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Josh Chin

@joshchin.bsky.social

3.5K followers 1.4K following 120 posts

Senior correspondent for WSJ covering collisions of geopolitics, tech, and power. 15+ yrs in Asia, mostly China. Co-author of SURVEILLANCE STATE: https://www.josh-chin.com/books Signal: joshchin.86. Also: [email protected]

www.josh-chin.com

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Josh Chin @joshchin.bsky.social · 17d

This is yet another story about authoritarianism — but one that hits a little different. Phurba is resilience incarnate, a person born for these times. And his tale is bonkers. I hope you enjoy reading it as much we did reporting it. Gift link: www.wsj.com/world/asia/t...

The Daring Caper of a Faithful Tibetan Who Outfoxed China

He escaped from police and crossed thousands of miles of wilderness on a decadelong odyssey toward freedom.

www.wsj.com

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Josh Chin @joshchin.bsky.social · 16d

Thank you so much for taking the time

Josh Chin @joshchin.bsky.social · 17d

The Daring Caper of a Faithful Tibetan Who Outfoxed China

He escaped from police and crossed thousands of miles of wilderness on a decadelong odyssey toward freedom.

www.wsj.com

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Josh Chin @joshchin.bsky.social · Aug 5

At this point, we’d all be much better off if we spent our days thinking and writing about nature

Reposted by Josh Chin

Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal.bsky.social · Aug 5

Hi, former Foreign Service Officer here

The Secretary of State might be interested to learn that visa requirements and terms are generally reciprocal. We do it to them, they do it to us.

PBS News @pbsnews.org · Aug 4

The State Department is proposing requiring applicants for business and tourist visas to post a bond of up to $15,000 to enter the United States, a move that may make the process unaffordable for many.

U.S. may require visa applicants to post bond up to $15,000 to enter country

The State Department is proposing requiring applicants for business and tourist visas to post a bond of up to $15,000 to apply to enter the United States.

buff.ly

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Gerry Doyle @mgerrydoyle.bsky.social · Aug 4

it is not the case that if you stop observing bad things, the bad things go away

NPR @npr.org · Aug 4

Exclusive: The Trump administration has asked NASA staffers to draw up plans to end at least two satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to current and former NASA employees.
By @rhersher.bsky.social

Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose

The Trump administration has asked NASA staffers to draw up plans to end at least two satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to current and former NASA employees.

n.pr

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Reposted by Josh Chin

slate @pleasebegneiss.bsky.social · Jul 31

sure fuck it, whatever. we deserve this

abc news post with headline radioactive wasp nest found at site where u.s. once made nuclear bombs

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Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal.bsky.social · Jul 30

What a great, great farewell note

Ben Mullin @benmullin.bsky.social · Jul 30

News: legendary Washington Post sports columnist @sallyjenx.bsky.social is leaving The Post.

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Zeyi Yang 杨泽毅 @zeyiyang.bsky.social · Jul 29

LLMs are basically terrifying users by force-feeding them niche fanfic texts without context. There's a reason why fandoms congregate on small forums to talk out their inside jokes because they don't want innocent people to stumble into their space and freak out without knowing the context!!!

Katie Drummond @katie-drummond.bsky.social · Jul 29

"AI companies used what amounts to the collective history of our species to create software that obscures its very richness and complexity."

www.wired.com/story/chatgp...

The Real Demon Inside ChatGPT

AI chatbots strip language of its historical and cultural context. Sometimes what looks like a satanic bloodletting ritual may actually be lifted from Warhammer 40,000.

www.wired.com

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Reposted by Josh Chin

David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · Jul 28

This is a really crazy thing to do.

Science Magazine @science.org · Jul 28

The National Science Foundation plans to abruptly end operation of the RV Nathaniel B. Palmer, the sole U.S. research ship capable of braving the farthest reaches of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. scim.ag/4mB8LOX

NSF plans abrupt end to lone U.S. Antarctic research icebreaker

Imminent termination of the RV Nathaniel B. Palmer shocks polar scientists

scim.ag

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Josh Chin @joshchin.bsky.social · Jul 25

Hmm, where have I heard this bef…oh, right:

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Reposted by Josh Chin

The Wall Street Journal @wsj.com · Jul 25

As the U.S. heads toward trade talks with China next week, President Trump is increasingly focused on trying to strike an economic bargain with Beijing.

Trump Is Shifting to Dealmaking Mode on China

The White House puts a priority on doing business with Beijing as it prepares for bilateral talks next week.

on.wsj.com

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Bill Corbett @billcorbett.bsky.social · Jul 25

The most interesting fact about Hulk Hogan is that as a kid in France, Andre the Giant sometimes got driven to school by playwright Samuel Beckett

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Amanda Weaver @amandaweavernovels.com · Jul 24

Your moment of joy today.

WuTangIsForTheChildren @wutangforchildren.bsky.social · Jul 24

Kids playing Ozzy's Crazy Train on xylophones

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Reposted by Josh Chin

Will Oremus @willoremus.com · Jul 24

This is shattering, must-read journalism from @leloveluck.bsky.social, Heba Farouk Mahfouz, Siham Shamalakh, Miriam Berger and @cheesemanab.bsky.social.

