On the one hand Hawley proposes a lot of things that don't ever get close to becoming law.<p>On the other hand, we did ban TikTok (which is currently unavailable on the app stores because of the ban).<p>I can think of few ways to more effectively destroy any US advantage in AI compared with the sheer efficiency of making it illegal to learn from what competing countries have achieved. From the article, it sounds like the proposed legislation is deeply confused about what "downloading DeepSeek" means--they're _talking_ about banning the app, while _writing_ laws to ban "the importation into the United States of artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence technology or intellectual proprietary developed or produced in the People’s Republic of China" which is a lot broader. Is it proposing to ban US citizens from reading research papers written by Chinese citizens? Or from publishing research in places that might be read by them? Apparently the EFF is concerned that the language of the bill is, indeed, that broad.
> The Republican Senator from Missouri Josh Hawley has introduced a new bill that would make it illegal to import or export artificial intelligence products to and from China, meaning someone who knowingly downloads a Chinese developed AI model like the now immensely popular DeepSeek could face up to 20 years in jail, a million dollar fine, or both, should such a law pass.<p>You get less jail time for committing 34 felonies.
> <i>“Every dollar and gig of data that flows into Chinese AI are dollars and data that will ultimately be used against the United States,” Senator Hawley said in a statement. “America cannot afford to empower our greatest adversary at the expense of our own strength. Ensuring American economic superiority means cutting China off from American ingenuity and halting the subsidization of CCP innovation.”</i><p>Oh goodness me!. If that's true, then why not just completely block China's IP addresses from our Internet? Why not just block all dollars from entering China?<p>Oh right, because that's not the truth. It's certainly not the whole of it anyway.
It is useful context for people who aren't American to know how ridiculous Josh Hawley is, and has always been. The current authoritarian chaos could lend some weight to the possibility that this becomes law, but it is still unlikely.
This is performative and obviously stupid, but to add some technical color to it: in the alternate universe where this passed, rather than floating around as a signalling tool for Josh Hawley, ordinary violators would see nothing resembling a 20 year sentence.<p>This statute falls under the 2M5 section of the sentencing guideline (for export violations); it has a base offense level of 14 (15-21 months) and is probation-eligible at that level. There are lots of accelerators for 2M5 offenses, but it's hard to see any of them applying to casual, or even commercial, users of DeepSeek. There are level-reducers that would apply.<p>(2M5 crimes can optionally be sentenced under 2B1.1, which is what most crimes we talk about on HN, particularly CFAA, are sentenced with; there the penantly would scale with financial damages. Again: hard to see how that would meaningfully apply here).<p>None of this is to suggest any federal prosecution for using DeepSeek would ever be reasonable. I don't even think Josh Hawley believes that. I think he just feels lonely and left out.
It is so deeply painful to witness in my lifetime how our nation's law makers have openly become so profoundly morally and intellectually bankrupt.
I thought that Hawley had fallen into obscurity after he tried to steal the White House in 2021. I was kind of hoping that that would be the last we would hear from him.<p>That's what I get for hoping for a better world.
>[I]nterpreting this law in such a way would further solidify the dominance of proprietary AI over open or academic research.<p>This goes to the heart of the debate here. Obviously forking an open-source model of Chinese origin is not “sending dollars and gigs of data” to China.<p>Hawley is a non-stupid person so he almost certainly gets this. The issue is that for a few US companies with >>$100B of market cap/valuation whose boards happen to be extremely plugged into Washington’s money machine, their strategic enemy isn’t China; it’s open-source models.
From the article:<p>> Hawley introduced the legislation, titled the Decoupling America’s
> Artificial Intelligence Capabilities from China Act,
> on Wednesday of last year.<p>On Wednesday of last year you say.... hmmm what wrote this article
As if they could enforce this. The model is out there and the number of spinoffs is insane. We will have so many different AI's available that there is no way they will know if it was DeepSeek at all.
Everyone seems to start with the premise that it benefits “the United States” to “lead” in AI. But that’s not obvious at all!<p>It seems bad for rights holders of many kinds of intellectual property (or else they wouldn’t be filing so many lawsuits).<p>It seems bad for progress in the field: for the most part our frontier vendors don’t contribute innovations back to the commons in anything like the way that DeepSeek has. This seems to mean that effort is duplicated at tremendous cost in a way that props up famine gouging markups for NVIDIA but little else.<p>It seems bad for the employees of those same vendors: they’ve been getting laid off left, right, and center with AI as a (dubious) justification.<p>It’s far from obvious that further growth will be powered by renewable energy, there is a lot of talk indicating that much of it will end up being coal brought back on line.<p>And even the investors are shaping up to be heavily in Japan and the UAE if this Stargate stuff is real.<p>It sounds like Mag7 shareholders maybe? And even that isn’t clear?<p>Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but extremely influential people in the space are selling this family of plan with visions of “wages crashing to zero”, which yeah no thanks.<p><a href="https://x.com/pmarca/status/1882993091784880557" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/pmarca/status/1882993091784880557</a>
The bill is political theater and this article is playing into it.<p>A downloaded model that can be run on US servers is covered by the first amendment as free speech. This is not the same circumstance as the law that required TikTok divest of its platform, which was over spying concerns[0]. You can’t spy on Americans when data is kept on US servers.<p>0. Per the TikTok Supreme Court ruling:<p><a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-656_ca7d.pdf</a><p><i>There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary. For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate petitioners’ First Amendment rights.</i>
It would be good if we could create a digital fortress around the US that stopped unwanted things from coming in. Like a firewall for the country.<p>. . .
