[conspire] (OT) geopolitics

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Steve Litt (slitt at troubleshooters.com):

> Then maybe he needs to take a writing course so his ability to
> communicate is on par with his other abilities.

I'm sorry this top expert and respected author doesn't meet your
exacting needs.  Perhaps flog him and order him to do better.


> >More to the direct point, I cannot see him having "argued both sides of
> >every point" (passionately or not).
> 
> Paragraphs 1-4 were about America in the 90's and early this century.

Yes.

> Paragraphs 5-9 argue for the world now being multipolar.

No.

These paragraphs describe the _common misperception_ that the world
became multipolar.  Thus Brooke's bolded phrase "According to most
observers...", with which he strongly disagrees.  

I guess this is the passage that you misread.

> Paragraphs 10-12 argue that the world isn't multipolar, with the US
> supreme.

Yes, unipolarity with asterisks, or, as Brooks phrases it, unpolarity
with only the nature and scope of it changing.

> The following quote from paragraph 11: "No longer can one pick any
> metric to see this reality, but it becomes clear when the right ones
> are used." Well yeah, if I get to cherry pick my metrics I can prove
> that smoking does no harm and global warming/climate change isn't a
> problem.

Except Brooks does not do that.  

You seem to be, depressingly, ignoring Brooks's point, and the nature of
what he's saying in large.  He says that various criteria _might_ be
used to decide which actors on the world stage have dominant influence,
no matter which of the conventional metrics you use, you end up with a
similar result.  He traces out this argument later on.

> I have to agree with Ruben on this.

Well, being wrong is popular in every age.


> * China is closing the economy gap with the US:
>   https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/

No, it's not.

China has a largely fake economy that is heavily financialised (in ways
that make Enron and the subprime loan crisis look like a model of
propriety), and has a few more years of apparent manufacturing strength
remaining on account of the sunk-cost effect of a huge, post-1976
manufacturing build-out, i.e., the physical plant is already paid for.
However, their labour cost is already 3x that of Mexican labour, and
their staffing is starting to have grave difficulties because of the
demographic cliff they are currently in the middle of going over.

Also, all of their econometrics are shamelessly manipulated, and only
the credulous rely on their figures.  They've been caught lying and
greatly exaggerating production figures over and over.  Recently, they
also admitted that they lied about their demographics, that there are
actually tens of millions of young workers they previously claimed
exist, who actually don't exist at all and were just invented out of
whole cloth (apparently lower-rank officials lying to higher-rank ones, 
telling them what the 10-year plan required and what they wanted to
hear).

And those GDP and similar figures largely feature economic activity
stimulated by Beijing's cheap-capital-at-any-cost policies, which have
lead to large numbers of businesses that don't have real business models
and never will, large numbers of apartment blocks getting built and
never occupied, merely being created as vehicles for investment, etc.

I'm an ex-accountant and auditor, sir.  (Passed the CPA exam, worked in
that field, decided instead to go into IT.)  I can recognise a Ponzi
scheme when I see it, and China's post-Mao economy is a Ponzi scheme on
a stupendous national scale.


> * China and/or Russia could totally cripple the US with a fission bomb
>   a hundred or so miles above South Dakota or somewhere similar.

And that is the _last_ thing that state would do.

> It remains to be seen how much of the US retaliatory force survives that.

It's called "strategic submarines".  Also hardened silos, and
ready-response strategic bombers.  But especially the quiet, long-range,
boomer subs that neither China nor Russia can even detect any more,
whereas we can detect and track theirs.

Save the Red Dawn fantasies for Tuesday at the discount cinema.


> * The US produces very few semiconductors anymore.

The US hasn't needed to.  

It's been cheaper and more cost-effective to globalise it to sundry
partner nations, in the globalised era that is slowly coming to an end.

Some chips are fabricated in Korea with expertise, and chip design, and
machinery from the USA, Japan, and the Netherlands.  You need
lithography machines, which are fancy lasers that come from the
Netherlands.  You need lenses from Germany, optics from California,
designs from both Silicon Valley and Salt Lake City.  You need wafer
systems that come from Japan, and so on.

Where are semiconductors _made_?  Low-end chips (90 nm and larger) are
made overwhelmingly in China, the sort of chips that are in LED bulbs or
washing machines.  Internet of (Pwned) Things.  Casio watches.
Refrigerator chips that tell you when they want you to buy a new water
filter.

