World News

It's kind of funny how we've now reached a point where the effectiveness of US propaganda is actually starting to become a serious problem for US. Mainstream political discourse has a very narrow Overton window, and anybody who dares voice views that don't fall within the allowed spectrum of opinion is marginalized and silenced. This created a powerful echo chamber where everybody just mindlessly repeats the narrative knowing that saying anything different would be career ending. Naturally, this leads to people drinking their own koolaid because they're never exposed to any contrary views. This kind of environment makes it impossible to pass any rational policy.

To ghouls, losing the power and privilege by getting fired/blacklisted probably feels pretty close to an execution. Of course I don't think many of these ghouls have any opinions inside them based enough to get actually executed...for now.

good strong take

This point is one that I'll disagree with. The capability of a country to develop technology isn't dependent on basic education but on higher education. In that regard, US education has seen record high expenses... The problem is, of course, that the costs are passed on and are also at record high.

Exactly, we see that western companies managed to go through these 3 generations in a few years, and there's no reason to expect that it's going to take China longer. If anything, I'm expecting China will be able to do it faster because the techniques for doing this are now known, and Chinese researchers know which approaches to pursue. Furthermore, nothing stops China from just hiring the researchers that were involved in developing western chips.

And yeah, the fact that China managed to create this whole industry domestically effectively overnight is incredibly impressive.

By putting these sanctions on China, the US may have created the only country on earth that has complete vertical integration of chip manufacturing.

I bet sanctions were the first step and I expect sabotage will soon start if it hasn't already

and to go from absolutely nothing 2 years ago to only 2 or 3 years behind the state of the art is huge.

It would have been described as impossible by most western "experts" barely months ago

Hell, some of them are still coping and saying it is impossible

Non Western countries competing with each other to produce commodities for practically nothing

Non Western countries competing with the west to produce high tech manufactured goods

Biden knew all of this. Why do it, then?

The answer is as usual: because this is how US imperialism operates. This is how they landed after decades of political practice in imperialism and this is what earned them the hegemony. Remember that US isn't the secret cabal operating in a small room and deciding everything with pushing sliders like in computer game. It's an ossified bureocracy with incredible inertia which not only can't just change its course, but it can't even institutionally devise any alternative to the good old methods of intensifying exploitation because it has all of the equally ossified influence groups behind them which aren't interested in anything that could intentionally decrease the profits. Especially in fastly changing world. They will be of course eventually forced to do it, but it will be too late and too little.

Note how even centrally planned economies had huge prolems with changes. Those that still exist managed it when USSR destruction radically changed the world 30 years ago, but the cost was great.

Aircraft

Is that why F-35 crash every other week?

Engines

Remind me, why's NASA using Soviet rocket engines?

materials science

Questionable, but aight

Pharmaceuticals

Germany would like a word

sadly that's a very likely scenario

In this scenario we will have to be desperate saboteurs with no regard for our life or political aspirations for the country.

Cuban Missile Crisis, but what if the soldiers actually believed their country's propaganda?

China recently signed a deal with Russia to purchase enriched uranium. Obviously China is a nuclear power and has its own reactors and enrichment facilities, so buying more from the Russians suggests China is expanding its nuclear arsenal as well.

Yeah but who would have thought Huawei would be the ones to pull it off? Wasn't on my bingo card.

Most of the articles focus on Russia at the moment, but here are a few I've seen.

• NPR article on why sanctions don't work, with a bit of copium thrown in https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2023/04/11/1169072190/why-sanctions-dont-work-but-could-if-done-right (https://archive.ph/HPJIf)
• one from the economist https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-the-economic-war-against-russia-has-failed/ (https://archive.ph/DCpgR)
• The Guardian admits sanctions on Russia failed https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/21/the-west-tightening-russian-sanctions-a-sign-of-failure (https://archive.ph/7HRMC)
• Asia Times explains why western sanctions are based on flawed premises https://asiatimes.com/2023/06/the-false-and-failed-logic-of-western-sanctions/ (https://archive.ph/Debo6)
• there's also an actual paper explaining why economic sanctions don't work https://www.jstor.org/stable/2539368

Specifically, RISC based chips. As I recall Chinese companies are focusing on RISC-V as opposed to ARM since RISC-V is an open architecture.