Helen Andrews
Feb 20, 2024
12:04 AM
The year 1994 marked the beginning of the era of globalization. For a short time after the end of the Cold War, it was unclear what would be the driving theme of the next period in history. Then it emerged: borderlessness. The theme of the new era would be the free movement of goods, people, and capital. In a few short months on either side of January 1, 1994, the European Union was formed; the Marrakesh agreement was signed, creating the World Trade Organization; the Channel Tunnel opened; and the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect.

Hubris was present from the beginning. During the negotiations over NAFTA, union leader Richard Trumka, then of the United Mine Workers of America, later president of the AFL-CIO, asked a Clinton administration official whether he was worried about the effect of free trade on American blue-collar workers. The official said yes, but eventually “wages would start to go up again, and things would even out around the world.” Trumka asked him how long this would take. The official answered, “About three to five generations.”

We are now one generation into this process, thirty years from the start of NAFTA, so we are at a good point to ask: Are things evening out? Is the new equilibrium we were promised any closer, and it is better than the one we had before? //

On the 30th anniversary of NAFTA, its opponents stand vindicated and its defenders are chastened—or at least they should be. In many corners of the left and right, free trade dogma is as strong today as it was the day NAFTA was signed. It is therefore worth looking back to see what exactly went wrong with NAFTA, what made people blind to its flaws, and why its costs proved greater than anyone predicted at the time. //

The U.S. lost 5 million manufacturing jobs between 1995 and 2015. Even in advanced technology products, we now have a massive trade deficit. Globalization has not made our manufacturing sector leaner and meaner. Between 2011 and 2022, manufacturing productivity in the U.S. actually declined. To be clear, these dismal numbers are not mainly the fault of NAFTA. The number of jobs lost to Mexico was relatively small; the China shock dwarfs it. Yet NAFTA set off the chain of events that allowed globalization to run free the way it did. It gave the free traders a big win and reshaped the coalitions to their advantage.

There have also been non-economic costs to NAFTA that don’t show up in economic statistics. For one, NAFTA made Mexico fat. The same cheap corn that pushed the farmers off their land flooded grocery stores with processed food and high fructose corn syrup. Coke became cheaper than water. The result was that Mexico’s obesity rate almost doubled; 17 percent of adults are now diabetic, compared to 9 percent in 1990. In 2016, diabetes was Mexico’s leading cause of death. If you believe the online nutrition gurus, NAFTA exported the same obesogenic diet patterns based on massive corn subsidies that have caused Americans to get fatter in the last half-century, far more than our rates of calorie consumption and physical activity can explain. It also gave an economic boost to the same corn producers fueling that dynamic at home.

NAFTA also made Mexico liberal. Today Mexico has gay marriage, gay adoption, and abortion, all things that would have been unthinkable when the agreement was signed. //

The lawsuit that led to the 2023 Mexican supreme court decision decriminalizing abortion was brought by a progressive NGO funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Tides Foundation. //

Pork prices surged after the pandemic because, as journalist Rana Foroohar explains in her book Homecoming, “the largest pork producer in the United States, Smithfield, is owned by a Chinese company that takes orders from the Chinese government, which understandably wanted to export to China what pork was available during a time of scarcity.”

anon-xnrk Laocoön of Troy
3 hours ago
China’s geopolitical strategy was always to create dependencies with other nations. It’s amazing we allowed it to get so far into a one sided game. Correct me if I’m wrong but an American company has to partner with a Chinese company then transfer technology to the Chinese one in order to set up shop there. The list of one sided nonsense goes on and on. Who loves Greenpeace more than China? EU and US decimate the industrial base while they build a coal plant a week. Can’t use a windmill to run a steel mill, sorry. Look at how people like McConnell voted pre and post WTO admission for China. Oh, and look at his family business. Chinese shipping!! And his father in law James Chao? Founder of Chinese shipping company Foremost, and also close friends and classmates with former president Jiang Zemin. This is just Mitch, any others make a nice living like this? Did this affect how this relationship between the world, US, and China evolved? Who knows? //

Guy Las Vegas anon-j5pd
3 hours ago
Since the tariff is on the wholesale price, a $10 item that costs Walmart $6 would see a $1.20 tariff. That makes the item $11.20 - just to clarify.

