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There's no conspiracy. Mostly think tanks, policy circles, and White House wonks over every successive Internet-age administration. All segments of the U.S. go

There's no conspiracy. Mostly think tanks, policy circles, and White House wonks over every successive Internet-age administration. All segments of the U.S. government pay close attention to, among many people, geopolitical analysis of all stripes, who can help them understand how to remain the world hegemon. The U.S. frequently commissions studies by outfits like Booz Allen Hamilton on geopolitical matters (you can browse the "DoD Reading Room" to read plenty of the these thanks to FOIA requests[0]). "Breaking them up would hurt the U.S." isn't just a lobbyist argument, it's deeply understood at all levels of the government. The White House absolutely understands that Silicon Valley is part of the U.S.'s soft power, draws plenty of international students to the U.S., and helps the U.S.'s cultural hegemony. It's not just about the most popular social networks and search engine "belonging to them" (though that's obviously important, and an advantage no rational nation would give up); Google and Meta's R&D spending are also huge elements of the U.S.'s "artificial intelligence dominance" over China, and the U.S. will never break them up simply because it sees AI-dominance as one of the most important elements of its geopolitical strategy. It's easy to get the impression that the government mostly deals with domestic politics; but at its root, it is deeply and overwhelmingly concerned with fundamental strategic questions. The government cares deeply about U.S. universities remaining the world's best; about immigration remaining high (Republican administrations too) so that it can attract as much skilled labor as possible, grow the economy, compete with China's 1.4B population, and avoid an aging population that would decimate the economy for decades. Policy debates "inside the government" bear very little resemblence to the TV version the American citizenry is obsessed with. [0]: see, for example, "The Future of Europe", a 177 page evaluation of Europe's future economic, industrial, demographic, and political trends. https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Litigation_Release/Litigation%20Release%20-%20The%20Future%20of%20Europe-Final%20Report%20%20201304.pdf https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20... After you read it, you'll understand that the "policy debates" the masses are exposed to have very little resemblence with what preoccupies decisionmakers! The government, no matter the administration, is far more rigorous and strategic than people give it credit for.

Schroedingersat 4y ago
The most maddening thing is how little other governments seem to care about it it. Forcing windows, android, and ios on your citizens and gifting silicon valley a constant worldwide surveillance feed is incredibly harmful to long term interests. Forcing every business to use office365 to interact with any government office is a 1% income tax gifted to the american economy.
- concinds 4y ago
  The U.S. would never allow the EU to ban American web services to try to foster European innovation like China's doing. They have strong ways to enforce this including by starting a trade war. But there's no reason for countries like India not to do it. Russia did it; it's not just massive countries that can get away with it.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    No need to ban it. Just stop enforcing it by only allowing access to government services (or any services during covid) via apps only on play and ios stores. Stop mandating teams for business communication with any government department. Stop publishing things in closed formats. Could even mandate that any inter-operation occurs over open protocols with at least two implementations (many governments even have this policy for essential systems, they just forget to enforce it around microsoft).
AshamedCaptain 4y ago
> After you read it, you'll understand that the "policy debates" the masses are exposed to have very little resemblence with what preoccupies decisionmakers! The government, no matter the administration, is far more rigorous and strategic than people give it credit for. In this case the example document you quote is rather poorly chosen and does not really seem "rigorous" at all. Most if not all topics the document touches are basically the same that monopolize "policy debates" everywhere all 24h of the day (immigration, nationalism, welfare, and immigration. did I say immigration?), and the conclusions are defended as poorly as your average comment from Reddit. The document does not even get the names of many regions and cities correctly; the grammar is at many points terrible; many of the figures and charts look as if made with Paint, and whenever they are not, they are screen-scrapped from random websites and then poorly JPEG recompressed. Heck, at some point they even use Google Trends as source... My humble opinion about these "think tank" reports that get "leaked" is that they use "commissioned by X government" just to advertise themselves, and it's either false or meaningless. I'm quite sure that the "serious" government analysis, if they exist, don't get leaked since that would probably immediately ruin all the predictions.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

The most maddening thing is how little other governments seem to care about it it. Forcing windows, android, and ios on your citizens and gifting silicon valley a constant worldwide surveillance feed is incredibly harmful to long term interests. Forcing every business to use office365 to interact with any government office is a 1% income tax gifted to the american economy.

concinds 4y ago
The U.S. would never allow the EU to ban American web services to try to foster European innovation like China's doing. They have strong ways to enforce this including by starting a trade war. But there's no reason for countries like India not to do it. Russia did it; it's not just massive countries that can get away with it.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  No need to ban it. Just stop enforcing it by only allowing access to government services (or any services during covid) via apps only on play and ios stores. Stop mandating teams for business communication with any government department. Stop publishing things in closed formats. Could even mandate that any inter-operation occurs over open protocols with at least two implementations (many governments even have this policy for essential systems, they just forget to enforce it around microsoft).

AshamedCaptain 4y ago

> After you read it, you'll understand that the "policy debates" the masses are exposed to have very little resemblence with what preoccupies decisionmakers! The government, no matter the administration, is far more rigorous and strategic than people give it credit for. In this case the example document you quote is rather poorly chosen and does not really seem "rigorous" at all. Most if not all topics the document touches are basically the same that monopolize "policy debates" everywhere all 24h of the day (immigration, nationalism, welfare, and immigration. did I say immigration?), and the conclusions are defended as poorly as your average comment from Reddit. The document does not even get the names of many regions and cities correctly; the grammar is at many points terrible; many of the figures and charts look as if made with Paint, and whenever they are not, they are screen-scrapped from random websites and then poorly JPEG recompressed. Heck, at some point they even use Google Trends as source... My humble opinion about these "think tank" reports that get "leaked" is that they use "commissioned by X government" just to advertise themselves, and it's either false or meaningless. I'm quite sure that the "serious" government analysis, if they exist, don't get leaked since that would probably immediately ruin all the predictions.