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The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

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Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#31

I've been thinking for a while that some part of the ebullience towards AI among the American decision-maker class is that it is a good way to stick our heads in the sand and pretend like super-intelligent AI will make up for not being able to build competitive cars and drones. It has the feeling of an easy-to-digest explanation but I'm worried that it's probably wrong.

I’d wager you’re more right than wrong.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#32
I don't understand the surprise in this article. This particular story is absolutely nothing new—the Germans and Japanese did it first to the US car market, which is inefficient, stuck in a bygone era, and propped up by government protectionism. Nearly all* American cars have been backwards in all metrics since about the 1970s.

In general, if you wanted...

Reliability: Japanese. Value: Korean, French, Japanese. Performance: German, Italian, maybe every now and then British. Luxury: German, Italian, British, and depending on marque, Japanese.

And today, Chinese marques are eating everyone's lunch on every metric in the EV sector because they have seen how everyone else builds cars, lorries, and buses for a while, learnt how to do it themselves, got rid of the ICE, popped a battery in them, and have been massively undercutting the market for a while now.

* I should qualify this properly to pre-emptively stave off the ooh-rah crowd: every now and then there has been a decent A-to-B car out of the US, like the Fiesta. Additionally there are models sold purely in Europe like the Ford Mondeo.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#33
post #9

Umm not when the adversary is using heavy government subsidies to undercut prices and essentially take over the industry. Look at what’s happening to the European car industry, with more job losses planned by VW just this week

Effective Chinese subsidy per vehicle is lower than the $7000 per vehicle the US had in place.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#34
US bans are based on the incorrect idea that we have control over AI. But the ban only reduces the most advanced model available from US companies. Models from other countries continue development. It's as if the US decided to hit pause on competing on AI and we're just going to let someone else win it.

The US could be using these models to fix bugs and defend out systems.. but instead, we're all waiting for open source models to exceed the best unbanned model available in the US(0), and then we can all watch while attackers -- who can use any available open source model, including banned models -- to attack every US company on the internet.

US bans are a choice: a choice to lose to China; a choice to leave US companies defenseless; a choice to reduce competitiveness of the US in software. Every time a US person or company watches someone use models they are prohibited from using to achieve something US models can't, they create opposition to this ban. I can't imagine this is a sustainable policy.

0. Currently open source models are included in consideration for the "best model in the US" -- but if they're willing to ban the best from Anthropic/OpenAI, I wouldn't necessarily assume that all open source models will always be available within the US.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New car sales in Europe in 2026 are approaching 50% EV with essentially none of the above. Europe has had generous EV subsidies in the past, but in 2026 those are mostly (but not completely) gone.

Youre right, i forgot to add 4) europeans are environemtally conscious Americans however like their gas guzzling F150s. The reason I did the original comment was I know for a time the major car companies did a huge push into EVs. Like the ford 150 lightning, chevy bolt and mustang mach E. But they stopped manufacturing them due to weakened sales and profitability. Its a vicious feedback loop of consumer adoption, hig…

The major US car companies pulled back some on EVs mostly because of hostility toward EVs from the Trump administration.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#36

I don't understand the surprise in this article. This particular story is absolutely nothing new—the Germans and Japanese did it first to the US car market, which is inefficient, stuck in a bygone era, and propped up by government protectionism. Nearly all* American cars have been backwards in all metrics since about the 1970s. In general, if you wanted... Reliability: Japanese. Value: Korean, French, Japanese. Perfo…

US only loves free market if they're the winners.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#37

>Americans watch the rest of the world getting better, cheaper, ... If we wanted cheap cars, there needs to be demand to justify building giga factories of EVs. There just wasnt sufficient consumer demand to justify the giga factory investments China CAN generate demand for EVs because they have the political ability to 1) force gas restricted cars to only drive on certain days of the week 2) create a brutal lottery…

New car sales in Europe in 2026 are approaching 50% EV with essentially none of the above. Europe has had generous EV subsidies in the past, but in 2026 those are mostly (but not completely) gone.

Hum... Announcing you will completely outlaw combustion cars soon is missing from the GP's options.

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#38
I've said this before and I will say it again. I don't see any problem in allowing Chinese cars in the US if China manufactures them here under a 49:51 joint venture with an American company.

Also, I'm not sure how long CCP will keep on bankrolling their car companies. They are now competing with each other pushing the profits lower. Over the last year BYD stock is down 40%. Take a look at their auto manufacturers index. It peaked in November 2021 losing about 47% since then (https://www.solactive.com/index/DE000SLA0CA9/)

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#39

US bans are based on the incorrect idea that we have control over AI. But the ban only reduces the most advanced model available from US companies. Models from other countries continue development. It's as if the US decided to hit pause on competing on AI and we're just going to let someone else win it. The US could be using these models to fix bugs and defend out systems.. but instead, we're all waiting for open sou…

[dead]

Re: The US Used to Demand the Best Tech. Now We Ban It

#40
Cars and solar panels get hit the hardest with tariffs and restrictions.

Solar panels: [1]

Cars: [2]

More devices are being hit by US digital sovereignty rules. Most US talk about this revolves around the EU not allowing processing of data about EU citizens outside the EU. It's now a big issue for US customers, too. The US is applying it to many classes of devices. For cars, there's the “Connected Vehicles Rule”.[3] Cars can't phone home to China or some other countries. New models of DJI drones are not allowed to be imported into the US, as mentioned in the article.[4] WiFi-equipped routers have even tighter restrictions.[5]

Will this be extended to phones? "Smart" TVs? That's going to be interesting.

[1] https://www.peacocktariffconsulting.com/solar-panel-imports/

[2] https://motorwatt.com/ev-blog/howtos/importing-a-chinese-ele...

[3] https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/us-bis-final-ru...

[4] https://uavcoach.com/dji-ban/

[5] https://www.fcc.gov/faqs-recent-updates-fcc-covered-list-reg...

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