China has said it will not honor the judgment. “The so-called lawsuit has no basis in fact, law or international precedence,” Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu told The New York Times. “China does not and will not accept it. If China’s interests are harmed, we will firmly take reciprocal countermeasures according to international law.”

China was not represented at the trial, resulting in a default judgment.

It's unclear why China is buying farmland in the United States. Granted real estate can be a valuable part of an investment portfolio, but China has ample land of their own. Interestingly, China is far from the largest foreign owner of American agricultural land; that largest foreign owner, as of 2021, would be Canada, followed by the Netherlands, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Germany. China's ownership, also as of 2021, is about 383,935 acres. It's likely, though, that the Canadian and other interests represent ownership by large agricultural business concerns, whereas China's purchases are disturbing due to some of the lands' proximity to important U.S. military installations. For example: Chinese interests have purchased 300 acres of land near Grand Forks Air Force Base, which is home to a B-1 Lancer wing, along with other assets.

stickdude90
9 hours ago
Remind me again why we spend so much blood and treasure to protect these blowhards...

jri500 anon-fv7m
6 hours ago
Bill Clinton and his buddy, Bernard Schwartz (LORAL Space) GAVE China our ballistic missile gyroscope guidance technology. Just gave it to them because liberals couldn't stand the fact that the US was the world's lone super power at the time. China's missiles couldn't reach orbit. Clinton moved the gyro technology from Defense to the Commerce department, and put a CIA satellite on a Chinese rocket. And when that rocket crashed, the Chi Coms sifted the wreckage and reverse engineered our gyros. When Clinton took office, China had zero (0) nuclear missiles capable of hitting the US mainland. When he left office, they had 20. //

Dieter Schultz stickdude90
6 hours ago edited
Remind me again why we spend so much blood and treasure to protect these blowhards...
I think you might be looking at the US being forward deployed and allied with nations around the world... through the wrong lens.

Yes we're spending money stationing forces around the world and, yes, some... maybe a lot of these countries... don't appreciate or deserve our protection but... look at it from the point of view of avoided costs.

But, we can't understand avoided costs unless we consider what isolationism might really cost us in the bigger scheme of things.

We were, mostly, isolationists between 1910 and 1940... not spending money with alliances and forward deploying our forces. Because of that the bad guys in the world didn't believe we'd respond as they gobbled up other countries. What they did believe, and what Churchill said so elegantly in some of his writing, was that if the US allowed its natural allies to fall, the position that the US would be in, strategically, would be difficult in the extreme.

So we stayed out of the areas but, when we were finally forced to act the costs in treasure and lives of our youth was great... far, far greater than they would have been if the Germans and Japanese really believed we would fight to stop them.

Since the end of WWII we've made a lot of mistakes and many of those mistakes have cost us 10s of thousands of our youth and untold treasures but, even with Russia's aggressive moves in the world, we haven't had a repeat of the carnage, loss of life, and expenditures of the country's treasures.

But, we should ask ourselves, even if we've helped protect people that didn't seem to appreciate and value our sacrifice, if, like happened to us leading up to WWI and WWII, would we have likely gotten sucked into another one of the continent's or world's battles and cost ourselves 10 or 100 times the loss of carnage, loss of life, and expenditures of our treasure anyway?

I see the discussions about forward deploying our forces around the world much like the Chesterton's Fence and we should ask ourselves, why that fence was needed in the first place?

Many in this country just want to tear down that fence but, as Chesterton might see it: "If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”

Note that the spy balloon transited Alaska, flying just north of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, possibly over Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, then proceeded to fly over the missile silo complexes in the Dakotas and over several military bases in the central and southern United States before being shot down off the South Carolina coast. While a balloon is at the mercy of the winds, prevailing winds very conveniently will take such a balloon on this route if it is launched in the right place.

