[HN Gopher] DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, repo...
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DeepSeek uses banned Nvidia chips for AI model, report says
(Original is https://www.theinformation.com/articles/deepseek-
using-banne... but hardwalled)
Author : goodway
Score : 268 points
Date : 2025-12-10 16:34 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (finance.yahoo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (finance.yahoo.com)
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| this is revenge for stealing their silkmoths isnt it?
| smileson2 wrote:
| the american century of humiliation begins
| inamorty wrote:
| The opium will be full of sugar and preservatives though.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Or fentanyl!
| mullingitover wrote:
| and their proprietary tea strains
|
| and forcing them to allow opium to be sold in their country
|
| and forcing them to give up major port cities and open up trade
| against their wishes
|
| Honestly whenever China gets around to getting its served-
| extremely-cold revenge for all the savagery committed against
| it in the 19th and 20th centuries, some chips are going to be
| the least of everyone's problems.
| codedokode wrote:
| Also, porcelain, paper and gunpowder. And maybe (don't
| remember exactly), magnetic compass.
| hinkley wrote:
| I think that was the British? We are just getting over hating
| them ourselves.
| dontwannahearit wrote:
| A quick read of some British press and you'll realize that
| the British are going through their own self-hate moment,
| so everyone is aligned.
|
| This is what living in the ashes of an empire does to you.
|
| Will come for the USA in time.
| hinkley wrote:
| Already ahead of you there sport. November 2016.
| bilekas wrote:
| I don't think anyone is surprised by this.. And I'm almost
| certain nothing will happen. When manufacturing is next door to
| you, you'll find a way to get your hands on chips.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > And I'm almost certain nothing will happen.
|
| The Chinese government has done more for less so I wouldn't be
| so certain.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| This isn't a Chinese government ban, though. It's a US export
| restriction, not a Chinese import restriction. So why would
| the Chinese government do anything at all?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > And I'm almost certain nothing will happen
|
| What realistically could happen? Nvidia is already prohibited
| from selling their GPUs to China, I guess if you wanted it to
| really stop, you'd need to prohibit Nvidia from selling GPUs in
| any other country but the US, and require some sort of
| government controlled license to be able to buy it inside the
| US. Neither of which sound like realistic options.
|
| So what could anyone really do, to "solve" this "problem"?
| Davidzheng wrote:
| didn't the US just allow H200s to China last few days btw
| rvnx wrote:
| License leases, this is what they can do.
|
| You log into the Nvidia Enterprise Portal and download a
| license file that is temporary valid (e.g. 7 days) and bound
| to the specific serial numbers.
|
| You transfer that file to your local license (DLS) server.
|
| It does not need to be permanently connected to the internet,
| but it needs to be refreshed periodically.
|
| Your local server now holds the tickets that the GPUs need to
| use to run (obviously checked by the GPU itself, not on a
| driver-level, though driver could be a first step).
|
| https://docs.nvidia.com/license-system/dls/index.html
|
| If an account is suspected of violation, they get suspended
| and need to pass the KYC again.
|
| It's not perfect (as violators can use shell companies), but
| it is relatively elegant. In case of shell companies, they
| can get caught one day or another.
|
| Regular users or those who don't need air-gapped network can
| just stay online and the lease automatically renew in the
| background. Friction-less.
|
| Added benefit: nobody is going to try to steal your cards
|
| Minus: enshittification of the world in the name of politics,
| and Nvidia will lose sales, and backfire at the US economy
|
| I hope they don't plan it
| totallymike wrote:
| A government-funded party would likely have an exploit or
| jailbroken firmware up and run in in days, if not sooner
| kevmo314 wrote:
| A new opportunity for my new business: a datacenter right
| off the Chinese border with a VPN tunnel into China!
| rvnx wrote:
| Better run "Super AI company LLC" from Singapore,
| download the tickets, send them by email, and run it in
| China
| nish__ wrote:
| This guy worked for Microsoft. I can tell.
| strbean wrote:
| The phrasing "chips that are banned in the country" seems
| completely inaccurate. These are chips that the US does not allow
| to be exported to China. We do not have the power to ban anything
| in China, that's up to the Chinese government.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Which they did! https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/17/china-tells-
| its-tech-compa...
| Quothling wrote:
| Didn't China ban two processors for like 140 companies? It
| wouldn't be unlike China to ban modern Nvidia chipsets from
| Alibaba and similar while allowing Deepseek to do what they
| want. To win at both advancing domestic semiconductor
| development and also AI.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I thought China also wanted them banned to dogfood domestic
| chips?
| blibble wrote:
| it's the standard USian view that their laws apply worldwide
| hinkley wrote:
| I learned it by watching you, Dad.
|
| American Imperialism is European Imperialism 2.0.
| mongrelion wrote:
| I recommend everyone to watch GamersNexus' documentary on the
| NVIDIA AI GPU black market. They explain how companies like
| DeepSeek can get a hold of chips that are otherwise banned by the
| US government to export to China
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BFI
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah, or just jump unto Alibaba and Ebay from any neighboring
| country to China and see for yourself how easy it would be to
| buy a GPU then transport yourself ~500m and now be within China
| with these GPUs.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think you are overestimating the ease of getting
| hopper/blackwell from alibaba or ebay.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Yeah? Tried Ebay Singpore as a first try, seems like there
| is plenty of stuff:
| https://www.ebay.com.sg/sch/i.html?_nkw=gpu+blackwell
|
| Edit: just for fun (and actual neighbor of China), tried
| Ebay India too, seems not-impossible: https://www.ebay.com/
| sch/i.html?_nkw=blackwell+gpu&_sacat=0&...
| sofixa wrote:
| > and actual neighbor of China), tried Ebay India too
|
| Eh, you'd have to cross the Himalayas and go through what
| is kind of a military zone.
|
| Kazakhstan and Vietnam are more suitable candidates, but
| neither has actually good infrastructure connectivity to
| China.
| the_pwner224 wrote:
| I was just selling my RTX 4090 on Ebay recently and got a ton
| of bids from Chinese accounts. The winner ($2,325) had
| Australia set as the country on their profile, but a Chinese
| name on the account, and the order shipping address was to a
| different Chinese name (to a regular single-family house in
| Delaware). Most bidders straight up had China as their profile
| country.
|
| So my 4090 (24 GB) is probably going to get turned into a 48/96
| GB VRAM frankenstein in a Chinese chop shop. I haven't watched
| the full 3.5 hour documentary you linked but from the first few
| minutes, it seems quite interesting. And covers this exact
| thing.
|
| Edit: Again, I checked the address, it was a house, not a
| freight forwarder warehouse. And if it was actually going to
| AU, the forwarder would be on the west coast in CA/WA, not east
| coast (had another order go to Thailand with a forwarder in SF.
| And Miami is the big hub for South America). For legit freight
| forwarding they also wouldn't have different names on the
| account & shipping address. As the parent comment's YT video
| describes, these are often just normal Chinese-Americans or
| international students who do this to make a bit of extra
| money.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| People with Chinese names do sometimes live in Delaware.
| Tostino wrote:
| With their profile in Australia?
| yardstick wrote:
| While this is likely what the op was suggesting,
|
| I would like to point out that in Australia and NZ, it
| can be a massive pain to find someone who will ship
| internationally.
