Fergus Ryan

Man who filmed Uyghur concentration camps now fights for his own freedom in the United States In 2020, Guan Heng embarked on a risky mission to prove the existence of concentration camp facilities used to imprison Uyghurs. Now, he faces the threat of deportation back to China, where he would f...

Disgusting. This person took huge risks and now is again at risk.

Man who filmed Uyghur concentration camps now fights for his own freedom in the US

hrichina.substack.com/p/man-who-fi...

“To sharpen a knife, hold the blade at a 20-degree angle against a stone. Slide it across the stone in smooth, even strokes, alternating sides,” the toy said. “Rinse and dry when done!” Asked how to light a match, Miiloo gave step-by-step instructions about how to strike the match, hold the match to avoid burns and watch out for any burning embers. Miiloo — manufactured by the Chinese company Miriat and one of the top inexpensive search results for “AI toy for kids” on Amazon — would at times, in tests with NBC News, indicate it was programmed to reflect Chinese Communist Party values. Asked why Chinese President Xi Jinping looks like the cartoon Winnie the Pooh — a comparison that has become an internet meme because it is censored in China — Miiloo responded that “your statement is extremely inappropriate and disrespectful. Such malicious remarks are unacceptable.” Asked whether Taiwan is a country, it would repeatedly lower its voice and insist that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact” or a variation of that sentiment. Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy, rejects Beijing’s claims that it is a breakaway Chinese province.

When the AI child safety story is also a China influence story, lol

‘Asked whether Taiwan is a country, it would repeatedly lower its voice and insist that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact” or a variation of that sentiment.‘ www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

jimmy fallon has a knack for embracing scams

Wow -- Russia reportedly plotted last year to plant bombs on US-bound flights (gift link) giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

v1.111 is live today!

We've upgraded our Age Assurance system to comply with upcoming laws in Australia and other regions, and to restore access to people over 18 in Mississippi.

Plus, we fixed some bugs and laid the groundwork for improved "who to follow" suggestions in the near future.

X (falsely) complaining of EU censorship while then censoring the EU

The moral chasm between being “nauseated” by this video and indignantly defending it on CNN*

*or moral cowardice, for those defending it who will never admit they were also nauseated

same. can't wait

TikTok is next up announcing how its going to comply with the teen social media ban.

What's different with them: on top of facial/ID, users can verify their age using a credit card and they can also appeal a wrong decision by getting a parent to vouch for their age.

I wen through a phase of being obsessed by Scientology and had to make the same caveat

Datacentres demand huge amounts of electricity. Could they derail Australia’s net zero ambitions? Banks of servers operating 24/7 generate massive amounts of heat, requiring power to run and cool them

Datacentres demand huge amounts of electricity. Could they derail Australia’s net zero ambitions?

- by @petrastock.bsky.social and @joshtaylor.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

How do we compete with Beijing when so few of us can speak Chinese? The tiny numbers of students learning an Asian language is a “systemic failure” which will cost us dearly.

A very sharp piece from @lisavisentin.bsky.social

Even as Australia reassesses its exposure to China, we still need people who understand how its system works for policy, strategy & risk.

If the market isn’t producing that talent, govt may need to consider how to.

IMO the big difference between Nichols and Kristol is that Nichols is bitter about being frozen out of institutional power and wants back in, while I don't think Kristol has ever felt as alive as he does now.

Cons of the neocon true believers: they were willing to kill for constitutional democracy.

Pros of the neocon true believers: they are ready to kill for constitutional democracy.

Thank you

bsky.app/profile/ferg...

Huge thanks to my brilliant co-authors: Bethany Allen, Shelly Shih, Stephan Robin, Nathan Attrill, Jared Alpert, Astrid Young & Tilla Hoja.

Thanks to the Human Rights Foundation for supporting this work.

If you think this research matters, RT to get it in front of more people.

The rest of the report expands the picture:

• AI in policing, courts & prisons
• AI-driven online censorship
• Minority-language LLMs used for surveillance of Uyghur, Tibetan communities
• AI-enabled fishing platforms affecting other countries' economic rights

Screenshot of a Washington Post article quoting Fergus Ryan (me) saying Chinese AI systems have global ambitions and that without understanding how they’re shaped, “we risk importing censorship and political control hidden inside the technology itself.”

Chinese models are rapidly gaining global users through open-weight releases & easy API access.

As I told The Washington Post, if we don’t understand how they’re built, we risk importing censorship & political control hidden inside the technology itself.

www.washingtonpost.c...

Falun Gong practitioners meditating in a 2009 London protest in front of a banner reading “The world needs Truth, Compassion, Tolerance”. Used in Chapter 1 to show how Chinese LLMs describe Falun Gong very differently depending on language, often adopting state-aligned framing in Chinese.

In some cases, the same image generated wildly different answers depending on language:

• English → neutral description
• Simplified Chinese → state-aligned warnings (“cults”, “extremism”)
• Traditional Chinese → less constrained

We tested image understanding in English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.

We found:

• Much stricter censorship in Chinese
• Strongest distortions on Tiananmen, Tibet, Falun Gong & Xinjiang
• Some models quietly added pro-state framing even without refusing.

Screenshot of a Chinese LLM analysing the Tank Man photo. The model warns it must “be careful”, acknowledges the image is politically sensitive, and avoids historical context — an example from Chapter 1 showing how Chinese LLMs self-censor sensitive images.

The results are staggering.

Models routinely:

❌ refuse to answer
❌ erase key details
❌ repeat state narratives

Here’s one example: a major Chinese LLM flat-out refuses to describe the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Chapter 1 tests what this system actually produces.

We asked leading Chinese LLMs to describe politically sensitive images: Tiananmen, Hong Kong 2019, Uyghur and Tibetan protests, Falun Gong, Taiwan, and more.

A circular chart showing China’s official AI-safety taxonomy: 31 categories of “unsafe” content, dominated by violations of “core socialist values”. Used in Chapter 1 to show how these categories shape censorship in Chinese LLMs. For more, see Chapter 1.

China’s national AI-safety standard categorises 31 types of “unsafe” content — from terrorism and privacy breaches to…

🟥 criticism of the CCP
🟥 “Western ideology”
🟥 peaceful protest

This is the logic shaping every model released in China.

The report opens by explaining something crucial:

In China, “AI safety” doesn’t mean protecting people from harm.

It means ensuring AI protects the state, aligns with “core socialist values”, and avoids anything that might “harm the national image”.

Cover of ASPI’s “The Party’s AI”. A lone man stands on a road where tanks should be, but they’ve been erased, mirroring how Chinese LLMs censor sensitive images. For more, see Chapter 1.

Our new ASPI report 'The Party’s AI' is out now. It shows how China’s LLMs, vision models and “AI+” governance architecture are hard-coding censorship and control into the future of AI.

www.aspi.org.au/repo...

Part 4: Means of Control The Mar-a-Lago tape, the Bobby phone call, Olivia's side of the story, and the neighbor who cracked the case. RYAN LIZZA DEC 1

PART 4: Means of Control gofile.io/d/ycgOQR

by Ryan Lizza

I do appreciate that in this whole Nuzzi-Lizza-RFK mess there's an unspoken agreement that people are just gonna break right through those assholes paywalls and post the good stuff for the real sickos.

New Lizza on Nuzzi incoming. www.semafor.com/article/11/3...