It was a master stroke in international politics though, the US created an arms race towards sovereign ai, small models, and self-hosting - exactly like they wanted to.
The Iran war and SoH crisis has been great for EV uptake outside of the US. In combination with the US AI apartheid, it has been a huge boost for Chinese EVs and Chinese AI adoption.
And trade. The last 18 months the US has shown itself to be a unreliable trade partner. Lots of companies are looking at diversifying both markets and supply chains.
The recent trip of the Canadian PM to China is but the most visible part of this shift. That's at govt level, but I've seen it happen all the way down to individual level.
US products are typically more expensive here than Chinese. But at least you were buying from a friendly supplier. That distinction is eroding quickly. In my experience it's forced people to try Chinese, and generally been surprised (in a good way) over quality and features.
And yes, the price of oil has focused people much more at the EV market. (Not least because people with an EV already aren't shy about gloating). Pretty much everyone I talk to, who would buy a car "new" tells me their next one will be electric. The tipping point is coming much faster than most people think.
I doubt the Canadians want their economy flooded with Chinese goods ("dumping" - selling goods at less than cost) - which destroys local industry.
This was predicted in The Economist awhile back, that if the US blocked Chinese imports a tsunami of Chinese goods would flood other countries and now it's happening. Those countries will also, in turn, erect trade barriers, or suffer the devastation that massive Chinese dumping causes.
So it's a nice protest gesture, but it's a cutting off your nose to spite your face gesture.
Oh no! Cheap goods and services! Maybe some other governments will be smart enough to not let a massive influx of nearly free stuff make everyone materially worse off. In fact it seems like only a completely idiotic system would make people worse off for having more free stuff.
Doesn't have to be state-owned but it probably helps if the state forces such a venture with their domestic companies. It's already occuring in many countries now that China is the dominant producer, such as Ford with Geely and Volkswagen with XPeng.
Hence the concept of trade partnerships. No country makes everything, and yes, there's lots of competition.
Tarifs have existed since forever. Countries use them to protect local industries. But they've always been stable, and industry focused.
Food production for example is worth protecting and Canada has tarifs on imported Dairy. Partnerships exist to protect local industries, promote exports, and give citizens access to cheap goods. It's a complex balance set up over time with lots of nuance and negotiating.
Yes, sometimes tarifs kill a local industry as well. Lack of international competition let's local industry stagnate until it is dead. US ship building is a good example of this, and US Auto makers are trending in this direction. (Banning Chinese EVs is not bolstering the US EV production, it is causing the US manufacturers to ignore that market, and I don't think that ends well.)
Tarifs are a powerful tool when wielded well. Alas right now the US in unstable. Local industries can't rely on tarifs existing next week, never mind 5 years from now. I'm not investing in a local hockey stick factory because the tarif could disappear at any time.
In my country we get cheap solar panels from China. Frankly, let them sell below-cost if they like. (Hint, they're not below cost). We don't make them here, so cheap energy is good for all.
The US negativity to Chinese goods seems to be around dumping (which happens, but not much), around quality (frankly much of it is very good) or around human rights. (Cause, you know, we bombed Iran to promote human rights...)
I don't think Americans will suddenly love China. But the rest of the world is getting very cosy very quickly.
But China wants to make everything, that is the problem. It might also be the case that we misunderstand the state of the Chinese economy quite a bit. I heard an argument by an economist that the situation is mainly explained by the real estate crash. That was a ginormous event but the government basically just denied any big consequences. That did kill the credit market for a long time. Now Chinese consumer have little money to spend and China is forced to export their products, no matter the price to keep things going.
As long as a typical Chinese person is happy with a standard of living that is far below what an American expects, China will be way cheaper on labor.
For most products, labor is a significant cost.
For a lot of consumers, price is more important then where it's made. Maybe not what they say they think is important but when they actually decide. As a result, China will make almost everything, along with the rest of south east Asia.
Basically, the lower price for products comes at the cost of exporting your own jobs. One is easy to reason about when making a purchase decision, the other is indirect and abstract. Which is why the former wins
Well so far I believe they've been buying us government bonds for example?
Also, haven't they been buying all kinds of stuff in Africa etcetera? Money doesn't have to flow from A to B and back to A. It might very well pass many more hops to complete the circle
Accusations of Chinese dumping are cheap and easy to make, but the evidence is pretty mixed.
Most actual cases have been of raw materials (eg steel, yarn) and industrial chemicals.
I think this is a long way from the alleged "tsunami of Chinese goods".
It's also worth noting that many Chinese manufactured goods would mostly substitute for US manufactured goods (eg cars). That's actually the whole point.
TBH I agree with you, even mentioned it in my other reply.
Modern China is not like the Soviet Union; it is much closer to a capitalistic society, but instead of private equity there is a (heavier than even the most 'socialist' of EU nations) government planning push.
In some ways, one could argue they're just taking lessons learned from all of the current systems and applying them aggressively in their centralized planning.
As someone who has lived in/around the heart of the 'Arsenal of Democracy' for my whole life, gotta say they are taking better lessons learned than the US has.
It's not "so bad in this case". The domestic version is called "predatory pricing" and is illegal. In practice, it's easier to raise anti-dumping complaints than predatory pricing cases, both because the producers don't vote in your country and because the complaint doesn't have to be proven in a court of law.
I'm sorry our educational system has not made the differences between bad faith companies and dictatorship clearer.
Let me put it this way: American companies sell you a bad car and lay you off to give a CEO a bonus.
Chinese dictatorships put you into reeducation camps if you're a Muslim dissident or unapproved member of a religion. China tells the Catholic Church who to appoint as bishops and the Pope spends his time criticizing...anyone but China.
China pumps metrics tons of drug precursors onto the black market which accidentally find their way into Mexican drug labs and...are imported into Detroit.
China backs our national enemies because they are friends to anyone who opposes us. China funds Russia. China buys Iranian oil.
You just described it yourself. American companies will build a Cybertruck, blame their customers, cancel a $25,000 EV, and then lay off employees for Elon's ketamine/AIPAC shill fund.
China has their own Abu Ghraib moments swept under the carpet, but their workers accept it for the same reason America ignored Seymour Hersh. Their middle class is growing, the Chinese economy has vast surpluses and market leverage that only America has ever enjoyed. Their asymmetric warfare stealing IP, from Texas Instruments to ARM to Lockheed Martin went unpunished. The Chinese intelligence agency, through Salt Typhoon, probably has more blackmail on American politicians than the Mossad does. From a Chinese perspective, the war is won. They're supporting the winning side in Ukraine since both US administrations rebuffed full NATO intervention. They're supporting the winning side in Iran after the IRGC proved they can disable planes, drones and ships with Chinese hardware.
When the United States calls Canada a "51st state" or renames border territories to manufacture leverage, it's not helping China lose. They're undermining the trade agreements that all of North America relies on, and strengthening China's case as a reliable alternative to America's fickle export restrictions. In that sense, humanitarian outrage is almost an advantage; why would Pakistan, Iran or Russia worry about ethical reprisal from China if they're equally amoral?
The thing people tend to handwave about China's manufacturing prowess is that they have spent the last 25-ish years getting really good at 'making things to a spec' at a cost in-line with their labor market, being bolstered by their government's approach at Economy planning (i.e. subsidizing certain industries, required partnership agreements when foreign companies want to use that labor market to build things).
The quality of the product you get, like always, is about what people are willing to pay. The big difference is that the current cost of labor/material inputs there, is low enough that you can get the same or often better quality for less.
I wouldn't call that dumping. And to be clear, yeah they've done dumping in some cases.
But when we look at what's happened in the last 8 months or so around various AI SaaS-ish offerings, one could argue that plenty of US companies have done 'dumping with extra steps'. (And that's not even the first time necessarily, e.x. the DoorDash Pizza Arbitrage thought experiment...)
> It's also worth noting that many Chinese manufactured goods would mostly substitute for US manufactured goods (eg cars).
Heck, GM was (although they are moving it due to the Tariffs AFAIR) building the Buick Envision (Compact CUV) in China and shipping it to the US for sale. GM Announced in January that they'd move production to the US by 2028.
Similar for The Lincoln Nautilus (Midsize CUV), The current Gen is built in China and they only in the last month announced that they would move production back to the US... by 2030.
Garlic dumping. Those little socks of 4 or 5 bulbs sold for a dollar-something are from China (notice the tops are chopped off so they cant sprout.) I buy domestic garlic because it's fucking stupid to import something that's so easy to grow.
Selling below price to capture a market is now somehow BAD? Isn’t this the bread & butter of cutthroat capitalism? Isn’t it something we do endlessly? But when the Chinese do it its “dumping”?
It would be cool to have a native Canadian car company to defend and the only argument you can make for Chinese car dumping is that you dont want the only car companies remaining in the world to be Chinese. Thats a possibility yes since China has 100+ car companies, the population is overall declining in most western countries and there are already too many car companies for a shrinking pie of customers. But from Canada's point of view: they have already been threatened enough that im sure those remaining ford,gm and stellantis jobs might be gone eventually...so whats left? Maybe Canada can demand BYD open a car factory in Canada.