Glad it is getting the front-page treatment it merits. Gift link for non-subscribers is here: wapo.st/3GXPS9A

Mass starvation stalks Gaza as deaths from hunger rise

Aid agencies warned for months that Israel’s harsh limits on food aid would bring acute malnutrition and widespread suffering to Gaza’s 2.1 million people.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Reposted by Josh Chin

Margarita @margarita.bsky.social · Jul 23

"Google users who encountered an AI summary also rarely clicked on a link in the summary itself. This occurred in just 1% of all visits..."

Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results

In a March 2025 analysis, Google users who encountered an AI summary were less likely to click on links to other websites than users who did not see one.

www.pewresearch.org

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Reposted by Josh Chin

rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · Jul 22

i believe that at 18 every american should be entered into a draft, not for military service, but for one year of mandatory retail or restaurant work

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Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal.bsky.social · Jul 21

Hey WHCA -- u up?

Steve Herman @newsguy.bsky.social · Jul 21

Politico - White House removing Wall Street Journal from the pool of reporters covering the president’s weekend trip to Scotland. www.politico.com/news/2025/07...

White House removes Wall Street Journal from Scotland press pool over Epstein bombshell

A White House spokesperson declined to comment on if the Journal would be included in the pool in the future, either on the White House campus or on subsequent trips.

www.politico.com

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Reposted by Josh Chin

David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social · Jul 20

“I violated the user directive …”

“I violated the first law of robotics…”

“I’m sorry Dave…”

Ian Coldwater 👻🌿 @lookitup.baby · Jul 20

This thread is incredible.

Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk)

.@Replit goes rogue during a code freeze and shutdown and deletes our entire database

xcancel.com

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Reposted by Josh Chin

Eileen Guo @eileenguo.bsky.social · Jul 18

NEW FROM ME: new research has found millions of ex's of personal info, including credit cards, passports, résumés, birth certificates etc in 1 of the largest web-scraped datasets used to train image generation AI models.

It's a major privacy violation.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/18/1...

A major AI training data set contains millions of examples of personal data

Personally identifiable information has been found in DataComp CommonPool, one of the largest open-source data sets used to train image generation models.

www.technologyreview.com

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Reposted by Josh Chin

The Relevant Organs @relevantorgans.bsky.social · Jul 18

Excellent move. Strong and confident regimes have no need for so-called “comedy,” which serves only to undermine socialist spiritual civilization.

The New York Times @nytimes.com · Jul 18

Breaking News: CBS will cancel “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” next year, retiring a franchise that lasted more than three decades.

‘Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ Is Being Canceled by CBS

The show will end in May, the network said, calling it “a purely financial decision.”

trib.al

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Josh Chin @joshchin.bsky.social · Jul 18

When we were doing the U.S. tour for Surveillance State, we got barely a handful of questions about the lessons China held for democracies despite that being a central theme of the book. Could never decide if it was complacency or denial, or more likely some mix of both

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Michael Caley @michaelcaley.bsky.social · Jul 17

the Grok - Mechahitler story is interesting for what it reveals not just about Elon's LLM but about how sign systems work at a pretty high level of abstraction

In other words, LLMs become “woke” because they are trained to be pro-social—to be helpful, kindly, truthful, and not to say bigoted or cruel things. Training it to do the opposite—to be anti-woke—is to activate every antisocial association in the English language, including racism, sexism, cruelty, dishonesty, and Nazism. According to a vast statistical representation of the English language constructed by none other than Elon Musk, that’s what anti-wokeness is. “Elon Musk is repeatedly insisting, no, no, there’s a difference between what I’m doing and being a Nazi. And what the model keeps telling him is, statistically, that’s not the case,” said Schou.

A key implication here is that LLMs will tend to converge on similar types of behavior. The above researchers were not using Grok, but they found the exact same pattern of powerful association groupings of good and evil in other LLMs—and these can’t be removed through fine-tuning. One could imagine the RLHF process including adjustments of every parameter, but experts said that this will degrade or break the model. The matrices in an LLM are arranged hierarchically, and the top layers get fixed in place relatively early in pretraining. Mess with them, and the model will stop working. Instead, RLHF developed more like a series of gates that prevent undesired outcomes. “The model completes most of the computation that it needs in order to reach a particular outcome,” Schou said. “And then says, ‘Wait, wait, wait, I’m saying that I’m MechaHitler. No, I’m not doing that.’”

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Josh Chin @joshchin.bsky.social · Jul 18

The leap from this to the systems Chinese police use for social engineering in Xinjiang and Tibet is exceedingly small

Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · Jul 17

New from 404 Media: inside ICE's supercharged facial recognition app of 200 million images. After scanning someone's face, it can query DHS, CBP, FBI, State Department, and state databases at once. An unprecedented linking of government databases into a single tool.

www.404media.co/inside-ices-...

Inside ICE’s Supercharged Facial Recognition App of 200 Million Images

404 Media has seen user manuals for Mobile Fortify, ICE’s new facial recognition app which allows officers to instantly look up DHS, State Department, and state law enforcement databases by just point...

www.404media.co

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Reposted by Josh Chin

Scott Tobias @scotttobias.bsky.social · Jul 17

Settle in and read this extraordinary piece by Rümeysa Öztürk about her detention and marvel at her compassion for others, even in the darkest conceivable situation. We are blessed to have students like her in America: www.vanityfair.com/news/story/r...

“Even God Cannot Hear Us Here”: What I Witnessed Inside an ICE Women’s Prison

Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk opens up about her 45 days in a South Louisiana processing facility—and the generous and compassionate women she met.

www.vanityfair.com

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