The inclusion of American technology not only demonstrates a considerable degree of planning and forethought, but it also shows that China is easily capable of obtaining superior American technology — and using it against us. This was a serious intelligence-gathering exercise by a country that is growing increasingly bellicose towards the United States — and our allies. //

Hank Reardon
7 hours ago
Quoting Professor Victor Davis Hanson from a recent opinion piece published in The Epoch TImes:

“(China’s) entire 20th-century ascendance was based on stealing U.S. technology, dumping its products on the U.S. market below the cost of production to capture market share, and forcing American corporations to relocate, offshore, and outsource—leaving our industrial hinterland a “rust belt.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/are-trumps-tariffs-really-tariffs-5808723. //

bk
7 hours ago
By coincidence, I just read the old Buzz Patterson book Dereliction of Duty about what a disaster Clinton was for our country re China. This episode with the balloon seems reminiscent of how Clinton allowed his bog donors at Loral and Hughes to provide all sorts of satellite and nuclear technology to China. No doubt Clinton - oops I mean the charitable Clinton Global Foundation - made some big bundles of cash.

Hank Reardon bk
7 hours ago
If you want another reason to despise Slick and his abuse of our technology, read Never Mind We’ll Do It Ourselves. The book that details how Slick demanded a new method for finding UBL for his handoff to Al Gore in advance of election day, 2020. And once the nascent Predator program did just that, by September, 2020, Slick refused to take the shot.

At the heart of this issue is the de minimis provision, which originates from Section 321 of the Tariff Act of 1930. This provision was initially designed to prevent the government from incurring excessive costs and hassles for small imports made by individuals in a single day, as long as the fair retail value of those imports did not exceed $1. Over the years, Congress has raised this threshold multiple times, and it currently stands at $800, making it the most generous de minimis exemption in the world. In contrast, Canada’s de minimis exemption is capped at only $15. //

A congressional report revealed that between fiscal year 2018 and 2021, more than two-thirds of de minimis imports came from China (including mainland and Hong Kong). In 2023 de minimis imports comprised an astonishing 1 billion parcels valued at approximately $54.5 billion, with around $18 billion in shipments originating from China.

The Select Committee on the CCP estimated that two Chinese companies accounted for more than 30 percent of the daily de minimis shipments in the U.S. These companies are Shein, a fast fashion online retailer based in Singapore that sources most of its products from China, and Temu, a China-based e-commerce marketplace offering a wide range of items from cosmetics to knock-off iPods. These companies ship their merchandise directly to American consumers at extremely low prices, utilizing small shipments that are exempted under de minimis provisions.

When asked about topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, persecution of Uyghur Muslims, or Taiwan’s sovereignty, DeepSeek either dodges the question or parrots Beijing’s official rhetoric. This is not a bug—it’s a feature. Unlike Western AI models, which, for all their flaws, still allow for a broader range of discourse, DeepSeek operates within strict ideological parameters. It’s a stark reminder that AI is only as objective as the people—or governments—who control it. //

The question we must ask ourselves is simple: If AI can be programmed to push a state-sponsored narrative in China, what’s stopping corporations, activist organizations, or even Western governments from doing the same?

Don’t think American companies would stop at weighting their algorithms to ensure diversity. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a growing trend of corporations aligning themselves with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics. This framework prioritizes social justice causes and other politically charged issues, distorting how companies operate. Over the same period of time, many social media companies have taken aggressive steps to suppress content considered “misinformation.”. //

Without transparency and accountability, AI could become the most powerful propaganda tool in human history—capable of filtering search results, rewriting history, and nudging societies toward preordained conclusions. //

This moment demands vigilance. The public must recognize the power AI has over the flow of information and remain skeptical of models that show signs of ideological manipulation. Scrutiny should not be reserved only for AI developed in adversarial nations but also for models created by major tech companies in the United States and Europe. //

DeepSeek has provided a glimpse into a world where AI is used to enforce state-approved narratives. If we fail to confront this issue now, we may wake up in a future where AI doesn’t just provide answers—it decides which questions are even allowed to be asked.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is warning that Contec CMS8000 devices, a widely used healthcare patient monitoring device, include a backdoor that quietly sends patient data to a remote IP address and downloads and executes files on the device.

