YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Feds Target AI Critics as "Foreign Agents"

61 points nmeagent 2 hours ago 39 comments

smalltorch 2 hours ago | parent

That's wild.

It will be bad for our economy, but local LLM's are way better for the future.

We happen to be on the wrong side of things for the future I would rather have.

(I'm American BTW)

iAMkenough 1 hour ago | parent

Just another example of the Executive Branch stripping First Amendment rights from Americans.

It will go to court, and taxpayers will pay for endless appeals by the Executive Branch.

Or like in Egbert v Boule (2022), the SCOTUS will decide that even if your constitutional rights are violated, you’re not owed any damages unless Congress establishes a policy for what to do when your constitutional rights are violated by the federal government.

737min 48 minutes ago | parent

CCP is pushing and amplifying AI opposition efforts, that’s a fact regardless of US politics. CCP is also working hard to smuggle around American export control laws for AI tech, at the same time.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/american-citizen-who-worked-a...

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-07-28/fbi-raid...

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-and-two-us-c...

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-google-engineer-found-...

Etc

fwip 41 minutes ago | parent

Zero of your links talk about China pushing anti-AI sentiment, as far as I can tell.

runsWphotons 31 minutes ago | parent

linking .gov as a source for a claim the government is making lol

dumberquestions 38 minutes ago | parent

I have no doubt China is taking part, what I doubt is that this makes any meaningful part of the total US anti AI sentiment, which can be much more easily explained by job loss anxieties, fear of massive change and good old NIMBYism. (Obligatory not an American).

bpodgursky 35 minutes ago | parent

All effective foreign interference takes popular sentiments and helps organize and focus it. You can't create movements without ground support.

But the thing is, there are a LOT of issues where the masses are generally grumpy but don't act on it. Civilization only really functions because people don't shut down the country over every populist urge. Effective agitprop amplifies this and makes it happen.

runsWphotons 27 minutes ago | parent

What is your point? You agree people have the right to act on their beliefs to effect democratic change, right? Surely that includes making up their own minds about information.

bpodgursky 17 minutes ago | parent

We should and should cut out sources of foreign funding and support, and prosecute and publicize genuine foreign agents, while allowing people to exercise their political rights.

otterley 14 minutes ago | parent

Why? Do you believe free speech is a right only Americans should have? Or do you believe that people shouldn’t be free to evaluate competing points of view and decide for themselves?

ElProlactin 24 minutes ago | parent

> All effective foreign interference takes popular sentiments and helps organize and focus it.

And a lot of effective domestic interference takes fears about foreign threats and "helps organize and focus it."

China is a legitimate threat to US hegemony and this is clearly a new Red Scare. The irony is that it was largely the US who invited and welcomed China into the global economic order.

> Civilization only really functions because people don't shut down the country over every populist urge.

Civilization also doesn't really function because a handful of ridiculously wealthy lunatics and their sycophants know what's best for 8+ billion people.

isityettime 27 minutes ago | parent

> the total US anti AI sentiment, which can be much more easily explained by job loss anxieties, fear of massive change and good old NIMBYism. (Obligatory not an American).

Some of it is also due to the qualities of LLMs as they actually behave and actually function today, "AI" being forced into products where it actively degrades the reliability, efficiency, or pleasantness of the product, etc. Think of Amazon's "Alexa for Shopping" or whatever, and whatever its predecessor was.

dosisking 18 minutes ago | parent

I am not necessarily anti-AI. I am more anti-Sam Altman, against using LLMs to usurp power, and against using AI as a scapegoat to abdicate responsibility for decisions that are made. AI itself encompasses so much more than LLMs.

Onavo 10 minutes ago | parent

Sam at least can be understood. He's in it to make money and nothing else. The most dangerous men are people like Dario, who sit on their elitist towers and think they are right and will burn down the world in the name of righteousness.

CGamesPlay 9 minutes ago | parent

> job loss anxieties, fear of massive change and good old NIMBYism

A lot of which is fake "grassroots" movements by... foreign actors. This isn't new:

- 2021: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/pro...

- 2022: https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/dra...

westernmostcoy 32 minutes ago | parent

So? My first amendment rights say I'm allowed to criticize it too.

specked-citrus 26 minutes ago | parent

It's one thing to identify that these influence operations are happening, but another entirely to say they are a significant factor in public opinion.

advael 14 minutes ago | parent

See here I was thinking this was a first amendment issue but with an evidentiary case like this it's clear we're dealing with a case of people having wrong and illegal opinions. Classic blunder, my bad

4lx87 14 minutes ago | parent

Unless I'm missing something, those sources don't mention anything about amplifying AI opposition efforts.

ks2048 6 minutes ago | parent

None of these any anything to do with "pushing and amplifying AI opposition efforts". (??)

usernametaken29 25 minutes ago | parent

> but somehow the Trump administration has convinced itself the public concern was manufactured in China.

