The Information is reporting that some DeepSeek employees are no longer allowed to travel after the company’s rise to fame. “Management asked some staff to hand in their passports, the three people said.”

This is a part of why I’m bearish on China long-term under the CCP: you can’t enough capital and top talent when you operate this way. If you were the best and brightest picking a university, would you (a) stay in China, where success means restrictions on freedom, or (b) go abroad where you are essentially unlimited?

OpenAI Threatened

Related: OpenAI asked the US government ban DeepSeek because the models are “PRC-produced.” While the diagnosis is probably not far off the mark, the prescription is farsical. There is no legitimate reason to ban the models at present.

…although my own research has shown censorship in models and other research has shown it is trivially easy to finetune existing models so they produce malcicious output.