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The author is naive. > The whole background of this AI conversation is that we’re in a race with China, and we have to win. But what is the reason we want Amer

The author is naive. > The whole background of this AI conversation is that we’re in a race with China, and we have to win. But what is the reason we want America to win the AI race? It’s because we want to make sure free open societies can defend themselves. We don’t want the winner of the AI race to be a government which operates on the principle that there is no such thing as a truly private company or a private citizen. In the US currently, there are private citizens, and there are 'not-the-1%' citizens, where a Kavanaugh stop is legal, your voter information may be (or may have already been) seized by the DoJ or FBI, you may be tracked by out of state or federal agents on ALPRs with no warrant, for any reason, and where attending a legal protest may have your biometrics added to a database of potential domestic terrorists. Or maybe your tax money will just be used to blow up unidentified boaters or bomb girls' schools and homes, and you'll get no say in whether that's the case because the elected body that is there to issue a declaration of war (or not) as representatives of you, has abdicated that power to a cabinet of unelected white nationalists. But go off about how we're such a better country that believes in freedom and goodness.

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
> go off about how we're such a better country that believes in freedom and goodness Better than China as a global model? Still, yes, probably. Potentially. Depends on how the next few years ago. Even if America fails, I’d argue a global republic is a brighter potential future than a global dictatorship.
- propagandist 7mo ago
  As much a republic as Rome was under Caligula.
- BoredPositron 7mo ago
  A republic without the rule of law is not a republic anymore.
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > republic without the rule of law is not a republic anymore An observation one can make when comparing a republic with the rule of law to one that ain’t, whether across time or geography. There is a real benefit to having the American experiment prominent and continuing.
    - BoredPositron 7mo ago
      Is there actually a benefit? Or are we just watching the slow motion collapse of another empire convinced of its own immortality? History is a graveyard of experiments that thought they were the exception to the rule.
      - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > Is there actually a benefit? Or are we just watching the slow motion collapse of another empire convinced of its own immortality? These aren’t mutually exclusive. The world is better off for Athens and the Roman and Harrapan and Haudenosaunee republics. (Book request: history of the republic. I’ve struggled to find one.) The CCP with internal elections was interesting and a genuine riposte to broadly-enfranchised republics. Xi as a dictator is not, not.
        BoredPositron 7mo ago
        But we are not talking about china.
        JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > But we are not talking about china Author literally is.
        BoredPositron 7mo ago
        And in this subthread we are talking about republics which you are keen to mention china isn't.
- ang_cire 7mo ago
  The real lie here is that there's an ethical superpower. Just like being a billionaire (or, super-wealther, if you will), you don't get to be a superpower by doing good things. China and the US can both be bad, and they're both going to use AI for mass internal and external surveillance and weapon targeting.
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > real lie here is that there's an ethical superpower It’s a lie in the way cats are round is a lie—actually a lie, but one nobody brought up. I don’t think Dwarkesh is arguing for global American hegemony. Just that if AI becomes dominant, having AIs embedded with American cultural values, broadly, is probably better than having ones seeded with Xi Jinping thought. > China and the US can both be bad, and they're both going to use AI for mass internal and external surveillance and weapon targeting Agree. But I don’t think any Chinese AI companies get to sue the CCP over it.
    - pydry 7mo ago
      >AIs embedded with American cultural values, broadly, is probably better than having ones seeded with Xi Jinping thought. I'd really rather have a choice of both rather than be forced to accept "AI that downplays a 2 year old genocide" over "AI that covers up a 40 year massacre".
      - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > rather have a choice of both You do. So do I. If American AI goes by the wayside, we cease to have that choice anymore.
        ang_cire 7mo ago
        That is also true if Chinese AI goes by the wayside, though. :P
  - loeber 7mo ago
- margalabargala 7mo ago
  Add to that all the military posturing over Taiwan and it's clear that it's not "China doesn't do what the US does", it's "China hasn't done it...yet." The idea that anyone would be better off with China supplanting the US is asinine. This is the same government that committed the Tiananmen square massacre and still doesn't acknowledge that anything happened.
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > it's "China hasn't done it...yet.” China invaded and annexed Tibet in 1959. To the degree we had a classical definition of intent-based genocide, Beijing continues to commit it in Tibet and Xinjiang. America’s conscious is stained. But it’s downright nonsense to go off about surveillance when the comparison is China.
    - lovich 7mo ago
      I’m surveilled across pretty much every aspect of my life between basic Snowden level scooping of my data and public tracking like flock cameras. Democracy is increasingly becoming a joke as the richest in our society explicitly are trying to break it and we look more and more like mid 90s Russia. I want the US to win because I live in the US and it will probably benefit me, but we’ve largely stopped pretending to value the republic so I don’t think we can claim a moral standing on these topics anymore. To reference your other comment, the common American man has as much de facto ability to sue our government and/or leaders as the common Chinese man