Contec is a China-based company that specializes in healthcare technology, offering a range of medical devices including patient monitoring systems, diagnostic equipment, and laboratory instruments.

China is beset by many problems. Their economy is deeply flawed, plagued by a massive real-estate bubble and years of currency manipulation and central planning. Their population is about to drop off a demographic cliff. The one thing that all of the various ethnic groups in China seem to have in common is that they aren't having many babies. But, we must note, these are problems that the Western world suffers from as well; here in the United States, we are struggling under $36 trillion in debt, and our people aren't having many babies, either. //

China is our primary geopolitical rival. We, meaning the United States, must do business with them. We must conduct diplomacy with them. We must reassure our Western Pacific allies that we stand with them against any possible Chinese aggression. And, if it comes to that, we may well have to fight a war with China.

We may do all of these things. But the one thing we will probably never do is to understand them. And we have to deal with them accordingly - knowing that China will be what it is, and not what we would wish for it to be. //

Surfer Boy OrneryCoot
19 hours ago
The Chinese in Taiwan seem to have picked up democracy, freedom, and capitalism pretty well for the most part.

Not Mao Surfer Boy
18 hours ago
It is totally different from the mainland. Hong Kong used to be that way too until the CCP took over there. We can also say the same of North and South Korea.

oldgimpy&cranky Surfer Boy
14 hours ago
The Taiwanese are rooted in the KMT, not the CCP. Which explains why the CCP wants Taiwan (beyond the tech and money). The fact that Taiwan adopted Capitalism & Democracy - which started in the 80's - simply means they got tired of being poor commies ;-). //

Redleg
a day ago
Understanding China is easy. They believe that they are the biggest and most powerful country (other than the US) and that this entitles them to be a bully. Hence their predations in the South China Sea, their aggression against the Philippines, and the like. Their intention of being a bully makes them hostile to the US-led rules based order, because the purpose of that order is to restrain bullies.

Protectionism worked for China’s Internet companies, which leapfrogged their American counterparts. Online sales comprised 27% of total retail sales in China in 2022, compared to 15% in the United States. Mobile payments in China reached $US 70 trillion with a total of 158 billion transactions, compared to $8 trillion in the United States. //

Washington, DC, in October 2022, banned the export of high-end computer chips (with a transistor gate width of 7 nanometers or less) as well as the tools and software needed to make them. //

It isn’t clear what the Biden Administration was thinking. The official rationale for the chip control was to stop the Chinese military from gaining an advantage. According to a 2022 RAND Corporation study, virtually all military applications employ older chips (see chart below). The older processes are easier to harden, and most military software has been tested for years on existing hardware rather than rewritten for newer chips. //

If the objective was to hamstring China’s economy, it has failed. The chip ban undoubtedly imposed severe costs on China, which is attempting to reinvent large parts of the semiconductor supply chain at high cost. But China can recompense itself for those costs by turning excess supply into a vehicle to dominate semiconductor markets globally in the not-too-distant future.

Americans imagine that inside every Chinese person an American is struggling to get out. But China is different, so different that the categories of Western political science are meaningless. China will not change because we think it should, or because we want it to, or because we exhort the Chinese to embrace the benefits of democracy and free markets. If it changes, it will do so very slowly. We shall have to deal with China as it is, and has been for thousands of years. We can demonstrate the superiority of our system with economic growth, technological innovation, and military strength—although we haven’t done so of late. We can show that our ways are better—when we stick to our ways—and set an example. But we can’t change China by preaching to the Chinese.

