The background image for Kurt Campbell's consulting firm is hilarious.
Gigantic Mt Fuji overlooking Asia's cities, with a tiny Washington Monument right in the middle. I wonder what country he's going to orient his entire Asia policy around? 🤔
And if this is Campbell's strategy for trade policy, boy howdy is he in for a rude surprise
There are only two realistic outcomes here: China outflanks the US trade bloc by accelerating interdependence via RCEP/CAI, or it takes Taiwan, takes over Western Pacific SLOCs, and cuts a deal with Japan and South Korea. Campbell's goal of dictating terms to China is a fantasy.
I would go on but it's worth noting that Campbell found time to cape for Pottinger in an October 2020 interview even though he full well knew Matt was pushing the Wuhan Virus narrative in an attempt to demonize Chinese people in the United States
Of course, Pottinger has been one of Campbell's proteges since at least 2010 so it's not surprising that he would say that. But that should give you some sense of where Campbell's views lie as well
And if you combine Campbell's "Asia Czar" role with Sullivan giving him some sort of interagency SWAT team plus Campbell whispering in the ears of 'empowered' regional officials, you have a recipe for the US getting sleepwalking into a full-blown Cold War - at the least
Anyhow, you can read my PoV on how to starting fixing the US-China relationship here. It starts with taking the biggest time bomb out of the relationship. There's more that I've thought about and will share later @suea_thornton@JohnCulver689
1/ US tech's ban of Trump gives China a once-in-a-decade opportunity to reset the global tech ecosystem in its favor. China should pay its tech firms to package and release an open source social media app, open source app store and mobile stack, and an open source cloud stack
2/ The blowback from bigtech doing this is going to be the balkanization of the internet. Every country + the EU is going to go for their own social media / mobile / cloud stack now @passluo
3/ China obviously has a trust deficit with other major tech ecosystems, so Chinese apps will have trouble winning worldwide, but it can get around that by making it so that *no one* can dominate the global commons in the way that Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple currently do
After two months, I've finally managed to categorize the accounts I follow or am interested in into a series of lists. I'd like to share all of them with you
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2/ In alphabetical order, first is the "1 million followers / pundit / politician" list, which are predominantly bluechecks and/or politicians with large follower counts. This list lost a notable member last night 😉 twitter.com/i/lists/132831…
3/ Next is 46 Admin, an evolving list of individuals who either work in or will be affiliated with the incoming Biden administration twitter.com/i/lists/132893…
1/ This is probably one of the few times that @joshrogin and I will agree on something, but Twitter banning US politicians is a bad idea if you care about American political stability
2/ In a political system where political capital is as media-dependent as the US, cutting off social media accounts can shift the political balance of power
3/ It can shift that power in a way that is just as effective as reallocating electoral votes or congressional representation
It's time for the #IRS to investigate Falun Gong for violating its 501(c)(3) status
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501(c)(3) organizations "are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office"
Instead of saying China has taken primacy over the US in 2020 - or even started that process - it's more accurate to say that 2020 marks the start of multipolarity's return to global politics
The US still has a plurality of the world's "critical bottleneck" technologies, supremacy in the maritime and orbital commons, financial centrality, and a global media nexus
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