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America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Aug 22

🧵

India: Once the West’s Trump card against China; today, an object for Trump’s disdain

In Trump’s eyes, India has lost all value. Now it’s just a liability Washington is eager to discard — even shove into the arms of Russia and China. Whoever takes in India inherits a burden.

On July 30, 2025, Trump managed to humiliate India from head to toe in the span of 48 hours — four consecutive posts, each sharper than the last.
First came the announcement: a 25% tariff on Indian goods, the highest rate ever imposed on a so-called U.S. “quasi-ally.”
Then, he dug up old grievances — accusing India of buying Russian oil to fund the war.
Next, he proudly declared a new U.S.–Pakistan oil deal, sneering that India might as well go buy its fuel from Pakistan in the future.
Finally, with maximum sarcasm, he called India a “dead economy.”

The U.S. Treasury Secretary, Bessent, quickly picked up the baton, declaring to the effect that India was an insignificant country with no real role in shaping the global order. For a proud nation obsessed with becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council, that was a dagger straight to the heart.

Inside India, the outrage was instant. Tens of thousands of Indian netizens flooded Trump’s accounts, calling him everything from a pedophile to a dog.
Celebrity anchor Palki Sharma dedicated a full 15-minute morning segment to tearing into the unreasonable Trump. Members of parliament demanded that Prime Minister Modi issue a strong response.

But Modi stayed silent. Instead, he repeated — over and over — that India would one day become the world’s third-largest economy.

Why the silence? Because Modi is cornered.

For nearly a decade, India has basked in the warm glow of Western — especially American — strategic attention, hailed as a pillar of the “Indo-Pacific” strategy against China. But look closely at the Quad — the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India — and it’s clear who is the intruder. Japan is Washington’s adopted son, hosting U.S. troops. Australia is the younger cousin, also home to American bases. India has neither sentimental ties nor military dependence.

So why choose India? Not for its cow dung as fuel and medicine or the taste of its curry. The reason is simple: since the U.S.–China trade war, Washington has been desperate to reduce reliance on Chinese goods. Full decoupling proved impossible — it might collapse the U.S. before China. So “de-risking” became the new mantra: shift supply chains, replace Chinese products step by step. India is key to this decoupling/derisking from China strategy. India is central to this strategy. The U.S. urged multinationals to relocate manufacturing there. Yet reality quickly set in: India is not up to the mark. Multinationals soon realize that India will never replace China.

Under Biden, relations with India warmed rapidly. New factories, Apple’s supply chain moving south, arms sales — even talk of selling the F-35. Washington bankrolled Modi’s allies, financing Adani Group's Colombo port project in Sri Lanka with $553 million. The goal was clear: turn India into a heavyweight capable of making trouble for China — economically, militarily, politically.

And how did India repay this generosity? By reselling Russian oil to Europe for massive profits. By snatching oil contracts from American companies. By wrecking U.S. plans for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. By passing laws that hiked compliance costs for Apple and Google, and squeezed American NGOs out of 40% of their operating space. Even plotting assassination of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a U.S.-Canadian dual citizen and Sikh separatist leader on U.S. soil during Modi’s state visit on June 22, 2023.

In short — a partner in name, a spoiler in practice.

II/

The breaking point came in the air. Despite U.S. and Israeli intelligence, French Rafales, and Australian electronics, India lost the air battle 0–6 to Pakistan on May 7, 2025. The defeat exposed systemic failures in coordination, equipment, and command — shattering the expensive deterrence image built on overpriced arms imports. Washington was wondering: if India couldn’t even match Pakistan’s export version of the Chinese warfighting system, how could it challenge China itself? The US has counted on India to wage a proxy war with China like Ukraine. Obviously India is impossible to draw China into a long war of attrition like Ukraine.

For years, India played the coquette — luring the U.S. with mixed signals and half-promises, reaping benefits while giving little back. But when the charm wears off, the tragedy writes itself. And a country stripped of its geopolitical value to Washington ends up in only one place: on the menu.

The Americans have always lived by a simple rule: if you can’t sit at the table, you’re served on it. India didn’t make the cut — so now it’s the main course.

Relations with the West have turned on a dime. Trump broke precedent to host Pakistan’s army chief for lunch at the White House — the first time a U.S. president has welcomed a non-head of state from Pakistan. Soon after, Trump publicly claimed Pakistan had shot down five Indian fighters — right after India’s “victory tour” ended. At the G7 in June, Modi didn’t even get an invitation, ending a six-year streak as observer.

A lost battle cost India more than just Rafales — it cost its strategic utility as a “must-have” ally. The red carpet is gone; the closed door is back.

India’s fall from “indispensable ally” to “dispensable background actor” has been swift — and brutal. Which is why both Trump and Bessent can mock India without restraint, without fear of retaliation, without worrying about breaking U.S.–India relations. The truth is simple: now that India is useless, Washington looks down on India and doesn’t care about its feelings.

And when India’s “united front value” evaporates, a hard-nosed Trump administration has no hesitation in putting India on the menu. The target? That $45 billion annual trade surplus India runs with the United States — year after year.

On July 30, Trump announced that starting August 1, all Indian goods would face a 25% tariff, plus an unspecified fine. A week later, on August 6, Trump doubled down — literally — announcing another 25%, pushing total tariffs to 50%. If implemented, Indian exports to the U.S. will crater.

And this hits India where it hurts most — the jugular. Without that surplus, the Indian economy suffocates.

Here’s the little-known fact: India is one of the most foreign-exchange-starved major economies in the world. Its forex reserves have always been stretched thin. In 2024, India’s GDP was $3.91 trillion, but its external debt reached $2.1 trillion — roughly 54% of GDP. Repayments can’t be made in rupees; creditors demand hard currency. And India’s total foreign reserves? Barely $49 billion — less than 3% of its debt. After covering essential imports, it doesn’t even have enough left to pay interest.

This isn’t just a theoretical risk. In 2019, after its reserves were nearly depleted, India had to literally fly its gold reserves to London as collateral, then accept the IMF’s harsh reform terms.

Why is India always short on dollars? Mainly because its manufacturing base is weak. It has to import huge amounts of industrial raw materials — oil alone costs $56 billion a year. On the export side, India has very few globally competitive products. The result? Chronic trade deficits and constant forex leakage.

III/

Its one big dollar-earner has been IT services. But the AI revolution is gutting that too.

For decades, Western software companies relied on India’s cheap, skilled coders to deliver projects for global clients. But now, AI can handle structured coding faster and cheaper. Assisted by AI, a person with basic programming knowledge can produce complex code that once took a team of engineers.Industry insiders predict that with specialized AI coding models being fine-tuned, the Indian IT sector could lose 100,000–300,000 jobs. Less work means less foreign exchange.