I'll be rude/bold enough to say that Canada's ability to argue around 'in-country' made goods has been eroded for decades;
I will admit I'm going to point to a specific example; Canadian Bike makers have been able for at least a decade to get an unpainted frame from Taiwan/China/Etc, components from wherever, but so long as they painted the frame in canada and did final assembly in Canada... 'Made in Canada' alongside all of the tariff exemptions that came with that.
> But from Canada's point of view: they have already been threatened enough that im sure those remaining ford,gm and stellantis jobs might be gone eventually...
Guess you didn't hear about Brampton in the news, the Stellantis plant there might be on the chopping block...
Yeah Canada has natural limitations bigger countries like the US does not have but still, I wonder if good negoiation and maybe a changing situation in regards to the US's declining prospects might allow Canada to swing a bit higher in the future and demand something like this. There is a skilled workforce in place as well so maybe that changes the calculus.
I'm Canadian, the auto industry here died the moment trump started all of this tarrif talk in February, it just hasn't gotten cold yet.
Because of the tarrif and trade war our local industries will struggle and collapse, there's nothing we can do about that - they were dependent on US trade partners and markets, the Canadian market is much smaller. We have massive productivity issues, there's little chance we'll successfully build our own auto industry.
In the interim buying more from China doesn't really hurt us, and sends a strong signal to the remaining people who care about foreign policy in Washington that there are penalties to treating allies like enemies.
I used to really strongly oppose Chinese expansion and the rise of cheap products getting dumped everywhere - I still do, but I oppose the US admin more; and at least they're stable and clear about what they want
Seems pretty straightforward to me: Hey, China - start local plants and we’ll be happy to have as many EVs as we can build. After all, we’ll have plenty of idle auto workers.
If Chinese industry is willing to operate at a loss in order to poke the US in the eye, sure - markets too small and labor too expensive otherwise imo.
Its Apple'esque. The edge are still rough, and I don't trust their sketchy antics. People buy Apple because they earned that trust among their customer base. Is the device better than competitors, in my opinion yes but they are more along the lines of Samsung and not Apple.
Caveat: (Yes I know geeks here will say apple users are just dumb and want a status symbol....they'll never get it)
BTW I know nothing about 3D printers, but the Bambulab was recommended to me by a German friend who lives in Germany and is all about open-source ... He had printers since a long time and knows the ecosystem very well.
He told me the BambuLab printer was better for me because less tinkering, and much cheaper, at similar quality... which is what i was looking for.
We both are embedded systems engineers who work with Linux daily, so I trusted him. The results I get from the printer do not disappoint.
However I totally get the Prusa vibe. Just not for my specific use case.
>Pretty much everyone I talk to, who would buy a car "new" tells me their next one will be electric. The tipping point is coming much faster than most people think.
People say a lot of things. If the infrastructure isn't there, it will end up like the US. I'm not sure Canadian EV infrastructure is up to snuff compared to China or even Europe. In the US a lot of people tried electric and now I am finding again and again, for many of these people, the next car after their EV is a gas car. Because poor implementation of the charging experience has put a bad first experience in many peoples minds. In the US K shaped economy, there are enough people that can stomach higher gas prices, and the lower portion of the K shaped economy has an even worse EV infrastructure or otherwise cannot afford most EVs(used or new) anyway.
For a lot of people the infrastructure is an outlet in our garage. Going to the gas station is a novelty and just for snacks. Road trips are a few times a year and not a dealio at all. A PHEV is a nice sweet spot.
It's 2026 and we are still debating this? There are a range of use cases for the population. We have semis, F350s towing landscape trailers, motorcycles, bikes, evs, NEVs, etc.
Pick what you think will work best for your use case and iterate. Global political posturing doesn't move you anywhere.
You can debate all you want. If I have learned anything this past decade, its the internet has little bearing on how real life turns out. Just look at the sales numbers. In the US they are now slightly declining after years of steady growth. I watch auto industry shows that talk about how executives who bet their reputations on the EV transition at places like Ford and GM now stand with destroyed careers because the demand was just not there and billions of wasted capital that had to be written down.
A car company has to sell a product that the masses will buy. It turns out for the US (and I suspect Canda as well) that product is currently hybrids. It gets the fuel cost down for people while allowing them to not give up on what they come to expect.
The market in the US may be growing less strongly than elsewhere, but there are somewhat unique circumstances involved in that.
One is political - Energy in the US is highly political, and the oil and coal lobbies are both influential and regressive. This leads to EVs becoming a political statement rather than an active choice.
Second is size. Americans tend to drive further so range does matter. More range means more cost. And even Americans who don't ever go further than 20 miles entertain at least the idea of a cross-country road trip.
So I get where you are coming from. But I'd also say that the US is different to the world in general. In Europe I saw charging infrastructure everywhere. (Streetlight poles contained chargers, all the way down the street.) Electric busses were the norm. Electric cars everywhere.
Like I said earlier, a tipping point is coming. Naturally it'll happen sooner in some places than others. The US will likely be towards the back.
The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al.
We are talking about the US and Canada here, thats why I referenced American car companies and their executives. Im not denying at all that other countries are in different scenarios and this will have different adoption trajectories.
>The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al.
It's possible that GM and Ford are dead companies already. Although at the same time, I'd expected Tesla to decline a lot faster than they really did post MAGA Musk. They've had massive duds and a lot of money spent. Yet in terms of the U.S. they are still ahead of the pack in technology development and sales are not abysmal which is insane given there have not been any new platforms introduced. In fact they have discontinued models.
Whether BYD overtakes the American market remains to be seen, and maybe even in Europe we might see eventual pushback as things get really dire with the local manufacturers. It's really too early to tell.
China has an oversupply of EVs. They have over 100 car companies right now competing to the very death, and only a small handful will survive. Those companies will be very strong. But due to the oversupply and the 25% youth unemployment rate, China has to find a way to offload these vehicles overseas or else they'll suffer significantly as well. So it's going to be interesting times, and I'm not too sure how things are going to play out long term.
Move and more people are realizing the reliance on fossil fuels is determinant to national security. EV and renewable sources of energy improve national security. I applaud those that have become enlightened.
My next vehicle will be fully EV, not Tesla, once my current one dies.
> I'm not sure Canadian EV infrastructure is up to snuff
Canada needs a whole lot less EV infrastructure than the US since so much of the population lives along a narrow band. Once you cover the trans-Canada highway, you've covered ~90% of long distance trips.
Perhaps, and I am open to being wrong about this. What about range anxiety in extremly low temperatures? We have all heard the stories of so many Teslas operating above the artic circle and other Tesla propaganda but day to day, do EVs stack up to Canadian environmental demands? Model 3 owenrs (including one of Telsa's largest former cheerleaders) had numerous problems withs its California based design in cold winters (ex. frozen door handles).
Maybe the eventual chinese sodium batteries will solve some of these issues.
Canadian environmental demands are strict but not that much of a problem. ~90% of the population is withing ~100 miles of the border and has pretty similar climate to the northern US/most of europe, and anyone much further north than that already plugs their car in at night in the winter to keep the engine from freezing. Recessed door handles could be a problem, but that's not a mandatory part of an EV.
> The Iran war and SoH crisis has been great for EV uptake
Trump has been the best promoter of electrical vehicle here in Europe.
He 'helped' his Arabian allies twice, first he brought war to their countries and then he made sure that people wouldn't need their oil anymore (at least much less).
Hell, it's been decent (relatively) for pushing EV adoption within the US, too, in addition to renewable energy. This is not the first time that I've wondered if Donald Trump isn't secretly still a democrat at heart.
Well yes... the current US admin gets blame for not seemingly understanding the market right now(or bungled elsewhere giving the Chinese a lucy break) but i'm sure the massive oversupply in Chinese EVs didn't hurt either. China has 100+ car comapnies that are all in the jungle right now trying desperately to survive. Most won't make it and when the victors emerge, other car companies may not be ready for these warriors that survived. One of the ways to get rid of excess inventory: dump it elsewhere.
The law is too slow. It's like a horse carriage in the age of twitter. Why can't they expedite for special cases? Not even defending Antropic or any company. Just that if a tweet can cause damage in seconds, the law shouldn't be too far behind.
They can, the preliminary injunction is a thing that can be invoked very quickly to stop actions before the law decides.
Anthropic didn't suffer any irreparable harm and they're free to seek damages if they wish, but they won't because it doesn't really matter to them. This whole mess has just been advertising that has kept them in the headlines and very likely has been more beneficial than harmful.
This is a fast paced business environment where one company being explicitly disallowed by the government could create long-lasting damage. How many institutions might have gone with the safer OpenAI and will not revisit the decision?
I'm pretty convinced Anthropic was intentionally antagonizing the government in order to get high level attention, media coverage, and government contacts to hep "fix" the problem. Far from irreparable harm it was a marketing stunt.
You sure they didn't lose governmental contracts because of it?
Also, the current administration doesn't care much about the law but what Trump and his people like and dislike. They made it very clear that they don't like Anthropic, so they won't get any contracts now, this ruling doesn't really matter until Trump is out of office.
None of this provable, of course.
