DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
Tell me about it.
User ID: 745
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
16m ago
It's not really verbose in normal use, rather the opposite. It is verbose in agentic mode, writing docs and commentary rather than thinking traces. RL has been used for all serious LLMs since GPT 3-instruct, this is independent of the current long-CoT paradigm. It is dubious that Kimi has been trained on CoTs because it doesn't do them. More likely, its training data is largely final outputs of a reasoner (like Kimi's own 1.5/1.6). They have a section in the paper on 1.5 about penalizing verbosity.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
55m ago
Relevant from Lambert: The American DeepSeek Project
While America has the best AI models in Gemini, Claude, o3, etc. and the best infrastructure with Nvidia it’s rapidly losing its influence over the future directions of AI that unfold in the open-source and academic communities. Chinese organizations are releasing the most notable open models and datasets across all modalities, from text to robotics or video, and at the same time it’s common for researchers worldwide to read far more new research papers from Chinese organizations rather than their Western counterparts.
This balance of power has been shifting rapidly in the last 12 months and reflects shifting, structural advantages that Chinese companies have with open-source AI — China has more AI researchers, data1, and an open-source default.
[…] The goal for my next few years of work is what I’m calling The American DeepSeek Project — a fully open-source model at the scale and performance of current (publicly available) frontier models, within 2 years.2 A fully open model, as opposed to just an “open weights” model, comes with data, training code, logs, and decision making — on top of the weights to run inference — in order to distribute the knowledge and access for how to train AI models fully.
etc. He overstates the cause, perhaps. America doesn't need these egghead communist values of openness and reproducibility, the free market will align incentives, and charity shouldn't go too far. But he's pointing to the very real fact that China, and not on the state level but on the level of individual small companies with suitable culture, is the only country bringing transformative AI not locked on corporate clusters closer to reality.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1hr ago
Periodic Open-Source AI Update: Kimi K2 and China's Cultural Shift
(yes yes another post about AI, sorry about that). Link above is to the standalone thread, to not clutter this one.
Two days ago a small Chinese startup Moonshot AI has released weights of the base and instruct versions of Kimi K2, the first open (and probably closed too) Chinese LLM to clearly surpass DeepSeek's efforts. It's roughly comparable to Claude Sonnet 4 without thinking (pay no mind to the horde of reasoners at the top of the leaderboard, this is a cheap-ish capability extension and doesn't convey the experience, though is relevant to utility). It's a primarily agentic non-reasoner, somehow exceptionally good at creative writing, and offers a distinct "slop-free", disagreeable but pretty fun conversation, with the downside of hallucinations. It adopts DeepSeek-V3’s architecture wholesale (literally "modeling_deepseek.DeepseekV3ForCausalLM"), with a number of tricks gets maybe 2-3 times as much effective compute out of the same allowance of GPU-hours, and the rest we don't know yet because they've just finished a six-months marathon and don't have a tech report.
I posit that this follows a cultural shift in China’s AI ecosystem that I've been chronicling for a while, and provides a nice illustration by contrast. Moonshot and DeepSeek were founded at the same time, have near-identical scale and resources but have been built on different visions. DeepSeek’s Liang Wengeng (hedge fund CEO with Masters in engineering, idealist, open-source advocate) couldn't procure funding in the Chinese VC world with his inane pitch of “long-termist AGI research driven by curiosity” or whatever. Moonshot’s Yang Zhilin (Carnegie Mellon Ph,D, serial entrepreneur, pragmatist) succeeded at that task, got to peak $3,3 valuation with the help of Alibaba and Sequoia, and was heavily spending on ads and traffic acquisition throughout 2024, building a nucleus of another super-app with chatbot companions, assistants and such trivialities at a comfortable pace. However, DeepSeek R1, on merit of vastly stronger model, has been a breakout success and redefined Chinese AI scene, making people question the point of startups like Kimi. Post-R1, Zhilin pivoted hard to prioritize R&D spending and core model quality over apps, adopting open weights as a forcing function for basic progress. This seems to have inspired the technical staff: "Only regret: we weren’t the ones who walked [DeepSeek’s] path."
