I'm not thinking from a global optimum mindset. I'm reading the actual DNI reports, I've talked with actual people in cyberwarfare (a major, even) and I've talk

I'm not thinking from a global optimum mindset. I'm reading the actual DNI reports, I've talked with actual people in cyberwarfare (a major, even) and I've talked with people in both the OSINT community and the SIGINT / COMINT community. I have a family member that works on blackers all day long for the government of Canada and I've gone to conferences on both attack (Infiltrate) and defence. China has a competitive advantage on creating tech at lower cost. America is awash in investment dollars, but has burdens that the Chinese do not have (IP, compliance, competition with other market participants like Google / Apple for the same talent) and it isn't realistic to keep our hopes on America or other western countries always matching the lowest cost. Some things need to be prioritized strictly because they're national security interests. Our media companies shouldn't be owned by state backed foreign interests, our defence companies shouldn't be, and our networking gear shouldn't be riddled with gear from a country like China that mass incarcerates people based on religion or ideology. I'm not saying things will be perfect if we keep China out of our 5G space—far from it—but the internet is essentially a nervous system for machines and if we allow their gear all over our networks it's going to be utilised against us. In an ideal world even a country like Canada would have their own networking gear providers, so that if a country like the USA slides into despotism we wouldn't have to worry about getting strong armed, but we're far from that ideal scenario and I'm only hoping for less of a bad bargain than we're likely to find ourselves in 20 years from now.