Moreover, recent allegations suggest that Indian software developers, when handling IT contracts for Middle Eastern clients, have inserted backdoors at the request of Israeli intelligence. Whether true or not, the revelation has severely damaged trust in Indian IT services in the region, leading to drastically fewer contracts.

And as if that weren’t enough, India’s two other major forex lifelines are cracking.

First is remittances — money sent home by Indians working abroad. Over 8.5 million work in Gulf oil states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar. Paid in dollars, their remittances flow into the Reserve Bank of India in exchange for rupees — making India the world’s largest remittance recipient at around $100 billion annually.

But India’s credibility in the Middle East is collapsing. Its open alignment with Israel during the Gaza war — and now, the fact that most of the foreign spies Iran caught in the Israel–Iran conflict turned out to be Indian — has poisoned perceptions. Gulf states are quietly tightening labor contracts, refusing renewals, even restricting visas. That pillar of dollar inflows is wobbling.

The second is foreign investment — which India has treated like a fattened pig to be slaughtered (杀猪盘). Foreign companies — Chinese, Western, even British — have all been hit with punitive fines and asset seizures. In 2023, New Delhi seized $670 million from Xiaomi alone. Over time, word got out. India earned a global reputation as a tax-and-regulation predator, the graveyard of multinationals, scaring away investors.

The numbers are stark. In May this year, net FDI inflow was just $35 million — a collapse of over 98% year-on-year. In the first half of the year, net inflows were barely $200 million, down 90% from last year. The tap has effectively run dry. For a decade, India could rely on $10 billion a year in net inflows; now, that lifeline is gone.

With AI crushing IT exports, Middle Eastern trust evaporating, and FDI frozen, what’s left? Only that fragile U.S. trade surplus. And with Trump’s tariffs at 50%, even that will vanish.

Can India negotiate the tariffs down? Theoretically, yes. But only if it meets Trump’s demands. And those are twofold: stop importing Russian oil, and open India’s market to U.S. agricultural products.

For Modi, both are poison pills. India cannot stop buying Russian oil. And it’s not like this is a new habit — India’s been doing it for years. The reason Washington didn’t object before is because under Biden, it actually tolerated it.

In January 2020, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen even said that as long as India avoided Western shipping and insurance, the U.S. was happy to see India buy “as much Russian oil as possible” to keep global prices down.

In May last year, U.S. Ambassador Eric Garcetti openly admitted that letting India buy Russian oil was a deliberate policy to prevent price spikes. Without that political cover, India could never have scaled up purchases so dramatically — from just 68,000 barrels a day in 2021 (2% of imports) to 2.15 million barrels a day by May 2023.

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America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Aug 20

🧵

Russia’s staggering war corruption (on the same level as Ukraine) and Putin's purge

The scale of corruption within Russia’s military and political elite is staggering: billions embezzled, frontline troops left with expired rations and improvised body armor, and defensive fortifications collapsing under pressure.

What began as a plan for a swift conquest has devolved into a drawn-out slaughter. What should have been, in Putin’s mind, a lightning strike on Kyiv within seventy-two hours has turned into a grinding war of years — with over a million casualties and nearly a trillion dollars burned.

At the heart of this failure lies corruption: oligarchs, defense contractors, and state officials feeding off the war machine while starving soldiers of training, food, and equipment. Their theft hollowed out Russia’s military from within. While elites were siphoning off wealth, Russian soldiers had to steal food to survive on the front.

And when the rot became too visible, Putin’s answer was a brutal purge—quiet “suicides” and arrests to remove the rot.

Since the war began, Russia has witnessed a grim wave of “suicides” among government officials, oligarchs, and members of the elite. Each death carries the mark of a system cracking under its own corruption.

For Ukraine and Russia, both countries operate on almost the same pattern. The oligarchs, the corruption, the money flowing through the same channels of power — it’s all there on both sides. The only real difference is the source of the money and the volume of funds to be embezzled. In Ukraine it comes from the United States and NATO countries, while in Russia it comes directly from government spending and the volume of funds is 3 times bigger. Strip away the flags and slogans, and you see the same machine running in both places.

What caused the extraordinary casualties of one million on the Russian side? They are a direct consequence of rampant systemic corruption. Russia’s corruption has destroyed its own war effort.

Consequences of Russian elite corruption:

Little or no training for mobilized men: Russians are being sent to the front with minimal or no training because the funds for training have been embezzled. Russian soldiers were told to buy their own gear. Novaya Gazeta Europe and summaries collated by reputable outlets traced this to chaotic mobilization and missing equipment (1.5 million uniform sets “disappeared,” per Duma deputy Andrei Gurulyov).

Expired/insufficient rations and widespread looting for food: Early-war reporting and verified CCTV showed Russian soldiers looting grocery stores and banks; Ukrainian officials said many units entered with only a few days’ rations.

Shoddy fortifications & materials diversion (2024–2025): Popov’s conviction for embezzling materials intended for frontline defenses is a courtroom-proven link between graft and compromised battlefield readiness.

Defective or improvised body armor (2025 case): The new embezzlement probe alleges troops received makeshift armor while money was siphoned off—another case of procurement corruption causing heavy Russian battlefield casualties.

II/

The case of Roman Starovoit

In Russia’s war, corruption has claimed as many lives as Ukrainian artillery. The story of Roman Starovoit, the former governor of Kursk, tells it all.

Not long ago, he was celebrated. After hurriedly building new border defenses, the Interior Ministry awarded him a pistol of honor, and Putin himself elevated him to Minister of Transport in May 2024. Starovoit spoke proudly to the press: “I'm proud to serve Russia.” For a brief moment, it looked like he would be the next Prime Minister of Russia.

But war stripped away the mask. In August that same year, Ukraine struck Kursk and tore through its defenses in days, exposing them as shoddy and half-built. The media soon reported investigations into Starovoit’s role in embezzling funds earmarked for fortifications. By July 2025, he was dismissed. Sitting in his car with the same pistol once given to him as an honor, he remembered his promise to serve Russia—then pulled the trigger. From ministerial office to suicide on the roadside within a few months, his fall could not have been more revealing of the current state of Russia.

He was not alone. Since the “Special Military Operation” began, at least 27 oligarchs, executives, and dozens of politicians have “fallen from windows” or been found dead in staged accidents and suicides. Some deaths were almost ritualistic: in January 2023, Colonel Vadim Boiko, involved in planning the invasion, shot himself five times in the chest inside his office—a grotesque and awkward attempt at honor. Major General Vladimir Makarov also shot himself after being dismissed by Putin. The message was clear: failure meant death whether due to corruption or incompetence, whether voluntary or forced.