    - ang_cire 7mo ago
      1800 people detained at "alligator Alcatraz" had their records purged from ICE databases, and are completely unaccounted for. Literally disappeared, and the only people whose word we have they're alive are the same people who disappeared them. Yes, the Uyghur genocide and paramilitary suppression and settler-colonialism of Tibet and Xinjiang is horrific, and will (hopefully) be recognized in the future as a genocide on par with others that 'enjoy' historical notoriety, but let's not pretend we're not well on our way to doing that here. The rhetoric of ethnic superiority and nationalism and birthright that exists in our government is the exact same rhetoric that exists in Xi Jinping's "Imperial Han" nationalism.
- M00nF1sh 7mo ago
  Is Trump really not a dictator? Meanwhile, China has been focusing on domestic development and investing in underdeveloped regions, including across Africa. China hasn't bombed girls' schools and then lied that it's their own country thrown the bomb.
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > Is Trump really not a dictator? No. There is no court in Beijing that can tell Xi to knock it off. > China hasn't bombed girls' schools Read up on the treatment of Uyghur girls in the Chinese schools. It’s Indian Removal Act stuff, except right now. Again, nobody is arguing America is a beacon of anything right now. But between America and China, one is an explicit and proud autocracy.
    - recursive 7mo ago
      What's the difference between a court whose orders you can ignore and a court that doesn't exist? Sounds like a question for the philosophers.
      - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > What's the difference between a court whose orders you can ignore and a court that doesn't exist? SCOTUS isn’t being ignored. > Sounds like a question for the philosophers And lawyers. It’s an interesting series of hypotheticals.
        paulryanrogers 7mo ago
        > SCOTUS isn’t being ignored. SCOTUS rules 90%+ for Trump (lower courts are 90%+ against). They've given him freedom from investigation and criminal prosecution. They aren't much of a bulwark.
  - albelfio 7mo ago
    What the governments have done is different from what the cultural values of the two countries are. Chinese values and American values are different, and people can argue for one or the other. We, westerner, want our values to prevail. Dwarkesh wants to preserve our values of freedom.
- keybored 7mo ago
  Even if more illegal wars are started in the Middle East, even if inequality gets more obscene, VCs on HN are still going to insist that We The Good Guys are the champions of freedom, equality, justice, all the good stuff that we don’t practice (but we have great ideas about).
  - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
    > VCs on HN are still going to insist that We The Good Guys are the champions of freedom, equality, justice, all the good stuff that we don’t practice (but we have great ideas about) They might. I’m not. There is an analogy here to perfect being the enemy of good. Or, at the very least, the pragmatic better.
    - keybored 7mo ago
      It’s the usual feigned comparison. America is a republic and if you don’t agree well, go to Reddit and argue about it; meanwhile China is just a dictatorship. American “crimes“ are dismissed with some rhetorical non-response like “hmmph, no one claimed we are perfect”, or immediately contrasted with some arbitrary Chinese “crime”, then dropped just as fast; even someone bringing up contemporary killing of Iranian schoolchildren gets contrasted with the “Indian Removal Act stuff” as if, you know, someone didn’t just now bring up something that America did last week. You bring up the ideal of “the American experiment”, then when someone brings up inconvenient facts the Tiananmen Square Massacre makes an appearance. But to your credit you brought up the Pretti shooting. I have to analyze how that demonstrates why the “AI values” should reflect American ones. Judge my enemies by their actions. Judge me by my words. About myself...
      - linkregister 7mo ago
        At no point have any of your arguers said they approve of the crimes perpetrated by the United States government. You repeatedly talk past them while only tangentially addressing their points. Your comments assume bad faith and make liberal use of pejoratives. My recommendation is to self-reflect.
ks2048 7mo ago
People who buy the USA-vs-China race to a specific goal - do they really believe if China gets "AGI" first, they will immediately try to conquer the USA? How exactly will that go?
- cuuupid 7mo ago
  It's more likely they will continue expansionist policy in Asia which counters several American diplomatic goals: 1. Democracy and freedom worldwide 2. Economic access+prosperity with Asia 3. Pro-American sentiment (Not in order of importance, which shifts constantly) I think assuming China would beat the US in conventional war if they reach 'AGI' first is a stretch, even if this actually grants them a force advantage it's not like the US can no longer reach AGI. The risk is really more that if they reach 'AGI' and subsequently a force advantage, that they would no longer be deterred and more decisively move on Taiwan next year. Taiwan is key to [1] and [2] above.
rakovsky89 7mo ago
[dead]
conradev 7mo ago
I love that you are allowed to go off about how we are a worse country without fear of jail or shunning or anything like that. You are using your rights properly!
- applfanboysbgon 7mo ago
