Their inability to find a backbone helps contort themselves to whatever Trump babbles that day, even if privately they know something is idiotic or illegal.

If you want a prime example, look at how Thom Tillis suddenly finds the ability to speak out once he lost his primary.

you cant do much in response if your whole company is sent to Cecot on a "mistake" with the federal government ignoring court orders

https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder

And if the accused company is outside of the US, well, US courts have no jurisdiction so apparently the US government can just claim they are guilty and impose the sanctions...

the US could also pull the functional harm argument in the same way the government uses it to regulate some protected speech (like the whole debacle over DeCSS)

Even if the free speech argument prevails, the US GOV can still use sanctions to prevent the public clouds from hosting any foreign open weight models, and prohibit US based sites from distributing the weights. It'll remain functionally legal for individuals (or at least, unenforceable) but in practice, you'll need to pirate the weights they won't be available from any US based site or provider and would be illegal for businesses to use, even if its a gray area, the liability will mean businesses won't touch them.

- https://modelscope.ai/

- Source code (ironically on GitHub): https://github.com/modelscope/modelscope

It's an unfortunate truth that we're exiting a global peace era and entering one of (hopefully just...) implied conflict. Our biggest geopolitical rival that's been threatening a hot war also distilling the things we build is not a good thing.

Trump is a huge self-own by our electorate sadly, but being concerned about a conflict between China and the US is a very bi-partisan concern for good reason.