Kursk became the showcase of systemic rot. Moscow had poured billions of roubles into its defenses, with emergency decrees giving local officials free rein to hand out contracts. Those contracts came with a 25% kickback “tax”—contractors had to pay to play. Insiders say 19.4 billion roubles were allocated; 4.5 billion simply vanished into private pockets. Defensive walls were left unfinished, others crumbled at first contact: tank traps made with cheap M20 concrete collapsed under the weight of armored vehicles. The paperwork said the fortifications were complete; the battlefield proved otherwise.

When the Ukrainian counteroffensive shattered Kursk in weeks, seizing towns and driving deep into Russian soil, prosecutors opened sweeping corruption probes. The Kursk Development Company, senior officials, and the acting governor himself were all arrested. As a direct consequence of the setback on the war front, the Kremlin turned to North Korea, paying dearly in oil and aid to bring foreign soldiers into the fight—an astronomical price to cover a 4.5 billion rouble theft.

Starovoit’s suicide was only one chapter in this wider tragedy. In the name of honor, some Russian officials chose a pistol. For others, “accidents” and poison did the work. The phenomenon has become so common that Russians joke about it: with so many oligarchs leaping from high-rise apartments, the price of ground-floor flats in Moscow has soared. The punchline is that the joke is true—the price of ground-floor apartment really has gone up in Moscow.

But there is nothing funny here. The war has made suicide “fashionable” among Russia’s ruling class, because corruption, failure, and betrayal have left them no other way out. Kursk’s collapsed defenses and Starovoit’s final shot stand as a warning: in Russia’s war, the thieves may profit for a moment, but the reckoning is always fatal.

III/

The case of Lukoil: Lukoil is one of Russia’s largest and most prominent oil and companies.

When Lukoil’s board publicly opposed Russia’s war in Ukraine, it showed just how deep the cracks had become.

Even children of oligarchs dared to speak out against the war. Sofia Abramovich, daughter of Roman Abramovich, shared an image on social media: “Russia wants to go to war with Ukraine.” The word “Russia” was crossed out and replaced with “Putin.” That was the initial Western information war in a nutshell — separating the Putin government from the Russian people.

At the time, Foreign Affairs ran a piece predicting exactly this: Western sanctions would hit the oligarchs hardest, and those losing wealth and influence would eventually form an anti-Putin, anti-war bloc to pressure Moscow into concessions. After all, people will betray their values, but never their interests. And since many oligarchs own media outlets and digital platforms, their potential for damage only grows.

On June 3 this year, a Moscow court announced charges of “extremism” against Victor Kislyi, head of the international gaming company Wargaming, and Marik Khatazaev of Lesta Studio. Their crime? Wargaming had run a promotion on World of Tanks selling Ukrainian army-themed game packs, with proceeds pledged to buy ambulances for Kyiv. For Russian prosecutors, this was proof of direct ideological sabotage within a military-themed game. Kislyi had also fired pro-SMO (Special Military Operation) staff in the early days of the war, including the chief producer of World of Tanks. Moscow framed this as oligarch-led “soft resistance” to the state.

And this “soft resistance” isn’t confined to media. Energy is the other battlefield. German company Wintershall had co-invested with Gazprom in a massive Siberian gas field. After Germany imposed sanctions, Putin seized Wintershall’s €5.3 billion stake. But then came the twist: Russia announced compensation — €7.5 billion, more than the seized value. Immediately afterward, prosecutors froze that payout, and a new criminal case was opened against the firm.

Soon after, one of Russia’s top gas barons, Sergei Protosenya, was found dead in Spain with his entire family. Protosenya was hanged, while his wife and daughter had been stabbed to death.

Protosenya's son disputed the murder-suicide theory and suggested that the deaths may have been staged .

Days later, Vasily Melnikov, head of a medical conglomerate, in a similar fashion, killed his wife and two children before taking his own life. Investigators found a knife marked with SOBR on the scene, Russia’s rapid-response police unit, but shrugged: “It’s suicide.”

The strangest wave hit Lukoil. In just three years, a general director, two chairmen, a vice president, and a board member all died — suicides, accidents, mysterious collapses. Each “self-inflicted” tragedy sent a message to Russia’s non-cooperating elite: if you refuse to exit gracefully, others will make you exit gracefully.

Opposition media inside Russia have framed these suicides as extrajudicial executions disguised as personal despair. Whatever the case, they highlight something else: the state’s inability to keep its elites aligned during wartime. The case of Transport Minister Starovoit is instructive. A protégé of Arkady Rotenberg, Putin’s longtime ally, Starovoit rose quickly through road construction projects, oversaw the Crimean Bridge, and eventually became governor of Kursk. For oligarch clans, this is the standard playbook: build a loyal cadre in ministries, ship them to the provinces for experience, then bring them back to Moscow as ministers — securing influence from the inside.

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America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Aug 17

🧵
It would be a miracle if the Russia-Ukraine war actually stops - the Russia’s War Dividends

I have already argued that Putin cannot end this war, even if he wanted to. What appears to the outside world as a bloody quagmire has, within Russia, become a roaring engine of renewal and opportunity.

Russia is reaping three distinct “war dividends” that will be extremely difficult to relinquish.

The First Dividend: Economics

The war has breathed new life into forgotten towns. Nowhere illustrates this better than Tula, the old military city south of Moscow. Once known for its guns and cannons, for Kalashnikov and for being the hometown of Dostoevsky, Tula today produces 70% of the shells fired by Russian artillery. Its factories run day and night, its workforce swelled by ethnic Russians who returned from Central Asia after the Soviet collapse. Wages here have doubled or tripled since the war began — most workers now earn at least 150,000 (US$1800) rubles a month.

Across Russia, the same pattern repeats. German companies left under sanctions; their plants were taken over by Russians who kept the machines running. Even a factory making salad dressing and cakes now runs at full capacity, its cakes catering to the war front. This is war-driven industrialization. Rusting Soviet smokestacks are suddenly alive again.

The numbers are startling. GDP grew 3.6% in 2023, 4.1% in 2024, and in the first quarter of 2025, an impressive 5.6%. Unemployment is below 1%. Everyone can find a job. A Kyrgyz taxi driver in Moscow earns 250,000 rubles (US$ 3000) a month. Prices too are rising — water at $2, a 6-km taxi ride at $12, — but wages have risen just as fast. Russians do not see inflation; they see full wallets.

