Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29237278
The website of the Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek, whose chatbot became the most downloaded app in the United States, has computer code that could send some user login information to a Chinese state-owned telecommunications company that has been barred from operating in the United States, security researchers say.
The web login page of DeepSeek’s chatbot contains heavily obfuscated computer script that when deciphered shows connections to computer infrastructure owned by China Mobile, a state-owned telecommunications company. The code appears to be part of the account creation and user login process for DeepSeek.
In its privacy policy, DeepSeek acknowledged storing data on servers inside the People’s Republic of China. But its chatbot appears more directly tied to the Chinese state than previously known through the link revealed by researchers to China Mobile. The U.S. has claimed there are close ties between China Mobile and the Chinese military as justification for placing limited sanctions on the company. DeepSeek and China Mobile did not respond to emails seeking comment.
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The code linking DeepSeek to one of China’s leading mobile phone providers was first discovered by Feroot Security, a Canadian cybersecurity company, which shared its findings with The Associated Press. The AP took Feroot’s findings to a second set of computer experts, who independently confirmed that China Mobile code is present. Neither Feroot nor the other researchers observed data transferred to China Mobile when testing logins in North America, but they could not rule out that data for some users was being transferred to the Chinese telecom.
The analysis only applies to the web version of DeepSeek. They did not analyze the mobile version, which remains one of the most downloaded pieces of software on both the Apple and the Google app stores.
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Geopolitical rivals, sure, but let’s not dress this up as some benign inevitability. The common sense you speak of is just the sanitized version of imperial interests sold to the public. It’s not about “American supremacy” being threatened—it’s about maintaining control over global systems of surveillance and capital.
Calling it “not particularly nefarious” is laughable when the same apparatuses have destabilized nations, crushed dissent, and commodified every aspect of life. The West isn’t reacting to China out of fear; it’s reacting because someone else dared to play their game.
Sheeple? No, this isn’t wool over the eyes—it’s a straight-up blindfold, and most people are too busy scrolling propaganda feeds to even notice.
My point is everyone is going to do the same as soon as they are in a different place. Right now everyone is playing the game of American supremacy, but it won’t last forever and then it’ll be Chinese supremacy or perhaps Indian supremacy. And that doesn’t even change anything for most of the world except the folks trading places.
The problem with your argument is that it assumes the game itself is inevitable, as if supremacy is some natural progression of power. It’s not. It’s a manufactured system designed to perpetuate exploitation and inequality, no matter who’s at the top. Swapping one flag for another doesn’t address the underlying machinery—it just changes the branding.
And saying “it doesn’t change anything for most of the world” is a cop-out. The folks trading places aren’t just figureheads; they’re architects of systems that crush autonomy, strip resources, and turn lives into collateral damage. Pretending this is just a rinse-and-repeat cycle ignores the agency we have to dismantle these systems instead of resigning ourselves to their inevitability.
Stop excusing the game. Start questioning why it exists at all.
Because it’s human nature is my ultimate response. I think it is more or less inevitable. I think there is an ebb and flow to freedom and liberty, and I think things and people at the top stay basically the same under any system. How is American democracy any different from feudalism except with land ownership traded for currency? How is it different from authoritarian communism?
Don’t answer that. I’m sure there are all kinds of minor ways you could point out, but is it really any different? Or are there just minor differences the wealthy and powerful don’t care about anyway?
Is it cynical and fatalistic? Yeah. Is it wrong? I don’t see evidence of that as I look at the course of human history.
Human nature isn’t the scapegoat you think it is. Blaming “inevitability” is just a way to absolve ourselves of responsibility. Systems aren’t born from some primordial soup of human flaws—they’re designed, maintained, and enforced by very real, very deliberate choices.
Feudalism, democracy, authoritarianism—different costumes for the same play. But the script doesn’t write itself. The powerful choose to consolidate wealth and control, and the rest of us are complicit when we shrug and say, “Well, that’s just how it is.”
Cynical? Sure. Fatalistic? Absolutely. But wrong? Yes. Because if history shows us anything, it’s that systems crumble when enough people decide they should. The course of human history isn’t a river; it’s a path we’ve paved. We can tear it up anytime.
sigh
My friend I have never both agreed and disagreed with anything harder at the same time in my life.
Yes, I think it’s all borne of human primordial soup as you aptly put it. We are creatures of instinct and primitive wants which we cloak in a thinly veiled layer of intellectualism and rationalization.
There is a reason that every form of government is fundamentally the same with different trappings—because that’s what our monkey brains are capable of. Power consolidates and then power does what it does. Hell, I suspect if you used sugar as a proxy for currency, you could probably find an experiment to conduct that shows microscopic life would organize itself in much the same way, but that’s just speculation.
Yes, the powerful get too big for their britches and eventually get torn down and displaced until a new power forms, telling itself it is vastly superior to what came before, only to eventually fall into the same patterns and cycles all over again. As a software developer I see a microcosm of it in how the state of the art changes over time but it’s just the same old stuff with a new name and layer of obfuscation.
Everything I see points me to the inevitability of human nature. And I hate it. But I don’t see any sign of change. I wish you well, and what’s more I wish your perspective is ultimately proven right. But I just don’t think it will be.
Thank you for engaging in open discourse—it’s rare and refreshing. I appreciate your perspective, even if we diverge on the inevitability of human nature.
If we’re doomed to repeat cycles, it’s because we refuse to break them. I still believe we can.