*edit: not that it matters, but since MAGA can't help but assume, these are all US citizens and green card holders that I am referring to.
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-raid-hyundai-korea-ic...
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/foreignaffairs/20251112/hundred...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/attorney-says-detained-k...
The regime is powered by racism and doesn't think through things.
The risk and level of publicity is just too high for many people to even consider, especially people already intelligent/capable enough to immigrate anywhere else that doesn't have these issues or stay in their own country.
1. Detained the incorrect person
2. Detained the correct person, with the correct legal status
3. Detained the correct person, with the correct legal status, but in unlawful circumstances
4. Detained the correct person, with the correct legal status, in ostensibly-lawful circumstances, but in a way which is unconstitutional or crazy
An example of the final category are the immigrants that spent years being vetted, following the law, and doing expensive paperwork to be citizens. ICE snatched them when they showed up on at the last second as they were to take their citizenship oath. [0] Not because of anything they did, but because today's Republican party has decided that it's OK to hurt people based on their "shithole" country of birth.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/30/us-citizensh...
If anything I find the stories featuring white/European people oddly racist because they seem to assume that I, the reader, will assume a white/European person couldn't possibly be in violation of immigration rules. But all the ones I've read turned out that they were indeed in violation of immigration rules.
Overall as a potential immigrant to the US myself, I find the process capricious and that US citizens by birth don't fully appreciate how painful it is or why it shouldn't be that way. But I don't find it notably worse or more onerous than the vast majority of immigration policies of other countries in practice.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/ice-immigrat...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/a-u-s-citizen-says-ice-f...
[3] https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...
To address your stories specifically, my point would be that I'm still not sure whether this shows the US is notably worse on this than any other place.
Their goal is for every one person violently detained, 10 decide to leave on their own, and 100 decide to not come in the first place.
If they actually thoroughly evicted non-status migrant workers they'd have a outright revolt on their hands from farmers and other businesses that depend on them.
Instead those businesses can now take further advantage of the fear of harassment and/or deportation to drive down compensation and rights.
Contrast with countries like Canada that have a legal temporary foreign agriculture worker program that provides a regulated source of seasonal migrant farm worker labour under a non-citizen temporary status, but with some rights (still often abused). It's notable to me as a Canadian that I don't see this being advocated on any large scale by either party in the US.
Anyways, all this just to say that the jackboot clown theater is the point, not a side effect.
Because going around and harassing and deporting other or non-essential non-status immigrants would drive labor costs down because of the chill it would put through those who are grudgingly tolerated.
And besides, given the quality of personality ICE seems to be employing even (especially) at its highest levels, I simply assume there's corruption such that if I'm a large orchard or whatever I simply pay ICE to stay away.
"There was a significant drop-off in entries to the United States in 2025 relative to 2024 and an increase in enforcement activity leading to removals and voluntary departures. We estimate that net migration was between –10,000 and –295,000 in 2025, the first time in at least half a century it has been negative."
There'd be no food on the tables, frankly. And people in Silicon Valley would have messy houses and algae in their pools.
Soybean farmers are screwed.
I dont think youre as right as you want to believe. Certainly not as right as I want you to believe
In any case, there's no way Anthropic's investors in Silicon Valley would countenance such a move.
Also, I'm biased the logical place is Canada, not Europe. Much of the fundamental/foundational research on LLMs, and a large part of the talent, came from universities in Canada anyways.
Europe really just needs to rally behind Mistral. That's where they should dump their cash.
At the moment my impression is instead that the issue is computational resources. It's important to stay near the frontier though, and to build up ones capacity to train large models.
Consequently I don't think we need Anthropic. It wouldn't be terrible if they came. Especially if they picked a nice location. Barcelona would be very nice, for example.
When I was a deep learning PhD in the first Trump administration, US universities were already very deeply affected by the Muslim ban, and so a lot of talent ended up in other countries.
Sibling commentators are rightfully pointing out that foreigners, especially those who would not be recognized as white, face an onerous and risky customs process with long-term and increasing risks of deportation. When you see a headline like the NIST labs abruptly restricting foreign scientists, _everything_ else feels uncertain. Even if someone doesn't believe they're personally at risk for deportation, they're still seeing everything else.
And then it all boils down to a reputational thing. The era where we were the top choice for research is in the past. If you start a PhD in the US on your resume during this era, you might be anticipating how you'll answe the question of why you weren't good enough to get accepted somewhere better.
Besides you can live a comfortable life in PRC nowadays or live in a racist America.
I will say we are winning in accessibility. China doesn’t have much of a ramp game
I wonder if you max out your options in China. It seems the Party is suspicious of ambition and high profile winners. I'm sure you can live comfortably, but there's a ceiling.