And then there are the soldiers. A recruit today gets a 400,000 ruble federal sign-on bonus (about $4,600), topped up with 1.9 million rubles in Moscow (around $22,000). Monthly pay is 200,000 rubles or more — $2,000–$3,000, among the top 10% of Russian incomes. Volunteer battalions sometimes pay double. Death itself has been priced: families receive about 3 million rubles (over $35,000), sometimes plus debt cancellation worth 10 million rubles ($120k). Whole new “professions” have emerged — women who marry soldiers just to collect the compensation when they are killed.

This is why Russia’s outcasts — the unemployed, the alcoholics, the prisoners — have become heroes overnight. Once despised, they are now breadwinners, prodigal sons turned golden boys, national martyrs. The war has given them status and dignity. They are now the new sex symbols of Russia.

The former “Prodigal Sons” of Russia — the lower-class men once written off as losers, riffrafs, outcasts — have now become the new golden boys of the military economy. After returning from the front, they are showered with pay, sometimes up to 3 million rubles ($36, 000) per deployment. For some, the money disappears in a blur of 10-day benders, spent on alcohol, prostitution, and extravagant vacations; 30,000 rubles may vanish in a single night. Others invest wisely, buying houses, cars, and luxuries for themselves and their families. Imagine the psychological transformation: once, these men had nothing, wandering drunk through semi-abandoned towns. Now, wealth, booze, sex, and excitement flood their lives. The morale boost is unparalleled — the war has created a whirlwind of opportunity and indulgence, and these men have never felt more alive. Life is exciting in Russia thanks to the war.

In truth, this is a war economy on steroids — like a real estate boom, pulling every sector along. Soldiers eat and drink, they need uniforms, food, fuel, electronics. The “meat grinder” of the battlefield keeps the factories alive. It is a sick economy, yes — “drinking poison to quench thirst” (饮鸩止渴）— but like an addiction, it cannot be stopped.

theconversation.com/holy-wars-how-…

II/

The Second Dividend: Politics

The battlefield looks disastrous, but for Putin the political rewards are immense. His power is greater than before 2022. The state now controls its citizens through universal biometric ID, surveillance, and GPS monitor as justified by anti-espionage measure. The war has given Putin a level of control unseen since Soviet times.

At the same time, his image has been sanctified. Red Square now flies banners reading: “For the Nation, For Sovereignty, For Putin.” Even failures at the front have not dented his authority — they have reinforced it. Ministers fall, the army bleeds, but Putin remains the one indispensable figure.

“Marked Man” Worship and the Consolidation of Power

At the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, many outside Russia predicted that Putin would fail, that a botched war would eventually topple him. We don't understand Russians. We tend to assume they admire strongmen, conquerors, or “winners.” In fact, they don’t. Russians admire the “marked man” — those who dare, who gamble their lives, who face danger head-on. It’s like Russian roulette: even if you blow your own head off, people say “Awesome.” “Cool”. That's a tough man.

Underlying the political and military culture is a deep-seated admiration for the “gambler”, fused with Russia’s traditional vodka culture. The Russian ideal is not merely a strongman or conqueror; it is a man who risks everything, who faces danger head-on, and whose courage is intoxicating — literally and metaphorically. Vodka embodies that recklessness, that thrill-seeking spirit, and Russians project it onto the leaders they admire. This “gambler-vodka” archetype reflects the average Russian man, the one who embraces risk, tolerates chaos, and celebrates audacity. It is this cultural ethos that makes them rally behind Putin’s audacious military gamble in Ukraine, even when the war is protracted and bloody.

This “gambler worship” is coded into Russian political culture. Sending troops to Ukraine was like Putin himself pulling the trigger. Whether it kills him or others doesn’t matter — what matters is the courage to act. Even though the lightning war turned into a slow, bloody meat-grinder. Russians still rally behind him, waving flags in Red Square: “For the Nation, For Sovereignty, For Putin.”

This is precisely why Russophobia is not unfounded. The combination of the gambler-vodka culture, a low threshold for violence, and leaders like Putin casually invoking nuclear threats creates a volatile and unpredictable political environment. With such a mindset embedded in both the population and the leadership, no one can be certain how far Russia might go, or how rapidly escalation could occur. The very traits that fuel domestic loyalty — risk-taking, audacity, and a glorification of sacrifice — make Russia unpredictable.

From their perspective, Russia’s failure to quickly defeat Ukraine does not signal weakness; it proves the real opponent is not Ukraine but the United States and the Nato. Three years of warfare have not only preserved Putin’s base but expanded it, consolidating his authority.

No wonder many Russians openly despise China. They hold China in deep contempt — the soft-spoken, cautious power that refuses to fire a single shot. From their perspective, China is a “coward,” unwilling to join the Russian grand sacrificial struggle against the West. Meanwhile, China looks on in disbelief at Russia’s drawn-out, bloody conflict. For China, this is a low-level, second-tier war — almost obsolete, a relic of a bygone era. But on the Russian side, the war is glorified precisely because of its brutality, its staggering attrition, its sacrificial nature. It fits seamlessly into Russia’s historical narrative of grand, heroic wars.

III/

From the Chinese perspective, modern war has moved on to a different paradigm: networked, systemic, AI-driven. Russia does not grasp this transformation, and in their eyes, China becomes a “traitor.” for remaining stubbornly neutral. Perhaps this helps explain the rising tension and hostile actions toward Chinese businesses operating in Russia — a mix of envy, incomprehension, and ideological and cultural disdain. China is a far cry from the gambler vodka military cult of Russia.

In 1962, China waged a self-defense war against India in response to numerous provocations. The conflict lasted just over a month, from October 20 to November 21, and resulted in a decisive Chinese victory. Chinese forces advanced rapidly, nearly reaching New Delhi, and inflicted significant casualties on the Indian military. This insignificant war struck deep terror into India, leaving a lasting psychological impact. Despite the overwhelming success, China chose to withdraw to the pre-war positions, avoiding the quagmire of prolonged occupation. This restraint may explain why Russia perceives China as despicable; not a heroic warrior nation but a soft merchant nation. If Russia were in China’s position, it most certainly would have seized New Delhi without hesitation—only to find itself bogged down in a war it could not extract itself from.

The war has also enabled a purge of rivals. In July 2024, Transportation Minister Starovoit was dismissed, only to be found dead that afternoon — officially ruled a suicide. He was one of over a dozen high-level officials to die under mysterious circumstances. Officially he was removed for embezzling military funds. However corruption is systemic among Government officials. Obviously he knew too much. Either way, Putin has used the war to reinforce his power and eliminate potential threats.

Ideological Dividends: The Rise of “Military-Orthodox” Doctrine

And finally, there is the ideological dividend. War has fused with Orthodox Christianity into a new state ideology — militant, mystical, and nationalistic. The army is glorified not only as defenders of Russia, but as holy warriors. Putin himself is elevated to near-Tsarist status.