Other Chinese labs (Qwen, Minimax, Tencent, etc.) now also emulate this open, capability-focused strategy. Meanwhile, Western open-source efforts are even more disappointing than last year – Meta’s LLaMA 4 failed, OpenAI’s model is delayed again, and only Google/Mistral release sporadically, with no promises of competitive results.
This validates my [deleted] prediction: DeepSeek wasn’t an outlier but the first swallow and catalyst of China’s transition from fast-following to open innovation. I think Liang’s vision – "After hardcore innovators make a name, groupthink will change" – is unfolding, and this is a nice point to take stock of the situation.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
30d ago
So, despite 15 years of supposed collapse
There's been no collapse, but there is a great deal of ruin in a nation. Canada has been a great country to live in, and it is still good by OECD standards. Canada is just on a starkly different growth trajectory from the southern neighbor (to wit, it does NOT grow, among other problems), a trajectory that holds no promise of changing. 10-15 years ago it was on par with the US in per capita GDP, then trends diverged more and more. In 2020 this was still easy to ignore, and anyway perceptions take time to change, the British are still stereotyped as sophisticated gentlemen in some parts of the world.
You attribute the quality of Canada in the past to Canadians, and the current condition to the government of Canada. But it's, of course, made of Canadians as well. My point is that the governance of Canada seemed to be successful, based on results, and for the last decades the results are getting worse and worse.
Americans also have a lot of cruel things to say about their governance, and about each other. I dismiss their entitled whining because the actual performance has been and remains superior to the competition.
Census says 126,340 people left Canada for the U.S. in 2022, a 70 per cent increase over a decade ago
sounds bad, but what do I know.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
30d ago
Israelis hadn't changed, but the clearly rising antisemitism among the western left and its Islamic neighborhood pushed Israelis to vote for the one cynical hawk in town : Bibi. While politics shifted right, the average Israeli remained a normal person.
this is quite tendentious.
Israelis have changed, and will change more. Demographically, politically, culturally. Israel today is not some offshoot of Western Civilization but a higher-IQ Middle Eastern nation, with all that follows. This narrative is getting very stale.
I wasn't talking of Canadian perceptions. Are you playing for pity now with this ridiculous «nuh-uh»? Yes it was.
But Canadians were endlessly preening about their moral superiority and greater civility and safety, too, much to the consternation of Americans. Still are, to an extent. This is very easy to observe in the wild.
It's always funny to watch a person unravel like this. You want to prove me stupid and ignorant on every turn, even when it's completely beside the point and your attack is not very tenable. I didn't want to get this result, you could have simply been content with me refusing to elaborate on the genius of American deep state.
Hajnali mentality is not that deep, scratch and there's the same rabid animal underneath.
P.S. I don't remember what I was taught in the geography class about Canada. It's not been heavy on politics. Probably just oil sands and climate, stuff like that.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1mo ago
or I imagine you'd retreat to a motte of achieve comparable GDP growth rates to the US
Do you really think this would be a mere "motte"? Canada used to be seen as a “nicer America”, an uncontroversially well-running state. Then they went all in on replacement migration in the name of muh GDP, and achieved GDP growth… proportionate to the population increase, per capita they've stagnated for a decade (quite a feat given that they've been importing hundreds of thousands of "talents" from China and India, I presume many of them legitimate). Now even first generation immigrants flee south for better opportunities, the government barely has popular mandate, and there's increasingly not-jokey talk about Alberta accepting American annexation. Yes, this is exactly how actual state incompetence looks like, the US isn't doing that.
For the case of EU, you can read this.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1mo ago
The issue with state regulation of AI is obviously that all relevant AI in the US is produced in California, maybe a little bit in Texas. This would have never flied with a Republican administration, but even that aside it's clearly discriminatory against everyone else who will experience the effects of Californian regulation.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1mo ago
Spy satellites contribute so little to the total mass to orbit that you never even needed SpaceX for that (i don't consider Starlink a primarily national security project, because it's not).
For delivering payloads, including probably international ones, China will begin catching up next year. I do not assume that Americans will be contracting them, no, so in that sense SpaceX is poised to maintain its near-monopoly.
It is believed that the crop of reusable rocket startups is attributable to Robin Li, the founder of Baidu, getting into National People's Congress, and advocating for legalization of private space businesses in 2010s. So far, there have been three Chinese entities that have conducted VTOL tests for reusable rockets.
