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Damn I wish the waning of US soft power felt like a positive thing to me; the CIA, along with the DEA, has been one of the more powerful criminal networks on th

Damn I wish the waning of US soft power felt like a positive thing to me; the CIA, along with the DEA, has been one of the more powerful criminal networks on the planet since its inception in the mid 20th C. It doesn't feel like the US gov is moving away from the soft-power/understated action stuff because the US gov is somehow committed to being less evil. It feels to me like they don't feel like it's as useful as the application simple hard power. That feels a little horrifying to me.

supjeff 9mo ago
How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? For the most part, the truth is trump's enemy. as far as he can control it, it's better for his to be the only authoritative voice. If he says Australia is full of muslims and bad hombres, he doesn't need the CIA contradicting him.
- exe34 9mo ago
  It gives me hope that Trump will replace the top generals and a few layers down with yes-men who will spend the military budget on coke and then the US will be less of a threat to the rest of the world. Another Russia is not a good thing, but it's better than a mad man at the top of the most powerful military in history.
  - simonh 9mo ago
    What were getting is another Russia with the full military and economic might of the US.
    - red-iron-pine 9mo ago
      and a demonstrated willingness to use it -- e.g. Venezuela
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      A number that is soon to approach zero, everyone hopes. It could happen. The world is dedollarizing as a direct consequence of the trade war.
  - georgemcbay 9mo ago
    > It gives me hope that Trump will replace the top generals and a few layers down with yes-men who will spend the military budget on coke and then the US will be less of a threat to the rest of the world. I realize this is kind of a joke, but... The US will continue to be the most powerful military in history for a very long time even with a highly incompetent top-layer. It will just have less people with the wisdom and power to push back on the president's worst impulses. Unfortunately(?) there's not enough coke in the world to put much of a dent in our current military spending (which they hope to increase even further to 1.5 trillion dollars in 2027). And if the price of coke ever did become a problem, well the US now believes it reserves the right to the entire western hemisphere which includes Columbia... On a more serious note there is also likely to be a rapid burst of nuclear proliferation across the globe as everyone else adjusts to this new reality sans the traditional post-WW II world order. On the current Trump path the world is going to get far more dangerous and chaotic, not less.
    - wat10000 9mo ago
      What's really fun is that conventional weapons can protect you from a crazy aggressor if you're strong enough, but nuclear weapons may not. They only act as a deterrent, so they require your enemy to believe you'll use them, believe that they can't destroy all of them before you use them, and understand the horrible consequences of retaliation. I get the impression that Trump is pretty negative on nuclear weapons and I don't think he'd do something that could provoke nuclear retaliation. But I doubt he'll be our last mad king. I think the odds are pretty high of at least a small nuclear war within my lifetime. Even if the US keeps it together, proliferation means much higher odds of some idiot leader somewhere pressing the Button.
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      What happens if the US economy collapses and it can't muster the equivalent of 1.5 trillion of today's dollars at any price?
      - georgemcbay 9mo ago
        We may find out. But I'm pretty certain that outcome also wouldn't be a net positive for the rest of the world in the short or medium term. Very little of the rest of the world is insulated from the US economy.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? Broadly? A lot. Donald Trump is wickedly smart. So is Stephen Miller. Susie Wiles. Hegseth is an idiot, but he's Chip 'n' Dale to Marco Rubio. (Our planes aren't falling off our carriers any more. And the raid on Caracas was executed flawlessly. That isn't something numpties can pull off.)
  - esseph 9mo ago
    > Donald Trump is wickedly smart This is the exact opposite of what has been said about Trump by his "friends" in the Epstein files.
    - CaptWillard 9mo ago
      His "friends" like Reid Hoffman and Epstein himself? They do talk about Trump a lot in those files.
      - esseph 9mo ago
        There's about half a dozen or more comments about Trump's lack of intelligence or inability to focus from Epstein, Bannon, etc.
  - red-iron-pine 9mo ago
    > Donald Trump is wickedly smart. wut. this is a joke, right? Stephen Miller... maybe. He's mostly evil and shiftless, and willing to utilize any and all tools.
    - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
      > wut. this is a joke, right? No, it's not. He's smart. His political instincts are well honed. And he's good at surrounding himself with strategists. I'm not sure he's wickedly intelligent. And he's getting old, which cuts into his cleverness and memory. But his wit is quick (recall the Republican debates), retention used to be spectacular and has achieved things which you simply cannot do by being the bumbling dope he's sometimes characterised as.
learingsci 9mo ago