The Slavic people have historically been religious, and even Soviet-era atheism carried a religious undertone. Religion in Russia does not prioritize logic but focuses on faith and presence — a fertile ground for constructing new ideologies.

The Putin administration has exploited this tradition to create what can be called “Military-Orthodox” ideology. This doctrine is increasingly becoming official state ideology, akin to a modern version of imperial Russian state religion. It has three defining characteristics:

1. All Russian Wars Are Sacred
Traditional Orthodoxy sanctified “defensive” wars. Military-Orthodox doctrine removes “defense” entirely: every Russian war, offensive or defensive, is sacred. Church murals now depict Jesus wielding a sword, angels holding AK-47s — war itself is divine.

2. Absolute Military Political Correctness
This ideology enforces loyalty: even pacifist Orthodox believers are drawn into the “military-correct” framework. Supporting Russia’s wars is mandatory; anyone dissenting is automatically labeled unpatriotic. Even the invasion of Ukraine is reframed as “defense against NATO expansion.”

3. Miracles and Apparitions
On March 7, 2022, during Forgiveness Sunday, icons in the Russian Armed Forces’ cathedral reportedly began glowing. True or not, the event follows a long Slavic tradition of politically useful religious miracles. While the Soviet Union spent 70 years dismantling churches, Putin’s administration has revived these rituals to reinforce ideological control.

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America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Aug 12

🧵

Nuclear as Divine Judgment: Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the New Sodom and Gomorrah

God’s Reckoning for Imperial Japan’s Atrocities Beyond the Reach of Human Punishment

If asked who embodies greater evil — the biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah or Imperial Japan during the Second World War — the answer is unequivocal: Imperial Japan’s cruelty far surpasses even those ancient symbols of depravity. The atrocities committed by the Japanese military were not mere acts of violence but systematic campaigns of unimaginable brutality and extreme perversity. Enforced incestuous sexual acts between family members, massacres, torture, biological experiments reveal a level of perversity that eclipses the legendary sins of Sodom. Unlike myth or allegory, Imperial Japan’s horrors are documented historical facts — a dark testament to human capacity for cruelty that no poetic imagination or cinematic depiction, no matter how harrowing, can fully capture.

There were once two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, glittering on the plain by the Jordan. Their streets were paved with trade, their halls filled with wine, their laws written not to protect the weak but to sanctify the strong in their cruelty. In these cities, compassion was outlawed. To give bread to a stranger, to pour water for a thirsty traveler, was not an act of mercy but a crime punishable by death. A man who fed a beggar might be stripped naked, flogged until his skin split, then thrown into a pit to die without light.

There is the story of a wealthy merchant who, tricked into offering food to a passing foreigner, was seized by the city elders. His house was emptied, his silver counted out to his accusers, and his family cast into the street. In Sodom, to help was treason; to harm was virtue.

The cities’ pleasures were not the pleasures of the body, but its desecrations. Men lay with men in the open square, jeering at those who passed. Sodom practiced advanced LGBTQ. Women abandoned their infants to take lovers of both sexes in the same night. Fathers forced themselves upon daughters; mothers upon sons. Animals were not spared — goats, dogs, even beasts of burden were dragged into the frenzy. Children were dressed in garlands and presented to guests as toys, violated until they could no longer cry. There were contests to see who could break the spirit of the innocent the fastest, who could invent a new obscenity to outdo the last. No law restrained it; the law encouraged it.

Public feasts became theatres of degradation: a virgin was paraded through the marketplace, stripped bare, and given over to the crowd; her cries were drowned out by music and drunken laughter. Corpses were kept for further use, the boundaries between life and death blurred until both were meaningless. It was not enough to sin — one had to defile, to desecrate, to make the act itself an altar to cruelty.

Millennia later, the world would see the same spirit take flesh in different uniforms. In the winter of 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army entered Nanjing. What followed was not war but a season of calculated sadism. Soldiers dragged women from their homes, raped them in alleys and doorways, sometimes in front of their families before killing them. Pregnant women were split open with bayonets, their unborn children tossed aside like refuse. Infants were flung into the air and caught on the tips of swords, their bodies displayed as trophies.

Real photos of Japanese atrocities during WWII in China:

Men were bound and used for live-bayonet practice. Prisoners were set on fire, doused in oil for amusement, or marched into pits where they were buried alive. At Unit 731 in the frozen reaches of Manchuria, doctors without conscience sliced open living prisoners to study their organs, froze limbs until they blackened and rotted, injected them with plague, cholera, and syphilis to watch them die. Women were forced into “comfort stations,” where dozens of soldiers would use them each day until their bodies failed. These were not aberrations; they were policies.

In both Sodom and Gomorrah, and in the territories under the Rising Sun, the natural order was turned upside down. What should have been sacred was mocked; what should have been protected was destroyed; cruelty was not only permitted but glorified.

And then, the fire came. For Sodom and Gomorrah, it was in the days of Abraham — a storm of brimstone and flame that erased them from the earth, leaving nothing but a wasteland. Some say it was divine wrath; others, the fire of a cosmic strike. For Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it came in August 1945 — God's wrath expressed through two nuclear bombs — a white light hotter than the sun, a wind that tore bodies apart and left shadows burned into the ground. In moments, the cities were gone; in days, the survivors began to die of the invisible poison left behind.

This is no celebration of destruction. In both cases, the fire consumed guilty and innocent alike. But history whispers the same refrain: when a people make cruelty their law and perversity their creed, when they delight in the breaking of the helpless, their end is not a matter of if, but of when — and the end, when it comes, is total.

The Depths of Depravity: The Unfolding Horror in Nanjing

After the fall of Nanjing, the Imperial Japanese Army unleashed a reign of terror that defied comprehension. This was no ordinary violence; it was a systematic destruction of humanity itself.

Chinese battalion commander Guo Qi, trapped in the city for three months, witnessed Japanese soldiers forcibly making sons rape their own mothers. Those who refused were executed on the spot. A German diplomat later corroborated one such atrocity: a man who refused to violate his mother was hacked to death in front of her eyes, driving her to suicide.

Entire families faced unspeakable humiliation. One family crossing a river was stopped by Japanese soldiers who raped the young women aboard their boat. Then the soldiers forced the eldest male to do the same — but the family chose to drown themselves over compliance.

Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking documents how soldiers, laughing like children torturing frogs or drowning kittens, formed circles to watch and jeer as mothers and sons were forced into unspeakable acts.