- China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), June 23, 2024
- LandSpace, September 11, 2024
- Space Epoch, May 29, 2025
There are others which are further behind.
Technologically, they are several iterations behind, but strategically I'd say they save significant advantages over the current SpaceX (a usual feature of Chinese fast-following). For example Space Epoch Yuanxingzhe-1 is basically a small Starship (or a better, thicker Falcon-9, if Falcon-9 were designed today). Stainless steel, metholox, will naturally plug into the existing and state-subsidized logistics, including military facilities that currently produce aviation parts (as a small point, Falcon's extreme height-to-width ratio is obviously suboptimal and downstream of American highway standards, but China had no problem building dedicated roads). LandSpace Zhuque-3 VTVL-1 is similar (they can boast of the first metholox engine to make it to orbit).
But as you rightfully notice, it's not clear if this will have much effect on the SpaceX bottom line, since Americans can saturate their cadence anyway. In all likelihood it will only unnerve some people in Washington as a symbolic thing.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1mo ago
Or are you trying to make the argument that the US state department is competent, but got played by even bigger-brained Israelis?
More charitably, I think that the US and Israel are a geopolitical bloc with shared elites, in which core US interests sometimes take a backseat for the bigger picture, to some consternation of the electorate. The US is long-term invested in the Israeli dominance in the Middle East. This isn't even different from the official rhetoric.
Ah, that was very generous of them. I'm sure self-interest played no part in it, and it's not even clear what you mean by that - buying treasuries? If so, they bought treasuries throughout the early 2000s at a rate not that different from 2008 - was that also for altruistic reasons?
It was after this paragraph that I decided to just stop reading. A Hajnali is just a Hajnali, in your head reality and morality melt together, a proper and cooperative action must be morally motivated, so you will engage in these ridiculous theatrics because you feel morally outraged at China and at me. It's so annoying.
Of course China did it for self-interest. As for buying treasuries. Have you actually checked? That was the sharpest sustained acceleration on the chart.
Some facts gathered by a Chinese open-source AI, which you could freely use instead of trying to be clever:
- In November 2008, China launched a ¥4 trillion ($586 billion) stimulus (13% of its GDP), dwarfing the U.S. stimulus (5% of GDP) 1 … This rapid recovery boosted global markets and commodity demand
- Mechanism of Support: China recycled trade surpluses into U.S. Treasuries to maintain a weak yuan, ensuring export competitiveness. By 2008, it held $700 billion in U.S. debt. This provided critical demand for U.S. debt during massive deficit spending (e.g., TARP bailouts)
During 2008, about half of China’s total reserve accumulation of $400 billion went towards net purchases of U.S. treasury bills and bonds.
During September to November 2008, the latest three-month period for which data are currently available from the U.S. Treasury, Chinese purchases of U.S. treasury bills and bonds amounted to nearly $123 billion—this at a time when U.S. financial markets were in deep turmoil. The continued flow of Chinese money into U.S. treasuries is of course rather convenient for the U.S. at a time when it faces the prospect of having to finance a massive budget deficit.
All this has saddled China with provincial debt, bloated real estate market, and systemic imbalances they're still not finished dealing with.
Of course not just China, everyone had to pay for American profligacy and scamming, to avoid a truly catastrophic recession. But my argument here was not that China Good: solely that allowing Chinese development in the first place, instead of pursuing a more negative-sum strategy, was not a blunder or a betrayal of American self-interest. America actually can benefit from global growth (eg by getting bailed out in a crisis, after having become a pillar of global economy). Chinese growth prior to this phase of conflict is, therefore, not evidence of American Deep State being incompetent.
You've lost track of that, and I've lost interest in combing through your rather emotional text. In short, Vietnam was premised on a reasonable fear of the domino effect, and most specifically-American problems (eg falling birth rate isn't one) are genuinely hard to solve due to the nature of American economy and population. The tradeoffs so far have been very worth it, accumulating towards even greater ones, and I believe they have been greater than what the American population without such high-IQ stewardship could hope to earn.
