I talked to @hsu_steve about tensions in Eastern Europe, Russian and Chinese military technology, the rise of China, and his work on IVF. A fascinating guy, and an important conversation on a wide range of topics. richardhanania.substack.com/p/the-future-o…
On the importance of Russian hypersonic missiles. The US has even less leverage than it believes in the Ukraine crisis. We both share the concern that American leaders are once again sleepwalking into disaster, this time with even graver consequences than before.
On how a potential Chinese assault on Taiwan might go.
How should a non-expert who doesn't speak Chinese think about the rise of China and judge how its system functions? You should ignore most experts, who have been wrong because of ideology, and look at results.
On meritocracy in the Chinese system and its reliance on standardized tests. Nothing like the SAT, which isolates g, but the gaokao measures intelligence and conscientiousness. Unlike US government officials, no one who deals with Chinese officials thinks they're incompetent.
"if you make an estimate of the number of high ability STEM PhDs in China in the near future, compared to the United States, it could be an order of magnitude larger. I’m not talking about two times larger. We’re talking about 10 times larger."
In Denmark, already 10% of children are born through IVF. This likely means closer to 20%-30% in higher SES categories. A revolutionary change in how humans are conceived that has occurred over just a few decades.
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The selection of JD Vance can be seen as a triumph for the Tech Right. I explain where they came from and what makes them different from others in the GOP. They're socially liberal, anti-egalitarian, and ultimately for dynamism and progress. 🧵 richardhanania.com/p/understandin…
Ironically, there is a group of leftists who saw this coming. They came up with the acronym TESCREAL, which is so ugly that it's actually catchy. The leftists paying the most attention knew that tech elites were different from other elites in academia and journalism.
If you believe in technology and progress, it's going to put you in conflict with the ruling class if it doesn't believe in those things. In most societies that may be religious authorities. In the modern West, it is wokes, driven by an egalitarian vision that discounts progress
The time Israel sent a commando team into downtown Beirut that assassinated three high-ranking members of the PLO and got out. The team was led by Ehud Barak.
Westerners hate Israel because it fills them with a sense of inferiority by showing that heroism is still possible.
Stop and read about the Entebbe Raid, after a plane was hijacked and taken to Uganda. The Israelis secretly flew a team from Suez to Uganda, slaughtered the Palestinian terrorists, their German allies, and Idi Amin’s soldiers, bringing almost all of the hostages home alive.
What were the Palestinians doing during this time? They had their own version of heroism. They were blowing up synagogues, killing random Jews all over the world, massacring flight crews, and getting the Gulf Arabs to pay them ransom money.
Fascinating analysis of the trendiness of baby names.
Since the 1960s, the endings of names rise and fall together, especially for boys. The fates of Mason, Jackson, Grayson, etc are all linked.
What names sound good to parents depends on subtle signals they’re not aware of.
This is associated with the decline of traditional names. The lesson here is people really feel the need to conform on a very deep subconscious level! If they don’t conform to tradition, they’ll look for arbitrary signs of trendiness.
But you don’t want to conform too much. So names that are too common get scratched off the list, while you need to pick a name for a boy or girl that sounds right in the current year.
Why not beginnings of names then? Makes the choice too conscious?
Time Magazine in 1958: Blacks are 10% of the population in 1,551 cities but commit 60% of violent crime. Northern mayors consider this their biggest problem and are afraid to talk about it. Black leaders blame racist law enforcement.
Black problems didn’t start with LBJ.
Time in 1958: NAACP tries to get people not to talk about black crime. Many whites are uncomfortable about the subject, and newspapers go out of their way not to mention a crime suspect’s race.
Time: Many blame poverty, but poor immigrants don’t commit crime like blacks do.
Change a few words around and this whole thing could’ve been written today. The media wouldn’t publish it of course but nothing has changed in 66 years!
Since October 7, many of us have been asking how we can be better allies to Israel.
I explain that what Israel needs is not better PR, or "hasbara," but pushback on narratives that are hostile to civilization itself, which Israel represents. richardhanania.com/p/article-in-t…
Israel doesn't have an "optics" problem because the rest of the world hated Israel before this war, and one can see this in the obsessive focus on its flaws compared to everything else in global politics. The problem is with Israel's existence.
There are three pillars of anti-Israel hate
1) Anti-western sentiment 2) Third worldism 3) Classic antisemitism
Unfortunately for Israel, it's the one place where all these ideological orientations converge.