Comment by ttul

13 hours ago

There's nothing anyone can do about state-level espionage anywhere, using any cloud-hosted service. That being said, there is a very big difference between the legal situation in the United States vs. China. Chinese internet companies are required to have CPC interaction and since the rule of law does not strictly exist in China, the state can compel surveillance cooperation regardless of what might be written down. If a three-letter agency is compelling Anthropic to open up its queries for inspection, that kind of surveillance would be authorized by law and if Anthropic violated the law in cooperating, they would suffer the consequences in civil court. Maybe not immediately, but at least the possibility exists.

In China, there's no recourse at all. Surveillance must be presumed.

> the rule of law does not strictly exist in China, the state can compel surveillance cooperation regardless of what might be written down

While I agree that China is obviously worse in this regard, it's naive to claim this is unique to China, when literally a couple of months ago the US got into a fight with Anthropic about them not removing safeguards which were already just enforcing the letter of the law.

Rule of law in the US - are you kidding yourself?

When American citizens are being gunned down in public on cameras by US federal government agents, you are telling me that the US follows the rule of law?

Before you start to offer more propaganda, just tell me where is the killer of Renée Good, has that killer been arrested or charged yet? Keep your censored version of rule of law to yourself and your kids.

oh, btw, the current US President did got convicted for criminal offences, he walked away for free just because he got elected as the president. nice rule of law! what did he do recently - authorised illegal war against another country in which over 100+ school children got killed. Surely your fancy US rule of law is going to do something about this?

  • It is understandable to feel frustrated when justice fails (and I wholeheartedly agree that justice failed all of us many times in relation to Trump), but I think it's a mistake to confuse those specific failures with a total collapse of the rule of law. The rule of law in the United States does not guarantee a perfect or utopian society; what it does provide is a crucial framework for accountability and transparency that simply does not exist in an authoritarian nation like China.

    This difference is clear when we look at how the systems handle tragedy and power. In the U.S., the killing of Renée Good by an ICE agent led to a public release of video, intense scrutiny from an independent press, public condemnation by local officials, and a family using legal tools to seek justice. In China, that event would be immediately erased from the public consciousness, and those who dared to talk about it would face arrest. When the U.S. military bombs a school, human rights groups and journalists _can_ investigate, and members of Congress _can_ publicly demand answers (even if half of them are reluctant to question anything Trump does...). In China, military operations are complete state secrets. Furthermore, while it boils my blood to see Trump evade prison due to complex legal and constitutional questions, the fact that he was indicted and convicted by a jury of ordinary citizens proves that a functional legal apparatus exists outside of his direct control, something not utterly impossible under a dictatorship like China.

    Day to day, the rule of law very much exists in the US. Doesn't mean we can just sleep on it, but compared to China, I take comfort in the level of institutional reliability that still exists in America (and I'm not even American).

    • you are defending a failed system purely based on your prejudice. let me get it straight to you -

      1. Renée Good's killer is still free, never got arrested never charged. you can't just ignore such facts and cheap talk to prove the system works. the system completely failed to bring justice even after large scale public unrest. that by itself is the evidence - the failed system answers to no one.

      2. Trump evade prison, everyone in the Epstein file evade prison. again, this happened in front of the entire world with extensive media coverage. you need to be extremely innovative to defend such systematic failures of the justice system.

      how would you openly argue against such facts? just because you love the US and its systems? lol