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15155last Friday at 8:18 AM2 repliesview on HN

Ah, invoking Godwin. "First they came" in 1976 when ITAR was first passed, or maybe "first they came" in the 1940s when we didn't export Proximity Fuzes, right?

Countries are free to prevent exports of technology. Equating export controls with the Holocaust is disgusting.


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myrmidonlast Friday at 5:28 PM

The comparison to cryptography export restrictions is absolutely valid, but is that really favorable?

I'd argue that 70's cryptography export bans in hindsight look completely misguided, futile, burdensome and pointless in the end (which is why most of it was lifted/reverted over the last decades).

I don't see how AI-models are much different; it's certainly a better comparison than the fuzes, because we're both not at war right now and the underlying principle is already out of the bag.

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avaerlast Friday at 8:34 AM

I did not bring in Godwin, but I guess he's here now :D.

I'm more trying to invoke GRRM. This is a Game of Thrones: billionaire CEO's complain about each other to the government to get their competitors blocked/tripped up with acts of fiat, which is what happened with Fable 5.

And in the linked post, it says GPT-5.6 access decisions are supposedly just hand picked.

The stories about export controls are just songs they sing to the peasants.

There are claims that Chinese companies are mining + reselling Claude subscriptions like crazy anyway.

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