  You are assuming that they are American and that the account is tied to their real identity and that they are not willing to take risks to state the truth. The Trump administration is already attempting to persecute critics[1], including some for random comments posted online[2]. If "freedom of speech" is your metric for what makes you a better country, you are in fact literally proving their point. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/02/13/doj-kelly-slotkin-indictment-attempt/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/02/13/... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s... People have also been detained with intention to be deported for their views about Palestine, with online comments being part of how they're chosen for targeting: [3] https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/01/28/federal-government-used-pro-palestinian-protest-online-posts-and-written-commentary-as-evidence-to-deport-columbia-affiliates-documents-reveal/ https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/01/28/federal-go... There was also someone jailed for a month for quoting Trump's own words about a school shooting, "we have to get over it", in the context of Charlie Kirk's death, along with many other noted instances of retaliation against online comments around that incident: [4] https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-over-charlie-kirk-meme https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-o...
- fragmede 7mo ago
  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s... ICE asking for a list of social media profiles of its detractors doesn't sound like "without fear of jail or shunning or anything like that." to me. Through data mining and 3rd parties, the local PD has a dossier on me based on what I write here that would come up if I did something to get their attention. That has a chilling effect on what say on here in public.
throwaway314155 7mo ago
You didn’t find this part naive? > But within 20 years, 99% of the workforce in the military, the government, and the private sector will be AIs. This includes the soldiers (by which I mean the robot armies), the superhumanly intelligent advisors and engineers, the police, you name it.
- ang_cire 7mo ago
  Frankly, I find that less 'naive' than I do 'dangerously possible'. Autonomous weaponry is one of the few ways that a fascist state could reasonably maintain violent control over a large and hostile populace. I guarantee Trump would rather have perfectly obedient killbots than critically thinking soldiers, or even just the 5 murderous assholes required to oversee tasking for 1000 semi-autonomous police drones. The least plausible part is the private sector, which just doesn't work that way.
elAhmo 7mo ago
Great take. If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way. Many of these things have been happening for years, but war crimes, disregard for international law, blackmailing allies, killing their own citizens without accountability, and allowing foreign governments to heavily influence policy are all troubling signs. It’s easy to point to China as a place where freedom of speech isn’t present, but try asking members of the current administration or even Supreme Court judges who won the 2020 election and see what kind of responses you get. That alone says a lot about the current state of things.
- possibleworlds 7mo ago
  > If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way. More like the past 200 years. America have never been the "good guys", and it is only Americans who seem to think they ever were.
  - cuuupid 7mo ago
    If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy. Similarly normal for the population of any country that has net negative externalities from America to view them as the "bad guys". The current and growing anti-US sentiment is an expected result of an increasing gap between the US and the rest of the first world on economy and defense. The existence of a superpower is precluded on being viewed negatively by the rest of the world
    - pezezin 7mo ago
      > If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy. No, it would be a sign of critical thinking and self reflection.
      - remarkEon 7mo ago
        I've thought about it a lot, and done some self reflection, and concluded that America is, in fact, the "good guys".
cuuupid 7mo ago
There is nothing unconstitutional about the first paragraph of your criticism. What is unconstitutional is restricting your ability to write this criticism, which is not breached. You _could_ argue that this is a flaw in the constitution, and that none of the above should be legal, and that people who support those things should be restricted in their speech or ability to hold office. This was the status quo in politics for a while! These things have all existed for a long time but this seems particularly targeted at Trump, who was famously banned from most social media platforms for years. There are a lot of democracies (most of the EU for example) that take this stance on freedoms and will even overturn elections to prevent those who support those policies. The question is really 'does doing that protect freedom and democracy or infringe it?' As for the second paragraph, this is just a lie, Congress has not abdicated any type of war powers to the Cabinet. There has not been any type of declaration of war, and if Congress wanted to stop the DoD, they very much could and in fact came very close to doing so. If your Congress representative did not represent your interests (in this case voted nay), you can call email etc. them and their office or vote them out. > better country that believes in freedom and goodness I think you're letting your strong feelings here cloud your judgement, you can hold all of these opinions above without needing to fellate China, which is objectively worse on freedoms than the US. It's also important not to conflate "believes in freedom" with "perfectly meets my line of freedom."
- ang_cire 7mo ago
  Please point out where I "fellated" China.
  - cuuupid 7mo ago
    Saying the US is not a better country on terms of freedom and goodness?
    - ang_cire 7mo ago
      "US not inherently better" is tantamount to fellatio to you? You have some low standards of praise.

