“Vance just dumped water all over that. [It] was like, ‘Yeah, that’s cute. But guess what? You know you’re actually not the ones who are making the calls here. It’s us,’” said McBride.
> "If you are not capable of violence, you are not peaceful. You are harmless"
this is exactly the value that caused so much war and death all over the world, for decades and thousands of years. still, even in 2025, it's being followed. are we doomed, chat?
There are peaceful strategies that are temporarily stable in the face of actors who capitalise on peaceful actors to take their resources, but they usually (always?) take the form of quickly moving on when an aggressor arrives.
Eg. birds abandoning rather than defending a perch when another approaches.
We're typically not happy to do that, though you can see it happening in some parts of the world right now.
Some kind of enlightened state where violent competition for resources (incl. status & power) no longer makes sense is imaginable, but seems a long way off.
No one in particular. Russia would be one current example, Israel (and others in the region at various times) another, the US and Germany historically, the Romans, the Ottomans, China, Japan, Britain, Spain, warlords in the western sahara, the kid at school who wanted the other kids' lunch money.
The idea though is that if everyone suddenly disarmed overnight it would be so highly advantageous to a deviant aggressor that one would assuredly emerge.
The emphasis is the word capable here. I think there's a difference between a country using their capability of violence to actually be violent and a one with the tangible capability using it for peace.
If you’re making sweeping statements like that, why the arbitrary distinction at 300 years? What happened then? Why not say “since the dawn of humanity”?
The declaration of human rights, like a lot of other laws, declarations and similar pieces of paper signed by politicians, have zero value without the corresponding enforcement, and are often just there for optics so that taxpayers feel like their elected leaders are making good use of their money and are on the side of good.
And the extent of which you can do global enforcement (which is often biased and selective) is limited by the reach of your economic and military power.
Which is why the US outspends the rest of the world military powers combined and how the US and their troops have waged ilegal wars and committed numerous crimes abroad and gotten away with it despite pieces of papers saying what they're doing is bad, but their reaction was always "what are you gonna do about it?".
See how many atrocities have happened under the watch of the UN. Laws aren't real, it's the enforcement that is real. Which is why the bullies get to define the laws that everyone else has to follow because they have the monopoly on enforcement.
> Laws aren't real, it's the enforcement that is real
Well, yes. This is why people have been paying a lot of attention to what exactly "rule of law" means in the US, and what was just norms that can be discarded.
The same is true for the HN comment I replied to, which was basically going *shrug*, but also without any army to enforce that. So I pointed out that some people went beyond just shrugging, because it could not go on like this; and here is what they wrote. Just reading these things does a person good, and to stand up for these things you first have to know them.
Generally I can't help but see 'more powerful than the government' claims forever poisoned from their shallow use in the context of cryptography.
Where it was used in a rhetorical tantrum throwing response to their power refuse to do the impossible like make an encryption backdoor 'only for good guys' and have the sheer temerity to stand against arbitrary exercises of authority by using the courts to check them only to their actual power.
If actual 'more powerful than the states' occurs they have nobody to blame but themselves for crying wolf.
My response to "the bullies are in charge" has been downvoted and flagged yet what I am responding to remains up. It's a different opinion on the same topic started by GP. Either both should stay or both should go.
AI doesn't look it will be restricted to one country. A breakthrough becomes common place in a matter of years. So that paraphrase of Vance's remarks, if accurate, would mean that he is wrong.
The danger of something like AI+drones (or less imminent, AI+bioengineering) can lead to a severe degradation of security, like after the invention of nuclear weapons. A degradation in security, which requires collective action. Even worse, chaos could be caused by small groups weaponizing the technology against high profile targets.
If anything, the larger nations might be much more forceful about AI regulation than the above summit by demanding an NPT style treaty where only a select club has access to the technology in exchange for other nations having access to the applications of AI from servers hosted by the club.
> The danger of something like AI+drones (or less imminent, AI+bioengineering) can lead to a severe degradation of security, like after the invention of nuclear weapons.
You don't justify or define "severe degradation of security" just assert it as a fact.
