Because both major GPU manufacturers are controlled by the same family. The primary model repo is controlled by that same family now. Both major pipelines are controlled by that same family. ONNX and the diffusion pipelines are maintained by Microsoft. The alternatives are controlled by hyperscalers (with the exception of civitai I guess). All frontier model pipelines are directly controlled by a single family in China. So its very much possible that you could be banned from accessing them yes. We really don’t need a pirate instance we just need AN instance at this point.

I had a problem with DNS over TLS with PIA this sounds very similar. The conflict was DNS encryption type. I use Gluetun infront of PIA and the DNS resolver defaults to DNS-over-TLS on TCP 853. Through PIA’s tunnel, port 853 is blocked or doesn’t work reliably. SO I switched DNS to DNS-over-HTTPS on port 443 (I used Cloud9), which PIA allows and Gluetun can actually use. Not sure if this is you issue at all but if you have a common ARR stack with a vpn through gluetun this very possibly could be

The AI itself doesn’t need self-awareness to kill us all. It just needs an idiot with too much money and even less self-awareness controlling it. We are already headed towards disaster in the US. https://themildtake.com/articles/2026-06-05-priced-for-rescue/