JumpCrisscross 7mo ago

> go off about how we're such a better country that believes in freedom and goodness Better than China as a global model? Still, yes, probably. Potentially. Depends on how the next few years ago. Even if America fails, I’d argue a global republic is a brighter potential future than a global dictatorship.

propagandist 7mo ago
As much a republic as Rome was under Caligula.
BoredPositron 7mo ago
A republic without the rule of law is not a republic anymore.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > republic without the rule of law is not a republic anymore An observation one can make when comparing a republic with the rule of law to one that ain’t, whether across time or geography. There is a real benefit to having the American experiment prominent and continuing.
  - BoredPositron 7mo ago
    Is there actually a benefit? Or are we just watching the slow motion collapse of another empire convinced of its own immortality? History is a graveyard of experiments that thought they were the exception to the rule.
    - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
      > Is there actually a benefit? Or are we just watching the slow motion collapse of another empire convinced of its own immortality? These aren’t mutually exclusive. The world is better off for Athens and the Roman and Harrapan and Haudenosaunee republics. (Book request: history of the republic. I’ve struggled to find one.) The CCP with internal elections was interesting and a genuine riposte to broadly-enfranchised republics. Xi as a dictator is not, not.
      - BoredPositron 7mo ago
        But we are not talking about china.
        JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
        > But we are not talking about china Author literally is.
        BoredPositron 7mo ago
        And in this subthread we are talking about republics which you are keen to mention china isn't.
ang_cire 7mo ago
The real lie here is that there's an ethical superpower. Just like being a billionaire (or, super-wealther, if you will), you don't get to be a superpower by doing good things. China and the US can both be bad, and they're both going to use AI for mass internal and external surveillance and weapon targeting.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > real lie here is that there's an ethical superpower It’s a lie in the way cats are round is a lie—actually a lie, but one nobody brought up. I don’t think Dwarkesh is arguing for global American hegemony. Just that if AI becomes dominant, having AIs embedded with American cultural values, broadly, is probably better than having ones seeded with Xi Jinping thought. > China and the US can both be bad, and they're both going to use AI for mass internal and external surveillance and weapon targeting Agree. But I don’t think any Chinese AI companies get to sue the CCP over it.
  - pydry 7mo ago
    >AIs embedded with American cultural values, broadly, is probably better than having ones seeded with Xi Jinping thought. I'd really rather have a choice of both rather than be forced to accept "AI that downplays a 2 year old genocide" over "AI that covers up a 40 year massacre".
    - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
      > rather have a choice of both You do. So do I. If American AI goes by the wayside, we cease to have that choice anymore.
      - ang_cire 7mo ago
        That is also true if Chinese AI goes by the wayside, though. :P
- loeber 7mo ago
margalabargala 7mo ago
Add to that all the military posturing over Taiwan and it's clear that it's not "China doesn't do what the US does", it's "China hasn't done it...yet." The idea that anyone would be better off with China supplanting the US is asinine. This is the same government that committed the Tiananmen square massacre and still doesn't acknowledge that anything happened.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > it's "China hasn't done it...yet.” China invaded and annexed Tibet in 1959. To the degree we had a classical definition of intent-based genocide, Beijing continues to commit it in Tibet and Xinjiang. America’s conscious is stained. But it’s downright nonsense to go off about surveillance when the comparison is China.
  - lovich 7mo ago
    I’m surveilled across pretty much every aspect of my life between basic Snowden level scooping of my data and public tracking like flock cameras. Democracy is increasingly becoming a joke as the richest in our society explicitly are trying to break it and we look more and more like mid 90s Russia. I want the US to win because I live in the US and it will probably benefit me, but we’ve largely stopped pretending to value the republic so I don’t think we can claim a moral standing on these topics anymore. To reference your other comment, the common American man has as much de facto ability to sue our government and/or leaders as the common Chinese man