They even fired people for investigating the storm on the Capitol. The message was pretty clear: we don't care about the law or what your job is, if you do something we dislike we retaliate, so you better become corrupt and stop caring as well or quit now on your own terms.
It was outright illegal to contract them after they were officially declared a risk. Afterwards it was clear that the highest level administration doesn't want them being contracted, an administration that's known to fire people that are only doing their job.
So being in the news for such things surely didn't help.
I don’t know how you can say that. Anthropic’s reputation was destroyed by this, and A LOT of business deals happened before this injustice was corrected.
Factually wrong. Many people on defense contracted projects (you can find at least a few of those in every big company you have heard of) are banned from using Anthropic models. They need to use GPT, Gemini or something else. That is a LOT of business lost.
A lot of folks here are misreading “irreparable harm,” which means “something that cannot be fixed with money later.” Even if this somehow screwed Anthropic so badly that they lost the AI race and Dario was relegated to the permanent underclass, that is an injury which could in theory be compensated with money - a jaw-dropping quantity of money, but money nonetheless. Irreparable harm can never be fixed even with infinite money. For example, if you think you’re the rightful owner of a piece of real estate, and someone else tries to sell it to a third party, you are faced with the prospect of irreparable harm: all the money in the world can’t FORCE the buyer to sell it back to you if the transaction doesn’t go through, and a piece of real estate is completely unique and non-fungible (at least in the eyes of the law), so no amount of money could get you the same thing.
To a certain extent this exists, but given that SCOTUS has been stacked with GOPers…
> The shadow docket is a break from ordinary procedure. Such cases receive very limited briefings and are typically decided a week or less after an application is filed. The process generally results in short, unsigned rulings. In contrast, merits cases take months, include extensive briefing and public oral argument, and result in lengthy written opinions detailing the reasoning of the majority and of any concurring and dissenting justices.
This is not really due to political balance as much as wanting to respect the standard escalation process and maintain decorum. They would rather that lower judges give proper justified rulings rather than spit out binding decisions on a whim without oral arguments, unless there's really an emergency.
It indicates one of two things: either the orange fuhrer is being sabotaged and having to defend himself, or that he's doing blatantly illegal things and even a court stacked in his favour by him is trying to reign him in.
Trump is leveraging the shadow docket to get decisions he doesn't like over turned which are then stamped by members of his own party who don't need to provide detailed (or any) explanations as to why or information about who voted for what.
The pattern is political, and beyond a matter of keeping lower courts in check. His success rate has also been far higher than Biden's.
Absolutely nothing about how the Supreme Court works nowadays has respect for standard process or decorum. It's merely a shield to hide behind when it's convenient, to be ignored when it's useful.
It's not unusual that the "shadow docket" orders have limited briefings when the extent of the ruling/order is usually procedural, as opposed to ruling on the merits of the case.
It should be noted any justice can write a dissent in a "shadow docket" ruling. If a justice finds a ruling incorrect, nothing hides their criticism of it from the light.
This mechanism means that regardless of how awful the Trump admin proposal one SCOTUS justice can "temporarily" unblock it giving no reason at all, and then the "real" merits case can be slow-walked.
Slow-walked, conveniently, until the admin has finished doing whatever the original lawsuit claimed was illegal, and then the government argues it is impossible to undo after the fact.
The problem is that the rationale is hidden, not that criticism of it is hidden. If the Supreme Court doesn't explain why they make momentous, weighty decisions, that leaves the rest of us with only speculation, both in understanding how the decision should be applied to other cases and evaluating whether the decision made any sense at all.
(I agree that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the even more recent trend of shadow docket decisions that do come with opinions attached, and perhaps law students in the 2030s will learn about the "expedited docket" as a normal way to handle cases.)
SCOTUS is not stacked with justices who are just GOPers. There are lots of Republicans who absolutely value the rule of law in this country!
The SCOTUS is stacked with reactionaries, people that want to take us back in history. They quite literally undid 60 years of civil rights legislation!
This is not a Democrat vs. Republican thing, this is is a very small minority that has taken control of an entire branch of government and is abusing their power.
From recalled beef, to contaminated greens, to the cancer that is twitter, you will forever remember this period of your life as the dreaded... "age of shitter"
That's why the exploit of a social media savvy government is to overflow the system with so much slop (literally and figuratively) the law can never catch up. Your bug is their feature.
Mostly, the law is not creating the right incentives. In this case in particular, I don't think it's so much a matter of speed: I suspect the current US admin would still sow the chaos they do to the same degree if it was deemed illegal within a week instead of within months.
Agreed. There's little doubt the admin knew they'd lose in court before they did it but they also knew it would still hurt Anthropic and make an example showing what happens to "any vendor who tries to put restrictions on the DoW's use of their product."
You're right: the current administration would find a way because they don't care what the law says. The law, to them, is a system to be hacked when necessary.
Many Americans take for granted the idea that the US is a "nation of laws" and that "rule of law" governs above all else. But the reality is this: there is no such thing as a perfect legal system.
You can have a strong legal system by design (good oversight, various checks and balances, etc.) but in practice, any system is only as good as the most powerful people are decent and respectful of it.
If you have someone in the most powerful position (the executive) who doesn't respect the law and who isn't willing to, with wisdom in his or her heart, exercise restraint with the understanding that protecting the integrity of the system is ultimately more important than getting your way, the law stands no chance.
An interesting feature of Trump 2.0 is that his party has essentially entirely keeled over.
Presidents are not historically all powerful within their own parties and the nature of the big tent systems means usually it is fairly difficult to get agreement on everything within a party without some compromise. Trump has managed to defang everybody else in the GOP.
This is true but every recent president has expanded powers, and had their party agree. Due to my age, I first noticed it with Bush then when Obama continued it, it felt weird to be fine with allowing more power in the executive branch when it’s someone you support, because that’ll add to the precedent for the next person who you don’t support. The presidency has come a long way since Washington and Trump 2.0 is a clear result / continuation of what’s been happening for as long as I’ve been paying attention.
Exactly. People forget things like Obama signing a law into existence that allows for the indefinite detention of Americans without trial or charge if you claim they're connected to terrorism. [1] As far as I know that law has not yet been used. However that leads to two issues. (1) It could be at any time. The current issues with Israel are rife for abuse to the point that I'm somewhat surprised it hasn't yet been used.
And (2) if the law hasn't been used then WTF did we even consider signing it into power, let alone actually doing it? Something like this should never be done, but if done one would think it would only be in the face of an imminent and urgent need. Instead we seemed to have just casually signed unconstitutional executive tyranny into power 'just in case.'
The only way we're ever going to reign in executive power is if one party or the other starts rolling back executive power while they're in power. But when people are in power they seem to convince themselves that it will always be like this, and so when it comes to power all they can say is 'more, more, more.'
Realistically speaking, it is also because the nature of law and society has changed since the Constitution was drafted. Congress is not set up with so many experts in all the fields of society and cannot literally line by line specify all the regulations pertaining to, say, aviation.
For "no fangs" there are an awful lot of people around (or dead) with GOP bite marks these days.
The SAVE act status probably has more to do with some Republican legislators who think it will harm their re-election chances by impacting their own supporters.
What on earth are you talking about? Trump invaded multiple American cities. He created an $85 billion federal goon force. He's kidnapped or killed TWO DIFFERENT heads of state. He's destroyed our trade relationships. He's taken inflation from frustrating to existential. He's bulldozing national parks. He's started a brand spanking new forever war. He's utterly corrupted the Supreme Court. He's multiplied the national deficit and debt. He's cut taxes for only the richest. He let Elon tear our institutions to shreds, costing infinitely more money than he "saved" in the process. Our entire federal science and research apparatus is gone. Effing measles is back and killing people. Screw worm is back. Air traffic is falling apart. Trump and his family have made tens of billions.
It is going to take literal decades, if it is even possible at all, to repair the damage Trump has done in 18 months.
> He let Elon tear our institutions to shreds, costing infinitely more money...
...and lives. Musk is now up there as one of the individuals with the highest kill counts in history - at least 500,000 to 700,000 so far. Analysis suggests that by 2030, this could reach as many as 14 million, including 4.5 million children under age 5. Musk is going to have to come up with his own salute, because he's no longer playing second fiddle to that other guy.
> An interesting feature of Trump 2.0 is that his party has essentially entirely keeled over.
The people who called it a cult were basically right. Trump has overwhelming control over republican voters and has proven he can easily end the careers of republican politicians who oppose him. I do not recall a single politician of either party in my lifetime who has held this level of uncritical support.
It will be fascinating to see what happens when his grip on the party is removed. None of the current crop of potential successors appears to have even remotely the right kind of support to maintain the coalition. That does not seem surprising, he cannot really abide having someone close to him who looks like a powerful successor because he would see it as a threat. So he will anoint a weakling and the base will fracture.
> So he will anoint a weakling and the base will fracture.
Prediction: he will never anoint anyone. He is pathologically incapable of stepping aside, sharing, or caring one iota of what happens to anyone after he dies. He may not even be capable of conceptualizing his own mortality.
There's also the benefit of following the strategy the Democrats as a larger party have followed since at least George W. Bush. Let someone stupider or bolder break a system that's hampering you, and then just never fix it because it benefits you. Disregard that with it broken your opponent can, will, and does cause more harm to everyone. We've been in a cycle of one side smashing whatever makes them upset at the moment, and then the other side just walking over the shards now that they don't have to detour around it.