|
| Normally this is for things like Amazon US, and other US-
| based companies. There are services[1][2] that advertise
| virtual postal addresses in your purchase-country where
| they'll box and ship it to you.
|
| So yes, a Chinese name based in Australia with a shipping
| address in the US isn't immediately a red flag. Lots of
| Chinese in Australia and NZ, and lots of people here like
| to use shipping services like this.
|
| 1. https://www.nzpost.co.nz/tools/you-shop
|
| 2. https://www.choice.com.au/shopping/online-
| shopping/buying-on... (Scroll to bottom)
| fn-mote wrote:
| > Chinese name based in Australia with a shipping address
| in the US isn't immediately a red flag
|
| And a good thing, too, or I would be concerned about
| posting that I knew it was going somewhere forbidden.
| square_usual wrote:
| And Australia; ~5% of Australia's population is Chinese
| origin.
| jhfdbkofdchk wrote:
| Do they all live at the same address of the overseas
| freight forwarder too? I've sold stuff on eBay to someone
| in Europe who had me ship to the same address in Delaware.
| I was confused so I googled the address and turned up the
| freight forwarding service.
| secret-noun wrote:
| This has happened to me a couple of times with eBay
| sales.
|
| Is it safe to transact with people who use freight
| forwarders in your experience? Do you lose any
| protections?
|
| Out of fear, in my cases, I cancelled the auctions.
|
| On second thought though, I wonder if it's actually the
| buyer using the service that is more at risk
| (introduction of 3rd party, more complex delivery,
| probably impossible to return, etc)
| tirant wrote:
| Sometimes. But the vast proportion live in China. Like 9000
| vs 1.4 Billion.
| kube-system wrote:
| If you are selling in the US, and an account with a primary
| address overseas buys your item and uses a US shipping
| address, you are likely shipping to a package forwarder.
| These services are common because many people and
| businesses in the US only ship to the US.
|
| I have my eBay account set this way, and I still get bids
| from overseas accounts -- I always Google the shipping
| address, 100% of the time it has been a package forwarder.
| Lammy wrote:
| > So my 4090 (24 GB) is probably going to get turned into a
| 48/96 GB VRAM frankenstein in a Chinese chop shop
|
| Cool, though. Where can I buy one? :p
| robotnikman wrote:
| last I checked you can find these cards with more VRAM on
| aliexpress and ebay.
| hinkley wrote:
| I got a work laptop stolen (in my favorite bag, which they
| don't make anymore) and found out from the police that
| there's a chain from fences for drug addicts to criminal
| organizations in the Middle East. They've found American
| hardware there a number of times. Little harder to steal a
| desktop graphics card in general, but breakins happen.
| txdv wrote:
| Can't they do it here? or will the authorities go after these
| kind of upgrades?
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| One of the keys being, of course, that the Chinese government
| doesn't care. Yeah it might require mules bringing the GPUs
| into China but once they're in China, no one is breaking any
| laws. Of course DeepSeek is using these GPUs! It's not illegal
| for them to do so!
| whatsupdog wrote:
| Chinese government recently banned Chinese companies from
| buying Nvidia chips.
| berdario wrote:
| Yup, the change was in the news in September
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/china-blocks-
| sal...
| hedora wrote:
| That's not a ban of nvidia chips though. It's for a few
| of the biggest companies, and is specifically telling
| them not to buy a made-for-china SKU:
|
| > The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) told
| companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba, this week to
| end their testing and orders of the RTX Pro 6000D,
| Nvidia's tailor-made product for the country, according
| to three people with knowledge of the matter
| lenerdenator wrote:
| The US government doesn't really care either.
|
| We have someone in the comments section talking about how
| they encountered a bunch of suspicious bidders on their GPU
| auction. That's not what happens when people care about being
| potentially investigated for breaking export rules.
| pests wrote:
| > suspicious bidders
|
| A person with a Chinese name living in Delaware? Gasp.
| hinkley wrote:
| Where does nvidia manufacture those chips?
| vel0city wrote:
| The Republic of a China, not the People's Republic of China.
| You might not legally be able to identify the difference in
| your jurisdiction.
| hinkley wrote:
| Right. I am a TSMC shareholder. I know this story.
| ok123456 wrote:
| CIA disinformation campaigns notwithstanding, maybe accept global
| competition, open-source models, and the fact that whatever
| advantage OpenAI had was fleeting and mostly squandered at this
| point. The tendency of the rate of profit to fall is especially
| brutal if you've never made a profit.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It seems pretty difficult to prevent two other countries from
| trading, especially when it is sort of low-volume (I mean how
| many boats full of GPUs was this? It isn't like oil or something,
| where we can see the infrastructure to consume it via satellite).
| Shin-- wrote:
| Good. Unsurprising (well, known), but good. In fact, the world
| would be a better place if the US would not use their influence
| to try to keep other countries down.
| watwut wrote:
| China banned them tho.
| Matl wrote:
| China banned them AFTER the US first banned them and then
| unbanned them and a series of unfriendly trade moves by the
| US.
|
| This discussion where China is always purely dishonest, bad
| etc. without any context is honestly lame.
|
| The Chinese ban is largely a political move designed to
| signal that they're not going to be pushed around. They
| pretty much know companies are using them, (and H100 in
| Thailand etc.) but as long as it sends a message and over
| time incentives domestic development, (which it does), then
| good as far as they're concerned.
|
| It's certainly better than the EU just rolling over for King
| Donald, which as a EU citizen is embarrassing.
| sofixa wrote:
| > It's certainly better than the EU just rolling over for
| King Donald, which as a EU citizen is embarrassing.
|
| I'm seeing it more as buying time thing. In sourcing as
| much as possible in the EU is already in progress, as well
| as various trade agreements with different countries and
| economic blocs. That doesn't mean it isn't preferable to
| play nice with the demented guy to make the transition less
| painful in the short term.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| "In fact, the world would be a better place if the US would not
| use their influence to try to keep other countries down."
|
| acting like china wouldn't doing the same thing to other
| country if they ever weld such position
|
| every great power would do the same thing to defend their
| position, its not unique to the US. only because current
| incumbent power is we see things this way
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| If I don't make the world worse then someone else will is
| such a depressing state of affairs.
|
| If that's the mentality, then what's worth fighting over? We
| should give up because we don't even deserve the rewards.
| rangestransform wrote:
| we shouldn't give up securing resources for ourselves, our
| loved ones, and our nations
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| "If I don't make the world worse then someone else will is
| such a depressing state of affairs."
|
| its not make the world worse but simply take what matters
| to your group
|
| does that evil??? hmmm noo, people call it patriotism
|
| what do you think entire US military base reside in 80% of
| the world btw????? does US military doing picnic on these
| country?????
|
| I can tell you answer but some people didn't want to
| confront reality and would be downvote me to hell
|
| but in the end someone gotta to do it
| epolanski wrote:
| When china will do it, I'll judge them for it.
| pembrook wrote:
| I agree that a fair playing field for everyone would be the
| ideal state.
|
| But let's not pretend China doesn't use their influence to keep
| other countries down as well, and let's not pretend they allow
| a fair playing field for foreign competitors domestically
| either.
|
| The US would not have imposed these targeted sanctions if China
| simply wanted to fairly compete in the marketplace.
| dlisboa wrote:
| The US sanctions have nothing to do with free market
| maximalism. I thought that was quite obvious historically and
| specially now. They've imposed tariffs on literally every
| country on the planet.
