This whole affair is pretty much a culmination in failure of the great thought experiment that started in the 1990s - that the spread of capitalism and trade wi

This whole affair is pretty much a culmination in failure of the great thought experiment that started in the 1990s - that the spread of capitalism and trade with dictatorships and authoritarian regimes would undermine those venues and lead to the rise of democracy and other freedoms by opening them to the world. Instead what we've found is we just grant those entities legitimacy and influence over our own affairs, while letting them change not at all. Wealth and power without any of the requisite social development. We've got China building the Great Internet Firewall specifically to keep Western ideas out but let the money come in, and we've allowed our tech companies to freely supply them the equipment and skills to do it.