notice that China isn’t cracking down on all of its technology companies. Huawei, for example, still seems to enjoy the government’s full backing. The government is going hell-bent-for-leather to try to create a world-class domestic semiconductor industry, throwing huge amounts of money at even the most speculative startups. And it’s still spending heavily on A.I. It’s not technology that China is smashing — it’s the consumer-facing internet software companies that Americans tend to label “tech”.
He goes on to say that if you want your country to have a strong military capability, you need hard technologies–network hardware, artificial intelligence, etc. You don’t need Facebook.
when China’s leaders look at what kind of technologies they want the country’s engineers and entrepreneurs to be spending their effort on, they probably don’t want them spending that effort on stuff that’s just for fun and convenience. They probably took a look at their consumer internet sector and decided that the link between that sector and geopolitical power had simply become too tenuous to keep throwing capital and high-skilled labor at it. And so, in classic CCP fashion, it was time to smash.
The CCP obviously understands that social media is a weapon, perhaps a much bigger weapon than aircraft carriers. China controls its sovereign discourse.
1) They’ve taken on the LBGT racket:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/outrage-over-crackdown-on-lgbtq-wechat-accounts-in-china
2) It has developed its own domestic media industry and largely kept out all but the most tame western blockbusters:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_China
3) China keeps control over religious practice:
https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/voa-news-china/china-stepping-its-control-over-religion
4) China makes Woke Capital bow to it instantly:
https://thetexan.news/dallas-mavericks-owner-mark-cuban-defends-nbas-business-with-china/
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/07/01/corporate-america-with-chinese-characteristics/
They aren’t going to give up control of sovereign discourse to have their best minds engage in Red Queen races for clicks.
Gurri wept.
Is succinct Handle > verbose Handle?
Probably not, but I’m enjoying your shorter comments.
Succinct HandleVerbose Handle.
Ok, that didn’t work. Both Handles are indispensible.
If you’ve followed AirSea Battle doctrine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirSea_Battle) or paid any attention to the developments, and frankly butt-whoopings for US forces, that have come out of US Army and Naval War College scenarios, you’ll quickly realize China is working overtime to secure the fundamental infrastructure and base of expertise it needs to survive an offensive from the United States. China, despite all the appearances (naval especially), isn’t going to ‘project power’ by seeking out favorable battle-space…it already has favorable battle-space, China and everything within about 1000 miles of its borders.
China is planning to be the rock US power projection breaks itself upon. It will take tremendous damage, and it knows this, but it will emerge more or less intact and capable of rebuilding, while the US will spend blood and treasure that can’t be replaced in the aftermath of the war.
I’m still betting this, varying in scale and intensity, kicks off before 2050.
What is the U.S. interest in attacking mainland China?
I would say that the interest level is very high.
Gaining access to *free* or heavily discounted fentanyl more than makes up for the price of admission of engaging in such a conflict.
The libertarian utopia is right around the corner. Carpe diem my friends.
The ‘interest’, as you put it, during a shooting war is going to be very very high. China’s primary assets and its ability to consolidate power and military force is relatively compact, not spread out over a vast logistic network like the US.
From a logistics and industrial perspective, the military costs for china compared to the US could be a ratio of as much as 1:50, and more (to put it in perspective, every $1 the Chinese spend keeping their force intact enough to inflict damage is going to be worth $50 the US spends to destroy that $1 of PRC force protection and lethality). A war between the US and PRC is going to be very much a numbers and economics game.
So the answer to your questions is none when war isn’t occurring, and unavoidable when it is. Additionally, any country allied with the US within the Chinese sphere of influence when it kicks off (Japan, Taiwan, Philippines) will very likely cease to exist, and probably for no other reason than to drain additional US resources trying to protect them.
I forgot to mention, as addendum to the above. The strategy for China in a war with the US is to exhaust the United States, not to win. There won’t be ‘winning’ in the traditional sense as we know it now. Success in Access Denial and destruction of US political goals will be all that’s needed, and they have been working on doing just that for 15 years now.
This is central planning, and we should consider that they are wrong.
The pen is mightier than the sword!
Facebook is the printing press. maybe they should invest in suits of armor and swords cause those things win wars. At some point China’s mistake will be obvious. That being said like the soviet economic miracle, central planing can work, for a while, in the obvious way, but it always fails, and fails for the same reason. They bet on the wrong thing. Have some faith in the market, in the long run it’ll win, even if it seems dumb in the short run.
China doesn’t need Facebook or Amazon, they already have Weibo and Alibaba.
I guess the Chinese government must have also decided that it has a strategic interest in shifting Chinese diets away from pork: [ https://www.npr.org/2021/07/28/1021651586/chinese-billionaire-sun-dawu-is-sentenced-to-18-years-for-provoking-trouble ].
Alternatively, maybe the selective crackdown on billionaires — it’s not just tech billionaires — is most easily understood as a crackdown on potential domestic political opposition. Didn’t Jack Ma make some statements that the CCP didn’t like? That would also seem to explain the crackdown on the for-profit, i.e., non-government, education sector. This explanation also helps us understand why, contrary to some predictions, increasing Chinese wealth through integration into the global economy hasn’t resulted in political liberalization. If anything, it has contributed to anti-liberalization in the West among many of those with business and other interests in China.
The top network hardware company, judging by worldwide market cap (https://www.value.today/company-products/network-hardware-and-software) are Cisco, Broadcom, Vmware, Te Connectivity, and Motorola.
Here’s a list of the top AI companies: https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-companies-roundup. Also, “AI” really has a broad and flexible meaning. It means a lot of different things to different people.
none of those companies are key to strong military capability.
Facebook, like most or all US consumer tech companies is very close to the intelligence agencies. Facebook’s ability to influence discourse around the world is unparalleled. In addition, FB does very aggressive tracking.
And Facebook does AI research as well as brain-computer interface research. FB and silicon valley are far from irrelevant to US power.
Would China lend us money to fight a war against them? Regardless of the outcome of such a war would they tolerate potential of default on loans, or a weakened U.S. dollar that disrupts Chinese exports for decades?
There is wide disagreement between very strong observers of China as to their real capabilities.
– David Goldman says they are strong in military and emerging basic tech such as quantum computers, AI
– Others point out China is demographically weak and have racial and provincial tensions
– Some say they want Taiwan to take over the world’s best semiconductor factories. Others say that gets you a factory (maybe – if it is not destroyed) but it doesnt buy you into the know-how.
– Some say Taiwan is too weak to defend, others that Taiwan has the capability and has specifically threatened to blow the 3 Gorges dam. Maybe China can live with 10 million dead.
– Some say Chinese internal investments are strong, others that China is sitting on giant internal loans that will bankrupt the CCP and/or provincial governments.
And so on.
Dr Kling, which sources do you use to establish your understanding?