Their jovial chit chat went as follows:

"This guy’s no good — he’s shaking, sweating! How’s he supposed to do it like this?"
"The woman’s already lying down — just get on with it!"
"Come on, this is his own mother! This is too much!"

Takeda Taijun, a former soldier, wrote in his memoirs how, one morning, after his shift, he and comrades brought a middle-aged woman and a boy of about fourteen to a village. After gang-raping the woman, they forced the boy to rape her in front of them.

"From the way she screamed, it was clear they were mother and son," Takeda recalled. "I couldn’t understand her words, but she could be shouting, ‘No! Not this! Only beasts do this!’"

Private Matsu, one of the soldiers, took cruel delight in forcing the boy upon the woman despite her screams.

Such acts of extreme perversity were not isolated incidents but systematic and deliberate. Wherever the Japanese forces went, these horrors preceded every massacre. It was a calculated doctrine aimed at destroying the Chinese people and unmaking their very humanity—especially devastating given the profound importance that Chinese culture places on 伦理 (ethical and familial order and morality).

Real video

A Nation of Sodom

This was no collection of isolated war criminals. The entire Japanese military — and the society that nurtured it — had cast aside the most fundamental laws of human decency. The Rules of Kinship, those sacred codes forged over millennia to distinguish humanity from bestiality, were gleefully trampled underfoot.

Japan orchestrated a carnival of perversion and intimate destruction.

Ask yourself: would you rather face a bullet, or be forced to rape your own mother, sister, or daughter in front of mocking soldiers before being killed?

For young girls, the cruelty was even more grotesque. After being gang-raped, they were coerced to identify their male relatives — fathers, brothers, uncles — who were then compelled to rape them while soldiers jeered. This is not depraved fantasy, but historical record, written in the Records of Japanese War Crimes, sealed with blood and tears.

The Fire from Heaven

When a people sinks so low, they cease to be human. The atomic bombs that consumed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not mere weapons of war — they were divine fire, the same fierce judgment that rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah. A nation that had made itself a race of torturers, rapists, and monsters could no longer claim the mantle of morality or mercy.

Yet even now, voices rise to defend those who bore such horrors, to claim that the civilians of wartime Japan were "innocent," that the Rape of Nanking, the system of Comfort Women, and the slaughter of millions were no worse than other wars.

To them, we say: look to history, hear the cries, witness the laughter of the wicked — and remember the price of turning away from basic humanity.

Two ancient cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, stood millennia ago as dark symbols of humanity’s fall — places where cruelty was law, kindness a capital offense, and every sacred bond was twisted into chains of degradation. Across the ages, their names have come to mean the very essence of depravity and divine judgment.

Centuries later, two cities—Hiroshima and Nagasaki—emerged not only as industrial powerhouses but as the very heart of Imperial Japan’s war machine. These cities contributed more soldiers than nearly any other region to the Imperial Army’s campaigns of terror across China and Asia. Yet the bloodshed that stained foreign lands did not spring from a few military commanders alone; it was the product of a society wholly consumed by war.

Women’s associations throughout Japan zealously supported the war effort. They organized sewing circles to produce uniforms, raised funds, and rallied families to sacrifice everything for the Emperor’s cause. Children were indoctrinated in schools, their textbooks filled with songs glorifying battle, bayonets, and the killing of Chinese “enemies.” (still going on today) The very education system was weaponized to cultivate hatred and obedience from the youngest age.

Individual conscience and dissent had no place in this fevered atmosphere. One Japanese woman, unconnected to political factions, took her own life so that her husband would be free of family obligations and could join the front to kill Chinese soldiers without ties to hold him back. Moderate politicians who dared call for peace were silenced through assassination — a brutal reminder that the machinery of war extended into the suppression of thought itself.

This was not merely a nation at war; it was a civilization that turned cruelty into creed, and perversity into policy. The entire population — from its leaders down to children in classrooms — became complicit in a relentless campaign to erase compassion, humanity, and moral restraint.

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America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Aug 9

From Lifeline to Target: The Quiet Rift in the Russia–China Partnership

While Russia and Ukraine are trading missiles and drones, another war—silent, smokeless—has been unleashed on “Made in China.” This time, the front is not the battlefield but the marketplace, and Moscow’s target is China’s heavy truck makers. Dongfeng, Foton, FAW Jiefang, Sinotruk, Sitrak—names that once dominated Russian roads—are now categorically banned in one Russian sweeping decree. The official verdict? “Brake system failures,” “excessive noise,”.

Yet before this purge, Chinese heavy trucks virtually had no competitors on the Russian market —they had no competitors. Sinotruk’s Shandeka had seized the crown as Russia’s best-selling truck, rolling out at over 700,000 rubles (USD 80,000) apiece, with queues of buyers ready to pay in hard cash. And now—overnight—the same trucks are declared unfit? Were those tens of thousands of Russian customers fools, or has the story changed for reasons unspoken?

The farce deepens. Not only are future sales banned, but trucks already sold are recalled, with no clarity on refunds or replacements. Chinese manufacturers are given no path to appeal—Moscow simply says “not good enough,” and the gavel falls.

The truth is, this didn’t begin with a single ban. The ground had been prepared. In October 2024, Russia suddenly raised its vehicle scrapping tax to a punishing 85%. Which means if you bought a truck for $30,000, you’d owe $25,500 just to dispose of it before its legal lifespan ended—a punitive tax, a warning in substance.

Then came 2025 and another twist of the knife: a “price-gap surcharge.” If a vehicle sells abroad for $20,000 but in Russia for $30,000, the buyer must pay another $50,000—half the difference—straight to the state. A barricade built to suffocate Chinese rivals.

And still, it wasn’t enough. By September 30, 2024, all Chinese vehicles had to pass Russian-run testing—twice the cost, up to a year in delays—and were forced to install GLONASS navigation whose performance is much inferior to China’s Beidou. Worse, any attempt to route trucks through Kazakhstan would end with confiscation and destruction, the loss borne entirely by the exporter.

Russia strikes hard, harder than Washington or Brussels ever dared against Chinese manufacturing.

But the question remains—does Moscow truly have the confidence to shut China out?

When the war broke out in Ukraine and the West turned its back, the western car giants fled in a single file: Toyota, Volkswagen, Renault, Ford—not one stayed. In that vacuum, it was Chinese automakers who drove in against the headwind, who kept Russia’s roads moving, who restored a semblance of life to a market on the brink of collapse.

Yet somewhere between gratitude and dependency, something curdled. Chinese companies didn’t just supply; they dominated—smartphones, electronics, automobiles. What was once seen as rescue began to feel, in the Russian telling, like exploitation. The tone shifted: China is not helping us; China is profiting from us. And so, even in its moment of greatest vulnerability, Moscow has begun driving Chinese firms out—starting with the most visible symbol of their market power: the heavy truck.