China’s unique geographic conditions required from antiquity a centralized tax system to fund infrastructure and a centralized bureaucracy to administer it. It never persuaded the peoples it absorbed into the Chinese empire to speak a common language or to confess the same religion. Ethnicity has no role in Chinese statehood. //

When Chinese dynasties failed, either because of internal corruption or natural disaster, bandit rebellions replaced them. China has no hereditary aristocracy, unlike Europe, because the new dynasty levels the ground that preceded it. The Communist Party of China arose as a bandit rebellion in China’s classic historical pattern, and governs as a new incarnation of China’s ancient Mandarin caste. In place of the old Mandarin exam based on Chinese classics, China now has the gaokao, the fearsome university entrance exam. The biggest difference between today’s Communists and the old Mandarins is that the CCP is larger and more comprehensive, with nearly 100 million members.

China’s Emperor is not a revered demigod on the Japanese model, or an anointed sovereign claiming divine right, but simply the one ruler whose job it is to prevent all the other would-be rulers from killing each other. He is Lucky Luciano, the capo di capi whose function is to keep the peace among the underbosses who fear him more than they fear each other. And, to extend the metaphor, the CCP is Marxist in the same way the Mafia is Catholic; both organizations take their ideology seriously, although its practical significance is limited. The Chinese people therefore don’t love their emperor, any more than rank-and-file Mafia soldiers love the capo. They say resignedly, “Without an emperor, we’d kill each other.” And that is just what they have done in the tragic periods when imperial dynasties collapsed.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi conveyed the message in a phone call Friday, their first conversation since Marco Rubio’s confirmation as President Donald Trump’s top diplomat four days earlier.

“I hope you will act accordingly,” Wang told Rubio, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, employing a Chinese phrase typically used by a teacher or a boss warning a student or employee to behave and be responsible for their actions.

The short phrase seemed aimed at Rubio’s vocal criticism of China and its human rights record when he was a U.S. senator, which prompted the Chinese government to put sanctions on him twice in 2020. //

This may be a tempest in a teapot. Chairman Xi has met and engaged with President Trump before; the two men know each other, and while Xi may be a Communist, he's not stupid. He knows what to expect from President Trump, and the same applies in return.

But no official, minor or otherwise, in China speaks out of turn without reason. We can assume that Wang Yi delivered this veiled warning at Chairman Xi and the CCP's direction; it's a statement of policy. And, we might note, China has slapped sanctions on U.S. government officials in the past, including Texas' Senator Ted Cruz (R) - and then-Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL).

China knows they have a new American president to deal with. They know what to expect. But it's important to note that China has, through its long history, considered itself the Middle Kingdom, placed between heaven and earth, and despite the strictures of communism, that's still a common way of thinking in China. And while China is, as I'm continually pointing out, a land of great momentum rather than a land of great ideas, they are also a land and a people that take the long view. We think of our history in terms of hundreds of years; China thinks in terms of thousands; they know that sooner or later America will again have a weak leader. We have, after all, had two weak presidents in the last quarter-century. //

OrneryCoot
14 hours ago
We need to take China very seriously. We need to seriously bring them to heel regarding spy balloons, forced technology transfer, election interference, hacking of private and public domains, fentanyl, and unfair trade practices. My hope is that we curb stomp those a$$h0!e$ over that and all of their other aggressive actions. Take them seriously. Seriously enough to fully and purposefully respond to all of their belligerent and dangerous actions, in a way that leaves no room for misunderstanding. Screw China. We saved their butts from the Japanese in WWII, and they have repaid us for the last 80 years with nothing but antagonism, up and to the point of sending troops to fight our soldiers in combat. Give them what they so richly deserve.

