US Senators Discover Censorship is Good, For China
The Financial Times breathlessly reports that US senators are lining up to block Nvidia's advanced chip sales to China, citing national security and human rights concerns. A bipartisan chorus is suddenly worried about Beijing's access to AI that could fuel its surveillance state and military. (Because US military AI is exclusively for humanitarian aid, naturally.) One might wonder where this moral
outrage vanishes when other nations, heavily subsidized by US taxpayers, acquire advanced US weaponry. Take, for instance, the consistent congressional approval of multi-billion dollar arms packages to regimes accused by human rights groups of widespread abuses. There's no bipartisan rush to block Raytheon or Lockheed Martin sales there. This technological gatekeeping appears remarkably flexible,
depending on whether the customer takes US aid or produces goods for the US market.