>Many Americans take for granted the idea that the US is a "nation of laws" and that "rule of law" governs above all else. But the reality is this: there is no such thing as a perfect legal system.
This is a dying vestige of the greatest generation who passed it onto their boomer kids who blindly believed it despite evidince to the contrary. We're moving back toward a late 19th and early 20th century understanding of how government and laws work.
The harder problem is designing remedies that make illegal government action actually expensive enough to discourage it, without also making officials afraid to make legitimate decisions.
Yeah, god forbid they drive right down the middle of the lane rather than drive right up to the line of what the public will tolerate.
There is a direct causative line between government actors feeling like they can get away with unpopular things and the populist politics we've had brewing in this country for the past 20yr. The tea party, the Bernie bros the ron paul era libertarians, even MAGA, they were all ultimately captured by the establishment.
The establishment wielding progressive (lowercase p) types would do well to understand that on some level you, the peddlers of government, must cater to the demands of the people, because if you don't eventually the pressure will build until a populist movement you cannot contain comes around and stomps you. And what that could look like is a serious power transfer away from the feds and toward the states. So if your policy goals involve people in other states, which just about all progressives do, this would be bad for you.
Which is to say turn down the damn heat on the frog, this is all happening because you're going too fast.
> if your policy goals involve people in other states, which just about all progressives do
That does not seem like a feature unique to progressives? Conservatives are trying explicitly to involve other states, they'd happily put us all under the thumb of a Evangelical theocracy if they had the power to do so.
Those jerks in NC to cram Christian values down everyone's throat via the federal government are no different than the jerks in CA who think that if they have to suffer through a low flow shower head some guy in Alton Missouri ought to as well. They're all progressives. We can debate the merits of the directions in which they seek to progress but they're both progressives on a fundamental level. They're seeking to use government to shape society, to what they think is everyone's benefit but in reality that's not so clear.
All of it, apparently, I've never heard the term progressive used to describe conservatives. I gather that you don't like the divergence between the dictionary definition and the practical one? That's valid, but in a discussion it helps to use terms in the most commonly accepted way to avoid that confusion. I don't think modern conservatives are very conservative at all, but I have to stick with the terminology other people understand.
The whole thing. I spend way too much time in the politics/political-philosophy rabbit hole, and it still whooshed right by me. I bet you got like a 2% hit rate on people understanding what you meant.
The part where you gave the word your own private meaning was the unclear part. There are no two sides to "progressive". It means thinking the past was bad and that we can make a better, fairer society in the future. Those who think society was better in the past and think the 1950s or even the 1850s or even earlier were the Golden Age aren't progressive upper or lower case. They are regressive by definition.
They do. It's called a preliminary injunction, which Anthropic obtained back in March. And this current decision is "summary judgement" which is another way to expedite a court case.
Such an injunction is granted when a party can show they have "irreparable harm" if not for the injunction and would likely succeed on the merits of the case.
> Anthropic has submitted concrete, non-speculative evidence of the ongoing harms to its liberty interests. Within days, many large enterprise customers signaled that publicly doing business with Anthropic over competitors was not worth it. (Dkt. No. 6-4 ¶ 16.) Three government contractor customers terminated their contracts with Anthropic, or were instructed to do so by Defendants; three deals valued at over $180 million fell apart despite being on the verge of closing; potential partners demanded additional protective contractual provisions such as
unilateral termination; customers asked to cut short their contracts or reduced their amount, in some instances specifically mentioning the Challenged Actions; and others switched from Claude to competing generative AI tools. (Dkt. No. 6-4 ¶¶ 11–19; Dkt. No. 6-3 ¶ 33.) Anthropic’s Chief Financial Officer, Krishna Rao, projects that, depending on how broadly Anthropic’s customers interpret the Challenged Actions, Anthropic could lose between hundreds of millions and multiple billions of dollars in 2026 revenue. (Dkt. No. 6-5 ¶ 6.) Moreover,
Defendants do not contest that Anthropic will be unable to obtain compensatory relief from the government, making its economic harm likely irreparable. E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Biden, 993 F.3d 640, 677 (9th Cir. 2021); California v. Azar, 911 F.3d 558, 581 (9th Cir. 2018).
The current decision discussed in the article was also expedited since it is Anthropic winning a motion for summary judgement.
That is, before a trial even happens to assess who is correct about a factual dispute, parties are allowed to try to win entirely on legal grounds. The judge assumes everything the United States alleges is true, then sees if Anthropic would win anyways.
From the current decision:
> Under the APA, an agency action must be set aside and held unlawful if it is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion,” “in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right,” or “without observance of procedure required by law.” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), (C), (D). Anthropic has shown that the Hegseth Directive and the Supply Chain Designation were in excess of statutory authority, contrary to law, and arbitrary and capricious.
It's less slow in countries that aren't extremely litigious and backed up with frivolous cases, underfunded in staff, with excessive penalties and racial profiling causing overflows of cases and convictions for minor offenses, resulting in the world's largest prison population and the world's most backed up legal system.
You are right and yet I continue to be impressed by a court system that can deliver judgment in 3 months whereas in the Netherlands nothing happens in under a year and complex cases always last more than five.
In the age of "Twitter"? Why Twitter specifically, not the internet or social media? I honestly feel like Twitter is losing relevance. I learned about it from TikTok for what its worth, and then read more about it here on HN. I've never understood why people put Twitter on a pedestal that I feel it doesn't deserve. Though aside from that your point stands and I totally agree with you. In reality people's/companies' constitutional rights can be infringed easily and the courts take months or even years to stop said infringement.
There was a guy in the comments of the first article on this topic, who claimed to be an expert on this law and was adamant that the decision by the Trump admin was perfectly legal.
Not just for accountability sake, but if that gentleman could come back in here and outline what he thinks is going on that would be quite interesting.
Yeah but this was supposedly "Cut and dry" and no one familiar with the law could possibly mistake it, and it was all media manipulation that made it seem like there was a case where there wasnt one.
> When anthropic contractually stopped the US government from using the platform for certain purposes that they could not prevent the average user from pursuing they created a de facto national security risk.
The 'national security risk' is imaginary and exists solely in the minds of the government morons in charge of AI policy
> When anthropic contractually stopped the US government from using the platform for certain purposes that they could not prevent the average user from pursuing they created a de facto national security risk.
That's some garbage. Anthropic had two red lines: 1) no lethal autonomous warfare without a human in the loop, and 2) no mass surveillance of Americans. How is that something the average user is capable of? How are those red lines creating a national security risk?
These were not special terms for the U.S. government, they were a part of the usage policy since 2024. Governments are not in the same class as the average user, their capability and potential for misuse of the service is not comparable. There is no reason why the U.S. government should not readily agree to those terms, and their reaction was dystopian.
A lot of what the President does is ineffectual. And this is speaking with generality, including Presidents Obama, Biden, Clinton, et. al.
The modern method of "ruling by Executive Order/Action" is a clever political ruse. It garners a lot of attention to decree an EO on some wedge issue, doesn't it? It stirs the pot quite effectively, even if the EO isn't, in fact, effective to do anything at all.
Ruling by EO is a way to keep campaign promises. It's a way to assuage constituents and donors and benefactors, "hey, I'm doing what you wanted from me!" and it's a way to keep ahold of the narrative. What it isn't, is effective governance. The USA is not ruled by decree. The EOs, if they are on subjects that are normally the remit of the judicial or legislative branch, may not do much, if anything at all. The President can say he's meddling with the national budget; the media can say he's meddling; the citizens can all complain that he's meddling, but only Congress can actually do budgetary things. The "#nokings" protests are attacking a straw man, because the USA has no king indeed. We uphold the Constitution in this house.
A lot of EOs simply get blocked or countermanded or never take effect, and remain as Presidential Suggestions or Presidential Wishful Thinking entirely. And nobody notices when they fizzle: they only notice when the pen hits paper and they supposedly take effect. They fulfill his promises. They galvanize the base. They assuage benefactors.
Don't be fooled, though. Ruling by EO is simply another layer of lawfare. It's not effective governance and it's not intended to be. It's intended to confuse and beguile you. What is it that Sun Tzu and Saul Alinsky said about having power? Check on that first.
Interesting. I wonder how those who were laid off by the Government feel about this. Or those who are harmed by ICE Agents. Maybe those who are stuck in limbo because their visas aren’t going to be renewed.
You’re point about /effective/ governance makes sense. To that I agree, often the EOs are overturned or have little affect.
However, the damage EOs cause is very real, lasting, and can be disastrous. For example Trumps tariffs, while ineffective at their (stated) goal, were eventually overturned. But the damage they caused will be very long lasting. Supply chains are organic, they respond to outside forces, when those forces cause them to shift and change. Rarely do they on their own shift back.
No, it didn't say that. It didn't stop the media from repeating it a thousand times, though. In the future, go directly to the supreme court decisions and read them for yourself rather than having other people tell you what to think. We are absolutely in a time rich with other people telling you exactly what you should think and feel about a thing.