Quite honestly, I don't see the case for not grinding ByteDance's commie face in the gravel. It has already said divestiture is off the table. If it would let TikTok, which is worth billions of dollars, die rather than sell it, that tells you the real purpose was never to make money. It is equally difficult to see how a company that Trump castigated this way in 2020:

"TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories. This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage."

becomes better without changing the underlying problem;

When I first heard that Donald Trump was talking about reacquiring the Panama Canal, I thought, "He's just trolling the world." Now that I realize he isn't, I thought I'd better bone up on the subject. //

Now, I was completely oblivious to that fact and learned that CK Hutchinson, a company moored up pretty tightly to the CCP, runs two port facilities located at each end of the canal. In 1997, they initiated a deal with the Panamanian government (two years before the US fully handed over the canal) to manage them.

Apparently, they have no plans to go anywhere. And this is a problem because Beijing is not our friend. //

Now, you have to remember that China always has a plan, and they don't do anything without forethought. And as they have become increasingly belligerent over the past 20 years at least, one has to assume that putting down roots in Panama, a global choke point, serves a purpose for Beijing. I doubt that purpose has any sort of goodwill for us. //

What I do know is that if China shut down the canal to us, we'd be going to war unless the plan is to shut down the canal once they actually invade Taiwan. I doubt they'd ever do it beforehand. That would sort of be like expecting Egypt to sit on its hands if the Sudanese ever dammed up the Nile. //

the Chinese are in the canal zone in an official capacity; they're there for a reason, and they have become increasingly belligerent on the world front over the years, so it's safe to assume that reason doesn't bode well for us as the largest user of the canal. I believe Donald Trump recognizes this. I don't think he's trolling. I think he is forewarning.

And I think he should.

If the US government absorbed/forgave all private debt to China and then defaulted on its own debt to China, that might be a pretty big pile of dollars that Beijing could kiss goodbye should they attack Taiwan. And it might deter them from doing just that. As a natural consequence of this goes the presumption that we would no longer trade with China. We're their biggest customer, and losing the US market is also going to be a kick to their stomach. //

lifer1
4 hours ago
There is a flaw in your assertion that "money has no intrinsic value." While true, it is too simplistic. To be sure, that assertion is the basis for the ill-named, Modern Monetary Theory, that has caused so many Swamp creatures to spend like debt and deficit mean nothing until Election season.

Money represents goods and services. It is an intermediate currency whose soundness is key to translating one type of commodity or labor to another with relatively equal representation.

The problem with MMT and spendthrift politicians who reconcile their excess spending by printing more currency is that it doesn't so much devalue the currency as it devalues what the currency represents, which then increases the number of dollars needed to complete commercial transactions.

That is the meaning of inflation. When one defaults on a debt like ours to China, that has the identical effect of printing $1T in new currency to flood the markets as well as undermining the markets' trust and confidence in the brokers of that currency.

Do you want to see the dollar replaced as the global currency? Default on a debt.

Bad idea. Such a bad idea that its proponent likely failed Econ 101.

No, the way that's been handled, historically, is to win a war and assign a war reparations to the loser that has the effect of canceling the debt. It's not done overtly since doing so could be read as defaulting. No, the loser is assigned damages that effectively covers the debt. Then it becomes a ledger exercise, provided everyone believes it to be legitimate.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, in his annual New Year's Eve address, reiterated his claim that Taiwan would "surely be reunified" with China.

His message comes ahead of Taiwan's crucial 13 January elections that will determine the island's cross-strait policy for the next four years. //

In his speech, Chairman Xi also struck a more diplomatic tone towards the United States:

Mr Xi noted that "adhering to mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation is the correct way for China and the United States to interact", according to Reuters, which cited Chinese state media outlet CCTV.

The problem with that is that, as we all know, the art of diplomacy consists primarily of saying "Nice doggy, nice doggy" until you can find a rock. China is making moves in the western Pacific, and at the moment, the United States is far from in the best position to counter any Chinese efforts.

China’s military buildup and cognitive strategies are clear indications of intent to defeat the U.S. and its allies by any means necessary. //

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is undertaking an unprecedented military buildup aimed at challenging America and its allies, particularly in the Indo-Pacific. And, like Nazi Germany’s buildup in the 1930s, the militarization program ordered by the Chinese Communist Party isn’t simply a great power buildup — it’s a weapon in service of a deadly ideology.

