> Well, and I am genuinely curious here, wouldn't defender and attacker capabilities being accessible equally by both parties be objectively worse than having a limited amount of privileged defenders?

Well, not really. Because those privileged defenders will never be able to predict what needs defending. So we have a few privileged "defended" places and the rest is left for privileged attackers to plunder.

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stalfie 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Privileged attackers?? So that would be career cybersecurity experts with Project Glasswing/Daybreak/Googlewhatever access, using it to perform actual attacks? Because that's what privileged means in this context. Access to frontier models not available to the public.

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Avamander 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> So that would be career cybersecurity experts with Project Glasswing/Daybreak/Googlewhatever access.

Yes. You really think access those models will not be given for offensive operations in each country? Of course they will be.

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stalfie 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Well, seeing as Claude literally snitches on everyday people planning murder and Houthis building rockets I would assume that every user in project Glasswing is heavily and very effectively monitored. I have to admit that I genuinely do not think that what you're hypothesizing is happening right now. I would bet good money that the amount of people with Glasswing access doing actual Blackhat work is currently zero.

Perhaps in the future this will change, but even if that is the case, that's still a win for the defenders. Having a time advantage, even for a few months, is still a win.

Edit: Actually, the CIA/FBI/NSA/Etc.. does probably have access and are probably trying to hack Iran and so forth, so my comment above is probably technically wrong in that respect.

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Avamander an hour ago | parent [-]

> I would bet good money that the amount of people with Glasswing access doing actual Blackhat work is currently zero.

I think it's not "blackhat" in that sense because it's officially sanctioned. Same goes for equivalent models overseas.

The only thing these embargos achieve is giving massive nations a huge advantage, but leaves the average country and person exposed.

	▲	stalfie an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I edited my comment above before realizing this is what you meant. And its a valid point I concede. Still, I disagree that advantaging this activity is the only thing these embargoes achieve. I would argue that they legitimately also give the Linux kernel, cURL and so on an advantage. And as long as that is true, this still makes it an overall win in my books, even if it also enables officially sanctioned offensive activities. I'm not a US citizen, but I would still rather get pwned by the CIA than both the CIA and Shinyhunters.