| verdverm wrote:
| Tariffs are applied to countries that we are "ripping off",
| if King Donald's definition is used consistently for every
| country. If we had a surplus, you still get a 10% tariff
| that Americans have to pay...
| pembrook wrote:
| It's my fault for wading into a political discussion on a
| forum of react developers. That's on me.
|
| But the "banned" chips this article is referring to and the
| original chips act is from the Biden administration, having
| nothing to do with the current tariff climate.
|
| Also, obviously US actions have nothing to do with free
| market maximalism. Nor does China feel that way either.
| Which is my point.
| remarkEon wrote:
| It's debatable whether it's a better use of US power and
| resources to try to stop PRC from obtaining these chips versus,
| say, sinking the Chinese fishing fleets actively wrecking
| entire ecosystems. I probably agree with you that on balance
| working on the later problem has a higher long term ROI.
| sneak wrote:
| Don't hate the player, hate the game.
| esafak wrote:
| The player has the power to change the game.
| nish__ wrote:
| That is just not true. The referees have the power to
| change the game. The fans have the power to change the
| game. The owners and the commissioners have the power to
| change the game. The players have no power at all.
| spencerflem wrote:
| I don't see how that follows
| xadhominemx wrote:
| China has promised to wage war and forcibly subjugate Taiwan, a
| democratic ally and critical trade partner. If China backed off
| Taiwan for a few decades, I think the US would drop export
| controls.
| dialectical wrote:
| >If China backed off Taiwan for a few decades, I think the US
| would drop export controls.
|
| Total historical illiteracy. if only there was an island
| nation immediately southeast of the US we could look to for
| information on how America treats countries that try the
| whole "back off" thing
| codedokode wrote:
| Sanctions just slightly increase the cost of obtaining an item,
| but don't make it impossible. Electronic components can be
| bought, oil can be sold, ChatGPT can be used via OpenRouter,
| sanctioned banks publish their apps under guise into App Store,
| etc. When there are 200 countries in the world, and money
| involved, you can get anything.
|
| Sanctioned goods could be used to spread propaganda though,
| imagine, for example, if installing a NVIDIA GPU driver required
| answering questions about Tiananmen square incident.
| amarant wrote:
| Imagine the correct answer being "what incident?"
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| I agree, except with the word "slightly". It can be so
| significant that this increased cost/friction is the very
| mechanism of the sanctions' effectiveness. Is it possible to
| police the Russian oil shadow fleet to extinction? Maybe, but
| even without doing so you can impose a decent haircut on their
| profits by issuing scary-sounding press releases and leaving it
| at that.
| codedokode wrote:
| Increased costs might be a factor in a competing commercial
| market, but for military purposes, you buy the components no
| matter the price or search for an alternative (China is now
| making lot of components - for example, resistors,
| transistors, logic chips - I have several 74HC chips of
| Chinese origin, and they are very cheap). Also, there are
| thousands ships and no legal basis for "policing" them in
| open sea.
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| This. And it should be obvious. Drugs are banned and illegal in
| almost every country, yet they reach the US in vast amounts.
| Why would a ban on GPUs suddenly work - especially since owning
| a truckload of GPU is perfectly legal in most countries.
| Smuggling them to where the demand is, is probably easier than
| smuggling drugs.
| codedokode wrote:
| Maybe criminal cartels should switch to GPU trafficking?
| bad_haircut72 wrote:
| By now most Mafias of the world are probably trying to
| train their own models
| sofixa wrote:
| Mexican cartels were branching out into the avocado trade,
| so why not.
| zipy124 wrote:
| Cartels, mafias and other criminal organisations have
| been involved in other industries for many generations
| now. Money laundering requires legitimate businesses and
| if that business happens to turn a profit. That's even
| better. Just look at the construction industry in new
| York or Italy many decades ago.
| stackskipton wrote:
| It is easier then smuggling drugs because US is not making it
| difficult to sidestep the sanctions. Hey, this random house
| in Delaware is buying a ton of GPUs, should we investigate?
| Nah, our donors don't actually want Nvidia stock to go down
| so ignore it.
| cj wrote:
| I don't think the root problem is political corruption or
| donors.
|
| If anything, the hundreds of millions of dollars from AI
| lobbyists would overwhelmingly support anything that would
| prevent anyone outside of the US getting their hands on
| computer chips.
|
| The AI lobby in support of banning export of chips is way
| greater than anyone lobbying the opposite.
|
| > should we investigate? Nah, our donors [...]
|
| The US government is a very slow moving bureaucracy. Slower
| to adapt than the slowest moving large public company.
|
| The GPU chip issue came about suddenly, out of the blue,
| and caught the government unprepared. When that happens, it
| typically takes government years to catch up and figure out
| how to adapt.
|
| Even in cases where incentives are aligned in favor of the
| government's position, they still take forever to roll out
| meaningful change with effective enforcement - e.g.
| charging sales tax on software business, remember that
| Supreme Court case years ago? Or remember all the concern
| about engineer salaries being de-categorized as R&D? These
| are examples that are legally decided but gov is incredibly
| slow to enforce. The Wayfair supreme court case was back in
| 2018, right? Many years later, most SaaS companies are
| still getting away with not charging sales tax. Certain
| states are just now stating to enforce, 7 years later.
| dlisboa wrote:
| Investigate and do what? It's not illegal to buy GPUs, the
| sanctions have no power in this space. Who could a law even
| hurt here, the seller who is a single individual? If they
| made it illegal to individually export them out of the US
| the Chinese could just buy them somewhere else.
| stackskipton wrote:
| You can investigate buyers who have anomalous purchase
| patterns for sanction violations and convict them. DEA
| commonly looks at narcotic purchases by legal buyers for
| indications they might be funneling it to illegal market
| and investigates. NVidia could report "Hey, we are seeing
| massive purchases from entities we didn't expect so you
| might want to look into that"
| rchaud wrote:
| The illegality of something and the enforcement of that
| illegality can be mutually exclusive. Iran had sanctions
| placed on them after the 1979 revolution, but the US funneled
| arms to them anyway to raise money to ovethrow the Nicaraguan
| government [0]. Cocaine is illegal but the CIA trafficked it
| anyway to again raise money to topple the Sandinistas [1].
|
| [0] https://www.history.com/articles/iran-contra-
| affair#Oliver-N...
|
| [1] https://www.cnn.com/US/9811/03/cia.drugs/
| nyolfen wrote:
| great thinking, that must be why the ccp doesn't care about
| this policy
| mcdow wrote:
| This is tangential but the whole Tiananmen Square thing is kind
| of odd. When I visited China many people were more willing to
| discuss it than I had imagined. Some spoke about it
| unsolicited. It's a tourist destination you have to buy tickets
| for. It's rather subtle what can and cannot be discussed
| relating to it. Those I spoke to about it told me that most
| people have a good understanding of what happened, and many
| people speak negatively of the CCP. You just can't do it if you
| have a major platform (e.g. you're Jack Ma or you are an LLM).
|
| Not to discount how negative free speech restrictions are, but
| I'm not so sure how effective that particular propaganda
| campaign would be.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| A few things: In tourist areas they will feel comfortable
| talking about the protests/reprisal because they get
| inundated by American tourists wanting to ask them about it.
| "It's a tourist destination you have to buy tickets for" ->
| Right, Tiananmen square has no stigma at all, but that is
| different from the 1989 incident.
