Agency: "Got a special job for you, you're going to help us prove this person at China's Wuhan virology lab was COVID's patient zero"
You: "What are we going off of here"
Agency: "Shitposts on an anti-CCP dissident forum and the ramblings of Matt Pottinger and Miles Yu"
You: "Looks like she left the lab in 2015"
Agency: "White House says that's propaganda. Keep digging"
You: "I can barely find concrete proof this person exists. Are you sure we're on the right track here?"
Agency: "White House says this narrative is critical to pushing back against China. KEEP DIGGING. We will have our assets in China speak up in support."
You, 1 month later: "Okay, so here's what we have: some blog posts and social media discussion, and -"
Agency: "Great, we're going to blame China for our inability to find someone whose existence might just be somebody's imagination. Good work"
You: *nods, prepares resume*
/end
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2/ The root of this lies in Rene Girard's theories on human behavior and culture, namely one quite accurate insight: humans want what other people want, and the act of achievement itself spurs other people to strive. This can create conflict when the thing to be had is scarce.
3/ This shows up as a theme in literature. Dan Wang describes this very well using Game of Thrones as an example. To summarize, at the start, Robert Baratheon sits on the throne after he led a rebellion against the Targaryens... danwang.co/girardian-mime…
HRC kicked off the SCS mess in June of 2010. The US told China in late 2009 "let's work together to rebuild the global economy", then less than 8 months later backstabbed China on the SCS by ambushing them with Vietnam at the ASEAN Ministerial.
I was in Beijing in late 2009. The US was literally begging China to lend money and save the world.
Then, right after the loans from China's 08-09 stimulus program finished making their way through Chinese banks/SOEs into purchases with MNCs, HRC timed her backstab at ASEAN.
@qin_duke's thread provides useful info on the SCS, so I'll add some context here. China wasn't even briefed that the US would be bringing up UNCLOS and China's 9-dash line to the rest of the ASEAN countries during the Ministerial. It was a literal diplomatic ambush.
ding ding ding. That's because if the global military hegemon is also the world's largest net debtor, then you end up with a never-ending stream of policies to drive capital stock in the frontiers into funding deficits in the imperial core
Indeed, this call for gov investments in US technology is a recognition that the old model of spooking Asian/Arab/Euro investors into chasing yield in US capital markets is fading and a new source of funding is needed to tide things over until the US dismantles China's economy
If you look at US export blacklists and investment bans, it's obvious the US is desperate to spook global capital flows into avoiding China's economy and instead keep funding deficits in the US imperial core
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
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? 🤔
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
1/
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…