  - ang_cire 7mo ago
    1800 people detained at "alligator Alcatraz" had their records purged from ICE databases, and are completely unaccounted for. Literally disappeared, and the only people whose word we have they're alive are the same people who disappeared them. Yes, the Uyghur genocide and paramilitary suppression and settler-colonialism of Tibet and Xinjiang is horrific, and will (hopefully) be recognized in the future as a genocide on par with others that 'enjoy' historical notoriety, but let's not pretend we're not well on our way to doing that here. The rhetoric of ethnic superiority and nationalism and birthright that exists in our government is the exact same rhetoric that exists in Xi Jinping's "Imperial Han" nationalism.
M00nF1sh 7mo ago
Is Trump really not a dictator? Meanwhile, China has been focusing on domestic development and investing in underdeveloped regions, including across Africa. China hasn't bombed girls' schools and then lied that it's their own country thrown the bomb.
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > Is Trump really not a dictator? No. There is no court in Beijing that can tell Xi to knock it off. > China hasn't bombed girls' schools Read up on the treatment of Uyghur girls in the Chinese schools. It’s Indian Removal Act stuff, except right now. Again, nobody is arguing America is a beacon of anything right now. But between America and China, one is an explicit and proud autocracy.
  - recursive 7mo ago
    What's the difference between a court whose orders you can ignore and a court that doesn't exist? Sounds like a question for the philosophers.
    - JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
      > What's the difference between a court whose orders you can ignore and a court that doesn't exist? SCOTUS isn’t being ignored. > Sounds like a question for the philosophers And lawyers. It’s an interesting series of hypotheticals.
      - paulryanrogers 7mo ago
        > SCOTUS isn’t being ignored. SCOTUS rules 90%+ for Trump (lower courts are 90%+ against). They've given him freedom from investigation and criminal prosecution. They aren't much of a bulwark.
- albelfio 7mo ago
  What the governments have done is different from what the cultural values of the two countries are. Chinese values and American values are different, and people can argue for one or the other. We, westerner, want our values to prevail. Dwarkesh wants to preserve our values of freedom.
keybored 7mo ago
Even if more illegal wars are started in the Middle East, even if inequality gets more obscene, VCs on HN are still going to insist that We The Good Guys are the champions of freedom, equality, justice, all the good stuff that we don’t practice (but we have great ideas about).
- JumpCrisscross 7mo ago
  > VCs on HN are still going to insist that We The Good Guys are the champions of freedom, equality, justice, all the good stuff that we don’t practice (but we have great ideas about) They might. I’m not. There is an analogy here to perfect being the enemy of good. Or, at the very least, the pragmatic better.
  - keybored 7mo ago
    It’s the usual feigned comparison. America is a republic and if you don’t agree well, go to Reddit and argue about it; meanwhile China is just a dictatorship. American “crimes“ are dismissed with some rhetorical non-response like “hmmph, no one claimed we are perfect”, or immediately contrasted with some arbitrary Chinese “crime”, then dropped just as fast; even someone bringing up contemporary killing of Iranian schoolchildren gets contrasted with the “Indian Removal Act stuff” as if, you know, someone didn’t just now bring up something that America did last week. You bring up the ideal of “the American experiment”, then when someone brings up inconvenient facts the Tiananmen Square Massacre makes an appearance. But to your credit you brought up the Pretti shooting. I have to analyze how that demonstrates why the “AI values” should reflect American ones. Judge my enemies by their actions. Judge me by my words. About myself...
    - linkregister 7mo ago
      At no point have any of your arguers said they approve of the crimes perpetrated by the United States government. You repeatedly talk past them while only tangentially addressing their points. Your comments assume bad faith and make liberal use of pejoratives. My recommendation is to self-reflect.