For the contrary example, look no further than the EU and Canada. They have comparable population quality, are at the same stage of development, and share many of your natural advantages. How have the last 20 years been for them? Are they famed for their Deep State? I rest my case.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1mo ago
I'll wager that if we're still here in 3-5 years, you'll be saying the same thing about underestimating the Chinese capacity for self-sabotage.
I have never underestimated their capacity for self-sabotage.
Your complaints about GWOT are motivated reasoning, GWOT was quite successful for Israel at least.
The US has been able to grow its economy extremely rapidly through Chinese industrialization, without that your, as marxists say, Internal Contradictions would have likely brought about a protracted recession already. Don't forget that in 2008, it was China that bailed you out. Those aren't so much major errors as conflicts of priority between sectors of American elite.
where's the golden era in American foreign and domestic policy mediated by these people?
1970s-2023, I'd say. Your safe and prosperous world is a product of an overall competent policy. Just continuing and improving on Biden's program could have been enough. See the success of CHIPS act, for example.
Like what, the financial system that proved utterly incapable of regime change in Iran or hindering Russia's ability to wage war?
Like owning the biggest consumer market in the world, most of the world's most prized IP, having military presence in all corners of the world. It's not the UN, it's the ability to spit at UN decisions and opinion of all UN members individually when needed, and not suffer economic consequences like Russia.
You bring up Russia and Ukraine - in March 2022, was there anyone (including what we can guess the US state department thought at the time!) who confidently predicted the outcome would be >= 3 year grinding war with little movement on the front, dominated by drone warfare?
I recall I did predict a long grinding war after like a week of it. Failure of the brazen paratrooper operation at Hostomel suggested that no quick resolution is likely; Ukrainians recognize it was a pivotal point, and if better executed (and less competently opposed), would have likely allowed Russia to settle the war on preferred terms. There have been a few others who thought likewise. I did miss drones, and predicted more WWII style mass mobilization with heavy artillery and aviation use and millions dead. We got some WWII features but not that. What did you say at the time?
If Americans were truly hegemonic and held that as their goal, the world would look very different.
Sorry, this sounds very much like Russian “we haven't even started yet” narrative to me.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
Well, it'll be more costly, but it'll be possible.
HONG KONG/SHANGHAI/LOS ANGELES, May 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. will cut the "de minimis" tariff for low-value shipments from China to as low as 30%, according to a White House executive order and industry experts, further de-escalating a potentially damaging trade war between the world's two largest economies.
Things move quickly. I think fentanyl stuff will also get resolved.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
There is something to the French case, but modern fertility collapse is uncharted territory in that it happens globally, for new reasons, in conditions of rapidly rising productivity via technological progress. I do not believe that “this country has higher TFR”, alone, is now predictive of much of anything, except the population age structure itself.
And yet it is unable to employ all of those workers
Fair enough, and yes, this goes to show that they're not on the verge of economic decline through labor shortages.
I think the US Deep State was capable of winning this, just like Russia was capable of winning in Ukraine, in theory, if we were to ignore the actual level of Russian governance and corruption and ability to prosecute the war rationally. I knew of that one and so didn't expect Russia to win, and overestimated the US mainly because I did not account for the immense capacity for self-sabotage.
The US State department isn't staffed by geniuses who can shape the world to their liking.
I think they have enough talented people to do this, it's just those people have lost in internal politics.
simply because the world is too hideously complex a system for someone of any intellect or means to meaningfully manipulate
Manipulating the world is made much easier when you own major causal factors of that world. It doesn't take 200 IQ, though intelligence helps not to manipulate yourself into the ditch. All of great power politics is such manipulation. Suppressing competitors, strengthening allies, capturing international institutions, and yes, it's done by networks of high-agency people, not by vague sentiment of the electorate. Sorry, that's just what we can observe happening.
Nothing is set in stone; despite triumphalist propaganda directed at the public, I think the USG is aware of the problems by now and still has major cards like monopoly in crucial technology (ASML is a de facto American company), global reserve currency and, most of all, global goodwill, everyone anxious to go back to normal. Trump has improved his standing in the Middle East with a single speech. Americans are losing time but they can undo the self-inflicted damage with a few more such pivots, apologize for tone-deaf Greenland-posting, revitalize their alliance networks, actually reindustrialize, implement very liberal issuance of citizenship to all Chinese talent and brain-drain the nation – and that's not all. Maybe the AGI God plan will work out too – after all, the attack on Huawei and broader semiconductor supply chain was a resounding success of the sort I expected, it did delay China by years. Maybe Starship makes Brillant Pebbles a reality and forces China to disarm and sign unequal treaties… The US Hegemony is very much a viable project, except some Americans are in the way.
