I know that this is rhetorical, but I'm sure an analysis of which country is least likely to leave you exposed to the issues mentioned above could be done. I suppose it also depends on who "you" are, and the threat of communications compromise vs drawing the ire of whoever Israel decides to attack through you. I'm sure there are plenty of countries that would rather be bugged by the Chinese or Iranians than be complicit in a way that opens them to actual armed conflict.
This is another danger of letting Israel swing its sword around without any sort of real condemnation from the US/West: the rationale for geopolitical multi-polarity increases in legitimacy. Pax Americana ends because allying with us doesn't save you from being used as a tool for ends like this. If speculation is correct that Taiwan is involved... Woof.
All this fearmongering about telegram and tiktok is weird.
China can decide what it wants from me- I have no plans to visit or engage with regime; however my life is dependent on the US not thinking of me as interesting.
So, the less I give to US companies, the better.
Especially as, being a non-US citizen I have no right to privacy afforded to me in the constitution, and US companies can be forced to comply with the government in secret- much in the same way we consider that China does it to even part-owned China based companies.
The concern over tiktok is not that Xi’s autocratic regime is surveilling you, but manipulating the algorithms in its large social media market share to foment anti-American (& anti-Israeli) sentiment.
What is the real risk here? The only thing they can really do is make the case that if China invades Taiwan then the US shouldn't get involved. There problem is they might well be right; if I compare Hong Kong and Ukraine, I'd expect Taiwan would be better off going with the HK model of an "invasion" rather than fighting an actual war with the world's #2 or arguably #1 economy. So I'm not sure what the case is for quelling the message; there are some important issues there to debate.
Even if we start with the questionable idea that the US has the moral and physical might to be deciding where the borders are drawn in Asia; it isn't obvious that TikTok would be influential enough to matter. The military-industrial complex lobbyists in the US have a lot of actual power in pushing for war and experience in getting messages to the public.
I’m exaggerating a little (but not much): the risk with tiktok is that it is brainwashing Americans—particularly young ones—with anti-American sentiment. Not only does that suck for the individual, but diminishes the civil-service talent pool and weakens US institutions.
It’s like the CCP looked at what social media was doing to mental health and cable news to our political discourse and said “I can do something with that, I’ll take the extra large.”
They may well be right that the people of Taiwan, a country with a democratically elected government, should just lie down and accept a complete and undemocratic Chinese takeover of their country?
All because China is saying: "Either you submit to us completely voluntarily, or you submit by force, but you will submit"?
Yep. Just because we don't like something doesn't mean that there are good alternatives. If I were in Tawian, Option A is status quo. Option B is to put the best and brightest into diplomatic posts. And they probably have a stack of other options they're thinking about. But all else failing Option Imperial-Subject is a much better one than Option Taipei-Becomes-A-Pancake-And-Then-Imperial-Subject. If there is going to be war it'd better be war with a credible good outcome to it.
The US could step in and police this back when it was 8x, 4x, 2x the size of China. I'd be surprised if it can now. China is pretty powerful.
The good alternative is China not wanting to take over a sovereign country, and for the world to gradually normalise Taiwan as a legitimate country.
China has no urgent or pressing self defence need to attack Taiwan. It also does not have a strong legal case to justify taking it over. In any rational sense the strongest case is for China to leave it alone.
Allowing the status quo to continue is better for the people of China, for the people of Taiwan, and for the rest of us around the world.
It's pure imperialist nonsense and we shouldn't seek to legitimise it just because China is powerful.
You're thinking too literal about what to influence. The more internal divide that foreign powers can amplify, the more likely that US will not/can not intervene in other places around the world.
There's also general propaganda to make people more empathetic towards China/Russia prior to any events occurring.
Sure, there are many avenues to spread this sort of propaganda, but a state-run social media platform can certainly be a lot more effective than someone flooding someone else's social media platform with propaganda.
Assuming the Chinese government is using TikTok for influence campaigns (they'd be foolish not to), they only way to stop it is to outright ban it in your country (which the US seems to be trying to do, with possibly-disastrous effects), or find a way to get your citizens to dislike it (good luck with that).