That would be "Running Man" Hawley who was recorded scurrying like a rat through the House while his buddies were trying to overturn the election.
I have no idea about the intricacies of US law, but reading the actual proposed bill[1], it seems <i>incredibly</i> broad. Like, "this may make publishing linear algebra papers on faster matrix operations illegal"-broad, as it includes everything which may <i>contribute</i> to AI research.<p>Also: Preventing the <i>import</i> of "foreign" knowledge / research seems completely insane to me, no offense, no matter how one stands on export. There is nothing justifying this, you're just kneecapping yourself.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.hawley.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Hawley-Decoupling-Americas-Artificial-Intelligence-Capabilities-from-China-Act.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.hawley.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Haw...</a>
Wow what a sensationalist clickbait. The bill says nothing about deepseek.<p>" bill that would make it illegal to import or export artificial intelligence products to and from China"<p>Also it makes importing illegal, which means that you as a consumer wouldn't even be able to run it (ip or dns block).
I didn’t think I could be further shocked by how dangerously incompetent our leadership is, but here we are. It’s mind blowing that someone would propose this without talking to a single person that understands the subject area.
"Underpaid? Backbench MPs, Darling? Being an MP is a vast subsidised ego trip. It's a job for which you need no qualifications, no compulsory hours of work, no performance standards. A warm room and subsidised meals for a bunch of self-opinionated windbags and busybodies who suddenly find people taking them seriously because they got letters "MP" after their names. How can they be underpaid when there're about two hundred applicants for every vacancy? You could fill every seat twenty times over even if they have to pay to do the job."<p>-- Honorable ex Prime Minister Jim Hacker
>” America cannot afford to empower our greatest adversary at the expense of our own strength. Ensuring American economic superiority means cutting China off from American ingenuity and halting the subsidization of CCP innovation.”<p>Meanwhile we seem interested in cutting research and pissing off our neighbors… presumably opening opportunities for China.<p>I don’t understand what if anything these Senators are thinking.<p>These guys are China’s best friends.
Firstly, i have to say i am not surprised it's coming from a Republican senator. Secondly, he proposes lots of shit. Nothing gets close to law. The real question is how did he even become a senator? It has to be investigated.
Can you just... download it before it becomes illegal? The wording suggests it's the <i>importing</i> that's illegal, not the possession. And once I possess it, I can... give it to a few of my closest friends? Without crossing any borders of course.
The cat is out of the bag. Latest gen chips are all the "moat" USA has left, and even that's gonna be cracked by China in a few years.<p>Hopefully Europe will start closer bilateral dealing with China, and not hang itself to the future hermit kingdom of america.
So the Bill is proposed by the same Hawley who was giving fist ups to the mob that was chanting for the hanging of the vice president, attacking police officers, and literally defecating and breaking the Capitol building?
So does this mean we will not be able to download works like open-r1, an open reproduction of deepseek?<p><a href="https://github.com/huggingface/open-r1">https://github.com/huggingface/open-r1</a>
Am I reading the bill text wrong or is it really so general it would also apply to devices assembled in China that can perform AI operations?<p>Seems like there'd be pushback from Apple, MS, etc on that one.
The bill is here: <a href="https://www.hawley.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Hawley-Decoupling-Americas-Artificial-Intelligence-Capabilities-from-China-Act.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.hawley.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Haw...</a><p>I'm reading this and it can't possibly mean what it says.<p>Section 3 says:<p><pre><code> (a) PROHIBITION ON IMPORTATION.—On and after the date that is 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the importation into the United States of artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence technology or intellectual property developed or produced in the People’s Republic of China is prohibited.
(b) PROHIBITION ON EXPORT.—On and after the date that is 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the export, reexport, or in-country transfer of artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence technology or intellectual property to or within the People’s Republic of China is prohibited.
</code></pre>
Note that in (a) and (b) the third part of the "or" clause is "intellectual property". It isn't qualified as (say) "artificial intelligence intellectual property".<p>And in Sec. 2 (6) "Intellectual property" is defined as work protected by copyright, property protected by patent, stuff which is trademarked, or trade secrets.<p>But any preprint on (e.g.) arxiv.org is copyrighted, hence "intellectual property" under this definition. So as written, this seems to prohibit the exchange of <i>research in general</i> with people in the PRC. The restrictions on AI are problematic enough, but this is just ridiculous.
