| >In May the Senate committee on small business and entrepreneurship found that six of the 25 largest recipients of federal funding via the Small Business Innovation Research programme had “clear links” to China — but still received nearly $180 million from the Pentagon in 2023 and 2024. >Jeff Stoff, a security academic and former China and national security analyst for the US government, said that a lot of what China was doing was not illegal. Rather, they were taking advantage of America’s corporate vulnerabilities using regulatory blind spots. >“The Chinese understand our system and they know how to work within it with virtual impunity — most of the time,” said Stoff. I get the impression that this whole situation is sort of like how DOGE operated. Theres this "move fast and break things" ethos that Musk brought to DOGE that the establishment was not prepared for and it just overwhelmed them. As each day passes, Im starting to think China is applying this mentality across their entire operations and the US government is not actually prepared at all. I'm reminded of this snippet from Dwarkesh Patel talking about how Chinese really see things: [1]:https://youtu.be/pE3KKUKXcTM?t=2021 I keep thinking there is this unseen "deep state" that has a handle on things and that the US is still competitive but day by day it seems like like there is no one actually behind the hidden door that has a handle on things. Am I thinking things wrong? Am I just falling for pro-Chinese propaganda and that the US establishment actually knows what they are doing? Because if they don't Americans(and probably most of the west) are probably screwed long term. |