Arm China Has Gone Rogue
The PRC isn’t fucking around. They’re playing for the whole show and the West is bringing a significantly weaker game than it did against a significantly dumber geopolitical adversary last time.<p>Being England or whatever isn’t the end of the world, there is life after global hegemony, but e.g. the USA should be realistic about the fact that e.g. shit like a legislature whose job is to get nothing done isn’t how you win in full-contact sports.<p>For all its innumerable faults, flaws, and outright human rights violations: the West of the latter 20th century seemed like a plausible v0.0.1 of some future, hypothetical, benevolent society. Sucked ass if you were a minority but there was movement on that, real wages seemed to be trending ok, technological innovation was on point. It looked to be going somewhere.<p>I’m not sure when it all went sideways, but the PRC is looking more than happy to design the future, and it seems unclear at best if that would be a net win in the “get to Star Trek as fast as possible” game.