Medium-tier chips are the type that are in HVAC control systems, 
automotive, thermostats, most aerospace, other machinery.  Those are
made in a host of places:  the United States, Malaysia, Thailand,
Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Netherlands, UK, and Germany.

High-end chips, 10 nm and smaller, are made overwhelmingly (80%) in
Taiwan (though TMSC is ramping up, post-2020, capacity in Germany,
Japan, and Phoenix).  These are the ones in smartphones, desktop
computers, servers, satellites, power-control systems, etc.  The other
20% are made in South Korea.  Almost all of the chips fabricated in
those two countries are not designed there, but rather in the United
States.

Some fabrication and other steps (wire harnesses, final assembly, like
that) occur in various places in East Asia, too, such as Malaysia,
Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand.  International industry has leveraged
beautifully the ability to ship supplies, sub-assemblies, etc. around
the countries of East Asia to leverage the different skill (and pay)
levels in different countries each at different points in the
manfacturing process -- courtesy of ultra-cheap and safe shipping, e.g,
the Bretton Woods system.

China's effort to develop (not make yet, but even develop) high-end
chips got kneecapped starting last October, i.e., ended, by the Biden
Administration with the help of Japan and the Netherlands, as part of a
sanctions package that forbids export to them of pretty much anything
(or the help of American persons) to develop a capacity to make high-end
chips for the first time -or even- to be able to make medium-end
chips (as they will not even be able to import the equipment or tool for 
that, or even the tools to operate and maintain the low-end gear).  The
entire Chinese semiconductor industry is thus now toast.  (Actually, to
make that sanctions regime airtight, the Biden Administration will also
have to nail down cooperation from South Korea, and I expect that to
follow soon, now that they got Japan and the Netherlands onboard.)

Over the next 2-3 years, thus, China is going to not only not be able to
move up to medium- and high-tier chips, but is going to erode its
ability to make even low-end ones, being embargoed from everything it
needs internationally, which is a problem, because _everything_ other
than local labour for its semiconductor industry has been imported:
tools, equipment, expertise, designs.  All that stuff about Chinese
hypersonics and AI has been done, heretofore, with foreign chips and
locally written software -- but now, they are being cut off from foreign
chips, so all of their industries that require them are going to wither
and die.

> China has far outstripped the US in the ability to set up chip
> factories.

China did indeed decide to build up the ability to crank out low-end
chips (whose design and machinery they are not even yet up to) like 
mad inside China, while the US (or, rather, US-based corporate concerns)
did not do so within US borders.

You seem to have drawn non-sequitur conclusions from that.


> The US is toast if China cuts off our chips.

Bullshit.

You're looking, in that case, at a shortage of Casio watches and smart
LED bulbs until adequate production plant capacity gets ramped up in
Mexico, Colombia, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.[1]

What you're really saying is that you don't understand the semiconductor
industry.  That's OK.  Most people don't.  But most people don't go up
on the Internet and shout "Here, I'd don't understand the world
semiconductor industry.  Here, I'll prove it to you."



> * I'm not saying this trend can't be stopped, but the US is currently
>   headed toward either a dictatorship or a second civil war.

Dictatorship is certainly possible, though the fact that Gen Z is now
voting and has (with the Millennials aka Gen Y) counteracted crazy,
panicky, nativist Boomer bullshit for two elections in a row is
encouraging.  Of course, this could be stopped by sabotaging elections,
which is of course the plan (along with other badness).

Civil War II Electric Boogaloo, despite Turner Diaries[2] fantasies, is
made so far lastingly unlikely because the famous "sorting" is resulting
in not a patchwork but rather a lumpy stew, lots of small red/blue
tartan work with inseparaable interweaving, rather than a checkerboard.

I'm not, of course, underestimating your Florida's ability to go
uniquely crazy, as that's always the smart way to bet.


[1] The next few years _are_ going to have some inconveniences because,
exactly at the time when there is a _huge_ trend towards
reshoring/friend-shoring/near-shoring of industry, capital has suddenly 
become sharply more expensive and in short supply, for (again)
demographic reasons that will probably remain true in the USA for about
the next several decades to some degree, because we like the rest of the
developed world (but _nowhere near_ as badly as most of it) are going
retiree-heavy for a while.

[2] I've read it, by the way.  Pretty dreadful.  IMO, the white-sheet
guys need to find better fantasy authors.