citizen.
One more wake up call for anyone outside USA, especially Europe. AI will be weaponized, on the battle ground too, but the bigger battle will be fought in the industry competition. Those who have access to state of the art models will have advantage over those who does not.<p>Hopefully open-weight models will catch up, hopefully we, as the people, engineers will find the way to maintain those open-weight models on pair with the closed ones.<p>I try to be optimistic, as we won some battles, against all odds, Linux is flourishing, open source solutions are mainstream.
Europe is in the worst spot right now, because even if open source is the future, there is not enough European-owned datacenters even for inference. Not to mention that China could pull the rug on these models at any moment just like the US did.
[dead]
Wow.. Okay so it's official now that the playbook is "we will try to prevent anyone who we don't like to use advanced tech".<p>I understand if its military hardware and software, that's the property of the US government however this is the property of a private company.. Now seemingly being commandeered and issued at the will of the government, sounds very Russian/Chinese to me.<p>Is there a precedent for this before in a democratic country ?
The overwhelming majority of export-controlled items are made by private corporations: the US government itself makes exceedingly little in comparison.<p>The missiles Raytheon makes are export-controlled too, and they're not somehow "property of the US government" - this isn't China.<p>Is this just upsetting because it's a product you want to enjoy?<p>> Is there a precedent for this before in a democratic country ?<p>Try every weapons system, encrypted radio system, FPGAs with high-bandwidth transceivers, lithography equipment, etc. etc. etc. There's plenty of precedent.
> Is this just upsetting because it's a product you want to enjoy?<p>No, infact I'm a proponent of open models and being able to run them locally, it just feels strange that a consumer product would be under the same restrictions as military grade equipment and tech which is specifically designed for warfare.<p>> Try every weapons system, encrypted radio system, FPGAs with high-bandwidth transceivers, lithography equipment, etc. etc. etc. There's plenty of precedent.<p>If it's the same equivalent then my issue is just that, it feels like trying to restrict the useage of RSA because it could be used by bad actors.
That was always the playbook<p>> Is there a precedent for this before in a democratic country ?<p>I'd argue US is not very democratic country given how many of what govt does goes against people's wishes. Same as UK
Keep your **** models to yourselves.... the world really has moved on to open models which can give you good enough results at a fraction of the cost and zero BS licensing.