China from the Top Rope

America sanctioned China around AI chips, creating the conditions to globally humiliate Sam Altman

Endeavorance

27 Jan 2025 — 6 min read

DeepSeek AI is a Whale of a Time

OpenAI has been America's AI crown jewel for the past few years. They created ChatGPT which is essentially synonymous with "AI" in modern marketing, and they're run by Sam Altman: a dude who did not finish his Computer Science degree and now walks around carrying a backpack as a prop, claiming it holds a button that can shut down their AI systems like some kind of doomsday failsafe button.

I want to note here that I am genuinely looking for a reputable source on what the hell the backpack really has in it, if anything, but all I'm finding are obviously AI-generated articles talking about how much of a genius Sam Altman is.

So, the math is definitely adding up.

Anyway, right on the heels of the Trump administration announcing a massive project investing in AI infrastructure almost exclusively to support OpenAI, a relatively unknown AI research organization from China released an open source AI model that compares favorably to OpenAI's most powerful offering.

Oh, and they did so under harsh sanctions from the US specifically designed to stifle their AI progress. (Which is, dare I say, delicious)

DeepSeek is the name of the research group who produced the AI, which has been found to beat the newest OpenAI model ("o1" at time of writing) in basically everything from correctness to energy consumption.

Better reasoning, better math capability, faster execution, lower energy usage, more reliable results, all while being open source for anyone to learn from, use, or extend. By contrast, OpenAI primarily seeks to sell access to their AI systems as B2B subscriptions.

Will this upend OpenAI overnight? No, but its a huge blow to the credibility and positioning of the United States on the global tech landscape. Hell, DeepSeek doesn't even have a bunch of huge corporations backing them up. A hedge fund manager dumped a ton of money into just doing some AI research for the hell of it.

Still no word on if they'll open source a backpack for us as well.

Policy Stuff

It has been a pretty rough week, y'all. Unfortunately we're in for a pretty rough… however long. But here's a few things to share about policy stuff happening in Washington, DC.

Sub-Sub Committee on Subcommittee Committees

House Republicans are planning to launch their own Jan 6 subcommittee, bent on proving the work of the previous Jan 6 subcommittee wrong by check notes… lying.

Don't Help The Tired, Poor, Yearning to Breathe Free

The US Department of Justice has directed all legal service providers with federal funding to cease legal support for people in immigration courts. The result is migrant families left alone to fill out legal paperwork in a foreign language with no legal assistance.

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While the US Constitution article 6 does assert the right to legal counsel, it is specifically for criminal proceedings.

Mass Deportations, Shock & Awe

Along with spikes in arrests of undocumented residents of our country, raids have begun targeting historically progressive places. One raid occurred in Newark, New Jersey where officers rolled up to a private business without a warrant and proceeded to detain several people—some of whom were US citizens—on suspicion that they weren't US citizens.

Trump is using military aircraft to ferry hundreds of migrants out of the country, though the destination countries of those flights aren't particularly happy with such a display. While the Biden and Obama admins did a ton of deportation flights as well, they were using the usual civilian aircraft and weren't handcuffing the migrants.

Colombia and Mexico have both already grounded and turned away US military craft full of migrants, citing that it is absurd to treat migrants as criminals in need of military escort, and if anything, they should be arriving on civilian airplanes.

After Colombia rejected the aircraft due to its military presence and the lack of respect to the migrants, Trump threatened tariffs, "enhanced scrutiny" at customs, and the voiding of visas for Colombian officials. Ultimately, the Colombian president relented, opting to not play games with the very lives of the migrants.

That said, the president of Colombia also wrote a very great letter to Trump calling him out for being a fucking loser.

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Let's clear something up: there's a stat out there that the Trump campaign just adored and would make most reasonable people's head spin, which is that something like 60% of US adults support mass deportations. What is often overlooked is that the support plummets once you ask if they support deporting people who have not been convicted of a violent crime.

That tidbit won't change any policy, as we know. It has started and it's not going to be stopping soon. But remember that the stats are skewed. While many people (such as myself) hold the opinion that it is absurd to consider a human being as "illegal" on planet Earth, I can understand someone who is scared by the mountains of anti-immigrant rhetoric who would agree with the notion that convicted criminals who do not have documented, legal status in the US would be deported. I can wrap my head around that, even if I strongly disagree. But the notion that the vast majority of US adults want to round up all migrants and ship them out is flat wrong. Of course those people exist, but they are not the norm.

For an analytical look at the moves Trump is making, check out the Associated Press' Campaign Promise Tracker.

DOGE is Just Rebranded USDS

Although Musk and Trump promised budget cuts to the tune of trillions of dollars on the campaign trail, Musk's little vanity project, "DOGE," (the Department of Government Efficiency) is quite literally just the USDS with a different name. The executive order renames the United States Digital Services to DOGE, paving the way for Elon to tackle some JIRA tickets, I guess.

The USDS was established under Obama and were the people who fixed Healthcare.gov. Now, it's looking like they intend to try and streamline… something. Oh, and of course try to get contracts for blockchain/crypto companies for some reason.

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Thank you for reading, now back to the Stuff.

Corpo Watch

Ayy how 'bout them corporations? They're always being wacky and wild. Let's see what's going on in the world of BIZNESS.

Weird!

First up, remember when Walgreens and Target and whatnot were all throwing a hissyfit about "shoplifting" being a major problem and why they have to raise prices? And so they put a bunch of locks on a bunch of popular items for sale, almost exclusively in majority-minority locations?

Well that didn't fucking work, as the CEO of Walgreens was like "oh, uh, nevermind that was dumb of us."

Weird, I wonder if anyone could have called that. Or rather, if anyone didn't call that.

Netflix Needs a New Kidney

Netflix announced another price hike, right after announcing a record level of subscribers fueled in part by their foray into live event stuff like that Jake Paul / Mike Tyson fight.

The cheapest plan will now be $8/mo (up from $7) with the highest tier now at $25/mo (up from $23)