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China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

cnbc.com

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Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#31

Post by some_random »

arjvik wrote: post #15
some_random wrote: post #8

Can we finally acknowledge the obvious Singapore-washing that Chinese companies have been doing for years or are we going to keep pretending?

elaborate on the problem, for those of us that this is not obvious to?

Chinese company has an issue being a Chinese company for international legal or optics reasons, relocates to Singapore while still being controlled by Chinese nationals or all-but-Chinese-Nationals. Bytedance is a great example. Russian companies do the same thing with Switzerland, see Kaspersky.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#34

Post by some_random »

stego-tech wrote: post #14
some_random wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your families live here", maybe "We have shadow police stations across the world", the playbook is well established

I mean, they're just cribbing what America did, and what the British Empire did before that. It's a disgusting playbook, but it's also an effective one if you're a state trying to exert control over important players or entities.

Not even getting into the more dubious part of this claim, just because the British or Americans did it doesn't mean it's right or acceptable. If you disagree with that, you're implicitly pro slavery, pro penal expeditions, etc.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#35

Post by rzerowan »

aesch wrote: post #22
stego-tech wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this is more of a warning shot to others attempting the same playbook ("Singapore-washing", as I've heard folks call it): the state is watching, and shifting geopolitics means it's in their interest to retain successful talent and entities at home rather than let opposition have them. If anything, I'm genuinely surprised it took them this long. America's been doing this for decades without much in the way o…

I don't know if America has done anything quite like this. The example I'm looking for is where a company starts in the US but leaves and incorporates outside the US and then the US attempts to block acquisition by a foreign company. Also, the enforcement mechanism while vague seems un-American. America might tax the company upon exit but it wouldn't hold the founders hostage in America. If you have examples I'd be c…

Famously back in the day Grindr , which had a plot point in the Silicon Valley series . Probably more obscure ones that havent been heard of outside software in the Hard tech space like MotorSich (Ukranian) was being courted by Chinese investment got blocked due to US pressure. And very recently the whole TikTok fiasco.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#36

Post by dublinstats »

umeshunni wrote: post #21
outside1234 wrote: post #13

What leverage does China have here to enforce this? Meta doesn't do business in China. Can't they just give them the middle finger?

Meta absolutely does business in China. e.g. https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/shenzhen/?p[offices... https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/shanghai/?p[offices... https://www.metacareers.com/v2/locations/hongkong/?p[offices... I also assume, like most advertising platforms, they cater heavily to the China export market.

I don't think their social networks are allowed in China.

From your link it looks like they might do R&D for Oculus in China (but may not even be able to sell it there due to the data-collection tie in required).

Not sure what you mean by catering to the export market. b2b sales would be just as restricted as sales to consumers.

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#37

Post by godelski »

stego-tech wrote: post #14
some_random wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your families live here", maybe "We have shadow police stations across the world", the playbook is well established

I mean, they're just cribbing what America did, and what the British Empire did before that. It's a disgusting playbook, but it's also an effective one if you're a state trying to exert control over important players or entities.

I'm really unfamiliar with this playbook and how America has used it. Do you have any examples? I can't seem to find any

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#38

Post by meisterbrendan »

deepfriedbits wrote: post #29
reissbaker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's precisely the fact that the founders live in China. The CCP can make them... kick rocks... for the rest of their lives. Generally speaking this seems bad for Chinese companies, though. They were able to raise capital from the West by running out of "Singapore"; I think basically every investor will have significant pause investing in Chinese-national-owned startups after this, "Singapore-based" or not.

Not only that, but they can make life inconvenient for your family. Nobody reasonable would accuse the CCP of outright violence, but there are a million bureaucracy-related tricks the state can pull to leverage you and/or your family.

"Nobody reasonable"??

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#39

Post by dublinstats »

stego-tech wrote: post #14
some_random wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your families live here", maybe "We have shadow police stations across the world", the playbook is well established

I mean, they're just cribbing what America did, and what the British Empire did before that. It's a disgusting playbook, but it's also an effective one if you're a state trying to exert control over important players or entities.

[flagged]

Re: China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

#40

Post by calebkaiser »

henry2023 wrote: post #5
giancarlostoro wrote: post #3

Funny when you consider the world owes a lot of AI advancements to both Meta and Google, their open releases really did shift things, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, especially for China, which as far as I know were not releasing as much in AI as they have been beforehand. I remember when Meta released Llama originally people were speculating about it, but it wound up producing a lot of projects that used it, I…

Wasn’t Llama a leak that got so popular meta decided to change their whole approach? I was working at Google at the time. Before Llama, releasing weights was not even worth a discussion.

If I'm remembering right, it was weirder than that, as Llama's originally release strategy was sort of bizarre.

You did have to apply for access, but if you met their criteria (basically if you were the right profile of researcher or in government), you got direct access to the model weights, not just an API for a hosted model. So access was restricted, but the full weights were shared.

I believe that the model was leaked by multiple people, some of which didn't work at Meta but had been granted access to the weights.

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