This is very interesting. Not saying it is, but a possible endgame for Chinese models could be to have "backdoor" commands such that when a specific string is passed in, agents could ignore a particular alert or purposely reduce security. A lot of companies are currently working on "Agentic Security Operation Centers", some of them preferring to use open source models for sovereignty. This feels like a viable attack vector.

What China is to the US, the US is to the rest of the world. This doesn't really help the conversation, the problem is more general.

Yep, focus on actors may be warranted, but in a broad view and as a part of existing system and not 'their own system'. Otherwise, we get lost in a sea of IC level of paranoia. In simple terms, nations-states will do what nation-states will do ( which is basically whatever is to their advantage ).

That does not mean we can't have a technical discussion that bypasses at least some of those considerations.

That is just factually incorrect. Most Chinese Malaysians are either Cantonese or Hokkien, with closer ties to Taiwan and Hong Kong than the mainland. A lot of the older folk don't even speak Mandarin. Keep in mind the CCP wasn't even in power when most migrated here.

As a Malaysian Chinese my ties to the CCP is that I have heard of them

literally it doesnt matter you'll always be Chinese to them.

He's Malaysian. He has no family in China

I can envision whitelist-only ISPs that block any traffic to unvetted domains and IPs. Hopefully we still have some time left before total dictatorship

As far as I know, what you describe exists today only in North Korea. Which is to say, this is not very likely. Thing is, a "great firewall" with some packet inspection thrown in to cut off the common VPN protocols deters 90% of the population, and that is generally "good enough" for authoritarians.

Why can't all this effort be spent on improving public infrastructure instead? The fact that it's even a possibility that wikipedia could be blocked and employees barred fro the UK makes it worse than China. Tory and Labor might as well unite into a single CCP-esq party

The evidence is shaky at best. A lot of hand wavy coincidences. The ballotproof accusation I've seen before. It's a random GitHub repo with 22 stars. I doubt anyone was seriously using it. If there has been fraud, more solid proof is needed or else it'll just get dismissed as conspiracy theories by the right.

> The cover-up wasn’t just about hiding evidence—it was about controlling the narrative

Ringing a bit of AI bells.

> The first step is acknowledgment... The second step is investigation

I think the order here is flipped. Investigate first. A bit hard to do when the opposing government is in charge. There are many crimes that Trump has committed. Properly prosecuting them, impeachment, and an early election would be a good first step rather than chasing fuzzy claims like Trump did with 2020.

At this point, what's the difference between the UK and China other than the specific content they block? Some ISPs have even started blocking wireguard here & I've had to resort back to xray/v2ray

Very little difference. But blocking wireguard is huge change, which ISPs are doing that?

I currently live in student accommodation so not sure what they're using upstream. The university network also drops wireguard connections but only to known providers like Mullvad (assuming obfuscation is off)

> I'm pretty sure if you lived in Taiwan you would think very differently

Well, I don't.

> And why you are so certain that Chinese entities are not?

It's not that they aren't, but they can't really. What are they gonna do if I make disparaging statements against their dictator? Deny me entry to their country? Meanwhile America is screening people's social media with immediate effect on careers and livelihood. I don't proclaim to know whether the US will use my data against me but they certainly would have more power to do so against their citizens. Who you trust really depends on where you are and which countries exert influence in your region. I personally would rather nobody have my data and self host everything.

I highly doubt that OpenAI is capable of releasing a full phone that isn't just a reskin of a generic Android with "AI". IOS design sucks (imo) and its app selection is much less than Android but that's not what makes people buy iPhone. It's simple familiarity and marketing. I'll definitely be switching off my iPhone when it breaks but that'll probably take at least a decade. Phones are pretty much feature complete at this point - for a normal person there's almost no reason to upgrade.

Because it would have catastrophic consequences on the world order. Normalizing nuking your opponent will invite Russia to nuke Ukraine, China Taiwan, and North Korea South Korea. The USA will not let Israel nuke anybody.

So far the USA hasn't stopped Israel from doing anything.

You mean when they said "Israel shouldn't attack" and then sent them 20.000 missiles and tons of other supplies for war and then they attacked?

How would we know if they did?

I think we are past Israel really caring about catastrophic consequences.

Why would they escalate to nukes when they can already fly over Tehran and bomb things at will?

>Against non-nuclear nation, there isn't really much threat of retaliation.

There is from the rest of the world. Israel needs the west on its side. Using nukes would guarantee that support would end, which would make them extremely vulnerable.

It's not clear there is anything Israel could do which would elicit more than strong, but carefully chosen, words of condemnation from the west.

Certainly Nuclear strikes against Iran would be a huge overreach. But no other country is going to retaliate with a Nuclear strike on Israel. If for no other reason than it would certainly lead the US deploying its nuclear arsenal. Especially with the current administration, no one would count on them choosing a path of de-escalation.