I recognize that my median prognosis has changed in a way that seems discrediting, but it's basically down to high-noise human factors on the US side.
All of these criticisms can be leveled at the Chinese as well - you've never heard them rant about 5,000 years of civilization?
They do have a strong belief in their civilizational superiority, and this chauvinism and smugness is another reason I was bearish on them. But in assessment of their current relative position they tend to be humble. “Building a world-class navy by 2035” is a typical Chinese goal. “Becoming a moderately prosperous society by 2020”. In 2018, Xi said:
When I met with Chinese and foreign journalists after the First Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, I said that the Chinese Communist Party was determined to make a thousand years of greatness for the Chinese nation, and that a hundred years was just the right time to be in its prime. At the same time, I said this with a deep sense of worry. From our history, dynasties existed for more than 400 years in the Xia Dynasty, 600 years in the Shang Dynasty, 300 years in the Western Zhou Dynasty, 500 years in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, 215 years in the Western Han Dynasty, 195 years in the Eastern Han Dynasty, 290 years in the Tang Dynasty, 277 years in the Ming Dynasty, 268 years in the Qing Dynasty, 15 years in the Qin Dynasty, 61 years in the Three Kingdoms, 167 years in the Northern Song Dynasty, 153 years in the Southern Song Dynasty, 90 years in the Yuan Dynasty, 38 years in the Republic of China, and other small dynasties There are countless blips and dynasties. The Qin Dynasty, Northern Song Dynasty, and Yuan Dynasty were all once unbeatable powers, but soon fell into disrepair. Those longer dynasties were also corrupt, socially unstable, discontented and rebellious, and many of them were left to languish and die. This shows that after a regime is established, it is not easy to maintain prosperity and long-lasting peace. Without self-reflection, vigilance, and effort, even the most powerful regimes can come to the end of the road.
It is now 97 years since the founding of our Party and 69 years since the founding of New China. The Soviet Communist Party has existed for 86 years, and the Soviet Union for 74 years. Our Party’s history exceeds that of the Soviet Communist Party, and our Party has not held national power for as long as the Soviet Union. By the middle of this century, the history of our Party will be close to 130 years, and the history of New China will reach 100 years. Comrade Deng Xiaoping said, “The consolidation and development of the socialist system will require a long historical stage, and it will take several generations, a dozen generations, or even dozens of generations of our people to struggle persistently and diligently.” How many years is that? It has to be calculated in terms of millenniums. This means that it will take a long historical period for us to build socialism with Chinese characteristics well and into. In this long historical process, it is an extremely difficult and risky challenge to ensure that the Chinese Communist Party does not collapse and the Chinese socialist system does not fall. Once upon a time, the Soviet Communist Party was so strong, the Soviet Union was so powerful, but now it has long been “the old country can not look back at the bright moon”. A generation does the work of a generation, but without historical perspective, without a long-term vision, also can not do the things of the moment.
This does not look as hubristic as American Main Character Syndrome to me.
The century of humiliation making them temporarily embarrassed hegemons
China has never held more than tenuous regional hegemony, I think this framing is not reflective of their ambitions and self-perception.
And you think that a world where China is hegemon won't see shit like Trump's exploitative trade war on the regular?
Yes. It's a stupid trade war and it's highly likely that no Tsinghua graduate will be so stupid. That aside, China has an official policy of not pursuing global hegemony. This certainly has no teeth, but Americans don't even have an equivalent toothless commitment.
Not to mention I'm fairly confident I've seen you mock Americans hyping the 'Chinese threat' and making them out to be more competent than they actually are as a motivation for more defense spending.
I've been right about that, Americans do hype up the Chinese military threat excessively, and they don't even build military that'd be useful in countering that threat, it's nearly entirely a grift. $1 trillion will go to more nebulous next-generation prototypes and battling the tyranny of distance in distant bases, not to a buildup of autonomous platforms that can compete in the SCS. Again, assuming Americans keep self-sabotaging.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
Find me a single instance in history where a nation was able smoothly transition through a period of declining population as the old begin to outnumber the young.