While Russia is doing pretty well at their influence campaigns on other platforms, those platforms can choose, if they so desire, to step up their detection and banning efforts. It's a constant cat-and-mouse game, of course, but it's at least possible to stamp out most of that crap if you're willing to spend the resources to do so.
Over the years I have personally found multiple accounts on Twitter/X that appeared to be Russian propaganda trolls (or someone with resources looking to appear that way).
They would pretend to be Americans and pushing certain narratives by retweeting/following/commenting/etc.
I found one that claimed to be a single mother living in the midwest USA. It was using a cropped photo from the personal blog of an Australian woman (who had multiple kids and a husband). If you went far enough back in the history you could find accidental Russian language usage. The timestamp trends in the posting behavior were clearly not American. It followed, and was followed by, other similar troll accounts.
Most recently I found one that claimed to be a 26 year old woman from the US. No reverse image search hits on the English web. But reverse image search with yandex you'd get hits for a couple of vk profile picture databases.
From there it was possible to find the actual vk account, which was a Russian woman who clearly was not the same person.
I could link you some of the accounts but the ones I've reported have been banned or deleted by now. I'm sure the US government is wrong on some stuff but there's too much evidence for stuff like the Internet Research Agency to be fake [1]
This is a comment I made on hackernews, replying to someone who (IIRC) claimed to be German but (in my opinion) was clearly a Russian astroturfing account.
After I mentioned it they deleted their comments, and they have since all been flagged by the moderators here.
My goodness, there are so many examples of more or less direct Russian influence operations. Here's a recent one where a bunch of political influencers were being paid ~$100,000 per single podcast episode by a company in Tennessee, whose founders were fully aware that their super-generous investor was located in Moscow.
the USA tried to invade Cuba when the soviets put missiles there, and somehow people are surprised that Russia would do the same thing in the same situation.
It feels like they're spending more on pro-israel sentiments, and have for decades. A biblical quote about a beam in one's eye comes to mind whenever people go "but china!".
My concern with tiktok is that it rots your brain like television, but far more effectively because it's rapid fire content constantly tuned to the individual user to keep them hooked on it. It's an instant gratification machine, effectively a drug, that fries people's attention spans. It has people spending hours a day consuming vapid short-form nonsense, and alters their psyche to make them less effective in other endeavors even when they aren't distracted by the app (particularly school, since it hits children particularly hard.)
I'm not sure why influence should be illegal. What about books and movies? Or even schools and universities? American schools are probably the greatest source of anti-American / anti-Israel sentiment in the country. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GXm-NYyWEAA1jNs?format=jpg&name=...
If you believe in freedom of speech, you should also accept that people, including foreign people, may try to influence you. China doesn't believe in freedom of speech so they censor foreign sources of influence. Does America really want to go down that path?
But dynamic algorithms, targeting exactly you, knowing what mood you have in that moment (by analyzing what you have looked at, liked, disliked), what opinions you have etc. opens up a whole different world of influence possibilities amd I think those possibilities are just starting to get explored with AI. The data is already there.
> American schools are probably the greatest source of anti-American / anti-Israel sentiment in the country.
Damn the education system, and it's penchant for teaching the history of colonialism instead of a revisionist policy. What's next, after Mandatory Palestine we'll teach our children about the Civil War and slavery too? What an anti-America sentiment, clearly we need our conservative lawmakers to... I dunno, rewrite history for both countries? Teach feel-good cookie recipes instead of international politics?
As long as America has anti-BDS laws there won't be any freedom of speech in the first place. Our first amendment rights are currently being suspended by international lobbyists that can't handle their share of due criticism. A shame, considering the US does so well to educate others on it's own embarrassing history, but is threatened with a lawsuit when anyone tries to meaningfully criticize Israel.