The subtext is hard to miss. The moment Western sanctions loosen, Chinese suppliers will be the first shown the door. That is the quiet truth beneath the grand rhetoric of “strategic partnership”—a truth built on mistrust and a strange Russian instinct to sever the very rope holding them above the abyss.

Unlike the trade with the US and the EU, the China-Russian trade is no one-way street. By mid-2025, China was taking nearly one-third of Russia’s total exports and buying almost half its crude oil—the lifeblood of Moscow’s revenues. The trade flows are not lopsided: in the first half of the year, Russia sold China around $59 billion in goods and bought back $47 billion, a modest Russian surplus but no imbalance to lament. This is mutual dependence, deep and symmetrical.

Perhaps the Kremlin believes it is defending the last strongholds of domestic industry. Russian names like KAMAZ and Lada have been battered; Chinese trucks claimed over 60% of the market, leaving Russian factories idle and workers on the street. Protectionism became the rallying cry, the government’s answer to a competition it could not win.

Yet the irony runs deep: Lada was powered by French Renault’s technology of 1997, and with Renault gone, it is a hollow shell. KAMAZ itself relies heavily on Chinese components. Ban Chinese trucks—and all Chinese manufacturing—and you won’t just block foreign competition; you’ll be striking at the heart of Russia’s own brands. If China turns off the supply of parts, those brands will collapse.

Let the irony sink in: the country that kept the Russian car industry alive is China, 100%.

It would be very easy for China to retaliate.

It's China, in recent years, which has kept the Russian economy breathing at all.

One could suspect an even bolder motive—that Moscow is clearing the market for Western brands ahead of some anticipated thaw with Washington.

So we have two scales in motion: one weighing war and peace, the other balancing trust and trade. Both are swaying, and both could tip the wrong way.

There may be reasons beyond economics. Russia is impatient to end the war in Ukraine on its own terms, but Ukraine’s strength—fed by Western aid—remains stubborn. Perhaps Moscow expected Beijing to lean in harder, to tip the balance more openly. China, however, has kept its footing on the narrow ridge of neutrality. It does not wish Russia to fail, but neither will it be drawn into commitments it deems excessive. It will not, for example, pay a 30% premium for Russian gas when cheaper supplies are available elsewhere.

China has, after all, called this what it is—a war of invasion—and does not approve.

One decisive reason China cannot accept Russian territorial expansion is history. In the 19th century, weakened by wars with Western powers, Qing China was forced into a series of unequal agreements with Tsarist Russia — notably the Treaties of Aigun (1858) and Peking (1860) — that transferred large swathes of territory in the Amur–Ussuri region to Russia. In 1900, Russian troops and local authorities carried out brutal expulsions and mass killings of Qing subjects in the Amur region (Blagoveshchensk and the “Sixty-Four Villages”), leaving lasting scars. In the 20th century the Soviet Union pushed for Mongolia’s separate status, and in 1945 a Soviet-backed referendum confirmed Mongolian independence from China. Those episodes — land lost under coercion, mass violence against Chinese residents, and the effective removal of frontier regions from Chinese control — are why Beijing cannot view further Russian annexation as anything but a strategic red line.

If Russia justifies its invasion of Ukraine on the grounds that Ukraine was part of Russia for centuries, then by that same logic, Russia’s annexation of vast Chinese territories is invalid — for those lands had been part of China for centuries before Russia seized them. And if Moscow claims it can use force to “take back” Ukraine, then Beijing could claim the same right to recover its lost territories from Russia.

Russia’s nature is to act on its moods—swiftly, sharply, without the patient weighing of consequences. It is not wedded to market logic, nor skilled in market thinking; its policies turn as quickly as the wind.

Russia’s nature is to act on its moods—swiftly, sharply, without the patient weighing of consequences. It is not wedded to market logic, nor skilled in market thinking; its policies turn as quickly as the wind.

One thing diplomacy should never do is let itself be swayed by passing moods, anger, or a sense of perceived loss, without thinking long term and weighing all the circumstances. Russian diplomacy makes this mistake all too often.

And China? China’s automakers will need to close ranks, to speak with one voice, to engage with Moscow at the highest levels. The Chinese state will need to step forward, to defend the terms of trade. If Russia insists on acting alone in matters of economics, China has the means—and the precedent—to respond in kind.

What we are watching, in effect, is Russia imposing sanctions on China and daring China to answer.

And trucks are not the only victims of this sudden hostility.

Over the past three years, as the corporate armies of Europe, America, Japan, and South Korea withdrew en masse under the weight of sanctions and political pressure, Russia’s shelves emptied and its markets hollowed. What was left became a frontier—open, underpopulated, ripe for the taking.

For a time, Chinese sellers moved in almost unopposed. Platforms like AliExpress and Ozon found a Russia hungry for goods and stripped of alternatives. Chinese electronics, clothing, home appliances—all poured in, filling the vacuum left by the retreating West. It was not dispensable superfluous trade; it was an economic bridge across a sanctioned landscape.

However recently, beneath the appearance of prosperity, trouble is brewing.

The Russian e-commerce giant Ozon has recently turned hostile, abruptly targeting Chinese brand sellers. Overnight, tens of thousands of product listings disappeared. This wasn’t a technical glitch or a random system error—it was a deliberate purge of Chinese brand sellers. No one was spared: from small workshops to large merchants. Most surprising, the main targets were sellers with brand certifications—those who had invested heavily in brand authorization, product quality, and packaging. Meanwhile, unbranded small sellers were left untouched.

What happened? Some sellers say this was no accident. The platform wasn’t just enforcing rules—many listings were removed due to malicious reports from local competitors. Local accounts could flag a brand as “problematic,” and instead of verifying the claims, Ozon would remove the entire store’s listings. Yes, the entire store. This has created an absurd situation: stricter rules have become a weapon for unfair competition. A system meant to maintain order has turned into a tool to suppress rivals.

Even when sellers manage to restore their listings with platform help, the damage is done. Rankings and reviews are gone, forcing them to start over. The only way to regain visibility is through paid ads—and Ozon’s ads are expensive. Even the basic ad package costs 1,200 Yuan (USD 170), a heavy blow for small and medium-sized sellers.

The pattern is clear: any Chinese supplier whose products seriously compete with local brands will be pushed out and even in sectors where China has no serious rival, entry can be blocked, licenses revoked, rules rewritten overnight.

The contradiction is almost theatrical. On one stage, Russia courts Chinese sellers, eager for them to fill the gaps that Western brands have left. On another, it bars Chinese vehicles, imposes crushing taxes, and erects obstacles with the precision of a siege engineer. The applause and the expulsions come from the same hands.