Not in those words, but the decision did give absolute immunity from criminal prosecution and civil damage suits for all core official acts and presumptive immunity for all acts "performed within the outer perimiter of his official responsibility". It also severely restricted the ability to gather evidence for acts that do not fall within this scope.
This is extremely broad, and not unreasonable to summarize as the president being able to do whatever they want without fear of criminal/civil consequences.
Suggesting that everyone should read the 120 page, highly technical decision and come to their own conclusions is not helpful.
That's what the syllabus is for. It's the first few pages of the decision, for the convenience of the average American. We're also in the age of AI though, so you can feed the PDF in and have it extract the essential decisions. They're generally good enough now that they won't inject hallucinations into primary source material when asked to extract information.
Separation of powers of the various branches of government is very bipartisan. The supreme court opinion largely re-emphasizes how this operates in practice within this particular scenario, because they had never had to detail it out before.
President Trump is the most attacked US president in American history. Full stop. There has never been a president in history that faced more litigation, libel, defamation, disinformation or assassination attempts. This is simply the first time the question had to be asked how the constitution applies in these scenarios.
These rules would have applied to previous presidents as well, so even though people like to say all new rules are being created just for Trump, it really is very much just an expression of the already understood constitution.
Good for Anthropic for standing up for themselves but think of the masses of companies that decided not to take the risk. The tone was definitely set at Trump's inauguration with all the tech execs front and center on display. They knew that if they didn't play ball Trump would use government power against them.
Law firms blackmailed into doing pro bono work for Trump's pet causes, intelligence analysts not able to tell the truth, energy companies giving up wind leases and switching to fossil fuels. And of course the constant shakedowns for cash.
No fine imposed on the Trump Administration corporation (doing business as the federal government of the US of A)? Does the current legal system allow Anthropic to sue for loss of revenue, reputational damage, etc.?
You're not wrong. The United States has a legal system and not a justice system. Having spent many years of my life involved 'adjacently' with the system, I'd say it's actually a rigged, sadistic system.
What the current regime has brought to light is that WAY too much of the American "checks and balances" are based on "trust me bro" and "a person with morals just wouldn't do that". Zero penalties for doing the wrong thing.
People can just go in front of a congressional hearing and ... lie. Just plain faced bold provable lies. Nobody can call them a liar because of The Code, but there's also no penalty for them for lying, zero.
The corruption was much worse in the previous administration, things like pardoning people for every crime that ever existed under a set of dates before they have even been accused a crime.. extremely suspicious.
At this point, does precedent even matter? Based on recent rulings, I feel like this exact scenario could play out again and the result would be the exact same.
So can they now sue the government and recoup their inflated theoretical losses to be paid out of tax revenue? It feels like any outcome here will have no negative effect on the major players actually involved.
If they what they missed out on was selling the government tokens at a loss ... do they now have to pay the government the value of what they would have lost? :P
There are several hundred federal judges, and cases like this can be brought before virtually any of them. As a consequence at least one judge has ruled practically every single action by the Trump administration is illegal. These rulings are typically overturn at some point in the appeals process up to the Supreme Court, which has mostly upheld them as legal.
Does anything matter if it's illegal or not when it comes to the current government? This is not a flamewar im interested from a practical perspective if things like this has any effects at all in practice.
It de-risks defense contractors working with Anthropic on other projects. The most aggressive interpretation of the blacklist is that Lockheed Martin was not allowed to use Anthropic to develop their own products, and that's not on the table anymore.
Before bashing Trump for not liking Anthropic, people should consider the consequences of having the judiciary decide what software companies the government can and cannot use.
You might get a petty win against the current administration, but lose big when next time a judge decides that $random_department must use Oracle for ERP and not SAP for example because Oracle has better lawyers and wants money from the government. You get the idea.
What I said is pertinent: Anthropic refusing to build software for autonomous weapons platforms is a national security issue. They have the capability, but they just don't want to do it because they don't feel like it.
Soldiers don't need to die because a company is stubborn.
Your argument would be more reasonable if you didn't handwave genuine and difficult moral and ethical decisions under those dismissive terms.
Civilians, including certainly 120 school girls, don't need to die because an AI hallucinated. Anthropic engages its responsability if their tools are used to designate targets. They have a right not to be implicated - or the Trump administration has to be open about requisitioning their tools and drafting their engineers in the name of a warm against Iran, which is another status altogether.
As it stands, there is no war against Iran, especially not one approved by Congress, and the only ones putting soldiers at risk are a senile reality show conman who was elected on the explicit promise of no new wars, and his gung-ho, racist, alcoholic TV host secretary of defense.
> Your argument would be more reasonable if you didn't handwave genuine and difficult moral and ethical decisions under those dismissive terms.
Anthropic willingly got itself into bed with the Pentagon. What did expect to do there, use their models to find the best locations to plant flowers?
As a company, you are to do what the client asks you to do or have your contract cancelled. Now it is bad luck that Anthropic decided not to do what the US government asked it to do and it is suffering the consequences. Maybe they should have used those fancy models to figure out that if they decide to say no to something, then every US government agency can say no to them. Suing to do business with the government again is poor business.
A judge reviewed the case for weeks, has training and experience in the law, had access to all relevant documents from both parties; the latter got the opportunity to argue their point at length, and the judge who knows the case better than you decided both the government and you are wrong.
Maybe things are a little more complicated than your simple rules.
I think the whole problem is that they don't. Their systems are wholly unsuitable for _fully_ automated killing. Random schools and fishermen don't need to die because an administration stubbornly refuses to properly confront reality.
Anthropic isn’t just used for image analysis, and is actually a bad option as you said. It’s used mostly for programming, and what happens when it finds “missile system” in your prompt and refuses to continue coding?
I can answer your direct question if you'd like, but I'm actually missing what I think is some larger point in why you asked it. Would you be okay elaborating please?
Anthropic may win this but strategically it was just plain stupid. Mythos was blocked for just enough time for OpenAI to just catch up with Sol and get lots of enterprise customers.
This ruling does not establish legal precedence. There is a second lawsuit that is still ongoing that will establish legal precedence. The article points out that the Trump administration is likely to wait for a ruling on that second lawsuit before deciding whether to appeal the ruling of this one.
IANAL, so I can't comment on the legal merits of any of it.
From a practical/business perspective, I can see the government's position. It's very simple and it makes sense. Here's an analogy that I think is apt:
We use Solidworks, Altium Designer and JetBrains tools for our work. Imagine a scenario where each of these companies has license terms that restrict their use to certain domains or types of products they --for whatever reason; it does not have to be political-- do not agree with. Further imagine that the restrictions are different for each product, creating a virtual mine field of sorts.
Now imagine that every supplier adopts this philosophy over time; hardware, software, tools, components, fabricators, contractors, consultants, etc.
Well, very soon you will have to conclude that the only job you will be able to do is drive for Uber, if that.
The DoD/DoW is massive and massively multidisciplinary. They simply cannot afford to have vendors create no-go mine fields for them. It quickly becomes an unmanageable pain in the ass.
So, yeah, under those circumstances, I would not touch Anthropic with a ten foot pole duct-taped to another ten foot pole. It simply would not be a reasonable decision to work with them.
Every single person I've seen trying to defend the government's actions in this case has carefully elided the difference between "not awarding them a contract" (which would've been fine) and "using the law to try and destroy their business". The fact that almost nobody on the government's side has actually spoken honestly about the facts of the case makes it pretty obvious who is in the right and wrong here.
It is a security risk. That's the problem you create if you allow every single vendor from imposing their own rules. The contracts are not awarded because doing so would create a security risk.
I don't know what analogy would drive the point home. Imagine a password management system where the people running the company have an ideology that leads them to believe that their system should not allow anyone to secure anything used in military applications. Well, that's a security risk. And no contracts should be granted. Cause and effect. There's no confusion here.
OK. I'm imagining such a password management system. I don't see why it makes sense for the government to ban Microsoft from using that company's password management system for Minecraft, just because Microsoft also happens to sell Microsoft Office to the DoD.
It's entirely reasonable for the USG to say "we don't want to use a product with guardrails". Plenty of people have gotten annoyed with Fable and done exactly that!
But to prohibit anyone else from using it is a much bigger and more questionable step.
> But to prohibit anyone else from using it is a much bigger and more questionable step.
What do you mean? You and I are not prohibited from using Anthropic products unless we do work for DoD/DoW that collides with their usage restrictions.
If Domino's Pizza offered to deliver pizza to the Pentagon but declined in their terms of service to deliver pizza-box-shaped packages to Tehran, do you think it would be a fair and proportionate response for the DoD to ban anyone in the defense supply chain from ever ordering pizza from Domino's?
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The recent trip of the Canadian PM to China is but the most visible part of this shift. That's at govt level, but I've seen it happen all the way down to individual level.
US products are typically more expensive here than Chinese. But at least you were buying from a friendly supplier. That distinction is eroding quickly. In my experience it's forced people to try Chinese, and generally been surprised (in a good way) over quality and features.
And yes, the price of oil has focused people much more at the EV market. (Not least because people with an EV already aren't shy about gloating). Pretty much everyone I talk to, who would buy a car "new" tells me their next one will be electric. The tipping point is coming much faster than most people think.