Can you give me a list of failure cases?
This is uncharted territory. All developed countries are aging, and all of them are losing out in overall population productivity through some combination of aging, dysgenics and demographic replacement. It's not even clear that China is declining faster than the US – at the very least, they are consistently graduating more and more highly educated workers, while Americans are struggling to hire literate people for menial jobs. Quantitatively, Chinese workforce size will continue to exceed the entire Western world's one for decades. Dependency ratio will reach Japanese levels in, what, 2045? This is not serious.
utterly dependent on continued imports of agricultural products and energy and most raw materials
What does this have to do with anything? They'll keep importing soybeans from Brazil and iron from Australia. They have $1T trade surplus and, for some years, have been annually installing as much or more industrial automation than the entire rest of the world combined. Their problem right now is not workforce, but that the world is too poor to absorb their exports.
Do you just operate on the assumption that China is a land of mobilized peasants gluing sneakers by hand, and when peasants get old, the gig is over?
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
From my point of view it's that you have degenerated into kanging and chimping from cognitive dissonance, like unfortunately many in the American sphere of influence. It seems Americans simply cannot conceive of having a serious or superior enemy, they grew addicted to safely dunking on premodern peoples in slippers or nations with deep structural disadvantages like Soviets with their planned economy and resource-poor, occupied Japan with 1/3 of their population – even as they sometimes smirk and play the underdog in their ridiculous doomposting. They feel like Main Characters of history, who are destined to win for narrative reasons and therefore can afford arbitrary foolishness in the midgame – at it will amount to is a few extra lines in the moral takeaway in the epilogue. Karl Rove's famous quote is quite apt.
China is not unbeatable, China is not stronger than the (hypothetical at this point) US-aligned alliance of democracies, and they're currently behind in AI. But you cannot see when I say this, because it would legitimate my positions that are less soothing for your ego, and instead you are compelled to default to these whiny complaints that are just a demand to shut up. Were you living in reality, you'd feel more incensed at nonsensical, low-IQ-racist boomer copes that keep undermining your side's negotiating position.
Accordingly I gloat that much harder when you lot suffer setbacks, because I strongly despise delusion and unearned smugness and believe they ought to be punished.
In what sense wasnt this already demonstrated by Germany buying russian gas?
It's a matter of degree. Pressing Germany to move away from Russian energy supply could be easily justified in the world where the US was a credible guarantor of German security, as indeed Russia tried the gas card to dissuade Germany from supporting Ukraine, and now German industry which grew dependent on Russian gas is contracting. True, Germany showed independent (and faulty) decisionmaking then. But this was all in the realm of politics as usual, rules-based international order, and German choice was business as usual too. Now we see a test of naked American authority in Trump's exploitative trade war, in “DO NOT RETALIATE AND YOU WILL BE REWARDED” bullshit. Faceh explicitly says “Honestly I can say I thought there'd be more capitulation by now”, and that's exactly the spirit. This is not normal politics, this is a desperate shit test: will you cave, or will you resist? Are you a country or an imperial vassal? Getting refusals in this condition is decisive, and clearly the US side expected to get fewer of them.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
The problem with all this nonsense (yours and @WhiningCoil's) is the projection of the degenerate American condition where somewhat organized 20th century things are next to impossible to do, so you have to rely on Bronze age factors like the proportion of – to a large extent functionally illiterate, obese, criminal and unhealthy, but at least physically mobile – population to kick the can down the road. Infrastructure cannot be adapted. Automation cannot be done, that's fake news, that'd require, like, electric engineering and other nerd shit that doesn't offer good P/E for the financial fraud class to get fat off. The olds will consume the surplus, or else revolt, because you cannot do anything against pensioners (eg provide very cheap industrialized welfare to have them shut up, or as @veqq says, just let them live out their lives in the naturally cheap countryside). Housing bubble will crash and bury the economy, because of course, the debt is secretly much higher than it seems, because Communists always lie with their fake statistics, we learned that from the Soviet Union, the previous “champion” of electronics exports and gacha games.