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America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Aug 3

US Tech is seriously compromised with backdoors

The Fool’s Dilemma: NVIDIA, the H20 Chip, and a Backdoor Too Far

So NVIDIA is called in to explain to the Chinese government - and prove - that there’s no backdoor in the H20 chips it’s preparing to dump on the Chinese market.

Put yourself in NVIDIA’s shoes.

If it admits there’s a backdoor, it’s finished. The company would face criminal espionage charges under China’s Cyber Security Law.

If it denies the accusation, China already holds irrefutable evidence.

If NVIDIA promises it will not embed backdoors, it violates U.S. compliance requirements and laws.

No matter which direction it takes, it cannot sell these chips in China.

But here’s the deeper truth: China likely no longer needs NVIDIA’s crippled chips. The H20 offers only 20% of the H100’s computing capacity—the version sold to U.S. AI firms. China has developed its own alternatives. Safer ones.

No Chinese company will dare purchase from NVIDIA now. The reputational risk, the threat of spyware, the national security implications—these outweigh any potential benefit.

That’s the fool’s dilemma. And that’s exactly where NVIDIA stands.

II/

The Background

In late 2023, under Washington’s pressure, NVIDIA released the H20 - a downgraded version of its high-end AI chip, the H100. It was tailored for the Chinese market to comply with U.S. sanctions.

Then came April 2025. Trump banned it.

But by mid-July 2025, he reversed course. (Trump's message is clear. “Don't trust us. We flip flop”)

On July 31, 2025, Chinese authorities announced the discovery of major security vulnerabilities in the H20. That very day, China summoned NVIDIA for a meeting, demanding explanations—and documentation—on three specific points:

Malicious pre-embedding

Remote control activation

Supply chain poisoning

Does China have evidence? Yes - overwhelmingly so.

Back in May 2025, several U.S. lawmakers publicly called for advanced chips exported to China to include controllable mechanisms. Their goal: to enable technical shutdowns during moments of geopolitical friction.

These legislators proposed the U.S. Chip Security Act, which mandates the Commerce Department to force American chipmakers to embed special modules into controlled chips. These modules must:

Track the chip's location

Identify users

Enable remote shutdown

The idea was clear: deny computing power to "problematic" regions whenever Washington chooses.

According to Western reports, even before the bill was enacted, NVIDIA had already begun integrating these features - preemptively - into its chips.

The Discovery

The U.S. Congress published the bill’s content. Western media confirmed NVIDIA’s compliance.

That was the signal. Within a week of H20’s launch, Chinese cybersecurity labs had fully disassembled the chip.

The results were devastating.

Using lithographic layer-by-layer scanning and full-spectrum electromagnetic testing, analysts discovered an unknown RF communication module embedded in the chip. Its design bore a striking resemblance to FLUXBABBIT, a hardware implant from the NSA’s infamous ANT catalogue - tools used to surveil foreign tech systems.

This module could be remotely activated via specific electromagnetic frequencies. It could exfiltrate data, rewrite firmware, or seize control of the chip altogether.

Worse still, periodic narrowband signals were detected—faint, rhythmic, and structured. Once decoded, they revealed:

Device location

Computing power usage

Data center topology

Cross-referenced with the U.S. Chip Security Act, it was a perfect match.

These signals were traced through global relay networks and eventually pinpointed to a server in Singapore. From there, the data was made accessible—in real time—to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Let that sink in.

A high-performance AI chip, sold to Chinese firms, was silently reporting its activity and coordinates to a foreign government. This is not just speculation. It is documented.

Trump even bragged about it—almost daring China to find it.

Reverse Engineering the Obvious

China didn’t need months. Just days. When you start with the answer and reverse-engineer from there, the truth becomes clear.

There are consequences.

NVIDIA could be:

Fined based on its global revenue

Forced to undergo independent audits

Banned entirely from the Chinese market

And if found complicit in enabling foreign espionage, NVIDIA executives—including Jensen Huang—could face criminal charges.

III/

The US is always accusing China of cyber espionage.

In July 2025, Italian police arrested Xu Zewei, a 33-year-old Chinese engineer from Shanghai, while he was on a tourist trip with his wife in Milan. Acting on a U.S. extradition request, Italian authorities detained Xu at Malpensa Airport, accusing him of participating in a cyber-espionage campaign allegedly orchestrated by a Chinese state-linked group known as HAFNIUM or Silk Typhoon. According to U.S. prosecutors, Xu had targeted American universities and Microsoft Exchange servers between 2020 and 2021 to steal COVID-19 research and conduct wide-scale intrusions. The arrest is widely seen as part of Washington’s broader effort to criminalize Chinese cyber activity and assert extraterritorial enforcement of its own digital security agenda.

Turns out that the US is carrying out cyber espionage on an industrial scale on China.

Let’s not forget: NVIDIA once gleefully joined the U.S. sanctions against Huawei.

In May 2025, the U.S. imposed a global ban on the use, sale, export, transfer, financing, or servicing of Huawei’s Ascend 910B, 910C, and 910D AI chips—even by non-U.S. entities.

And yet—Huawei’s Ascend 910B has since surged to over 20% market share in China. In just weeks. Orders are flowing in.

Why? Because U.S.-made AI chips - like NVIDIA’s - are compromised.

Why It Matters

This isn’t about a single chip.

With the H20 embedded in China’s infrastructure, the U.S. could monitor any researcher using the platform.

A scientist working on biotech or nuclear energy—his queries, his data, his thought process—tracked in real time.

Because this backdoor doesn’t just capture data. It captures intention.

That is the real danger.

Leaking private data is bad enough. But leaking strategic thought, state secrets, or defense intelligence—that crosses a line.

And that is why China moved quickly.

Detection required deep technical skill, full-stack mastery, and industrial sovereignty. You cannot find what you don’t know how to look for.

You can fool many when it comes to hiding backdoors—but not the Chinese. Over the years, China has developed a deep expertise in detecting U.S. surveillance implants, precisely because it has been a primary target of them.

No country should trust U.S. tech products unless Washington fundamentally changes its foreign policy and provides verifiable, global proof that the NSA is no longer spying—on the world, on its own citizens, or in secret partnership with American tech companies.

At present, it appears that nearly every major U.S. tech firm maintains a service line that is—formally or informally—connected to the NSA. This should be unacceptable.

Ironically, this is the very kind of state-corporate collusion the U.S. accuses so-called "dictatorships" of practicing. But in truth, America is conducting it at industrial scale, with minimal resistance and a public that has grown numb to its implications.

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