This was predicted in The Economist awhile back, that if the US blocked Chinese imports a tsunami of Chinese goods would flood other countries and now it's happening. Those countries will also, in turn, erect trade barriers, or suffer the devastation that massive Chinese dumping causes.
So it's a nice protest gesture, but it's a cutting off your nose to spite your face gesture.
Tarifs have existed since forever. Countries use them to protect local industries. But they've always been stable, and industry focused.
Food production for example is worth protecting and Canada has tarifs on imported Dairy. Partnerships exist to protect local industries, promote exports, and give citizens access to cheap goods. It's a complex balance set up over time with lots of nuance and negotiating.
Yes, sometimes tarifs kill a local industry as well. Lack of international competition let's local industry stagnate until it is dead. US ship building is a good example of this, and US Auto makers are trending in this direction. (Banning Chinese EVs is not bolstering the US EV production, it is causing the US manufacturers to ignore that market, and I don't think that ends well.)
Tarifs are a powerful tool when wielded well. Alas right now the US in unstable. Local industries can't rely on tarifs existing next week, never mind 5 years from now. I'm not investing in a local hockey stick factory because the tarif could disappear at any time.
In my country we get cheap solar panels from China. Frankly, let them sell below-cost if they like. (Hint, they're not below cost). We don't make them here, so cheap energy is good for all.
The US negativity to Chinese goods seems to be around dumping (which happens, but not much), around quality (frankly much of it is very good) or around human rights. (Cause, you know, we bombed Iran to promote human rights...)
I don't think Americans will suddenly love China. But the rest of the world is getting very cosy very quickly.
As long as a typical Chinese person is happy with a standard of living that is far below what an American expects, China will be way cheaper on labor.
For most products, labor is a significant cost.
For a lot of consumers, price is more important then where it's made. Maybe not what they say they think is important but when they actually decide. As a result, China will make almost everything, along with the rest of south east Asia.
Basically, the lower price for products comes at the cost of exporting your own jobs. One is easy to reason about when making a purchase decision, the other is indirect and abstract. Which is why the former wins
Explain how this is supposed to work on any medium time frame.
Also, haven't they been buying all kinds of stuff in Africa etcetera? Money doesn't have to flow from A to B and back to A. It might very well pass many more hops to complete the circle
Most actual cases have been of raw materials (eg steel, yarn) and industrial chemicals.
I think this is a long way from the alleged "tsunami of Chinese goods".
It's also worth noting that many Chinese manufactured goods would mostly substitute for US manufactured goods (eg cars). That's actually the whole point.
https://euobserver.com/226294/eu-warns-europes-car-industry-...
If there's a difference, I haven't heard a good explanation of it.
Modern China is not like the Soviet Union; it is much closer to a capitalistic society, but instead of private equity there is a (heavier than even the most 'socialist' of EU nations) government planning push.
In some ways, one could argue they're just taking lessons learned from all of the current systems and applying them aggressively in their centralized planning.
As someone who has lived in/around the heart of the 'Arsenal of Democracy' for my whole life, gotta say they are taking better lessons learned than the US has.
A hostile power - and China to the US is a hostile power - has no such stake. Quite the opposite.
> A hostile power [...] has no such stake.
As someone that grew up in Detroit, reading this is basically equivalent to science-fiction for me.
If you think domestic companies have some sort of special stake in your country, you're misinformed.
Let me put it this way: American companies sell you a bad car and lay you off to give a CEO a bonus.
Chinese dictatorships put you into reeducation camps if you're a Muslim dissident or unapproved member of a religion. China tells the Catholic Church who to appoint as bishops and the Pope spends his time criticizing...anyone but China.
China pumps metrics tons of drug precursors onto the black market which accidentally find their way into Mexican drug labs and...are imported into Detroit.
China backs our national enemies because they are friends to anyone who opposes us. China funds Russia. China buys Iranian oil.
Chinese hackers steal US trade secrets.
And on and on.
China has their own Abu Ghraib moments swept under the carpet, but their workers accept it for the same reason America ignored Seymour Hersh. Their middle class is growing, the Chinese economy has vast surpluses and market leverage that only America has ever enjoyed. Their asymmetric warfare stealing IP, from Texas Instruments to ARM to Lockheed Martin went unpunished. The Chinese intelligence agency, through Salt Typhoon, probably has more blackmail on American politicians than the Mossad does. From a Chinese perspective, the war is won. They're supporting the winning side in Ukraine since both US administrations rebuffed full NATO intervention. They're supporting the winning side in Iran after the IRGC proved they can disable planes, drones and ships with Chinese hardware.
When the United States calls Canada a "51st state" or renames border territories to manufacture leverage, it's not helping China lose. They're undermining the trade agreements that all of North America relies on, and strengthening China's case as a reliable alternative to America's fickle export restrictions. In that sense, humanitarian outrage is almost an advantage; why would Pakistan, Iran or Russia worry about ethical reprisal from China if they're equally amoral?
If we have standards and laws it’s unfair to allow outsourced competition to skirt them and collect the savings. That’s a recipe for disaster.
I'd note the lack of evidence presented there, at least in the part I could read.
The quality of the product you get, like always, is about what people are willing to pay. The big difference is that the current cost of labor/material inputs there, is low enough that you can get the same or often better quality for less.
I wouldn't call that dumping. And to be clear, yeah they've done dumping in some cases.
But when we look at what's happened in the last 8 months or so around various AI SaaS-ish offerings, one could argue that plenty of US companies have done 'dumping with extra steps'. (And that's not even the first time necessarily, e.x. the DoorDash Pizza Arbitrage thought experiment...)
> It's also worth noting that many Chinese manufactured goods would mostly substitute for US manufactured goods (eg cars).
Heck, GM was (although they are moving it due to the Tariffs AFAIR) building the Buick Envision (Compact CUV) in China and shipping it to the US for sale. GM Announced in January that they'd move production to the US by 2028.
Similar for The Lincoln Nautilus (Midsize CUV), The current Gen is built in China and they only in the last month announced that they would move production back to the US... by 2030.
Hypocrisy is never a good look.
I will admit I'm going to point to a specific example; Canadian Bike makers have been able for at least a decade to get an unpainted frame from Taiwan/China/Etc, components from wherever, but so long as they painted the frame in canada and did final assembly in Canada... 'Made in Canada' alongside all of the tariff exemptions that came with that.
> But from Canada's point of view: they have already been threatened enough that im sure those remaining ford,gm and stellantis jobs might be gone eventually...
Guess you didn't hear about Brampton in the news, the Stellantis plant there might be on the chopping block...
Because of the tarrif and trade war our local industries will struggle and collapse, there's nothing we can do about that - they were dependent on US trade partners and markets, the Canadian market is much smaller. We have massive productivity issues, there's little chance we'll successfully build our own auto industry.
In the interim buying more from China doesn't really hurt us, and sends a strong signal to the remaining people who care about foreign policy in Washington that there are penalties to treating allies like enemies.
I used to really strongly oppose Chinese expansion and the rise of cheap products getting dumped everywhere - I still do, but I oppose the US admin more; and at least they're stable and clear about what they want
Designed and made in China.
Right from the unpacking to first print the experience was top Apple-style quality.
Indeed I was agreeably surprised.
Caveat: (Yes I know geeks here will say apple users are just dumb and want a status symbol....they'll never get it)
To each their own I guess.
He told me the BambuLab printer was better for me because less tinkering, and much cheaper, at similar quality... which is what i was looking for.
We both are embedded systems engineers who work with Linux daily, so I trusted him. The results I get from the printer do not disappoint.
However I totally get the Prusa vibe. Just not for my specific use case.
To each his own indeed !
People say a lot of things. If the infrastructure isn't there, it will end up like the US. I'm not sure Canadian EV infrastructure is up to snuff compared to China or even Europe. In the US a lot of people tried electric and now I am finding again and again, for many of these people, the next car after their EV is a gas car. Because poor implementation of the charging experience has put a bad first experience in many peoples minds. In the US K shaped economy, there are enough people that can stomach higher gas prices, and the lower portion of the K shaped economy has an even worse EV infrastructure or otherwise cannot afford most EVs(used or new) anyway.
It's 2026 and we are still debating this? There are a range of use cases for the population. We have semis, F350s towing landscape trailers, motorcycles, bikes, evs, NEVs, etc.
Pick what you think will work best for your use case and iterate. Global political posturing doesn't move you anywhere.
You can debate all you want. If I have learned anything this past decade, its the internet has little bearing on how real life turns out. Just look at the sales numbers. In the US they are now slightly declining after years of steady growth. I watch auto industry shows that talk about how executives who bet their reputations on the EV transition at places like Ford and GM now stand with destroyed careers because the demand was just not there and billions of wasted capital that had to be written down.
A car company has to sell a product that the masses will buy. It turns out for the US (and I suspect Canda as well) that product is currently hybrids. It gets the fuel cost down for people while allowing them to not give up on what they come to expect.
One is political - Energy in the US is highly political, and the oil and coal lobbies are both influential and regressive. This leads to EVs becoming a political statement rather than an active choice.
