Have any of these AI CEOs, politicians or tech bros that try to rally behind a nationalistic “gotta win the AI race against China” ever explained what is actually consequential about this race in their view for anyone but themselves? Like other than your personal company’s outlook, your stock portfolio or your political influence/military usage over what is, best case scenario (being generous), a valuable and useful advanced tool for some types of work… what difference does it make to the average internet user if their AI chat bots or agents are developed in or run on data centers in the US or China?

Or more realistically, if they have the largest market share in the world, because there’s no lose state that means that the US AI companies can’t still exist… unless the AI companies keep pissing people off enough for the public to actually just shut down every data center.

It seems pretty clear that the only real motivation is an unimpeded return on their massive investments. China having market share in AI applications does not, inherently, threaten anyone’s safety any more than if they have a minority share in the market.

Don’t blame you. Shits fucked.

I don’t mean wipe your device of all data. I mean wipe any of your sensitive data. Keep your texts to friends, photos of your daughter, apps and stuff.

Remember to turn off all biometrics for unlocking your phone, if not now, then at least when traveling internationally. They can scan your face or your fingerprint without a warrant. But they can’t compel you to provide potentially incriminating information including passwords, codes and patterns. Self-destruct codes will likely get you arrested for obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence though, so use those at your own risk. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Best to never keep anything you wouldn’t want a cop or fed seeing anywhere on your device. If you have any materials that you wish to keep private, store them elsewhere as much as possible. Either never store them on your device or regularly back them up somewhere secure and wipe your device clean. Make sure all remote access to those materials are behind secure encrypted password protected connections.

Remember, know the law so that you may follow it to its letter and no further. If you must comply, comply. If you can, don’t comply. Know your rights and practice them. Never volunteer information to law enforcement even if you’re innocent. You don’t know what they know, what they are wanting to hear, what can be misunderstood, confused or contorted to put you into trouble. Every day is shut the fuck up Friday. Nobody will protect you but you.

From a consumer freedom standpoint this is shitty. And it does allow them to sell an enthusiast model at a premium without competing with an after market modder.

But two things can be true. I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable for the company to want to protect the integrity of the brand if unreliable after market sellers start releasing bad product indistinguishable from your own with your logo slapped on it.

Even if you have authorized resellers entrusted with doing the upgrades and audited for quality, if you leave the door open, there will be unauthorized mods on the market too. It does hurt not only Raspberry Pi, but the entire resell market if you can’t trust the product to have their expected standard of quality. It still sucks, but I at least get the justification.

A few years back, I worked in an assembly plant for a car company. One time when I was doing a quality containment, I found out that something like 30-50 cars were found to have a very slightly misaligned roof piece when it was welded, and it causes a slight, but visible warp in the roof. It was otherwise fine. Still water proof, still structurally sound, just a cosmetic defect. They were all quarantined to be stripped of any easily removable components and then the remaining parts and body would be scrapped.

I asked why? Even if they didn’t want to put them out to dealers with a visible defect, they were still safe and functional. They could still offer them to employees for sale at a discount and make far more back for them than its value as scrap. The answer was that it could hurt the value of the brand as a whole if low quality cars were put on the market, even if only for resale. It was worth the loss of these 30+ cars to maintain a consumer’s high expectation of quality.

I still think it may have been better to allow employees an opportunity to get a new vehicle at a great price with only a cosmetic defect. But I do get the competing concern there. You do want things you buy from a big company to have reliable quality.