The advent of nuclear weapons has meant 75 years of relative peace which is unheard of in human history, so quite the opposite.
Given that AI weapons don't exist, then you've just created a straw man.
The peace that you refer to, involved a strong restriction placed by more powerful states which restricts nuclear weapons to a few states. This didn't involve any principle, but was an assertion of power. A figleaf of eventual disarmament did not materialize.
I do claim that it is obvious that widespread acquisition of nuclear weapons by smaller states would be a severe degradation of security. Among other things, widespread ownership, would also mean that militant groups would acquire it and dictators would use it as a protection leading to an eventual use of the weapons.
Yes, the danger of AI weapons is nowhere at that level of nuclear weapons yet.
>The danger of something like AI+drones (or less imminent, AI+bioengineering) can lead to a severe degradation of security
For smaller countries nukes represented an increase in security, not a degradation. North Korea probably wouldn't still be independent today if it didn't have nukes, and Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine hadn't given up its nukes. Restricting access to nukes is only in the interest of big countries that want to bully small countries around, because nukes level the playing field. The same applies to AI.
The comment was not speaking in favour of restrictionism, (I don't support it) but what strategy the more powerful states will adopt.
Regarding an increase in security with nukes, what you say applies for exceptions against a general non-nuclear background. Without restrictions, every small country could have a weapon, with a danger of escalation behind every conflict, authoritatrians using a nuclear option as a protection against a revolt etc. The likelihood of nuclear war would be much more(even with the current situation, there have been close shaves)
I love the retelling of "I don't really care, Margaret." here.
But politics aside, this also points to something I've said numerous times here before: In order to write the rulebook you need to be a creator.
Only those who actually make and build and invent things get to write the rules. As far as "AI" is concerned, the creators are squarely the United States and presumably China. The EU, Japan, et al. being mere consumers sincerely cannot write the rules because they have no weight to throw around.
If you want to be the rulemaker, be a creator; not a litigator.
> The EU, Japan, et al. being mere consumers sincerely cannot write the rules because they have no weight to throw around
Exactly what I'd expect someone from a country where the economy is favoured over the society to say - particularly in the context of consumer protection.
You want access to a trade union of consumers? You play by the rules of that Union.
American exceptionalism doesn't negate that. A large technical moat does. But DeepSeek has jumped in and revealed how shallow that moat really is for AI at this neonatal stage.
Except EU is hell bent on going the way of Peron's Argentina or Mugabe's Zimbabwe. The EU relative share of world economy has been going down with no signs of the trends reversal. And instead of innovating our ways of stagnation we have - permanently attached bottle caps and cookie confirmation windows.
Nope mate. Looking at my purchasing power compared to the USA guys I knew now and in 2017. Not in my favor. EU economy is grossly mismanaged. Our standards of living have been flat for the last 18 years since the financial crisis.
In 2008 EU had more people, more money and bigger economy than US, with proper policies we could be in a place where we could bitch slap both Trump and Putin. And not left to wonder whose dick we have to suck deeper to get some gas.
Peter Zeihan would say, that’s the problem Europe has, in addition to demographic collapse. They’re not energy indepedent and hitched their star to Russia (especially Germany), on the belief that economic interdependence would keep things somewhat peaceful. How wrong they were
I'm Japanese-American, so I'm not exactly happy about Japan's state of irrelevance (yet again). Their one saving grace as a special(er) ally and friend is they can still enjoy some of the nectar with us if they get in lockstep like the UK does (family blood!) when push comes to shove.
> You don't make rules by writing several hundred pages of legalese as a litigator, you make rules by creating products and defining the market.
That is completely wrong, at least if rules = the law. You might create fancy products all you like, if they do not adhere to the law in any given market, they cannot be sold there.
> Only those who actually make and build and invent things get to write the rules
Create things? Or destroy them? Seems in reality, the most powerful nations are the ones who have acquired the greatest potential to destroy things. Creation is worthless if the dude next door is prepared to burn your house down because you look different to him.
“Vance just dumped water all over that. [It] was like, ‘Yeah, that’s cute. But guess what? You know you’re actually not the ones who are making the calls here. It’s us,’” said McBride.