It's looking good until you start to see the US gov forcing cloudflare to block hugging face and others.

They'll just make it a crime to run the models unless they authorize you (classifying it as a munition, like they tried to do with encryption), and if your power bill is suspicious you'll find yourself in jail.

Any company providing the models will be deemed a threat to national security.

No need to block the download.

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15155 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Citizens were and are free to use the technology (cryptography and every other export-controlled item); your "power bill is suspicious, go to jail" FUD doesn't really track with history.

> Any company providing the models will be deemed a threat to national security.

Any company providing specifically-controlled models to foreigners would hypothetically be prosecuted.

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avaer 6 hours ago | parent [-]

There's a famous poem called "First They Came" about how slippery this slope can be in a heated political climate.

I don't believe for a second this ends with "foreigners", this is about setting up infrastructure for controlling the technology. Foreigners are just the current excuse.

Note that TFA mentions they are supposedly hand-picking access to whoever they want, based on whatever criteria they want, already.

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15155 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Ah, invoking Godwin. "First they came" in 1976 when ITAR was first passed, or maybe "first they came" in the 1940s when we didn't export Proximity Fuzes, right?

Countries are free to prevent exports of technology. Equating export controls with the Holocaust is disgusting.

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avaer 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I did not bring in Godwin, but I guess he's here now :D.

I'm more trying to invoke GRRM. This is a Game of Thrones: billionaire CEO's complain about each other to the government to get their competitors blocked/tripped up with acts of fiat, which is what happened with Fable 5.

And in the linked post, it says GPT-5.6 access decisions are supposedly just hand picked.

The stories about export controls are just songs they sing to the peasants.

There are claims that Chinese companies are mining + reselling Claude subscriptions like crazy anyway.

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15155 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> I did not bring in Godwin

Who is the "They" in "First They Came" referring to exactly?

> There are claims that Chinese companies are mining + reselling Claude subscriptions like crazy anyway.

Which will become a felony with export-controlled models, which is why identity verification is becoming a thing.

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hhjinks 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Nobody was compared to the nazis, so Godwin's law is not yet relevant in this discussion.

	▲	15155 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I'm sure cooky old Martin Niemöller just dreamt that poem up out of nowhere and his time spent in in Dachau had nothing to do with it.

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15155 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do they need to "force Cloudflare" to do anything?

Why wouldn't they just tell Hugging Face that they need to abide export restrictions directly - they're an American company?

Doesn't sound dystopian enough without a second compelled entity?

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bilekas 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Because the models don't necessarily need to be hosted on hugging face. You can create a Model Card repository containing your README and from there you include instructions or a custom script in your repository that allows authenticated users to download the model.

> Doesn't sound dystopian enough without a second compelled entity?

This is the second snarky question you've made today, the other in relation to the export limit.

> Is this just upsetting because it's a product you want to enjoy?

Both are assumptions you are making and don't provide much in the way of constructive conversation, if I'm wrong about something it's alright to just point it out.

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15155 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> don't necessarily need to be hosted on hugging face.

Export restrictions don't split generally hairs on technicalities like "hosting" - the "but magnet links aren't actually torrents!" defense doesn't fly when $1M fines and federal felonies are at stake. All distribution or "causing" distribution to restricted entities is prohibited.

> This is the second snarky question you've made today

It's not snark: why would Cloudflare somehow be legally or technically relevant in the context of two American companies distributing export-restricted materials? HN seems to love the "Cloudflare controls the internet!" "NSA bad!" trope.

	▲	bilekas 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Export restrictions don't split generally hairs on technicalities like "hosting" - the "but magnet links aren't actually torrents!" defense doesn't fly when $1M fines and federal felonies are at stake. All distribution or "causing" distribution to restricted entities is prohibited. So why would open models that are not in the US be restricted ? The government would need to subpoena each model that was in the US individually, why would they do that when they could simply pull clout over CloudFlare, which we have seen governments do around the world. Either CloudFlare comply, or they're added a block list. > https://cybersecurityadvisors.network/2025/04/15/la-liga-blo... This is not a new thing, anyway this discussion has become too argumentative for an off the cuff comment about government over-reach.