Technology

You say Chinese state censorship is an understood quantity. Could be. But I’d say that my points about equivalencies are to illustrate that what we think is true, is often much more grey. I’ve been to China, and while I was impressed and shocked at how much more advanced it was than I expected, I also couldn’t imaging living there. It doesn’t change the fact that a stagnant late-stage capital mafia state that lives off defense contracting is performing ooorly against a centrally controlled capitalist state that has set different priorities (that’s right boy, deepseek-r1 is a side project of a…. CHINESE HEDGE FUND). It’s value neutral. But if you dismiss reality based on a conception of political censorship that I doubt you’ve deeply engaged with, enjoy.

The so called free market certainly didn’t seem to take much reassurance in deepseek being compromised by communist censorship this morning though. Probably because the deepseek news isn’t exceptional because of China, or what it is, but because of what it isn’t, compared to the bloated tech carcasses that the US has pinned its hopes on.