I'm not sure the American pov is really the topic here. This story can have consequences for everyone. The USian government is not the center of the world
> Especially as, being a non-US citizen I have no right to privacy afforded to me in the constitution
Say what? Ok, there is no explicit "right to privacy" anywhere in the US Constitution, but that applies equally to citizens and non-citizens. Whatever is in the Constitution applies to everyone regardless of citizenship, with only a few exceptions. And those exceptions don't have much to do with anything you might refer to as privacy. (They're about whether state governments can mess with you. And were I a non-citizen, it's the states that I would be worried about, given that many of them are actively trying to make things harder for non-citizens.)
Unreasonable search and seizure, in particular, applies to everyone. The courts have repeatedly affirmed this.
Unless you're talking about non-citizens outside US borders, or crossing them? That's much murkier.
The constitution does not exclusively apply to US citizens is the good news.
The bad news is that there is no explicit and broad right to privacy in the constitution. You are protected by the fourth amendment requiring a warrant for searches and seizures, but the court has ruled that, citizen or not, if a third party like Meta willingly hands over your info, it’s fair game. L
JFK asks to take a photo of you when leaving US. Only US citizens can object that based on privacy. Thats the moment you know, as a foreigner, you have no privacy in this country. And honestly, I would not expect America to care for that.
> my life is dependent on the US not thinking of me as interesting
Why do people engage in this sort of larping, like they're secret agents or intellectuals that may be hunted at any moment by the grey suits in western governments?
We know it's not true for this person in particular because one click on their HN profile tells you their real name. I stopped there, but I'm sure there is plenty of additional info available with 3-4 more clicks. If they were really so afraid of government reprisal like this larping suggests, maybe they'd attempt to be at least a little pseudo-anonymous.
The actual fact is that 99.9999999999% of us are boring and will remain boring no matter what kind of comments we write on HN. It wouldn't hurt to touch grass once in a while.
You shouldn't be downvoted, the whole industry ought to know by now that Palantir aggregates multiple international sources of data for sale to American defense agencies. If you're legitimately afraid of America, the internet has few places of refuge.
> China can decide what it wants from me- I have no plans to visit or engage with regime; however my life is dependent on the US not thinking of me as interesting
If you have something of interest to Beijing and you’re doing something shameful or illegal in America, and they have evidence, they have leverage. This is human asset development 101.
Most people don’t have skills or information relevant to a foreign state. But some do, and for them being mindful about not giving a foreign adversary blackmail leverage is prudent.
Anybody that has lots of videos from you could train a deep fake realistic model and create a fake video depicting you committing a major crime. Sadly blackmail is the easier part.
The two groups are more like US+Europe+China on one hand and 'misc' on the other. Most people get by without depending on the technology from the 'misc' group at all.
This kind of incident will hurt the Israeli tech sector individually, not some imagined US/EU/Israel tech grouping.
Exactly. Our concept of sovereign states has become outdated by advances in technology. Up until maybe 1990 even second-tier countries could make just about anything indigenously. It might be a little worse and a little more expensive, but still good enough. Today only China and the USA are fully sovereign in terms of having the capability to build the full spectrum of electronic, communications, and military equipment. (We might outsource some of that to save money but the latent capability and capital reserves are there.) Even with nuclear weapons, India, Russia, UK, and France are only partially sovereign. Other countries can barely even pretend anymore, and their freedom of action will continue to evaporate barring some drastic realignment of the geopolitical order.
> Today only China and the USA are fully sovereign in terms of having the capability to build the full spectrum of electronic, communications, and military equipment.
Not arguing, but I think China still relies on Russia for jet engines - though it’s making great efforts to become self-sufficient there.
(Edit: high performance / high technology jet engines)
Russia is no longer a reliable supplier. They need all the engines they can make for domestic use, including replacing war losses and building airliners to service domestic routes. Production is down because all the foreign technical experts left.
Are those jet engines the only option for China or are they just the best option. Because if you require state of the art tech then everyone still relies on Taiwan (TSMC).
>> Unless you can spin up your own fab (hint: you can't) you're dependent on a hegemon. US/EU/Israel isn't perfect, but pretty much as good as it gets.
It's much easier to spin up your fab tech more so now -- than ever before.
