>It really is interesting to see the conversation here framed so narrowly within an understanding of China as some comical all powerful, omniscient entity comin

>It really is interesting to see the conversation here framed so narrowly within an understanding of China as some comical all powerful, omniscient entity coming to steal your children. I'm not sure we read the same transcript? Part of the second quarter of the seminar is spent talking about how China is so obsessed with their surveillance state because they, perhaps, perceive their situation as weak or fragile. This makes a lot of sense to me, and checks out with how other authoritarian states have behaved in the past. It's not even that profound of an observation if you couch it in the context of the larger history of 20th century totalitarian regimes. There's a burgeoning nervousness that exists on both sides, the West (broadly defined) and China, about the access to high tech semiconductors. All of that represents a discussion of weakness or single points of failure for both parties here. Since Thiel and Pompeo are such polarizing characters, to say the least, perhaps it's helpful to read things like this and imagine different names there in the transcript. A lot of this is just old fashioned Realpolitik, which I get it it's kind of frowned upon today for reasons that don't really make much sense to me, but it's just another IR lens to use to look at what is a return to Great Power Conflict.