Isn't it just straight-up illegal in China to refuse the government from using your model? USA isn't perfect, but at least it has active discourse.
China is bullying lots of countries in the SCS (ramming Philippine coast guard ships, building military installations in the SCS, ...). Not peaceful or responsible.
People in Hong Kong died. Over 10,000 were arrested and many are still in prison. The rest are permanently disgraced in their social-credit society.
Again, USA is not perfect, but let's not dream up some fantasy about the CCP.
https://reclaimthenet.org/china-man-chair-interrogation-soci...
Does that matter? In China people don't judge the state of their civilization by how easily you can insult the police but whether you need to be afraid to meet them on the street. "I can insult my pedophile president" (who doesn't care if you do) isn't exactly a flex.
It does tell us something though that the evaluation of American life now consists of parasocial interactions with the president on social media. I'm starting to belief Bruno Maçães, ex Portuguese secretary of state, was prescient with his diagnosis that American material society has rotted to the point where life is now entirely defined by virtual interactions. That's the difference between China and the US today.
The president's a pedophile, a criminal, undeterred by democracy, economy or social disorder but you can freely yell into the void. Have you considered that in the US one can freely say all these things precisely because that's irrelevant?
Americans will vote for their Congress representatives in November. They will have a chance to decide how they want their government to be run. The US President was already shot-down once by the Supreme Court (tariffs). The system is working. Let the voters decide, and then let it work.
But this:
> According to the social credit system, Chinese citizens are punishable if they indulge in buying too many video games, buying too much junk food, having a friend online who has a low credit score, visiting unauthorized websites, posting “fake news” online, and more.
...is just pure bullshit. There were _ideas_ about including these kinds of stuff into the score, but they have never been implemented. At this point, the social credit score is only used to find people who dodge court decisions.
Please ignore the gun pointed at your head / social credit score / masked goons roving about Minnesota / flock cameras / etc as it hasn't been used against you at this point.
Do you imagine an invasion of Taiwan won't involve dropping bombs?
I feel like we should be able to agree that providing authoritarian regimes with high tech tools is immoral in the general case.
If you'd asked me two years ago my answer might have been different.
And to the original point, yeah, I would feel entirely justified in the critique of engineers in providing tools to the US defense apparatus at this point.
At least the Chinese shops are giving their weights away for free, and not demanding that any government ban the rest.
I'm sure it's a very nice place to live if you're content to just stay quiet in society and never put a political sign in your yard or even just talk about the wrong thing with your friend in a WeChat.
In practical terms, if you're not kind of person who would want to run for an office in the US, China is incredibly comfortable. Cities are safe, with barely any violent crime. Public drug use is nonexistent. And with the US-level AI researcher income, you'd be in the top 0.1% earners.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47252833
My comment and the linked video says otherwise. The guy was in a private group chat and said some nasty things about the police for confiscating his motorcycle. Now he's arrested and in the Tiger Chair.
How are we explaining this?
Not as bad as China sure, but not as good as other civilized nations.
If you want to put this to the test try crossing the Canadian border and when they ask you the purpose of your visit respond that it's to attend a protest.
Link? I’m guessing we’re going to see that this definition of “protesting” involves being aggressive and directly in the face of law enforcement officers, not merely holding a sign at a distance.
It just looks a bit ridiculous when students walk out in protest against things that are far outside the influence of their school, city, or even state.
Well duh, as recently demonstrated, an US model used by the US gov will 100% end up murdering actual children sooner than later, in this case less than a calendar year in some far flung war that many Americans do not support. Alternatively PRC model used by CCP might kill in some hypothetical future but for national reunification/rejuvenation that many Chinese support. At the end of the day, researchers and population on one side sleeps more soundly.
In the US people try to hide it and are far more sinister about it, since there are a lot of laws against obvious racism. The cops are also happy in the US to just kill you.
The racism in the US comes out of hate where as what I experienced abroad was more, we don't think you'll fit in and follow the rules and you have to constantly prove that you can.
I didn't spend too much time in China so maybe it is a racist hell hole.
But my experience in Japan was that white immigrants were way more inclined to make a huge deal about the lighter racism they experienced because they had never been somewhere where their skin color was a disadvantage.
I speculate that if you were a permanent minority instead of a visiting inconvenience, then that 'nice' racism you describe would metastasize into the type of racism you see in the USA. It's more friction from time and exposure added on. And, you know, slavery.
I think Alibaba needs to just give these guys a blank check. Let them fill it in themselves. Absent that, I'm pretty sure they'll make their own startup.
I do think it'd be a big loss for the rest of the world though if they close whatever model their startup comes up with.
That's very likely to happen once the gap with OpenAI/Anthropic has been closed and they managed to pop the bubble.