The U.S. Anti-China Tech Protectionism Racket From a ‘Middle Power’ ⇥ karlbode.com

Karl Bode:

So prepare for a year of breathless and evidence-optional claims that Chinese AI is a dire threat to U.S. consumer privacy and national security, followed by an elaborate bipartisan train of bad policy and shitty new laws crafted by a clumsy coalition of technofascists, extremists, and competition-averse chickenshits.

A bit rant-ish for my liking, but the kind of thing that makes me worried about living in what our prime minister called a “middle power”. The success of A.I. models developed in China has caused much concern among U.S. hyperscalers.

In his recent essay, Mark Zuckerberg warned that “[a]ny policy that slows American model releases — even by a month — could add significant risk to American leadership while letting foreign models race ahead”; by “foreign models”, he means those from China. Much of this section of the essay bemoans the already feeble restrictions in the U.S. on training and building A.I. models. Zuckerberg even says “falling behind in A.I. overall would almost certainly be a larger and longer term national security issue than any specific issue we’ll face in its development”. These talking points are ripped from the history Bode documents of the supposedly essential 5G “race”.

But if you live in a “middle power”, what matters are the knock-on effects of these battles that are about political and public relations more than they are about actual technology. For U.S. allies, it means a further entrenchment of U.S. companies in our technology landscapes.