I&#x27;ve read enough Usenet for enough years to suspect that STEM may well be a liability when it comes to &quot;soft&quot; subjects, the sort that politics operates on. Just the realities of government finance and government debt seem to be beyond many in our field(s), because it&#x27;s a bizarro subject.<p>That China is run by nominally &quot;engineers&quot; could well be a significant problem for them.