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Posted by nmeagent 15 hours ago

Feds Target AI Critics as "Foreign Agents"(www.kenklippenstein.com)
339 points | 355 commentspage 3
shrubby 12 hours ago|
Tech fascism. Read Nerd Reich!

It gets flagged here instantly so your duty to read this.

Try searching "tech fascism" or "nerd reich" and almost every topic is flagged.

Nerd Reich describes the Y Combinator connection nicely.

Jamesbeam 3 hours ago||
chuckles "I'm in danger"

I am confident this has absolutely nothing to do with the Super Intelligence private financial interests.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/donald-trump-stock-trades

beej71 11 hours ago||
"Let us build this data center in your back yard and in return you'll get..."

Conspiracies aside, this sentence still needs to be satisfactorily completed for people to buy in. Because right now people know the best case is they'll get nothing.

ipdashc 11 hours ago||
This is a silly standard and the reason why people make fun of NIMBYism. By this logic we shouldn't build anything at all unless it immediately benefits the people living next to it. (And I don't like how much power DCs are using either, but that should be the argument, not "it doesn't benefit me personally so don't build it".)
someonebaggy 9 hours ago||
Correct, we shouldn't.
ipdashc 9 hours ago|||
Alright, fair enough. I guess no factories, no power lines or pipelines, no thru highways or train tracks, no office parks, no farms other than subsistence, no radio towers or aeronautical beacons, no bus depots or railyards, no quarries, oil rigs, or mines. Heaven forbid someone is forced to live nearby something that's useful for someone other than themselves.
someonebaggy 8 hours ago||
They can exist, they just have to create value, and not the capitalist sort exclusively measured in dollars.
ipdashc 8 hours ago||
Sure. ChatGPT alone has a billion users. I don't particularly like AI, but it's clearly useful, and a lot of people are using it. (And even this assumes that every data center is an AI one.)
someonebaggy 6 hours ago||
Then it can afford to compensate affected people.
ipdashc 4 hours ago||
Yeah, they do, they pay for the land. That's how buying land works and it's separate from the permitting process to actually build on it. I'm not really seeing where we're going with this
someonebaggy 2 hours ago||
That doesn't compensate affected people. It only compensates the previous landowner. In fact it usually more than compensates them, as they receive substantial profit, creating a speculative bubble market that's bad for everyone else.
hardbass 8 hours ago|||
If people like that have their way private property would effectively cease existing.
Ekaros 10 hours ago||
And on higher level. "You are spending astonishing amount of maybe our collective money for ..."

Looking at those numbers. Looking at what it does now. And then simply comparing it to anything else and very reasonable some start to question what even is going on...

GolfPopper 8 hours ago||
Regardless of what the tech can or cannot do, the business model is clearly a scam by people who get high on thinking they're smarter than everyone else. You don't promise your investors "the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars" by accident. You do it because you're a fraud who thinks you're much cleverer than you actually are.
jstummbillig 9 hours ago||
"Anxiety over AI and data centers is widely held, but somehow the Trump administration has convinced itself the public concern was manufactured in China."

What has one to do with the other? Why would a believe "widely held" have any bearing on it being manufactured in China or not? This is a non sequitur.

nunez 11 hours ago||
> Cotton’s chief exhibit was Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based American tech mogul whose network of left-wing U.S. nonprofits, Cotton claimed, has spent years producing content opposing American AI infrastructure, with the Chinese government as its “ultimate paymaster.”

Was not expecting a crack down on ThoughtWorks today, but this is totally on brand for him afaik. (Singham founded TW)

aussieguy1234 12 hours ago||
Sounds similar to Russia targeting LGBT rights and other human rights activists as "Foreign Agents".
loeg 13 hours ago||
> the Justice Department instructed “citizens and noncitizens” that anyone furthering the “goals” of a foreign power in “any public activity” — including even “public demonstrations” — must formally notify the government to avoid arrest and prosecution.

Citizens acting as foreign agents have always had to register that representation! This is not new to the Trump admin. FARA dates to 1938.

kennywinker 12 hours ago|
the difference here is that regular citizens who act on their beliefs are being considered foreign agents if they have the wrong beliefs.

This seems right out of the Red Scare, when normal everyday american socialists were treated as agents of the USSR.

The term "witch hunt" was used then, because just like the historical witch hunts - an accusation alone was enough to find you guilty

loeg 12 hours ago||
No, this is something the article attempts to claim, but it is not true.
kennywinker 11 hours ago||
Not true yet. It seems pretty likely it’ll happen soon enough, given their track record of saying their going to abuse the law to go after a group - and then abusing the law to go after a group.
pinkmuffinere 13 hours ago||
> “Alarming reports indicate that a network of foreign actors, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is attempting to manipulate U.S. policy and public opinion on data centers.“

Setting aside the politics, trump, ai-doom/boom, I just think this claim is fascinating. Can somebody steel man this? What’s the best evidence for this?

sailfast 13 hours ago||
The best evidence will undoubtedly be classified so we can’t see it, but trust us, it’s there. Ignore all the other evidence.
pvab3 13 hours ago|||
I heard it reported by a reputable source a few weeks ago. I don't think the propaganda reach was very broad
jrochkind1 12 hours ago||
I mean, I don't particularly doubt it's happening (and that the US tries to do the similar things in China, mess with public opinion in ways we think convenient for us or inconvenient for the CCP). Like, why wouldn't they try to mess with us this way, we're so easy to mess with. I don't think either the USA or Chinese governments are limited by things like "ethics" or "international law" or something. I'm talking about social media campaigns with sock puppets etc, mostly on the internet. How effective it is or exactly how many resources they are putting into it is another story.

That obviously doesn't mean that everyone who is protesting a data center is working for China, or wouldn't be doing so if it weren't for Chinese interference. It's plausible to me that China is messing with social media with puppet accounts and stuff (like why wouldn't they be?), much less plausible they have agents on the ground organizing or even going to protests or public hearings (and obviously even if they did, it would not be _most_ of the campaigns or protests against data centers).

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