I am not aware of chinese or iranian devices exploding and killing people. Spying is not worse than spying and killing. I do not get how do you get the conclusion that US/EU/Israel is as good as it gets if you are a random citizen not from any of these mentioned countries.
Yeah but if you’re dealing with hardware with any kind of Israeli involvement, do you really want to open every single customer unit to make sure one of the capacitors hasn’t been swapped for C4? I think that’s what the poster was indicating. At first I thought yesterday’s action was deviously impressive. Now I’m starting to think it’s actually shortsighted and bizarre. It’s a declaration of war on Lebanon, and obviously a declaration of a war they think they can win, but no good can come of this action.
If you want to run with this argument, they have been at war since 1948, when all of Israel's neighbors including Lebanon invaded Israel following the UN vote to grant Israel statehood and Israel's declaration of independence.
There has been a UN-brokered ceasefire since the later 2006 war. Minor issues have occurred since then, but October 8 was the first major escalation between the two in almost twenty years.
1. This is an attack against Hezbollah, not Lebanon. The two entities are tightly coupled, but they are not the same.
2. Israel and Hezbollah are already at war. 60,000 Israelis have been displaced because of Hezbollah ongoing rocket and missile attacks. Israel has retaliated in various ways.
TLDR: you can argue that this is an act of war against Hezbollah. But it is not a declaration of war, and it is not against Lebanon.
In Britain, if the mobile phones of 3000 members of the non-governing Conservative Party exploded in their pockets caused by the armed forces of a different state, one could be reasonably assured you just declared open war on Britain.
For a more accurate analogy, imagine if Conservative Party were a terrorist organization with its own military, took direct orders from Iran, had claimed for itself all of Wales, and had been firing thousands of missiles into France without cooperating in any way with either the British government or army.
Then imagine that France predictably shoots back, and takes great care to specifically target members of that terrorist group.
In this more accurate analogy, would you still say that France declared open war on Britain? I would say no - that the terrorist group is the one that declared war; and that France is clearly engaging in acts of war against that terrorist group, which happens to be embedded in a host country, like a parasite.
For a more accurate anology involving Britain, imagine that British secret services decided to detonate pagers belonging to Sinn Fein party members in the territory of the Republic of Ireland.
Yeah I agree with you. It’s also that the situation in the region around Israel is so complex and long-running that there aren’t really appropriate analogies. The two countries are at a state of war that’s fairly obvious regardless of the parties involved. I’m fairly confident Israel given its history in these matters knows what it’s doing and takes actions that will move it toward security and victory, and any potential responses from Hezbolah have been considered and accounted for. One thing that came up for me was if Hezbolah had de-escalated, what would Israel have done with the pagers? It’s clearly a kind of “sleeper” munition, I wonder what the circumstances would have been for them to never use it.
What if the pockets of IRA members had exploded (yes, I know. Say 40 years ago when they were doing their share of bombing)? Does anyone seriously dispute that Hezbollah is a proxy army for Iran?
I think your comparison stops holding wage as,soon as you mention the Conservative Party. They just aren’t the same thing as Hezbollah.
To clarify, obviously I rather live in the EU than in china, but if this system is as good as it gets, then I am quite sceptical for humanities long term survival.
How does a Bay Area tech site, when Bay Area tech has sooo many individuals who originally came to the USA as students but then couldn't go home due to tiananmen, have this kind of 'enlightened thought' on China, day in and day out?
I believe the point GP makes is not that China is a good place. More like that we are oblivious to all the points that make our own place pretty bad too.
On one hand, you can claim that it's a well-known propaganda technique (e.g. the soviets using "...And you are lynching negroes" as a rebuttal to anything). But on the other hand, the most satisfying way to avoid that form of propaganda would probably be to fix our own flaws rather than calling whataboutism.
I mean American's seem like about the most 'bring our flaws out into public and deal with them' society I have ever interacted with. Daterape is no longer acceptable. The entire way men treat women has changed in my lifetime. How we respond to domestic violence has completely changed (we don't just ignore it). LGBT+ rights have greatly changed. Race relations have completely changed (they may need work but they are so much better than the 80s where people rampantantly used the N word at work, in social situations).