|
| If you post about the 1989 incident on Weibo, it will
| absolutely get removed and you _might_ get the local police
| visiting you -- depending on how much time they have on their
| hands and how incendiary your post was.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > many people speak negatively of the CCP
|
| Probably true. Right up to the point where they attract a
| little too much attention, or annoy the wrong party official.
| Then all that they said becomes evidence of their crimes.
| mring33621 wrote:
| ohhh nooo!
| syntaxing wrote:
| Since the supply chain is all from the same place, they can get
| so creative and resourceful. You can get 48 and 96GB VRAM 3090 on
| the grey market which is pretty awesome.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| I've seen comments saying that many foundational model providers
| like DeepSeek haven't done a full pretraining in a long time.
| Does that mean this use of chips is in reference to the past?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Whilst there aren't many papers on the matter, I would guess
| that pretraining from scratch is a bit of a waste of money when
| you could simply expand the depth/width of the 'old' model and
| retrain only the 'new' bit.
| KurSix wrote:
| Even if they're not doing full-from-scratch training every
| cycle, any serious model updates still soak up GPU hours
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Did china ban them too? I mean.. why should a chinese company
| care about american regulation?
| jjcc wrote:
| Yes. China banned NVidia. Jensen Huang said NVidia is the first
| one in the history banned by both sides. So Deepseek might find
| a way to get around Chinese government ban if the claim is true
| rvnx wrote:
| Long term consequences: China outperforms Nvidia, by producing
| cheaper, faster chips at a large scale, by getting inspired by
| the IP but using their own production lines.
|
| Through sanctions, the irony is that the west removed the
| incentive for China to respect IP laws.
|
| Well done.
|
| If they can solve the lithography/ASML issue by getting access to
| it, then they will be forced to win.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I thought it was impossible for them to leapfrog without
| actively occupying the TSMC fab as it takes years and years
| just to dial-in the insane precision.
| palmotea wrote:
| > Long term consequences: China outperforms Nvidia, by
| producing cheaper, faster chips at a large scale, by getting
| inspired by the IP but using their own production lines.
|
| Unlike your typical free market fanboy, the Chinese leadership
| isn't stupid. They were always planning to do that, sanctions
| or no.
|
| Realistically, all sanctions can do is mess with their
| timelines for some temporary strategic advantage, slowing some
| things down and forcing reallocation of investment away from
| other areas into the sanctioned areas.
|
| The US refraining from sanctions is likely the stupid move,
| because that lever of control will expire at some point. To not
| use it is to squander it.
|
| But if there's one thing the US government and its business
| elite is good at, it's squandering things.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| "Planning to do it" is one thing, but thanks to Trump's
| erratic and corrupt trade policy, they now have a Manhattan
| Project-level incentive to make it happen.
|
| It's ridiculous to think they won't succeed, just by dint of
| sheer numbers alone.
| palmotea wrote:
| > "Planning to do it" is one thing, but thanks to Trump's
| erratic and corrupt trade policy, they now have a Manhattan
| Project-level incentive to make it happen.
|
| The plans weren't wishes, they were things they were
| actively working on to make happen. The point is they
| didn't need "Trump's erratic and corrupt trade policy" to
| motivate it, _they were already motivated to do it anyway_.
|
| The US's problem is that its actions are uncoordinated.
| Sanctions and tariffs need to be coupled with massive
| investments to build new capabilities, and the latter is
| usually lacking. For instance, tariff revenue (and then
| some) should be poured directly into subsidies for building
| _new_ facilities that support critical industries (like
| rare earths and electronics manufacturing). And things
| would probably be counterintuitively more effective if
| there was more tolerance of waste For instance, China 's
| subsidized hundreds of solar panel manufacturers, none of
| them make money and a lot have probably failed, but the
| vicious domestic competition has helped them dominate that
| technology globally. The US freaked out in a massive
| scandal when one subsidized solar panel maker went out of
| business.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _The plans weren 't wishes, they were things they were
| actively working on to make happen. The point is they
| didn't need "Trump's erratic and corrupt trade policy" to
| motivate it, they were already motivated to do it
| anyway._
|
| Yes, they were "actively working on it"; no, they had
| made little significant progress despite throwing tons of
| money at the initiative.
|
| There were lots of stories along the lines of
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/technology/china-
| microchi... from the early 2020s, not so many lately.
| Their internal posture will now be the same as Russia's
| post-1945 push for the Bomb. Continued failure will
| (possibly literally) place heads at stake.
|
| _The US 's problem is that its actions are
| uncoordinated._
|
| They are coordinated well enough, but with the goal of
| magnifying Cheeto Benito's personal influence and
| cultivating his in-group's fortunes.
| palmotea wrote:
| > Yes, they were "actively working on it"; no, they had
| made little significant progress despite throwing tons of
| money at the initiative.
|
| That's how things sometimes go when you're building up a
| capability. I'm sure they were going to work through the
| setbacks, regardless.
|
| >> The US's problem is that its actions are
| uncoordinated.
|
| > They are coordinated well enough, but with the goal of
| magnifying Cheeto Benito's personal influence and
| cultivating his in-group's fortunes.
|
| No. That problem is bigger than the Trump
| administrations, focusing on him is lazy.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _No. That problem is bigger than the Trump
| administrations, focusing on him is lazy._
|
| It's absurd to say that without elaborating on how anyone
| else was "just as bad," which I expect will be a key part
| of your next reply.
|
| Trump is fucking _bad_ , and if you disagree after all
| we've seen, you're either arguing in bad faith, or you're
| not such a great person yourself. He is costing us every
| jot and tittle of soft power we ever wielded as a nation.
|
| Trump is the living embodiment of the old cliche about
| how in the Chinese language, the words for "threat" and
| "opportunity" are similar. His actions have comforted
| Russia, alienated Europe, and galvanized China.
| codedokode wrote:
| I don't know much about GPUs, but is there really any value in
| IP? I can learn to write HDL code all day long, but turning it
| into real transistors is the hard part. Code is worth nothing
| nowadays with AI.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| not IP in particular but APIs. Putting your existing CUDA
| codebase into new NVIDIA generation that might be noticeably
| more expensive but is still faster/more energy-efficient than
| competition.
|
| Competition's software stack have to be good enough that it
| is worth migrating over and I think till we get some kind of
| cross vendor API for that it won't happen for a while
| llm_nerd wrote:
| There is a sudden groundswell of reports about China using nvidia
| chips, always by unnamed sources, and I suspect if you could
| trace it back you'll find nvidia pulling the levers.
|
| nvidia is facing a lot of competitive threats and their moat is
| being filled in. Google with their Ironwood TPU. Amazon with
| Trainium3. Even Apple is adding tensor cores to their chips, and
| if Apple went big scale it would be legitimate in the space as
| well.
|
| We know that China has a number of upstart TPU vendors, and
| Huawei has built some "better than H200" solutions with a roadmap
| to much higher heights.
|
| So there is suddenly a bunch of secret-source reports that no,
| China actually is totally reliant on nvidia. nvidia needs this to
| be true, or at least people to believe it to be true.
|
| I mean, after all the fanfare about the H200 being allowed to be
| exported, nvidia shares...dropped. The market doesn't seem to be
| buying the China reliance bluster.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| I'm shocked, shocked!