Second is size. Americans tend to drive further so range does matter. More range means more cost. And even Americans who don't ever go further than 20 miles entertain at least the idea of a cross-country road trip.
So I get where you are coming from. But I'd also say that the US is different to the world in general. In Europe I saw charging infrastructure everywhere. (Streetlight poles contained chargers, all the way down the street.) Electric busses were the norm. Electric cars everywhere.
Like I said earlier, a tipping point is coming. Naturally it'll happen sooner in some places than others. The US will likely be towards the back.
The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al.
>The problem for US automakers is that by the time they see a local market, they'll be well behind the curve in development. I don't think a GM will be able to compete in product (never mind price) to a BYD et al.
It's possible that GM and Ford are dead companies already. Although at the same time, I'd expected Tesla to decline a lot faster than they really did post MAGA Musk. They've had massive duds and a lot of money spent. Yet in terms of the U.S. they are still ahead of the pack in technology development and sales are not abysmal which is insane given there have not been any new platforms introduced. In fact they have discontinued models.
Whether BYD overtakes the American market remains to be seen, and maybe even in Europe we might see eventual pushback as things get really dire with the local manufacturers. It's really too early to tell.
China has an oversupply of EVs. They have over 100 car companies right now competing to the very death, and only a small handful will survive. Those companies will be very strong. But due to the oversupply and the 25% youth unemployment rate, China has to find a way to offload these vehicles overseas or else they'll suffer significantly as well. So it's going to be interesting times, and I'm not too sure how things are going to play out long term.
My next vehicle will be fully EV, not Tesla, once my current one dies.
Canada needs a whole lot less EV infrastructure than the US since so much of the population lives along a narrow band. Once you cover the trans-Canada highway, you've covered ~90% of long distance trips.
Maybe the eventual chinese sodium batteries will solve some of these issues.
Trump has been the best promoter of electrical vehicle here in Europe.
He 'helped' his Arabian allies twice, first he brought war to their countries and then he made sure that people wouldn't need their oil anymore (at least much less).
With allies like that you don't need enemy lol.
Good show!
They can, the preliminary injunction is a thing that can be invoked very quickly to stop actions before the law decides.
Anthropic didn't suffer any irreparable harm and they're free to seek damages if they wish, but they won't because it doesn't really matter to them. This whole mess has just been advertising that has kept them in the headlines and very likely has been more beneficial than harmful.
Also, the current administration doesn't care much about the law but what Trump and his people like and dislike. They made it very clear that they don't like Anthropic, so they won't get any contracts now, this ruling doesn't really matter until Trump is out of office.
None of this provable, of course.
They even fired people for investigating the storm on the Capitol. The message was pretty clear: we don't care about the law or what your job is, if you do something we dislike we retaliate, so you better become corrupt and stop caring as well or quit now on your own terms.
I'm sure they got MORE government contracts because of it by turning themselves into headline news for weeks.
So being in the news for such things surely didn't help.
Anthropic’s reputation was enhanced by this
Fixed that for you.
However it is true that there were some defence contractors who probably took Codex deals instead of Claude deals when this happened.
Factually wrong. Many people on defense contracted projects (you can find at least a few of those in every big company you have heard of) are banned from using Anthropic models. They need to use GPT, Gemini or something else. That is a LOT of business lost.
What you are saying is false.
You don't have the full picture.
To a certain extent this exists, but given that SCOTUS has been stacked with GOPers…
> The shadow docket is a break from ordinary procedure. Such cases receive very limited briefings and are typically decided a week or less after an application is filed. The process generally results in short, unsigned rulings. In contrast, merits cases take months, include extensive briefing and public oral argument, and result in lengthy written opinions detailing the reasoning of the majority and of any concurring and dissenting justices.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_docket
The first Trump admin filed 41.
Biden filed 19.
The second Trump admin filed 32 in 2025 alone.
The pattern is political, and beyond a matter of keeping lower courts in check. His success rate has also been far higher than Biden's.
It should be noted any justice can write a dissent in a "shadow docket" ruling. If a justice finds a ruling incorrect, nothing hides their criticism of it from the light.
(I agree that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the even more recent trend of shadow docket decisions that do come with opinions attached, and perhaps law students in the 2030s will learn about the "expedited docket" as a normal way to handle cases.)
The SCOTUS is stacked with reactionaries, people that want to take us back in history. They quite literally undid 60 years of civil rights legislation!
This is not a Democrat vs. Republican thing, this is is a very small minority that has taken control of an entire branch of government and is abusing their power.
Many Americans take for granted the idea that the US is a "nation of laws" and that "rule of law" governs above all else. But the reality is this: there is no such thing as a perfect legal system.
You can have a strong legal system by design (good oversight, various checks and balances, etc.) but in practice, any system is only as good as the most powerful people are decent and respectful of it.
If you have someone in the most powerful position (the executive) who doesn't respect the law and who isn't willing to, with wisdom in his or her heart, exercise restraint with the understanding that protecting the integrity of the system is ultimately more important than getting your way, the law stands no chance.
Presidents are not historically all powerful within their own parties and the nature of the big tent systems means usually it is fairly difficult to get agreement on everything within a party without some compromise. Trump has managed to defang everybody else in the GOP.
And (2) if the law hasn't been used then WTF did we even consider signing it into power, let alone actually doing it? Something like this should never be done, but if done one would think it would only be in the face of an imminent and urgent need. Instead we seemed to have just casually signed unconstitutional executive tyranny into power 'just in case.'
The only way we're ever going to reign in executive power is if one party or the other starts rolling back executive power while they're in power. But when people are in power they seem to convince themselves that it will always be like this, and so when it comes to power all they can say is 'more, more, more.'
[1] - https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/president-obama-signs-in...
Someone has to get things done, and if Congress won't do it, maybe the President has to.
They can't even get the SAVE act passed.
The SAVE act status probably has more to do with some Republican legislators who think it will harm their re-election chances by impacting their own supporters.
It is going to take literal decades, if it is even possible at all, to repair the damage Trump has done in 18 months.
...and lives. Musk is now up there as one of the individuals with the highest kill counts in history - at least 500,000 to 700,000 so far. Analysis suggests that by 2030, this could reach as many as 14 million, including 4.5 million children under age 5. Musk is going to have to come up with his own salute, because he's no longer playing second fiddle to that other guy.
Sources, with details of methodology, here: https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2026/07/how-pulitzer-final...
The people who called it a cult were basically right. Trump has overwhelming control over republican voters and has proven he can easily end the careers of republican politicians who oppose him. I do not recall a single politician of either party in my lifetime who has held this level of uncritical support.
It will be fascinating to see what happens when his grip on the party is removed. None of the current crop of potential successors appears to have even remotely the right kind of support to maintain the coalition. That does not seem surprising, he cannot really abide having someone close to him who looks like a powerful successor because he would see it as a threat. So he will anoint a weakling and the base will fracture.
Prediction: he will never anoint anyone. He is pathologically incapable of stepping aside, sharing, or caring one iota of what happens to anyone after he dies. He may not even be capable of conceptualizing his own mortality.
I fucking hate living in interesting times.
They have literally no excuse to be this cowardly. They will still be alive and rich if they go against Trump.
What happens then will be very interesting!
I don't see anyone who can keep wielding Trump's power.
This is a dying vestige of the greatest generation who passed it onto their boomer kids who blindly believed it despite evidince to the contrary. We're moving back toward a late 19th and early 20th century understanding of how government and laws work.
Yeah, god forbid they drive right down the middle of the lane rather than drive right up to the line of what the public will tolerate.
There is a direct causative line between government actors feeling like they can get away with unpopular things and the populist politics we've had brewing in this country for the past 20yr. The tea party, the Bernie bros the ron paul era libertarians, even MAGA, they were all ultimately captured by the establishment.
The establishment wielding progressive (lowercase p) types would do well to understand that on some level you, the peddlers of government, must cater to the demands of the people, because if you don't eventually the pressure will build until a populist movement you cannot contain comes around and stomps you. And what that could look like is a serious power transfer away from the feds and toward the states. So if your policy goals involve people in other states, which just about all progressives do, this would be bad for you.
Which is to say turn down the damn heat on the frog, this is all happening because you're going too fast.
That does not seem like a feature unique to progressives? Conservatives are trying explicitly to involve other states, they'd happily put us all under the thumb of a Evangelical theocracy if they had the power to do so.
Those jerks in NC to cram Christian values down everyone's throat via the federal government are no different than the jerks in CA who think that if they have to suffer through a low flow shower head some guy in Alton Missouri ought to as well. They're all progressives. We can debate the merits of the directions in which they seek to progress but they're both progressives on a fundamental level. They're seeking to use government to shape society, to what they think is everyone's benefit but in reality that's not so clear.
All of it, apparently, I've never heard the term progressive used to describe conservatives. I gather that you don't like the divergence between the dictionary definition and the practical one? That's valid, but in a discussion it helps to use terms in the most commonly accepted way to avoid that confusion. I don't think modern conservatives are very conservative at all, but I have to stick with the terminology other people understand.
The whole thing. I spend way too much time in the politics/political-philosophy rabbit hole, and it still whooshed right by me. I bet you got like a 2% hit rate on people understanding what you meant.
injunction in question: https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/rYKRX7EU...