ks2048 7mo ago

People who buy the USA-vs-China race to a specific goal - do they really believe if China gets "AGI" first, they will immediately try to conquer the USA? How exactly will that go?

cuuupid 7mo ago
It's more likely they will continue expansionist policy in Asia which counters several American diplomatic goals: 1. Democracy and freedom worldwide 2. Economic access+prosperity with Asia 3. Pro-American sentiment (Not in order of importance, which shifts constantly) I think assuming China would beat the US in conventional war if they reach 'AGI' first is a stretch, even if this actually grants them a force advantage it's not like the US can no longer reach AGI. The risk is really more that if they reach 'AGI' and subsequently a force advantage, that they would no longer be deterred and more decisively move on Taiwan next year. Taiwan is key to [1] and [2] above.

rakovsky89 7mo ago

[dead]

conradev 7mo ago

I love that you are allowed to go off about how we are a worse country without fear of jail or shunning or anything like that. You are using your rights properly!

applfanboysbgon 7mo ago
You are assuming that they are American and that the account is tied to their real identity and that they are not willing to take risks to state the truth. The Trump administration is already attempting to persecute critics[1], including some for random comments posted online[2]. If "freedom of speech" is your metric for what makes you a better country, you are in fact literally proving their point. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/02/13/doj-kelly-slotkin-indictment-attempt/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/02/13/... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s... People have also been detained with intention to be deported for their views about Palestine, with online comments being part of how they're chosen for targeting: [3] https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/01/28/federal-government-used-pro-palestinian-protest-online-posts-and-written-commentary-as-evidence-to-deport-columbia-affiliates-documents-reveal/ https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/01/28/federal-go... There was also someone jailed for a month for quoting Trump's own words about a school shooting, "we have to get over it", in the context of Charlie Kirk's death, along with many other noted instances of retaliation against online comments around that incident: [4] https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-over-charlie-kirk-meme https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-o...
fragmede 7mo ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s... ICE asking for a list of social media profiles of its detractors doesn't sound like "without fear of jail or shunning or anything like that." to me. Through data mining and 3rd parties, the local PD has a dossier on me based on what I write here that would come up if I did something to get their attention. That has a chilling effect on what say on here in public.