It's surreal to watch how their nation-scale companies like BYD operate, compare this to the shambolic, truly late Soviet bullshit going on in the US, and then observe all this Gordon Chang tier punditry. Their working age population is right now just short of 1 billion people. They're, it seems, overall higher quality people too, they live longer, ask for less and work harder. Tighter margins all around, higher efficiency of converting revenue to capex… There is, admittedly, a lot of population locked in agriculture and low-productivity sectors, so fine, the effective discrepancy in workforce might be “only” 5x. Do you seriously imagine that economies of scale in a nation with 5x the American workforce will amount to Wile-E-Coyote running off a cliff. Okay, I'll keep watching how it goes.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
To establish ground truth facts: All that is left of Liberation Day tariffs on China is minimal 10% “against humanity” tariff, reciprocated by 10% as well. 20% of “Fentanyl tariff” (lol) came in February, and China reciprocated it with asymmetric tariffs which are also in power. So it's somewhat more equal than 10% for 30%. Also, China has not repealed their global export controls on rare earth elements which is in fact terrible as there is no way to quickly ramp up production elsewhere, stockpiles will run out in months, and much of the imagined American revival (eg industrial automation, so robots) requires REEs. Though there's cope.
Chinese imports of ≈$500B add far more to American GDP, maybe on the order of $2T even naively accounted (eg not considering the costs of unmaintained infra if trade were terminated) – they're a large chunk of all consumed goods and inputs to almost all industry, they retail for much higher value, and create a lot of economic activity. Since the gap with the rest of the world is just 20%, China refuses to cover the tariffs on their side and there is, in fact, no ready substitute to most of their products at acceptable volume and shortages would have caused crisis and panic, most businesses opt to pass the price to consumer or just cut margins. So the main effect of this in the short term will be slight reduction in bilateral trade, slightly (because the markup of US distributors is insane) higher prices of everything for Americans, and redistribution of wealth from businesses and consumers towards their state.
I've been wrong with my usual doomerism, predicting that neither side will fold. I mainly overrated Trump's ego strength and isolation from feedback. China kept playing this with surgical game-theoretical precision, consistently demanding respectful and equal treatment and insisting that they will not be intimidated but in principle oppose trade wars as lose-lose scenarios. Trump toadies initially made some smug noises about “isolating the bad actor”; then, when Chinese retaliation succeeded in preventing quick submission of others, particularly emboldening other largest trade partners (EU and Japan), improved ties with ASEAN, and precluded any such isolation – course-corrected, through some opaque drama between courtiers it seems. They started begging for talks (in a bizarre Oriental manner of requesting that Xi calls first, to save Trump face, maintaining the optics of “they need us and our Great American Consumer more than we need their cheap trinkets”), and eventually signaled willingness for equal deescalation that the Chinese side has been expecting. We are here.
What has been learned? First, that indeed, the US just does not have the cards to push China around, much less rally “the world” against it. That trust and respect is easily lost. That even nations highly dependent on the US security umbrella and on trade with the US can refuse to bow, and barter for their own interests:
Regarding the tariff negotiations between the United States and the United Kingdom in which an agreement was reached to set tariffs at 10%, including on automobiles, Prime Minister Ishiba said on a Fuji TV program, "It is one model, but we are calling for their abolition.We cannot say that 10% is okay."
That the South-East Asia is probably not a viable platform for any “choking” or “Malacca blockade”, like, just look at this statement.
That the EU has sovereignty, that Canada has sovereignty, that… basically, that the US is not a big scary hegemonic superpower it imagines itself to be and sometimes laments the wages of being. It's just a very powerful country, with large but decidedly finite leverage, and that runs well short of getting everyone to play along with American King's unreasonable imagination. The US can not credibly maintain the pressure on a determined adversary the size of China. Now, some half-dead vassals like the UK will make unequal concessions. But that's about it. Others will drive a bargain.
It's been a moderate economic shock for everyone, and a significant loss of credibility for the US.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
If China is actually weaning Russia off of drones then I think they are making a hubristic mistake.
It's not strategic. Factories that sell to Europe want to keep selling. The most powerful move the EU could do would be to build a domestic Russiatech Drone industries and rrun it on the same components as RU.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
It's a harder brand of Russian sarcasm, applied in inherently absurd circumstances.