Wait a minute here. Critical journalism could dissect how opinions are formed. It’s far from speculative that the White House opinion about AI opposition is informed by AI companies. They’ve been warning about China for a long time. So there’s really no somehow. Vested interests with massive amounts of money are lobbying and succeeding to convince the government that any opposition to AI is outside influence. It’s not somehow, it’s deliberate. Do better.

advael 19 minutes ago | parent

Good ol' land of the free

surfmike 19 minutes ago | parent

When the CEOs of these companies are saying that we will risk extinction and jobs will be decimated, why do you even need a "foreign agent"?

tcdent 17 minutes ago | parent

Multiple things can be true at the same time.

surfmike 15 minutes ago | parent

There can be foreign agents criticizing AI, but not all people criticizing AI are foreign agents.

Trump is painting critics with a wide brush:

"The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by “Climate Change.” That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they’re on to the next one. These people are Revolutionaries, but Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause. Soon you’ll find out they’re working for people that do not have the best interests of the United States in mind!"

loeg 5 minutes ago | parent

> There can be foreign agents criticizing AI, but not all people criticizing AI are foreign agents.

Right. The DoJ is demanding the former group register as foreign agents, as they are required to under FARA.

_heimdall 14 minutes ago | parent

Said CEOs are horribly biased, they have fiduciary responsibilities that make them useless judges on the relative risk/reward balance of LLMs and AI, if we get there.

c0nducktr 6 minutes ago | parent

Claiming your product increases the risk of extinction doesn't sound like something someone would do if it were just for fiduciary duty.

godwinson__4-8 6 minutes ago | parent

Yet everyone laughed at the Google engineer who thought the LLM was sentient and it was being tortured...

People just pick and choose what they want to hear when it suits them. The fact is most people thought AI was a joke. Now they realize it does React better than them they want it outlawed.

It's their right to pursue their electoral and economic self-interest but it's really not like the average voter is more principled than the average tech CEO at this point.

This fed was voted in by this public. Maybe stop lionizing what other people think and think for yourself.

Do you think we risk extinction now more than ever because of AI? A simple refrain from slippery slope will show most AI doomerism is bordering on psychosis.

I haven't seen one convincing model of AI existential risk. Can anyone offer one?

godwinson__4-8 14 minutes ago | parent

In whose interest is it to make the pro AI position in the United States so indefensible?

Maybe the foreign agents are coming from inside the house...

bradthebeaverfa 10 minutes ago | parent

The pro-AI position is literally just: if we don't do this and other countries do, we are going to get smoked.

It's like trying to run a freight business that still uses horse drawn carriages when your competitors have trains. Except, in this case the competitors are power hungry dictators who would kill you if they were rich enough to get away with it.

andersonpico 6 minutes ago | parent

> Except, in this case the competitors are power hungry dictators who would kill you if they were rich enough to get away with it.

I'm not sure what side are you talking about here.

binlog 3 minutes ago | parent

The pro-AI position actually is - the US economy is being kept afloat by the AI bubble. If it pops then Republicans are going to have a bad time in the midterms and beyond.

robertclaus 11 minutes ago | parent

Classic case of not listening to the protests. There are tons of examples now of data centers harming communities. The issues range from overwhelming local power grids to literally poisoning the local water supply. The issue is not the data centers, it's that the government isn't enforcing basic rules already in place for these projects. Until the government or the companies demonstrate they'll protect the adjacent communities the protests will continue.

loeg 10 minutes ago | parent

> the Justice Department instructed “citizens and noncitizens” that anyone furthering the “goals” of a foreign power in “any public activity” — including even “public demonstrations” — must formally notify the government to avoid arrest and prosecution.

Citizens acting as foreign agents have always had to register that representation! This is not new to the Trump admin. FARA dates to 1938.

pinkmuffinere 10 minutes ago | parent

> “Alarming reports indicate that a network of foreign actors, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is attempting to manipulate U.S. policy and public opinion on data centers.“

Setting aside the politics, trump, ai-doom/boom, I just think this claim is fascinating. Can somebody steel man this? What’s the best evidence for this?

sailfast 7 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

tptacek 9 minutes ago | parent

Klippenstein. He's counting on you not looking up the elements of a FARA violation charge. You can't accidentally violate FARA simply by opposing AI; you have to literally be an agent of (that is, under the direction of China, and a felony violation has to be willful.

The DOJ announcement is surely in supremely bad faith, as is everything else in Trump's DOJ. But this kind of breathless response is exactly what they're hoping for by publishing this stuff.

vopi 8 minutes ago | parent

Does this article not have a source?