The average American is much more aware of our issues, not China's. Our own place isn't pretty bad just because we have past history nor ongoing problems. It's a matter of 'what are we doing to change and improve', and are we willing/free to bring up problems that need changing, and does our societies structure allow change? Or does society pound down those nails that dare stick out? Every society is a flawed human constructed stumbled into not intelligently/humanely designed. The American systems is the most dynamic/flexible of all the ones I have been exposed to. There are more liberal ones, but less dynamic and flexible (no free speech laws in the UK which might cause the lack of reflection that you lament). There are more conservative ones that are again less dynamic/flexible.
Look - I agree. But at the same time, I've seen what the Bay Area puts out, and their product designers are more concerned with designing the next cigarette than improving anyone's life or ensuring domestic security. The US is currently relying on contractors that are asleep at the wheel.
Plainly speaking, China already took our iPhone manufacturing and our electric car business. They've got the chops, the supply chain and the export network to keep doing that for everything from the JSOW to the Harpoon missile. Unless the US makes a serious effort to invest in domestic R&D, our Bay Area vanguards are going to spend more time jerking off than participating in a healthy defense business.
Additionally, iPhones were never assembled in America. Enough manufacturing had been offshored to the PRC it just wasn’t even a consideration of any sort until late last decade, and the response from Apple has been to reshore some assembly elsewhere, not bring it into the States.
"over time" is right - if TSMC's roadmap isn't getting the US onto 3nm before 2026, then Apple could buy cheaper/denser silicon from fucking Samsung if they wanted. You know, the fab Apple has avoided for density issues and concerns that they aren't competitive. Taiwan still has the golden goose, and unless Apple's products stop relying on node upgrades (they won't) then we're not going to manufacture the majority of Apple chips in America. We'll be lucky if American fabs yield high enough to make memory controllers, let alone entire SOCs.
It's very easy to say that during peacetime. But you can't depend on adversaries for cheap labor, period. The US federal government, communist or not, just spent billions ensuring that those manufacturing jobs aren't forfeited by our multi-trillion multinationals. Our strict adherence to capitalism is just about pushing us to USSR-collapse levels of market abuse. Our consumers are completely braindead; our manufacturers aren't being given reason to stay by the government; even US agencies like NASA and DARPA are getting outdone by Chinese state-run agencies.
Regardless of how you feel about it, the CHIPS act is a line in the sand the US has just crossed. We are heading back to cold-war style economics, because this is an economic cold war.
This doesn't really mean much when those laws include "you're not allowed to expose crimes by government" not to mention drug laws and copyright. At the end it's not any less arbitrary than whatever excuses the chinese government uses to intern those they don't like.
There are also no laws against exposing crimes by the government. You’re just not allowed to break other laws just because you’re doing so.
People very frequently successfully expose corruption and abuse by governments in the US. It just doesn’t make significant news unless it’s a major national politician, and that happens multiple times a year.
It is known a priori that the laws are so vague that everyone is breaking several. If the government chooses to find out which one you are breaking, you go to prison. If you expose crimes by the government, you may find yourself suddenly being investigated for something unrelated.
That's just the government interring whoever it doesn't like, with extra steps. Or making a law that says "we have to like you" with extra steps.
Sure they are. E.g. hate speech, antisemitism, threat to public order, threat to the integrity of the state. You know that Russian woman with the blank paper was also a threat to the integrity of the state.
No. While there were criminals also in gulags, most of people were there only because someone didn't like them or they happened to be wrong time in wrong place. That's it.
One is a failure of social order, product of greed, evil and stupidity. The other is the largest-scale arbitrary detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II.
No. But does China have a horrible record on human rights and abuses? Yes. Have they been ethnically cleansing the Uyghur population for years now? Yes. Not to mention bullying and threatening all neighbors across the region. Just read about the recent worries over ZMPC cranes. The CCP will and has infiltrated private companies as a vector to spy on other countries. Maybe they haven't blown up pagers like this, but they've done other things that should make anyone skeptical of buying sensitive equipment from them.