throwaway314155 7mo ago

You didn’t find this part naive? > But within 20 years, 99% of the workforce in the military, the government, and the private sector will be AIs. This includes the soldiers (by which I mean the robot armies), the superhumanly intelligent advisors and engineers, the police, you name it.

ang_cire 7mo ago
Frankly, I find that less 'naive' than I do 'dangerously possible'. Autonomous weaponry is one of the few ways that a fascist state could reasonably maintain violent control over a large and hostile populace. I guarantee Trump would rather have perfectly obedient killbots than critically thinking soldiers, or even just the 5 murderous assholes required to oversee tasking for 1000 semi-autonomous police drones. The least plausible part is the private sector, which just doesn't work that way.

elAhmo 7mo ago

Great take. If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way. Many of these things have been happening for years, but war crimes, disregard for international law, blackmailing allies, killing their own citizens without accountability, and allowing foreign governments to heavily influence policy are all troubling signs. It’s easy to point to China as a place where freedom of speech isn’t present, but try asking members of the current administration or even Supreme Court judges who won the 2020 election and see what kind of responses you get. That alone says a lot about the current state of things.

possibleworlds 7mo ago
> If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way. More like the past 200 years. America have never been the "good guys", and it is only Americans who seem to think they ever were.
- cuuupid 7mo ago
  If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy. Similarly normal for the population of any country that has net negative externalities from America to view them as the "bad guys". The current and growing anti-US sentiment is an expected result of an increasing gap between the US and the rest of the first world on economy and defense. The existence of a superpower is precluded on being viewed negatively by the rest of the world
  - pezezin 7mo ago
    > If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy. No, it would be a sign of critical thinking and self reflection.
    - remarkEon 7mo ago
      I've thought about it a lot, and done some self reflection, and concluded that America is, in fact, the "good guys".

cuuupid 7mo ago

There is nothing unconstitutional about the first paragraph of your criticism. What is unconstitutional is restricting your ability to write this criticism, which is not breached. You _could_ argue that this is a flaw in the constitution, and that none of the above should be legal, and that people who support those things should be restricted in their speech or ability to hold office. This was the status quo in politics for a while! These things have all existed for a long time but this seems particularly targeted at Trump, who was famously banned from most social media platforms for years. There are a lot of democracies (most of the EU for example) that take this stance on freedoms and will even overturn elections to prevent those who support those policies. The question is really 'does doing that protect freedom and democracy or infringe it?' As for the second paragraph, this is just a lie, Congress has not abdicated any type of war powers to the Cabinet. There has not been any type of declaration of war, and if Congress wanted to stop the DoD, they very much could and in fact came very close to doing so. If your Congress representative did not represent your interests (in this case voted nay), you can call email etc. them and their office or vote them out. > better country that believes in freedom and goodness I think you're letting your strong feelings here cloud your judgement, you can hold all of these opinions above without needing to fellate China, which is objectively worse on freedoms than the US. It's also important not to conflate "believes in freedom" with "perfectly meets my line of freedom."

ang_cire 7mo ago
Please point out where I "fellated" China.
- cuuupid 7mo ago
  Saying the US is not a better country on terms of freedom and goodness?
  - ang_cire 7mo ago
    "US not inherently better" is tantamount to fellatio to you? You have some low standards of praise.