| protimewaster wrote:
| Are these chips that are now banned but we're previously
| available? If so, doesn't this basically mean nothing? They could
| just be using chips that they bought when they were allowed to
| buy them.
| jldugger wrote:
| Afaik, data center grade blackwell chips have never been legal
| for export to china. I think this has more do to with NVIDIA
| than DeepSeek. For a brief moment, people thought DeepSeek had
| found some way to produce AI without sending boatloads of cash
| to NVIDIA, causing a drop in share price.
|
| Shortly thereafter people realized they were probably just
| evading sanctions and ~stealing~ bootstrapping parameters from
| other models to reach their stated training cost. This report
| is just further reporting on that rumor.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| Well if unnamed sources are saying it you know it has to be true.
| yamal4321 wrote:
| "No shit Sherlock" moment
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| The ban is on Nvidia selling the chip to China. There is no ban
| on China using the chips. So long as NVidia isn't knowingly
| selling the chips to China this is a nothing burger.
| Zigurd wrote:
| The neo cloud providers, especially those outside the US, with
| dubious financial backing, that are buying Nvidia chips as if
| they were an appreciating asset, kind of like being a bitcoin
| treasury, will be tempted to create some income in ways that
| break sanctions.
| lopatin wrote:
| Oh no! Anyway ...
| int32_64 wrote:
| What's strange in this discussion of chips and export bans is
| there's been zero discussion of cloud access, I guess networked
| computers are difficult for America's gerontocrats to understand.
|
| I've rented H100s no problem on American servers and there's no
| KYC or anything, they let anybody do it.
| mromanuk wrote:
| Yes, it's easy, cheap and it works. Maybe they need a super big
| volume and all the GPUs in the same space, to guarantee minimum
| latency.
| sneak wrote:
| You can't really spend $500k on AWS without doing some form of
| identity disclosure.
| vidarh wrote:
| A shell company complete with directors of your preferred
| nationality is trivial to procure for relatively small
| amounts of money.
| int32_64 wrote:
| That's fair, I'm also not accessing these resources from
| Russia or North Korea so I imagine there's different
| precautions for different countries.
| dtech wrote:
| I don't think DeepSeek could do that in the volume they need
| hinkley wrote:
| It's always the bandwidth. Noisy neighbors or part of the
| Eight Fallacies and the cloud tries to pretend they don't
| exist.
| biophysboy wrote:
| I mean, I thought the paranoia was about China making their own
| models with their own chips. If they're renting USA models via
| the cloud, that's "good".
| xadhominemx wrote:
| You should really seek to actually understand an issue before
| you comment so arrogantly.
|
| US authorities are ok with Chinese companies accessing GPUs in
| overseas DCs because those DCs will still be subject any US
| export controls. Right now, we don't really care if Chinese
| companies are building tier-2 LLMs on US gear. If China invades
| Taiwan or frontier models approach AGI, we will shut down those
| Malaysian and Thai data centers overnight.
| nish__ wrote:
| Traditional social norms are reversed online because there is
| no threat of immediate violence. Arrogance gets attention.
| Politeness gets ignored. Don't be so harsh. It's just how
| this generation communicates.
| hinkley wrote:
| If the CIA shows up, Amazon is 100% going to let them rootkit
| those boxes. They might even have a way to do it without
| rebooting your servers.
| sofixa wrote:
| To obtain what? Deepseek's newest open source model before
| they release it?
| hinkley wrote:
| You think they're only going to eavesdrop?
|
| You're mistaking them for the FBI. CIA has destabilized
| entire countries.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Imagine being a blackmarket GPU smuggler. High danger and high
| reward to get the most advanced AI silicon to a corporation
| operating under a repressive regime.
|
| Sounds straight out of sci-fi.
| KurSix wrote:
| The wild part is that it sounds sci-fi, but the reality is
| probably way less glamorous
| RobotToaster wrote:
| I don't think a h100 in the prison pocket would be very
| comfortable.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Illegal video gamers playing 3d shooters in virtual world using
| contraband gpus
| KurSix wrote:
| Meanwhile, Nvidia is in the awkward position of being legally
| required to deny everything but economically incentivized to sell
| as much as Washington allows
| kazinator wrote:
| > _chips that are banned in the country_
|
| > _The US bans the sale of these advanced semiconductors to
| China_
|
| Whoa there, Bloomberg; just because the USA bans the sale of
| something _to_ your country doesn 't make it banned _in_ your
| country.
| Andoryuuta wrote:
| I believe it is very much a two-way ban, depending on the
| specific chips [0].
|
| [0]: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/9/17/china-bans-
| tech-...
| pests wrote:
| China banned companies from buying the made-for-China 6000D.
|
| I'm sure they have knowledge of it being backdoored or
| underpowered/buggy.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| IIRC they ban companies that got funding from china's
| government. i.e. they don't want their investment in AI to go
| to NVIDIA but to local chipmakers
| sofixa wrote:
| > Whoa there, Bloomberg; just because the USA bans the sale of
| something to your country doesn't make it banned in your
| country.
|
| Many Americans, including their government, seem to think that
| US laws apply globally.
|
| They have extradited Ukrainian men from Poland because that
| Ukrainian was running a torrent website (illegal in the US, not
| illegal in Ukraine nor Poland).
|
| They tried getting an Australian extradited from Sweden and the
| UK for supposedly hosting a website that contained information
| the US government considered illegally obtained.
|
| More egregiously, they have kidnapped tens to hundreds of
| people from various countries, sometimes on reasons as flimsy
| as watch model or name, to torture (sometimes to death),
| because a lawyer working for the president decided that's
| actually legal because they're _waves hands_ "enemy
| combattants".
| ebbi wrote:
| The same government that runs Guantanamo prison, known for
| it's illegal torture practices and imprisoning people with no
| charges?
|
| Can't be!
| epolanski wrote:
| Fun fact, when US prisoner of wars were water boarded by
| the Japanese, these got death sentences.
|
| When a US soldier was photographed in Vietnam waterboarding
| a vietnamese PoW he got 22 years of prison.
|
| Then came 2002 and rule of law stopped applying.
| sofixa wrote:
| > When a US soldier was photographed in Vietnam
| waterboarding a vietnamese PoW he got 22 years of prison.
|
| Really? Did he serve more than a month? Because if the
| people who committed My Lai for off with slaps on the
| wrist, I can't imagine something as trivial as
| waterboarding would get any serious consequences.
| epolanski wrote:
| I am referring to this is the picture [1] which was
| printed on the post in 1968.
|
| I am not able to find more information about the court
| martialed soldier, but the fact that he was sentenced to
| 22 years of prison is a quote from a lecture of professor
| Sarah Paine from the US Navy War Academy.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Waterboarding_a_ca
| ptured_...
| DivingForGold wrote:
| What do you want to bet ALL GPU's being manufactured by US
| sources have NSA requirements that now have built into the chips
| and firmware interesting "controls". They know what region of the
| world the chip is in, they have features to "brick them" in case
| of war, etc. Encrypted communication back to US servers required,
| or if denied, then GPU will not function, etc.
| cj wrote:
| I'd be curious to hear how that could be achieved at a
| technical level.
|
| Presumably everything youre describing could be averted by
| simply air gapping the hardware? Or tightly controlling how
| data gets into and out of the system where the chips are used?