Oh wow, a country BULLYING its neighbors. Imagine a country doing that. Luckily, the US never does something like that. Or imposes sanctions on a country half a world away, sanctions which the entire world has to adhere to unless they want to lose US trading all together.
Some of these talking points fall apart upon typing them, let alone posting.
China is the one major power that doesn't seem to engage in extraterritorial assassinations, so by default I'm more inclined to at least trust that the Chinese state won't ever decide to activate a kill switch against me.
Isn't China the one country that actively sets up their own police forces all over the world? Aren't there numerous Canadians of chinese origin that China has abducted? I see news articles of Canadians being arrested for assisting China in these abductions fairly often lately.
> Isn't China the one country that actively sets up their own police forces all over the world?
The US does the same thing and worse, just look for the very long arm of their FBI and Secret Service when it comes to what they allege to be “cyber-crime”. A decade or so ago I was visiting my company’s ISP one morning when I manage to stumble just as some US federal agents were doing their thing among the server racks. I live in Bucharest, Romania.
Of course FVEY/CSIS would push anti PRC narrative. PRC's espionage behavior basically translates to "using words", it's so mild vs what others majors are doing that it needs to be characterized as "over seas police stations" to make it seem extra threatening, when it's bottom barrel espionage activity. MSS handlers using words to leverages / intimidate, to convince people to return to PRC on their own accord, i.e they're not abducting anyone let alone extrajudicial assassinate. Like the solution to countering these activities is to say... naw I'm good.
AFAICT, that's mostly propaganda. What makes them "police" centers exactly? They do not have police men in them, don't have jails, no one has been convicted of a crime in relation to them, etc. Not sure what you mean by "abductions" but if you are referring to the Canadians who was arrested on Chinese soil, one of them admitted to espionage and is even suing the Canadian government for involving him against his will.
They are called secret police centres in Canada because of the actions they pose, and the threats they make. They'll threaten to kidnap you and extrajudicially extradite you to China, they'll threaten your relatives in China, they'll force you to stop behaviours considered inappropriate by the CCP, they'll try to recruit you as a spy.
To the Chinese Communist Party, the Han ethnic group belongs to the Chinese State, and everything anyone of this ethnic background does is their business.
Some of the actions you mention would definitely be illegal and yet, no one has been prosecuted nor found guilty. In fact, the concerned centers in Canada are suing the RCMP for defamation. So you are either speculating or spreading propaganda.
But people have been charged by the Canadian government over people that have been taken to China. Referring to actual Canadian court cases that are in regards to actual people taken to China is propaganda because?
Edit: Why am I blocked from replying to the below comment?
I previously asked what you were referring to because I genuinely don't know what you are talking about. Of course I don't believe actual criminal convictions are propaganda, but there have been none in relation to the so-called "police centers".
That article pretty clearly says they were assassinations within China of people who no one disputes were actual CIA spies or handlers. So at bare minimum it wasn't extraterritorial, which I understand to be the key differentiation made by GP.
Could you clarify? I see some reports of extraterritorial assaults, as well as harassment (particularly including threats against relatives within Chinese territory), but couldn't find examples of extraterritorial killings, at least with my best attempt at ctrl-f.
I have. I just haven't heard of them resorting to assassinations. Happy to be proven wrong, but I'll need to see at least one actual example assassination.
Right afterwards, you can learn about the place called Haiti. Or Cuba. Or Venezuela. Or heck, Mexico. Oh, Vietnam. North-Korea. China. Japan. Wait until you learn about Chile. And do not forget to look up the meaning of 'Jakarta is coming'
BTW, before someone screams whataboutism: adjusting your worldview according to facts and applying your moral standards to all countries is not whataboutism. Its a prerequisite to being able to morally condemn any action.
Only in the sense that, as a US citizen who has no desire to travel to China or Russia, I don't feel all that worried that either country is going to do anything bad to me directly.
But if I lived in either one of those places... whooooa boy. I'd have to be a different person to not get in trouble. And I wouldn't call myself much of an activist or pot-stirrer, really. I feel bad for people who want to show public dissent of their government in China or Russia but can't (or do, and end up in jail), and for people in marginalized groups that the government doesn't like.