A nuclear strike on Jerusalem sounds untenable for religious reasons.

Other than strong condemnation, there would be zero consequences and no effect on west's support to Israel, if Israel would to use nuclear weapons on Iran.

This is probably wrong.

Yes, support for Israel is already looking threadbare around most of the world.

Most of the world yes. Most of the world doesn't really matter.

Iranian general said,

> Pakistan has assured Iran that if Israel uses nuclear weapons, Pakistan will retaliate with nuclear strikes as well.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/pakist...

But who knows if that's true or not.

Any country that drops nukes on Israel is going to become the US’s next target. I can’t see Pakistan wanting that.

For important context, Pakistan is Iran's neighbor. Can you not see why nukes in Iran is a concern?

And if Israel could use a nuke without nuclear retaliation in turn, they would proceed to annihilate half a continent. Once you get hit, it's far too late to retaliate.

Pakistan is establishing preemptive MAD in defense of barrier states, because if Israel does this, they're effectively already dead; they'll have nothing to lose. Israel can call it a bluff, but I personally think they're serious.

As a final consideration, if Israel drops nukes on Iran and is retaliated upon, the US is absolutely not going to start a global thermonuclear war and end all of humanity on their behest. Nor would China ever allow the US to get away with an counter invasion of Pakistan, leaving little other option.

Lack of a nuclear response from the target country, if it could even be guaranteed, is not the same thing as lack of retaliation. Even the non-nuclear response from current allies would be devastating for Israel's security.

Layman's impression, but it seems like Iran has been holding onto stockpiles and deliberately not going all the way to weapons grade, probably to navigate around the threat of us invasion or similar in the time between them getting that and credibly weaponizing it. Recent events may push them to rush it though, if they still have the facilities.

> if they still have the facilities.

Wasn't the entire point of this that now they don't have the facilities?

As per the story we're commenting on, whether they were successful in this mission or not is currently unknown.

The story is about the fate of the stockpile, not the processing equipment.

That's even in the title of this thread.

I believe you are mistaken. While the title is correct, it is also incomplete. One of the sites bombed was Fordo, the enrichment plant.

> Satellite photographs of the primary target, the Fordo uranium enrichment plant that Iran built under a mountain, showed several holes where a dozen 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators — one of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal — punched deep holes in the rock. The Israeli military’s initial analysis concluded that the site, the target of American and Israeli military planners for more than 26 years, sustained serious damage from the strike but had not been completely destroyed.

The article goes on to discuss how this is only initial analysis and that additionally equipment may have been moved prior to bombing.

> additionally equipment may have been moved prior to bombing.

It's possible, and Iran has done it before (AFAIK, the only country), but this is about as easy as building a new facility from scratch (what they essentially did last time they moved a centrifuge).

It's not exactly portable, like a satellite dish or something.

And even if you transported some of the most complex parts (the centrifuge), they aren't really very useful on their own, without an entire facility.

So the idea that they're going to be up and running and further enriching uranium to bomb grade any time soon is - while theoretically not impossible - highly implausible.

The odds are likely higher that they've just got another facility no one yet knows about (which is low, but non-zero).

Because MAD works when people care about their life.

Mad requires both sides to 1) be rational, 2) believe the other side is rational. Neither is a safe assumption. It's fundamentally always been messed up. Even Reagan realised that.

Reagan was president after a 50 year stint of nutjobs running the White House without nuking anyone. His failure to negotiate strategic arms reduction isn't somehow justified because the world sucks 20 years in the future.

What's the point? Persians are friendly towards Israel, it's the religious loonies that hold the power, and they can't be eliminated even with many nuclear strikes. As an armchair internet analyst like myself, I'm 100% sure Iran has nukes just no good delivery mechanism. The few missiles they bought from NK that could have delivered a nuke, they used to randomly shoot at Israel.

The closest Israel came to using nukes was in `73 when it looked like it was about to be overrun by Arab armies on multiple fronts and also many suggested it should have dropped it on Gaza on Oct 7, but that would be seriously stupid even just for revenge, since you can't repopulate the area later.

You're sick, if you think the only reason to not drop nuke on Gaza would be that Israel would not be able to steal the nuked land later on.

You're also full of it talking about Iran's rocket forces.

Lookup eg. "Deep Dive Defense" on YT.

All this poster would need to do is compare photos of modern day Hiroshima to modern day Pripyat to realize how absurd of a statement that was.

Yeah totally. Have you seen Hiroshima lately? Total wasteland.

Are we really trying to make a point that Israel cares about civilian casualties?

We're trying to make a point that there's a reason that even pariah states like North Korea have not nuked people since the end of WWII. You don't just casually look at a problem and say "oh, why haven't they thrown a nuclear warhead at it?"