This is dumb. But I guess I shouldn’t expect any better.<p>Someone on LinkedIn posted how “dangerous” it was that AWS was going to make DeepSeek available and hosted on Bedrock because it would give China access to data. Not understanding that if it were hosted by AWS, China wouldn’t have access to the data.<p>This is like this bill where he doesn’t understand that if you “download” the model, you aren’t giving China access to your data.
That would disincentive this type of research, for example:<p>"DeepSeek's Hidden Bias: How We Cut It by 76% Without Performance Loss" (2025)
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42868271">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42868271</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42891042">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42891042</a><p>TIL about BBQ: Bias Benchmark for QA<p>"BBQ: A Hand-Built Bias Benchmark for Question Answering" (2021)
<a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.08193" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.08193</a>
Well if you have not banked these files already, you probably should. Bank any open model. OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta are probably behind the potential ban lol.
Badly written and likely fair to characterize it as dumb. It's probably more about the theatrics of politics than a real intent to pass such a stupid idea as a bill.<p>That said, there has always been a serious imbalance with China that has yet to be addressed as far as I know. This isn't a US-vs-China thing. This applies to every country in the world. In most nations around the world China is able to buy land, property, businesses, etc. The reciprocal isn't true. We could say a similar thing about intellectual property. Good luck enforcing yours in China. Entire industries in China have been built on the back of, to be kind, borrowed IP.<p>One could have made the argument to look the other way 40 or 50 years ago, when China was an agrarian society in need of economic help. That is no longer the case, by far. Why is it that residents or companies from western countries cannot fully own property in China in the same way as the Chinese can do everywhere else in the world?<p>This concept of lack of reciprocity extends into such things as data and privacy rights and ownership. Everyone knows that any service based around user data (TikTok, AI, whatever) based in China creates 100% exposure of that data to government entities, without any level of transparency or accountability --particularly if you are not Chinese and likely worse if you are.<p>I think it is good and likely necessary to call China to task on these issues and apply (or continue to apply) pressure for them to open the doors to reasonable levels of reciprocity. The relationship, otherwise, is decidedly one-sided, and this means that nobody will ever trust them. Why would anyone send AI queries and data to servers in China? Or use any current or future code generator offerings to work on projects? That would be, at a minimum, suicidal.<p>So, while this bill is bonkers, maybe it launches a conversation that might, in a few years, drive reform that could open China and Chinese services like TikTok and AI to the world without fear of use, abuse and repercussions stemming from the nature of their society and government. To be sure, I think China would benefit immensely from a greater degree of openness.
aww man, you telling me I gotta go download this huge thing now even though I don't actually care about running it myself...<p>(I just assume it's huge. I'm Spartacus and Spartacus doesn't really know about such things.)
Trump made this big announcement, and China bitchslapped him with math :<p>We want it to be in this country and we're making it available. I'm going to help a lot through emergency declarations because we have an emergency. We have to get this stuff built. So, they have to produce a lot of electricity, and we'll make it possible for them to get that production done very easily at their own plants if they want, where they'll build at the plant, the AI plant, they'll build energy generation and that will be incredible.<p>But it's technology and artificial intelligence all made in the USA. Begin immediately, Stargate will be building the physical and virtual infrastructure to power the next generation of advancements in AI. And this will include the construction of colossal data centers, very, very massive structures. I was in the real estate business, these buildings, these are big beautiful buildings that are going to employ a lot of people and physical campuses in locations currently being scouted nationwide.
"Being in possession of a contraband Chinese Artificial Intelligence" is honestly one of the most cyberpunk things I can imagine. I hadn't felt like I lived in the future until now, honestly.
I remember this being mentioned as the next step in the previous thread haha. It's getting old and they need to find a new slant (ode to Bryan Colangelo).<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42872142">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42872142</a>
Submitted this a day ago and it got flagged: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907234">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42907234</a>
I'm just amused that when Chinese products were hurting the average manufacturer in US, and the majority of goods on Amazon, Walmart, Temu, Shein are "Made in China" it is good and capitalism. When Hollywood movies or music are pirated- its just kids having fun. But dare you try to hurt tech/software companies investments or revenue streams, and politicians suddenly get patriotic and want to send you to jail for 20 years!
Dogshit "pick me!" bills that they introduce/sponsor for no other reason than to get the attention of corporate overlords.<p>Practically zero chance to get through house and senate.
I wonder if one could get some member of the current congress to introduce a bill that proposes jailtime for the entire presidential cabinet?<p>It wouldn't be any more stupid than this, and would probably solve a lot more of the US's problems...