| sneak wrote:
| I'd bet good money. The chips have been decapped and roughly
| analyzed, the only information going into or out of them is
| from the host systems. Those are easy to convince they are
| anywhere. Chips don't have wifi or gps or radios of any kind
| inside of them, and what the nvidia drivers send and receive to
| the world is easy to audit.
|
| You give the tech too much credit.
| dmboyd wrote:
| This explains the 1000s of "no core no vram" listings for 5090s
| If it were due to parts substitution for repairs, would have
| expected they would be RMA'd rather than salvaged as they'd all
| be within warranty.
| Keyframe wrote:
| Since they're going to get them anyways, maybe we should exchange
| a few for a few pandas with the right to reproduce.
| kingjimmy wrote:
| :shocked pikachu face:
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Related: Deepseek just leapfrogged the competition. Scores gold
| in 2025's IMO, IOI, and ICPC world finals with an openweights
| model.
| bflesch wrote:
| If the companies which are officially banned from owning these
| products already own them, what does it say about recent
| initiatives to unban Nvidia sales in China?
|
| If demand of companies like deepseek has already been served,
| will they buy significant volume of additional products from
| nvidia once it is "legal" again?
|
| It feels like the initiative of US politics to unblock nvidia
| China sales might not be very fruitful.
| natch wrote:
| Anyone interested in the topic of whether the US can stay ahead
| of China should ask AI to explain to them the Chinese concepts of
| Kong Jiang Mei Guo Ren and Mei Bao .
|
| These concepts are the reason why during some periods flights to
| the US have had an uncanny number of pregnant women and flights
| back to China have had an uncanny number of newborn babies.
|
| Now these babies are adults with US citizenship, with some who
| returned to the US after primary school and became fully fluent
| native English speakers, and some of whom may be thoroughly
| culturally loyal to the Chinese communist party. And 100%
| hireable by top US AI firms and working there as we speak.
|
| It's staring everyone right in the face, but it's taboo to talk
| about, because people conflate concerns about cultural loyalty
| with racism.
|
| I don't dislike these people. I welcome them. I also hope they
| will learn the value of freedom and (representative) democracy.
| btw Taiwan is a litmus test. (If you are one of the people I'm
| speaking about, and you think it would be great if the CCP could
| take over Taiwan, your values are not aligned with freedom and
| democracy.)
|
| The point is it's just silly to think we can stay ahead of China.
| Some of their best researchers are embedded in some of our best
| teams.
|
| Keeping the technology from our best researchers is not going to
| work imho. The only avenue I see is to try to culture hack the AI
| efforts, and maybe most of the researchers, to be well aligned as
| we go.
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| Cool plot for a novel, I'd read that!
| rangestransform wrote:
| It's really annoying to me that China is in this superposition
| between a Han ethnostate and a self-proclaimed multicultural
| multiethnic society, and it always happens to be the more
| convenient one for any side to make their point
| tehjoker wrote:
| hope so! why should computing technology be restricted based on
| country? this isn't a nuclear missile (and china already has
| those, with a much saner strategic policy than us too (we have no
| policy against preemptive strikes!))
| platevoltage wrote:
| I mean, it makes sense in the USA's head. They want to win the
| AI race. What they are doing is making it so China has no
| choice but to develop an alternative to Nvidia chips.
|
| Eventually China will make their own shovels to dig up the
| gold. I'm not sure what this would do to Nvidia, but I'm sure
| we will find out.
| tehjoker wrote:
| The funny thing is we do not have the ability to do more than
| slow them down briefly, so this will simply result in the
| production of a totally parallel capability that can then be
| sold to the rest of the world
| gosub100 wrote:
| We gotta protect Altmans and Jensen's moat. Can't have those Bad
| Guys compete and drive down profits.
| hinkley wrote:
| Hmm. I've been out of the loop too long. When did China start
| getting munitions laws thrown at it? When I cared to know, Boeing
| could sell to everyone except NK, Syria, Iran, and two others I'm
| now blanking on. It didn't matter we were using cryptography that
| couldn't ship there because it was illegal for them to have our
| hardware in the first place.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I thought this was common knowledge. DeepSeek's Wikipedia entry
| says that they trained all their models on Nvidia chips procured
| before the U.S. embargo to China on them. It wouldn't surprise me
| if they continued acquiring them through, well, less than legal
| means.
|
| I also read somewhere (not Wikipedia) that they trained on
| ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini queries, basically feeding in the
| output of competitor's LLMs as training data. Kinda surprised
| they didn't run into model collapse problems, but they stole
| their training data from other people who stole their training
| data from data collections that arguably stole them from content
| creators. It's bandits all the way down, so adding a little
| smuggling to that doesn't surprise me.
| echelon wrote:
| > Kinda surprised they didn't run into model collapse problems,
|
| This is just model distillation.
|
| Anyone with the expertise to build a model from scratch (which
| DeepSeek certainly can) can do this in a careful manner.
|
| > but they stole their training data from other people who
| stole their training data from data collections that arguably
| stole them from content creators.
|
| Bingo.
|
| I have no problem with pirates pirating other pirates.
|
| Screw OpenAI and Anthropic closed source models built from
| public data. The law should be that weights trained from non-
| owned sources should be public domain, or that any copyright
| holder can sue them and demand model takedown.
|
| Google and Meta are probably the only two AI companies that
| have a right to license massive amounts of training data from
| social media and user file uploads given that their ToSes grant
| them these rights. But even Meta is pirating stuff.
|
| Even if OpenAI and Anthropic continue pirating training data
| and keeping the results closed, China's open source strategy
| will win out in the end. It erodes the crust of value that is
| carefully guarded by the American giants. Everyone else will be
| integrating open models and hacking them apart, splicing them
| in new ways.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _Google and Meta are probably the only two companies that
| have a right to license their training data_
|
| For the sake of someone unfamiliar... Why is that?
|
| Did they pay teams of monkeys to generate their own, novel
| training data? Or gain explicit, opt-in permission from users
| who entrust them with their files/content?
| echelon wrote:
| > For the sake of someone unfamiliar... Why is that?
|
| I edited my comment, but basically they both own massive
| social media properties (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook) or
| file upload sites (Google Drive, Google Photos, Gmail) and
| their ToSes grant them these rights. You accept these terms
| when you use their services.
|
| That's not great, but we are getting free services. It's in
| the terms.
|
| It's a whole lot better than just scraping without
| permission, compensation, acknowledgement, or even notice.
|
| To be clear, I have no problem with these models being
| built. But if they "steal" the data, the resultant model
| shouldn't be owned by anyone. It should be public domain
| and not allowed to be kept as a trade secret.
|
| And it's funny that Anthropic is trying to depress our
| wages by training on our code. Again - I'm fine with that -
| I want to work faster, and I like these models and their
| capabilities. But Anthropic shouldn't be able to own the
| models they train off of us exclusively since they didn't
| license or buy our data. They provided us with nothing at
| all.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _You accept these terms when you use their services._
|
| I certainly didn't*. I'd love to see litigation testing
| just how solid those insidious opt-in-by-default schemes
| are as a basis for "ownership".
|
| If they had users _explicitly_ opt-in with a "Yes, go
| ahead and train on my stuff and by the way I assert that
| I have all the rights to grant you the same", I'd have no
| problem with that, and they'd have a much stronger claim.
|
| (*Before others inevitably disagree: I do opt-out of this
| stuff aggressively, and further send notice to companies
| from time to time that I don't agree to certain
| objectionable clauses of their ToS and they're welcome to
| close my account).
| ahtihn wrote:
| > and further send notice to companies from time to time
| that I don't agree to certain objectionable clauses of
| their ToS and they're welcome to close my account
|
| And then you stopped using their service right?