> > Literally China/Russia are more trustworthy.
>
> Only in the sense that, as a US citizen who has no desire to travel to China or Russia, I don't feel all that worried that either country is going to do anything bad to me directly.
I sort of get this PoV, but on the other hand…
If China had any information about you that was valuable for any purpose whatsoever (trade an intelligence tip to a corrupt businessman in a mafia state?) its government could do so with no legal or political safeguards.
The US government has legal safeguards against this, and would face _massive_ potential political risk for doing so against one of its own citizens.
>The US government has legal safeguards against this, and would face _massive_ potential political risk for doing so against one of its own citizens.
The US government literally steals cash money from its citizens and faces no repercussions whatsoever. If you carry cash with you in the US, you're in absolute danger of having it confiscated by the police as "drug money" and never seeing it again. You can claim the US has "legal safeguards", but until they're actually tested, it's just a supposition.
The US has a very large voting bloc composed of people who want their state and municipality to be free from restrictions imposed by the federal government. In practice, this leads to many places with a significantly larger amount of actually-experienced tyranny than you get in more uniformly governed countries. Ideally, this is coupled with freedom of movement, so that it's easy to get a job and housing in a state or city with more liberal governance.
They actually have. The Supreme Court had a recent ruling, congress has passed laws to try and restrict it (to the best that federal rules can affect local state ones). The distinction definitely is important, but if you have an ideological bone to pick, it’s better to ignore it.
If you actually believe that then you are amazingly ignorant about the legal structure of the USA and its dual sovereignty system. You should ask your civics teacher for a refund.
You think China and Russia don't do a hundred times worse to their citizens? The US is far from perfect, but it is drastically better than China and Russia.
Whataboutism. I never claimed they were better (and you're right, they're much worse). But the US is the one that claims to be the world leader in defending freedom and individual liberty. China never made any such claim that I know of.
> If China had any information about you that was valuable for any purpose whatsoever (trade an intelligence tip to a corrupt businessman in a mafia state?) its government could do so with no legal or political safeguards.
You should look up how Israel actively fishes LGBT palestinian people using fake dating site accounts, and threatens to out them in order to force them to contribute intelligence.
The US is clearly not that compromised. But they're not exactly clean either, considering some of the stuff that happened in central America.
The US is a two party system with many hereditary politicians. How free do you think your elections really are?
> They have no free press unlike US.
How did the US news report on Snownden, Assange and others the US government does not like? The US press is an oligopoly that does barely any real reporting. Theoretical freeness does little here.
> They have no independent judiciary unlike US.
Which is more than happy to shield the executive from any consequences. Qualified immunity makes this separation meaningless.
> They both rank poorly on the corruption index unlike US.
According to western definitions of corruption that conveniently do not include corporate lobbying, revolving door relationsships between politics and industry, backdoor laws via trade deals and all the other shadyness that has effectively taken over so-called democracies. But sure, pat yourself on the back for being less likely to get out of a speeding ticket by slipping the officer some cash.
Hey I used to believe this myself. But then just realized that this too is propaganda. Insider trading by congress? Lobbying? Judges accepting gifts from billionaires? Abortion? At least in China/Russia women that need urgent reproductive care can get it without risking death.
Because they are just as bad as the US but don't pretend otherwise. Also because the US has gone into aggressive conflicts a lot more than those 2 countries put together.
Thy was what, 40 years ago? China has their great firewall set up today, never mind their social credit systems, automated CCTV citizen tracking systems, etc. Russia has people accidentally falling out of hospital windows or drinking polonium tea. I don't think this is at all comparable.
I checked Wikipedia to learn about the Social Credit System, and according to the article, no such system exists as described. Most assumptions about it seem to be based on misinformation from Western media. Could you clarify what you mean?
Who do you want to be able to spy on you and compromise your hardware?
Unless you can spin up your own fab (hint: you can't) you're dependent on a hegemon. US/EU/Israel isn't perfect, but pretty much as good as it gets.