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The thing that kind of bothers me most is that he hasn't considered how much of his (and silicon valley's and the oligarches he defends) worldview might be the

The thing that kind of bothers me most is that he hasn't considered how much of his (and silicon valley's and the oligarches he defends) worldview might be the result of disinformation operations in and of themselves. IF China is amoral and doesn't see anything wrong with lying, why wouldn't they have an operation running to get the US to deindustrialize themselves and give up their manufacturing base to overseas countries, mainly China? It's like this guy is shocked, shocked to find out that gambling is going on at Rick's American Cafe.

staticman2 6y ago
Also if an intellectual property law is passed to benefit the silicon valley establishment as a result of silicon valley lobbying it is apparently not "cheating". Cheating is when those bad foreigners don't care about those intellectual property laws.
iforgotpassword 6y ago
Since his message is mostly that you should prepare for China rising, and that the US should put a huge load of focus on education, I think ultimately it doesn't matter whether the current decline of the country like the rapidly growing number of conspiracy theorists is a highly successful Chinese operation or not; the outcome and call to action is the same, while adding unnecessary speculation that would further derail discussion about the article. Half the comments here on hn are what Steve explicitly asked people to put aside for a moment: Trying to invalidate China's achievements by pointing out how evil they are, or how some news outlet somewhere ran a story on how they're not really lifting people out of poverty etcpp., so you conveniently don't even have to deal with the idea of China being the one running the show one day.
- cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
  I'm not saying "OMG China is evil..." I'm suggesting that the Silicon Valley Gleichschaltung, of All Heavy Industry Is Evil and we'll just ignore the fact that we haven't banished it from the world, just exported it from the United States to China, all the while pretending to save the world from global warming, has been a huge contributor to the process. "Better Education" isn't going to help if it's just maleducation in things that don't help, and trying to build up the corporations that helped get us in this mess because their worldview can't really handle manufacturing probably won't help either.
  - iforgotpassword 6y ago
    > I'm not saying "OMG China is evil..." Sorry, I didn't mean your comment specifically, it didn't come across as such to me. > "Better Education" isn't going to help if it's just maleducation in things that don't help Well if we're at a point where people believe 5G caused Coronavirus, Bill Gates wants to implant microchips into people to control their minds and so on, I think almost any education helps. ;) The article puts it quite well, there seems to be an anti-education, anti-science movement going on, and if you look at history, it wouldn't be the first time that an advanced civilization somehow turns around 180° and starts rejecting science and turns to religion and superstition, even without the help of externally seeded misinformation. > and trying to build up the corporations that helped get us in this mess because their worldview can't really handle manufacturing probably won't help either. For now just letting them be and, as the article suggest as well, milking them for that sweet tax money that could go into education would be a start. That also doesn't exclude regulating them in other ways.

staticman2 6y ago

Also if an intellectual property law is passed to benefit the silicon valley establishment as a result of silicon valley lobbying it is apparently not "cheating". Cheating is when those bad foreigners don't care about those intellectual property laws.

iforgotpassword 6y ago

Since his message is mostly that you should prepare for China rising, and that the US should put a huge load of focus on education, I think ultimately it doesn't matter whether the current decline of the country like the rapidly growing number of conspiracy theorists is a highly successful Chinese operation or not; the outcome and call to action is the same, while adding unnecessary speculation that would further derail discussion about the article. Half the comments here on hn are what Steve explicitly asked people to put aside for a moment: Trying to invalidate China's achievements by pointing out how evil they are, or how some news outlet somewhere ran a story on how they're not really lifting people out of poverty etcpp., so you conveniently don't even have to deal with the idea of China being the one running the show one day.

cheaprentalyeti 6y ago
I'm not saying "OMG China is evil..." I'm suggesting that the Silicon Valley Gleichschaltung, of All Heavy Industry Is Evil and we'll just ignore the fact that we haven't banished it from the world, just exported it from the United States to China, all the while pretending to save the world from global warming, has been a huge contributor to the process. "Better Education" isn't going to help if it's just maleducation in things that don't help, and trying to build up the corporations that helped get us in this mess because their worldview can't really handle manufacturing probably won't help either.
- iforgotpassword 6y ago
  > I'm not saying "OMG China is evil..." Sorry, I didn't mean your comment specifically, it didn't come across as such to me. > "Better Education" isn't going to help if it's just maleducation in things that don't help Well if we're at a point where people believe 5G caused Coronavirus, Bill Gates wants to implant microchips into people to control their minds and so on, I think almost any education helps. ;) The article puts it quite well, there seems to be an anti-education, anti-science movement going on, and if you look at history, it wouldn't be the first time that an advanced civilization somehow turns around 180° and starts rejecting science and turns to religion and superstition, even without the help of externally seeded misinformation. > and trying to build up the corporations that helped get us in this mess because their worldview can't really handle manufacturing probably won't help either. For now just letting them be and, as the article suggest as well, milking them for that sweet tax money that could go into education would be a start. That also doesn't exclude regulating them in other ways.