I think some win-win can be had, especially considering that Trump's platform is incoherent. He said he wanted Europe to spend more on defense and be more independent, and he'll get it. Did he want it ho happen like this? And strengthened EU-China trade too? Probably not. But he'll definitely have something to report as a win to his electorate.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
Is Germany considered a Baltic state now?
I mean the first link. But Annalena Baerbock is even worse than Baltic.
that needs have no bearing on actual procurement numbers.
So do you have numbers? I consulted with a person who does procurement for Russian troops, the impression there is that Ukraine out-drones us by at least 2x in terms of drones that are actually combat-capable and not just advance the counter for the responsible bureaucrat, sitting in some warehouse.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
Russians cannot pick up bodies, there are too many drones attacking retrieval teams, so our corpses rot in the fields. This may affect exchange rates.
Not only have they been criticized by NATO and European leaders for this, but Chinese firms have been sanctioned. Reporting from last fall indicates that Russia actually established a facility to build military drones in China
Kaja Kallas
Typical Baltic yapping. These people are too used to American backing and have failed to become cognizant of their weak position. There are hundreds of different attempts by both sides, so all kinds of things happen, but I know that it's actually hard for Russia to procure even components in China right now, regiments have to use drones very prudently, while Ukrainians spam them by the thousand, and seem to have no issues in procurement. But China itself doesn't need to rely on these garage techniques and could make better loitering munitions by the million; with actual support, Ukraine would fall in a few weeks, and Estonia probably too. I almost wish to see it happen because racist arrogance of peoples incapable of defending themselves inherently begs for punishment. Morally though, I have to support the status quo to the detriment of my people.
The Americans have done some saber-rattling
Americans are delusional as well if they don't understand how much the credibility of their defense commitments has suffered from Trump and Vance's posturing with regards to Denmark. This has nothing to do with withdrawing some US troops or asking for higher defense spend by other NATO members, though this part doesn't help either (and there are many more parts).
Europe is not entirely deindustrialized, they can make their own drones, in addition to Chinese-Ukrainian ones.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2mo ago
Subcontinentals are extremely classist (which is funny because virtually all of them, even those highly educated Model Minority types far outearning Westerners, remain lower-class-coded in the Western mind) so it's no wonder they found a catchy slur appropriate.
“Pajeet” is not a real Indian name, but that's really a nitpick because there are tons of legitimate names that are very similar. I sometimes interact with people called something like “Rajeet Patel” and it's a bit awkward how I can't not associate them with 4chan memes.
Ukraine is in a hard but sustainable position right now. Indeed their position may be improving. With Trump's brilliant geopolitical and economic movements, China is more dependent than ever on European trade. This makes them less likely to ever militarily assist Russia (as that'd be a red line for Europe and prompt them to actually consider joining Trump-Bessent's project of isolating China), and all but ensures that Ukraine will keep getting a steady supply of Chinese materiel required for their accelerating drone warfare machine, which is currently claiming 50-80% of Russian lives on the battlefield (depending on how direct a contribution you count) and is growing less vulnerable to Russian EW. Combined with deep strikes on Russian infrastructure from radars to refineries and depleting stock of Russian armor, this means that deep offensive operations are very hard for Russians, and claiming more territory or even holding on to these gains is increasingly costly. Europe, de facto deprived of the American shield, is also quickly militarizing (see Rheinmetall stocks and so on) and commits to support Ukraine, including advanced drones. I think people don't appreciate but this is pretty bad for Russia, my friends get push notifications about rocket danger instead of heavy wind now.
In light of this, vague defense promises inferior even to ones already proven unreliable (Budapest Memorandum anyone?) from an unstable and untrustworthy and also declining actor (the US), which is threatening long-term allies and itself losing an economic war at the moment, do not seem so enticing as to violate Ukrainian constitution and de facto admit defeat, enraging the electorate. Zelensky is rational to demand better terms, which he won't get, in large part because Putin won't agree to them either. Both Ukrainian and Russian states have atrociously high tolerance for losses and their citizens will keep dying for the foreseeable future.
There probably isn't a delay, plans to ship it in May to capitalize on the hype were entirely hallucinated by jo*rnalists as far as I can tell. It might take many months yet.
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