Such an injunction is granted when a party can show they have "irreparable harm" if not for the injunction and would likely succeed on the merits of the case.
> Anthropic has submitted concrete, non-speculative evidence of the ongoing harms to its liberty interests. Within days, many large enterprise customers signaled that publicly doing business with Anthropic over competitors was not worth it. (Dkt. No. 6-4 ¶ 16.) Three government contractor customers terminated their contracts with Anthropic, or were instructed to do so by Defendants; three deals valued at over $180 million fell apart despite being on the verge of closing; potential partners demanded additional protective contractual provisions such as unilateral termination; customers asked to cut short their contracts or reduced their amount, in some instances specifically mentioning the Challenged Actions; and others switched from Claude to competing generative AI tools. (Dkt. No. 6-4 ¶¶ 11–19; Dkt. No. 6-3 ¶ 33.) Anthropic’s Chief Financial Officer, Krishna Rao, projects that, depending on how broadly Anthropic’s customers interpret the Challenged Actions, Anthropic could lose between hundreds of millions and multiple billions of dollars in 2026 revenue. (Dkt. No. 6-5 ¶ 6.) Moreover, Defendants do not contest that Anthropic will be unable to obtain compensatory relief from the government, making its economic harm likely irreparable. E. Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Biden, 993 F.3d 640, 677 (9th Cir. 2021); California v. Azar, 911 F.3d 558, 581 (9th Cir. 2018).
The current decision discussed in the article was also expedited since it is Anthropic winning a motion for summary judgement.
That is, before a trial even happens to assess who is correct about a factual dispute, parties are allowed to try to win entirely on legal grounds. The judge assumes everything the United States alleges is true, then sees if Anthropic would win anyways.
From the current decision:
> Under the APA, an agency action must be set aside and held unlawful if it is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion,” “in excess of statutory jurisdiction, authority, or limitations, or short of statutory right,” or “without observance of procedure required by law.” 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A), (C), (D). Anthropic has shown that the Hegseth Directive and the Supply Chain Designation were in excess of statutory authority, contrary to law, and arbitrary and capricious.
Can it be at all lawful to retaliate though?
Not just for accountability sake, but if that gentleman could come back in here and outline what he thinks is going on that would be quite interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzwRflcLPAA&t=2479s
Super interesting pov from the person who recommended the supply risk designation.
The 'national security risk' is imaginary and exists solely in the minds of the government morons in charge of AI policy
That's some garbage. Anthropic had two red lines: 1) no lethal autonomous warfare without a human in the loop, and 2) no mass surveillance of Americans. How is that something the average user is capable of? How are those red lines creating a national security risk?
These were not special terms for the U.S. government, they were a part of the usage policy since 2024. Governments are not in the same class as the average user, their capability and potential for misuse of the service is not comparable. There is no reason why the U.S. government should not readily agree to those terms, and their reaction was dystopian.
The modern method of "ruling by Executive Order/Action" is a clever political ruse. It garners a lot of attention to decree an EO on some wedge issue, doesn't it? It stirs the pot quite effectively, even if the EO isn't, in fact, effective to do anything at all.
Ruling by EO is a way to keep campaign promises. It's a way to assuage constituents and donors and benefactors, "hey, I'm doing what you wanted from me!" and it's a way to keep ahold of the narrative. What it isn't, is effective governance. The USA is not ruled by decree. The EOs, if they are on subjects that are normally the remit of the judicial or legislative branch, may not do much, if anything at all. The President can say he's meddling with the national budget; the media can say he's meddling; the citizens can all complain that he's meddling, but only Congress can actually do budgetary things. The "#nokings" protests are attacking a straw man, because the USA has no king indeed. We uphold the Constitution in this house.
A lot of EOs simply get blocked or countermanded or never take effect, and remain as Presidential Suggestions or Presidential Wishful Thinking entirely. And nobody notices when they fizzle: they only notice when the pen hits paper and they supposedly take effect. They fulfill his promises. They galvanize the base. They assuage benefactors.
Don't be fooled, though. Ruling by EO is simply another layer of lawfare. It's not effective governance and it's not intended to be. It's intended to confuse and beguile you. What is it that Sun Tzu and Saul Alinsky said about having power? Check on that first.
You’re point about /effective/ governance makes sense. To that I agree, often the EOs are overturned or have little affect.
However, the damage EOs cause is very real, lasting, and can be disastrous. For example Trumps tariffs, while ineffective at their (stated) goal, were eventually overturned. But the damage they caused will be very long lasting. Supply chains are organic, they respond to outside forces, when those forces cause them to shift and change. Rarely do they on their own shift back.
This is extremely broad, and not unreasonable to summarize as the president being able to do whatever they want without fear of criminal/civil consequences.
Suggesting that everyone should read the 120 page, highly technical decision and come to their own conclusions is not helpful.
Separation of powers of the various branches of government is very bipartisan. The supreme court opinion largely re-emphasizes how this operates in practice within this particular scenario, because they had never had to detail it out before.
President Trump is the most attacked US president in American history. Full stop. There has never been a president in history that faced more litigation, libel, defamation, disinformation or assassination attempts. This is simply the first time the question had to be asked how the constitution applies in these scenarios.
These rules would have applied to previous presidents as well, so even though people like to say all new rules are being created just for Trump, it really is very much just an expression of the already understood constitution.
Law firms blackmailed into doing pro bono work for Trump's pet causes, intelligence analysts not able to tell the truth, energy companies giving up wind leases and switching to fossil fuels. And of course the constant shakedowns for cash.
And that friends, is capital-F Fascism.
If only it were them "giving up" leases -- we *paid them billions* to halt developments.
I hope I’m wrong…
People can just go in front of a congressional hearing and ... lie. Just plain faced bold provable lies. Nobody can call them a liar because of The Code, but there's also no penalty for them for lying, zero.
Because he is a shameless crook who heads up a corrupt administration
> These rulings are typically overturn at some point in the appeals process up to the Supreme Court, which has mostly upheld them as legal.
Gee I wonder why that is!!
You might get a petty win against the current administration, but lose big when next time a judge decides that $random_department must use Oracle for ERP and not SAP for example because Oracle has better lawyers and wants money from the government. You get the idea.
"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics"
Soldiers don't need to die because a company is stubborn.
Your argument would be more reasonable if you didn't handwave genuine and difficult moral and ethical decisions under those dismissive terms.
Civilians, including certainly 120 school girls, don't need to die because an AI hallucinated. Anthropic engages its responsability if their tools are used to designate targets. They have a right not to be implicated - or the Trump administration has to be open about requisitioning their tools and drafting their engineers in the name of a warm against Iran, which is another status altogether.
As it stands, there is no war against Iran, especially not one approved by Congress, and the only ones putting soldiers at risk are a senile reality show conman who was elected on the explicit promise of no new wars, and his gung-ho, racist, alcoholic TV host secretary of defense.
Anthropic willingly got itself into bed with the Pentagon. What did expect to do there, use their models to find the best locations to plant flowers?
As a company, you are to do what the client asks you to do or have your contract cancelled. Now it is bad luck that Anthropic decided not to do what the US government asked it to do and it is suffering the consequences. Maybe they should have used those fancy models to figure out that if they decide to say no to something, then every US government agency can say no to them. Suing to do business with the government again is poor business.
Maybe things are a little more complicated than your simple rules.
I think the whole problem is that they don't. Their systems are wholly unsuitable for _fully_ automated killing. Random schools and fishermen don't need to die because an administration stubbornly refuses to properly confront reality.
Well, the US does have this whole "freedom" thing. Which said soldiers presumably fight for companies like Anthropic to have.
Are you seriously saying the US government should be able to compel individual companies to make things?
I am not saying it should be able, it already is.
From a practical/business perspective, I can see the government's position. It's very simple and it makes sense. Here's an analogy that I think is apt:
We use Solidworks, Altium Designer and JetBrains tools for our work. Imagine a scenario where each of these companies has license terms that restrict their use to certain domains or types of products they --for whatever reason; it does not have to be political-- do not agree with. Further imagine that the restrictions are different for each product, creating a virtual mine field of sorts.
Now imagine that every supplier adopts this philosophy over time; hardware, software, tools, components, fabricators, contractors, consultants, etc.
Well, very soon you will have to conclude that the only job you will be able to do is drive for Uber, if that.
The DoD/DoW is massive and massively multidisciplinary. They simply cannot afford to have vendors create no-go mine fields for them. It quickly becomes an unmanageable pain in the ass.
So, yeah, under those circumstances, I would not touch Anthropic with a ten foot pole duct-taped to another ten foot pole. It simply would not be a reasonable decision to work with them.
I don't know what analogy would drive the point home. Imagine a password management system where the people running the company have an ideology that leads them to believe that their system should not allow anyone to secure anything used in military applications. Well, that's a security risk. And no contracts should be granted. Cause and effect. There's no confusion here.
But to prohibit anyone else from using it is a much bigger and more questionable step.
What do you mean? You and I are not prohibited from using Anthropic products unless we do work for DoD/DoW that collides with their usage restrictions.