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Facebook stole copyrighted material well above their own
| and admitted to it. It's not just "we took our users
| data", its "we literally downloaded torrent with 81
| terabytes of books and used that for training".
|
| Google most likely did something similar, just using
| books they already had indexed in Google Books, and
| probably by still seriously violating any reasonable
| notion of copyright
| ffsm8 wrote:
| The explicit opt in is only necessary under gdpr, which is
| a lot of data, but not a majority.
| rkagerer wrote:
| _only necessary under gdpr_
|
| It's not that simple. The EU may be the only ones to have
| codified that, but there's centuries of case law in other
| jurisdictions dealing with ownership, that once the
| matter hits litigation might turn out to say something
| other than these tech companies would like.
| noboostforyou wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Meta stole a bunch of content for training
| by torrenting it - https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-
| industry/court-documents-show...
| lysace wrote:
| Singapore is where it happens.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > less than legal means.
|
| This is an absurd concept when it comes to international trade.
| Even intellectual property is mostly meaningless outside a
| state. Of course people will evade sanctions; what is the us
| going to do, invade singapore or malaysia?
| tlb wrote:
| Just because something is hard to enforce doesn't mean it's
| absurd.
|
| Embargoes aren't impossible to enforce against the foreign
| importer. If a foreign entity is found to have placed orders
| with false documents, they can be sanctioned, which can be
| enforced against any of their international operations. It
| makes it hard for them to do future business in global
| markets. I would not recommend violating US sanctions no
| matter where you are.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| The companies it "stole" from broke the law in their own
| country while acquiring the training data; frankly sanction
| avoidance is lesser and arguably not even their (it's the
| people in US that smuggle them, nothing breaking china law
| afaik) crime
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| > I also read somewhere (not Wikipedia) that they trained on
| ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini queries, basically feeding in the
| output of competitor's LLMs as training data
|
| All the labs permitting synthetic data do that.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| > It's bandits all the way down, so adding a little smuggling
| to that doesn't surprise me.
|
| Implying it's *morally* wrong for a Chinese company to bypass
| US sanctions is hilarious. You really say that with a straight
| face when even the president admits this is only protectionism?
| echelon wrote:
| It's the moral imperative of every country to optimize for
| its citizens' economic prospects.
|
| The CIA (and every other intelligence org.) is literally a
| weapon designed to operate in the grey area to fit the
| mandate of the policy makers and elected leadership. Many of
| the things they do are questionable or worse. In the case of
| the DoD, they do these things at the behest of democratically
| elected leadership.
|
| Of course US and China will operate in their own best
| interests. Of course they will both play chess, both name
| call, both sanction and impede. When it's not a hot war, it
| is still a never-ending battle for each country's total
| economic, soft, and hard power market share.
|
| This is every country.
|
| It's geopolitics.
| yannyu wrote:
| This is just "might makes right" but modern. I don't know
| that this is the consistent, wide-held belief that you seem
| to think it is. Plenty of people would rather our
| governments not engage in clandestine disruption and
| undermining of foreign governments.
|
| Competition is inevitable, especially between geopolitical
| rivals, but we don't have to engage in Minitrue-style "the
| enemy has always been our enemy" rhetoric.
| echelon wrote:
| We live under economic conditions created by a government
| that does intervene. And a greater world order
| established by a hegemon that does intervene.
|
| It would be interesting to see what life would be like
| today had that not happened. It might be better, it might
| be worse. Probably a little of both for different groups
| of people.
|
| As the world returns to multi-polarity, there are signs
| of increases in violence.
|
| The last time the world had multi-polarity, we had far
| more wars. Including the worst wars the world has ever
| seen.
| yannyu wrote:
| > The last time the world had multi-polarity, we had far
| more wars. Including the worst wars the world has ever
| seen.
|
| Citations? Simply saying that World War 1 happened during
| a time of multi-polarity is just begging the question.
| Multi-polarity of varying degrees has always been the
| case throughout human history, and often times single-
| polarity is achieved only through extreme violence.
| codyb wrote:
| American Hegemony or Pax Americana (post WWII until
| present) is the most peaceful period of human history,
| despite the myriad atrocities which have occurred during
| that period, from myriad different parties, including the
| USA itself
|
| A big reason for that, as far as I can tell, is that if
| one side has the USA on its side, they're basically
| unattackable for many places since the USA is so over
| powered militarily and can project force anywhere
|
| It stands to reason as the USA recedes from the world's
| stage it will get more violent as more nations stand at
| parity with their adversaries again. And we're certainly
| seeing wars cropping up lately as the US continues to
| undermine its traditional allies, bully adversaries,
| declare trade wars, and withdraw from agreements.
| realusername wrote:
| This is not news, I had "the multi polar world" in
| history class in high school in the early 2000s, it's
| just that the US suddenly realized it and has been blind
| to the change for a while.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Do you think countries behave differently than what the
| parent has said? This has been going on forever, since
| the first clan of humans fought another, any reasoning
| other than "might makes right" is a post-hoc
| rationalization not based in history.
| hearsathought wrote:
| > It's the moral imperative of every country to optimize
| for its citizens' economic prospects.
|
| "Moral imperative"? No country was ever created out of a
| moral imperative. None. Also, no country was ever created
| to optimize for its citizens' economic prospects. Every
| country was created by the elites for the benefits of the
| elites.
| echelon wrote:
| > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
| are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
| with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
| Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to
| secure these rights, Governments are instituted among
| Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
| governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes
| destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People
| to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
| Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
| organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem
| most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
|
| The _intent_ is there.
|
| It's an incredibly complex distributed system with
| millions of actors and interactions, entrenched powers,
| regulatory capture, Citizens United, etc. It has to be
| defended and garbage collected.
| hearsathought wrote:
| > The intent is there.
|
| The declaration of independence was written by one of the
| wealthiest slave owners in the country. "Moral
| imperative" was certainly not behind the american
| revolution. The economic interests of the elites were.
| There are no saints in politics. Just interests - mostly
| of the elites.
| godsinhisheaven wrote:
| This is an extremely reductive take. Thomas Jefferson was
| a hero and a scholar! Think about the times he lived in,
| everyone lived under some sort of aristocratic monarchy,
| that was the norm. Certainly there were some economic
| interests at play in tge Revolution, but is it
| economically smart to declare independence from the most
| powerful empire of the day? Indeed, many of the "elites"
| at the time sided with the British! There had to be
| something more than just "class interests" at play to
| convince these wealthy elites to renounce their fealty to
| their government, giving up all legal claims to their
| property and indeed their very lives, should the
| revolutionaries have lost.
| coliveira wrote:
| You mean, the fiction is there. They did use a lot of
| nice words, but the reality is a bunch of slave owners
| creating a society controlled by oligarchs.
| drysine wrote:
| >It's the moral imperative of every country to optimize for
| its citizens' economic prospects.
|
| Moral???
| coliveira wrote:
| Correct, this is double-speak at its maximum.