One can view the defensive realist perspective as another application of the 80/20 rule. It’s all economics. Debt determines many outcomes.
epsilonic 9mo ago
We're definitely going in the direction of "might is right". The "palantirization" of data stores (not just those for surveillance) is going to be an enabler of the "hard power" you're alluding to. This whole platform is probably a dragnet for identifying intelligent people with dissident views. Expect things to get uglier and stranger as well.
- exe34 9mo ago
  Project Insight. Hydra was growing inside S.H.I.E.L.D the entire time!
- Revolution1120 9mo ago
  Power also needs to be justified. Hitler is an example of "unjustifiable might." And all fools who want to promote Darwinism need to know that causing one's own extinction is far easier than causing one's own evolution. Evolution is merely a survivor bias, and Darwin's On the Origin of Species didn't analyze the patterns of extinction.The evolutionary pattern should be that only when you yourself are perfectly rational can you eliminate the irrational enemy. Some people are inherently irrational, yet they try to use Darwinian "survival of the fittest" as their belief to eliminate rational beings, ultimately leading only to their own extinction. This is what happened, is happening, and will happen.Might makes right is not an Rights; Rights are Rights. Might is might, and Right is Right. The statement "might makes right" is rife with literary folly.
  - epsilonic 9mo ago
    Book 1 of Plato: Republic demonstrates the folly of such thinking.
- scarecrowbob 9mo ago
  I mean, my hope is that the kids at the CIA read all my dumb postings here, report them to their old-men quattos, and try and flip me :D But I'd think that the folks with their hands on the big levers probably care less and less about that kind of thing; I'd imagine it's harder and harder to find the Foucault readers who might even care to collect and monitor dissident views because the newer folks figure all us stupid nerds will show up on flock and get nabbed once they've run out of brown folks to kidnap.
goda90 9mo ago
> It feels to me like they don't feel like it's as useful as the application simple hard power. Soft power is a hard power amplifier though. I don't think it's incompetence and ignorance about how to maintain and use power, I think it's intentional deconstruction of power so that others can fill the vacuum.
idle_zealot 9mo ago
> It feels to me like they don't feel like it's as useful as the application simple hard power. They do feel that way, but I think they're wrong. Pervasive soft power is a lot better for building stable systems of oppression than more overt shows of force. They're either really bad at, or not interested in (probably both) building anything. I don't think this period of brutal oppression they're gearing up for is going to last very long. People in the US react very poorly to roving bands of State goons.
- red-iron-pine 9mo ago
  this isn't 1820 -- most people's perception is via social media, and failing that, legacy media. which is why the big tech bros and the openAI execs donated money to Trump; "kiss the ring". it's why Larry Ellison desperately wants to buy CBS. recent posts show that 1/3 of the US electorate will still, in all likelihood, vote Republican, again, even after everything that has happened.
  - idle_zealot 9mo ago
    You're talking about that effective soft power, yes. There are some smarter authoritarians still maintaining it, but when things get overt it loses a lot of efficacy. We've swung from 1/2 to 1/3 support for Republicans, despite most people going about their lives more-or-less normally outside of one small city. So that swing is attributed to a failure of soft power. Check out opinions in Minneapolis to see what application of hard power looks like.
    - tremon 9mo ago
      > outside of one small city We're conveniently forgetting Chicago, Portland, Houston, Charlotte now?
      - scarecrowbob 9mo ago
        Ah damn, I thought they were talking about the "one small city" I live in in rural CO. Where where ICE kidnapped a bunch of folk who were legitimate parts of our community. Where my anarchistic line of "I have stopped caring about the law and have a hard moral boundary that if a person can live here and keep up a house and job and contribute to our community they are as 'legal' as anyone else" is starting to get a real hold even among my historically Democrat-voting friends. But yeah, I wouldn't forget those comparative metropolises, because I'd figure that the sentiment is even stronger where even more people can see the reality of which humans are being trafficked by the US gov.
mrexcess 9mo ago
[flagged]
iwontberude 9mo ago
It’s the incompetence and low-intelligence of our leaders that scares me most. We need actual clever people in office coming up with decentralized systems that work rather than the mentally deficient demagogues and liars coasting along collecting rent. Californian independence is the best way forward for us.
Revolution1120 9mo ago
Shouldn't the DEA be the weakest agency? Now that the drug problem requires the involvement of the Department of Homeland Security, the War Department, and the U.S. military, shouldn't the DEA be shut down?
gunapologist99 9mo ago
But in some ways publishing your opinions on other countries might be the equivalent of sharing your hand at the poker table, right? So this arguably strengthens the soft-power method as well. (OTOH, to your point: how you describe other countries is itself an exercise in soft power, so your point is well taken in that respect.)

