Reminds me of the US trying to prevent the rest of the world getting 128 bit encryption back in the 90s.
And gps. Only the military was allowed the accuracy we have today
I was busy sucking on my thumb then, for real they did that?
Yeah, I went on holidays to the US and got the 128 bit plugin for what was probably Netscape (the precursor to Firefox) and it was very clear during the download process that it wasn’t to be taken outside the US. It was considered a weapon if memory serves me.
Anyway not long after the rest of the world caught up and it looked silly in hindsight so here we are.
Edit: just to add some context on the “weapon” thing… The other standard was either 56 or 64 bit and it was secure enough at the time given compute capabilities but it was also clear that it would be crackable in time whereas 128 bit has a very long shelf life even with modern capabilities, as long as the algorithm was good (and it was / is)
“Cracking DES”, about 56 bit encryption you are talking about, was released in 1998, and showed how to construct an fpga machine to decrypt DES in just hours (their proto did it in a week), and also showed that DES was weakened on purpose to allow the US to decrypt foreign comms.
Wow. I never heard about that one. I do recall some distributed community attempt at breaking (I think) 64 bit DES around that time. It used spare CPU cycles and I had it running on my Pentium 2 machine.
Was DES still widely used at that point do you recall? I had AES in my head for SSL and the like.
DES was in wide use until AES because of standards. The RSA libs commonly accepted in the finance industry still used DES in the three round form until AES replaced it (so 2001 is when the replacement started, I imagine some banking systems and government systems still used it post 911 and well into the 2020’s).
MIT press put out the book, so it is probably still available. Using HTTPS for everything was a huge step up in security for everyone, not least because OS updates address vulnerabilities. The RSA labs libraries were statically linked back in the 90’s, IIRC (at the very least a blob you shipped with your app.)
Dean Ball, a former White House official who contributed to the AI Action Plan the administration issued in the summer of 2025, said in a post on X that the order suggests all “non-Americans” would be restricted from using Anthropic’s latest models, including those based in the U.S.
“This means you should expect to have to prove your citizenship to use Anthropic models,” Ball said.
There is the real reason, folks.
Yet another effort to force mandatory ID checking to access a website.
Not just a website, how can a company prove that a “non-American” isn’t using an API?
They can’t and Anthropic have disabled it for US users too.
Though that’s perhaps, in part, to get the govt to change its mind.
nice IPO you have there.
it’d be a real shame if something were to happen to it.
Seems like a good policy to give non US AI companies a boost whilst also causing a US recession, given a large chunk of the US economy is currently being propped up by the AI bubble.
Wasn’t one of the results of the failed 90s encryption export controls, that as a result, other strong encryption schemes were created elsewhere and kneecapped the advantage that the US previously held in that area
Trump admin is masterful at own goals. They are the Wayne Gretzky of own goals.