Analyst Chuck DeVore, chief national initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, penned an essay for The Federalist Friday and also appeared on "Fox & Friends Weekend" to warn that China is conducting a massive military buildup the likes of which we haven’t seen since the days of the Third Reich.

His conclusions are concerning:

https://thefederalist.com/2024/12/27/report-china-rapidly-builds-up-weapons-and-psychological-warfare-operations/ //

"Now the big difference there, is that he really focused on land power, which frankly is pretty easy to build up pretty quickly," he added. "Navies are much more difficult to build up. And we are way behind. And not only do we need to catch up, but we also need to modernize our nuclear weapons, and we need to put a lot of effort into missile defense." //

DeVore also argues that Donald Trump is right to be concerned about the Panama Canal because while we’re busy woke-ifying our military, China is staying occupied with different concerns: //

DeVore continues, arguing that we need budget reform and we need to wake up to the fact that “China’s military buildup and cognitive warfare strategy are clear indications of its intent to defeat the U.S. and its allies by any means necessary.” //

Dr. Dealgood
2 minutes ago
tinfoil hat time: China bought Biden, who then weakened us monetarily and militarily thru useless sh*t like Ukraine.

This strategy also depleted and exposed Russia's weakness.

Two enemies, one big bribe. China gains Russian oil and possibly Siberia. The US gains squat from Ukraine, except hacking and making its corrupt gov't wealthy. //

Minister of War
12 hours ago edited
Regardless of whether or not this is just a headfake by the Communist Chinese, China is going to dominate the future development of military equipment & technologies unless we get our shit together soon. And there are three primary reasons for that:

1) There are far more Chinese students focusing their university studies on math, science, engineering and technology than American students. With so many American students focusing their university studies on social sciences & other mostly pointless & BS majors, even American universities are training far more students from China & India in key STEM subjects than they are training Americans. American children today dream of being the next big star of Communist China's TikTok app far more often than they dream of actually building or inventing something. How can we expect to keep up with the Communist Chinese when China is training so many more of their young people than we are in these key fields?

2) The espionage program of the Communist Chinese has become vastly superior to ours. This problem is heavily related to DEI & wokeness in our intelligence services when Communist China doesn't have to worry about that at all. If the best American spy happens to be a white guy, this wouldn't be much help in Communist China because he'll stick out like a sore thumb. But if the Communist Chinese send Chinese nationals to do spy work in the US for them, Americans are forbidden from noticing that the Chinese national looks a lot like a Chinese person & might require additional vetting before being granted a top secret security clearance. The same garbage in America that required that a grandma from Kansas goes through the same TSA vetting process as a single male who appears to be of Middle Eastern descent also requires that we waste a ton of time & money that should be focused on more likely targets when it comes to Communist Chinese spying. The Communist Chinese Ministry of State Security has basically decimated our human intelligence gathering operations in China while we appear to be clueless about the great majority of Communist China's operations in the US or around the world until it is too late in the best case scenario. There is no surprise that at least one of the Chinese Gen 6 fighters bears so much resemblance to our own F-35 since Communist Chinese spying resulted in all specs for the F-35 being stolen by them. Imagine they same white guy American spy being able to steal such info from the Communist Chinese. It ain't gonna happen.

3) We continue to be our own worst enemies since we are the ones paying for Communist China's military buildup & military technology development programs. And this goes far beyond direct payments to develop their next weapons, as was the case with the Communist Chinese asset Anthony Fauci & his use of direct American taxpayer financial assistance to develop the Communist Chinese Military's Wuhan Bioweapon that killed millions, made hundreds of millions more very sick & brought the economies of the world to their knees. Our indirect funding of the Communist Chinese massive military buildup & weapons development programs comes through our enormous international trade imbalance. A not insignificant portion of any of the trade profits going to Chinese companies also goes to fund what has been the most massive "peacetime" military buildup & development program in human history. If we don't begin a serious initiative to completely decouple our economy from the economy of the Communist Chinese Party, then we will continue to be the ones digging our own graves.