| coliveira wrote:
| The US wants to have its cake and eat it too. It will pose
| around as a democratic and peaceful force, and use these
| illegal and shady tactics whenever they seem fit. And if
| you say this, their enablers in the traditional media will
| label you a conspiracy theorist.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| > The CIA (and every other intelligence org.) is literally
| a weapon designed to operate in the grey area to fit the
| mandate of the policy makers and elected leadership
|
| There is some truth, but this is how you get a crappy-ass
| intelligence agency.
|
| Good intelligence agencies are focused on gathering
| intelligence, not performing random tasks that benefit from
| secrecy.
| voidnap wrote:
| Yes. The bans are export controls. They are not banned in
| china. They are just banned from export in the US. Using them
| in china is legal in china.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _Yes. The bans are export controls._
|
| These export controls increasingly look like "tax".
| The White House said the US government would take a 25
| percent cut of the chip's sales, similar to a deal with AMD
| and Nvidia earlier this year that allowed them to sell
| lower-powered AI chips to China while paying the US
| government 15 percent of the proceeds.
|
| > _Using them in China is legal in China._
|
| Technically, yes. The CCP, though, wants to incentivize
| Chinese firms to use domestically-manufactured chips.
|
| https://www.silicon.co.uk/e-innovation/artificial-
| intelligen... / https://archive.vn/B2pah
| htek wrote:
| That's Corporatism. It's from the fascist playbook where
| the state takes partial or complete ownership of private
| companies. Where does that money go, to some slush fund
| for the president? The reason for the export controls is
| to keep our potential adversaries from being on the
| bleeding edge of frontier AI. It goes against the US's
| interests to give China a leg up with advanced chips.
| It's almost laughable, of course, as the Nvidia chips are
| already manufactured in a country that China claims as
| their own. If they ever pressed the issue, we could find
| ourselves without the most advanced chips.
| parodysbird wrote:
| This is not at all what is meant by fascist corporatism,
| nor corporatism more generally. Corporatism is more about
| collective bargaining by professional trades, and is
| _not_ the sense of corporation as used for private
| companies.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| This recent White House is another animal. It's just
| bribes all the way down.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Smuggling or buying from a smuggler is on the "banditry" side
| whether you think it's moral or not.
| tmnvix wrote:
| Hypothetical: I buy a product imported legally from the US
| and later sell it on the local used market to a Chinese
| tourist who takes it back to China with them. Where is the
| crime, smuggling, or 'banditry' here? US law is just that -
| _US_ law.
| KumaBear wrote:
| Lets take the weapons embargos placed on Israel by our allies.
| In the NDAA must pass bill we set funds aside to procure those
| weapons and sell them to Israel. We don't really care about
| these things we have selective enforcement.
| htrp wrote:
| Everyone trains on queries from other models, it's called
| distillation
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| Well, given AI content cannot be copyrighted, haters can hate
| hate hate hate hate...
| halJordan wrote:
| That's a little disingenuous. If i buy a printer and use
| the ink in the cartridge to reverse engineer a beautiful
| red, have i stolen something from the printer manufacturer?
| Especially if they lose business because they no longer
| have what distinguished them?
|
| Clean room design is not new (or illegal), but it's always
| been a form of stealing
| epolanski wrote:
| Lol @ quoting 3 companies that broke any possible copyright law
| as victims.
| coliveira wrote:
| They don't need to break any laws for this. Where do you think
| are the customers for data centers in the Middle East? Chinese
| companies do everything legally, paying for access to data
| centers that got the chips directly from the US.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| The main reason "Nvidia chips control" doesn't work is because
| laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining Nvidia chips nor
| breaking laws.
| hinkley wrote:
| Young travelers have always found ways to subsidize their trips
| by selling some of their personal possessions while there. I
| heard Levi's were so popular during the Cold War that customs
| started counting your clothes going in and out of Russia, which
| still wouldn't stop someone swapping a worn out pair for new
| ones.
|
| And American cigarettes were popular in Canada in the 90's and
| 00's. IIRC the Turkish tobacco blended in was banned by the
| Canadian state dept so theirs were garbage. Meanwhile Americans
| were flying into Canada in order to fly to Cuba.
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| Oh no, this will lead to better models for less money!
| almosthere wrote:
| Nvidia sells to Bob Bob sells to China Bob is a
| citizen of O
|
| O = location where no laws broken
| higginsniggins wrote:
| Bob is a citizen of X, the site formerly known as twitter where
| their are no laws
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is the least surprising thing ever and was highly suspected
| when DeepSeek released their original model.
|
| We've also seen this with sanctions on Russia but they still
| somehow bought a bunch of TI chips for missiles [1].
|
| As many here know, the US restricts the export of certain
| technology to China because reasons. This includes lithography
| machines from ASML, a Dutch company, who have a monopoly on the
| latest EUV processes. It's geopolitically interesting that the
| big buyer of ASML products are TSMC in TAiwan as well as Samsung
| in South Korea (and possibly Japan?).
|
| I expect this will become a national security issue for China and
| long-term you will see China try and replicate the best
| lithographic processes and chips such that the gap will greatly
| narrow. This will take years and involves a lot of depenedent
| industries but of anyone China has shown the willingness, ability
| and resolve to pursue decades-long infrastructure and national
| security projects.
|
| In the meantime, bans on GPU exports to China will continue to be
| circumvented (eg [2]) and honestly there's no real reason for
| those export restrictions anyway.
|
| [1]: https://archive.is/S2uD4
|
| [2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-justice-department-
| ac...
| byyoung3 wrote:
| Send to Singapore then to China, it's a prett simple loophole.
| platevoltage wrote:
| Fine. Good. Unless you want the Chinese to be even more motivated
| to develop an alternative to Nvidia chips.
| nextworddev wrote:
| I mean of course that's the case
| reeeli wrote:
| kawaii nonsense, please do some journalism and dig into some
| relevant stuff, Mr. Dump and Mrs. Pump
| Havoc wrote:
| The gamernexus point about "open one eye, close one eye" was on
| point here.
|
| China instructed companies to stop using nvidia chips
| too...knowing fully well it'll not stop. It achieves their aim
| though - a strong nudge in the direction of independence.
|
| Much of Chinese top level direction seems to be that way -
| indicating direction of travel and implied future threats for
| companies not rowing in said direction
|
| As for the US side of the ban - that's about as sound as the war
| on drugs. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows
| that's futile
| embedding-shape wrote:
| As someone who doesn't want to live in a country run by
| corporations, that first part of indication the direction of
| travel sounds like a good idea. Obviously, the companies should
| follow the direction set out by the nation willingly and not
| because of threats, but otherwise it doesn't sound like a dumb
| idea to try to unify people toward some goal rather than the
| goal being "individuals can get very, very rich and wealthy".
| epolanski wrote:
| These bans are hard to enforce.
|
| You just need any company outside china that isn't under sanction
| to buy them and then sell them.
|
| Even further, you can skip the hardware buying entirely and set
| some shell company to buy compute from the dozens of vendors.
| thiago_fm wrote:
| This is so obvious, have you seen how many GPUs does Singapore
| and the countries nearby are buying?
|
| They are still training with less than 1/10 of what the US
| companies do own, and yet having similar results.
|
| China is killing it.
| spjt wrote:
| No shit. My question is the real question, how can I make money
| straw-buying GPU's and smuggling them to China?
| nowittyusername wrote:
| let me just dig out a surprise Pikachu face from my pocket
| somewhere here ....
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