Trump administration reportedly considers a US DeepSeek ban | Hacker News Reader

Trump administration reportedly considers a US DeepSeek ban

techcrunch.com

20 pointsddxv5 comments

I'm worried that older politicians do not understand technology and are letting Musk and Altman dictate what is best.

So good, they've made it illegal. Jokes aside though, aside from installing the Great Firewall of USA, I don't see how this could possibly work. And even then the cat is out of the bag. Models and code are speech, and there's no such thing as "banned speech" in this country.

Here were my predictions after Deepseek R1's release: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42883218

It seems likely that all of my predictions will come true.

1. H20 would be in huge demand in China due to Deepseek. [0]

2. Whitehouse likely to completely ban Nvidia chip exports to China. [1]

3. Chinese customers will put in huge orders for Nvidia chips in Q1/Q2 because they knew some export ban was coming. [2]

4. Whitehouse looking to ban Deepseek in US.

[0]https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/n...

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/15/nvidia-says-it-will-record-5...

[2]https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/c...

In some ways, this was very predictable. All the AI tech bros showed up at the whitehouse inauguration. Clearly they do not want competition from Chinese companies. It's an easy sell to Trump to ban Nvidia in China and to remove competition from Chinese models in US. Banning Nvidia will also make Nvidia chips theoretically cheaper in the US for companies like xAI and OpenAI because China is 30% of Nvidia's demand.

In the long term, this is likely good for China because now tens of billions of real demand will flow into Chinese companies who aren't as competitive as TSMC and Nvidia combo. Let's say in the next 5-7 years, China will make something almost as good as Nvidia's best. In the short term, Chinese models will fall behind.

It's another jab at China for not apologizing to Trump and coming to the table to do a deal, while he, Vance, and the rest of the stooges in the Administration try to humiliate Xi like they tried to do to Zelensky, god bless that man.

This is meaningless and just more Trump bullshit, everyone knows that, but for some reason, Trump thinks we're all stupid like his supporters and think it is a big deal. China is going to eat this SOB alive.

I love the shit show, Trump the deal maker is going to lose everything and I feel sorry for 50% of Americans.....

Leaving aside the support base, lots of ambitious and driven people use the same strategy Trump does, cause it works. For them. At the expense of others.

Sort of like the survival strategy of parasites and predators in nature. They key point being they survive. Because it works.

To do it at the scale Trump does it though, is only possible via social media network effects.

People not only recognize what Trump is doing because they do it too, they see his rise as validation of their own choices and survival strategies.

Basically attack/provoke. If it does work you are in a dominating position. If it doesn't work then use the Reaction of the target to gain allies/sympathy/support/reinforce fear+doubts+insecurities etc.

The Chinese dont look capable of responding to this model, cause they don't have people who can stand as a total contrast to this model. Nor do they have anyone who can get attention on social media.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com