China has unveiled two new so-called sixth-generation fighter aircraft designed to demonstrate technological prowess and overawe its potential adversaries, but which could be much less. //

China's two major military aircraft manufacturers rolling out prototypes of what is alleged to be the first flyable models of a new-generation fighter aircraft certainly screams "public relations gimmick." At this stage, no one has had a chance to examine the aircraft, so everything we read about it is speculative. Are they real, or are they supposed to create an aura of technological superiority?

We've seen one version of this picture before. The Soviet MiG-25 first appeared at the 50th October Revolution Airshow on July 9, 1967 at Domodedovo airport. It was unexpected, and it was the star.

US intelligence panicked and our defense industry set about designing an aircraft that could overmatch the MiG-25.

Fast-forward to September 6, 1976, when Lieutenant Viktor Belenko defected to the West by landing his MiG-25 fighter at Hakodate Airport in Hokkaido, Japan. When Western engineers examined the airplane, they discovered it was crudely made and designed for high speeds.

The tear-down revealed that the braggart was a toothless phony, too heavy to be maneuverable at low altitudes, limited in what it could accomplish up high, and with little range and no midair refueling capability. When later compared to the U.S. teen-series fighters, the F-15, -16 and -18, it was powerless, particularly because the Foxbat had a max-G rating of 4.5, and just 2.2 with full fuel. Excess Gs would rip its half-ton air-to-air missiles from their underwing hardpoints, since the airplane was intended to go fast but in a straight line. //

Glenn Diesen @Glenn_Diesen
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China is building a drone army in preparation for America's "Pivot to Asia" and "Global NATO"

• Yes, this swarm technology also has civilisation application, although it will also be part of its military

Last edited
7:40 AM · Nov 24, 2024

Elon Musk @elonmusk
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Meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35 🗑️ 🫠

1:41 AM · Nov 24, 2024. //

You have to ask yourself why China, the owner of the above "drone swarm," is sinking billions of dollars into developing a manned fighter if they believe the drone is the future of warfare. You also have to ask why a continental power like China is investing in a heavy stealth fighter "with long endurance and comparatively massive internal volume to accommodate a very large fuel load, as well as weapons and sensors" for a future battlefield that we are told will be dominated by drones and hypersonic missiles — unless the new fighters are a head fake designed to catch our attention and divert resources to countering them.

At this point, these aircraft are what the late Don Rumsfeld would call "known unknowns." We know these planes exist, but we have no idea what they mean. What we can count on is defense contractors trying to divert as many Pentagon resources as possible into developing an aircraft that can overmatch these two Chinese planes without having any idea of their capability. //

anon-vwl5
7 hours ago
A long range fighter and a drone swarm are answers to two different tactical problems. //

RedLegADC(M)
16 hours ago
Usually we are tracking, but I'll take some small exception to your conclusion. First of all, the F-15 was not developed simply as a response to the Mig-25 - I suspect you actually know that as well as I do. Secondly, while it is always a cheap but wildly applauded diversion to criticize the greedy defense industry, I would hope you are not saying it was a mistake to develop and deploy the F-15, or that the defense industry and services should ignore emerging threats. //

Random US Citizen
16 hours ago edited
Meh. Call me back when China starts doing air operations from carriers at night, or launching nuclear-powered submarines that don’t sink while docked. I’m not saying their military is a paper tiger in the way that Russia’s obviously is, because quantity has a quality all its own. We know that from the human-wave attacks in Korea.

But we also know that China is on its way over a demographic cliff, that their economy is wallpaper covering up the cracks in the wallpaper covering cracks in the wallpaper, and that their culture of “face” means QC is, at very best, a distant afterthought.

China is an adversary with a zillion-man army, which is a threat to its near neighbors, but there’s no reason to freak out over plywood prototypes shaped as if they were stealthy.