supjeff 9mo ago

How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? For the most part, the truth is trump's enemy. as far as he can control it, it's better for his to be the only authoritative voice. If he says Australia is full of muslims and bad hombres, he doesn't need the CIA contradicting him.

exe34 9mo ago
It gives me hope that Trump will replace the top generals and a few layers down with yes-men who will spend the military budget on coke and then the US will be less of a threat to the rest of the world. Another Russia is not a good thing, but it's better than a mad man at the top of the most powerful military in history.
- simonh 9mo ago
  What were getting is another Russia with the full military and economic might of the US.
  - red-iron-pine 9mo ago
    and a demonstrated willingness to use it -- e.g. Venezuela
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    A number that is soon to approach zero, everyone hopes. It could happen. The world is dedollarizing as a direct consequence of the trade war.
- georgemcbay 9mo ago
  > It gives me hope that Trump will replace the top generals and a few layers down with yes-men who will spend the military budget on coke and then the US will be less of a threat to the rest of the world. I realize this is kind of a joke, but... The US will continue to be the most powerful military in history for a very long time even with a highly incompetent top-layer. It will just have less people with the wisdom and power to push back on the president's worst impulses. Unfortunately(?) there's not enough coke in the world to put much of a dent in our current military spending (which they hope to increase even further to 1.5 trillion dollars in 2027). And if the price of coke ever did become a problem, well the US now believes it reserves the right to the entire western hemisphere which includes Columbia... On a more serious note there is also likely to be a rapid burst of nuclear proliferation across the globe as everyone else adjusts to this new reality sans the traditional post-WW II world order. On the current Trump path the world is going to get far more dangerous and chaotic, not less.
  - wat10000 9mo ago
    What's really fun is that conventional weapons can protect you from a crazy aggressor if you're strong enough, but nuclear weapons may not. They only act as a deterrent, so they require your enemy to believe you'll use them, believe that they can't destroy all of them before you use them, and understand the horrible consequences of retaliation. I get the impression that Trump is pretty negative on nuclear weapons and I don't think he'd do something that could provoke nuclear retaliation. But I doubt he'll be our last mad king. I think the odds are pretty high of at least a small nuclear war within my lifetime. Even if the US keeps it together, proliferation means much higher odds of some idiot leader somewhere pressing the Button.
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    What happens if the US economy collapses and it can't muster the equivalent of 1.5 trillion of today's dollars at any price?
    - georgemcbay 9mo ago
      We may find out. But I'm pretty certain that outcome also wouldn't be a net positive for the rest of the world in the short or medium term. Very little of the rest of the world is insulated from the US economy.
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? Broadly? A lot. Donald Trump is wickedly smart. So is Stephen Miller. Susie Wiles. Hegseth is an idiot, but he's Chip 'n' Dale to Marco Rubio. (Our planes aren't falling off our carriers any more. And the raid on Caracas was executed flawlessly. That isn't something numpties can pull off.)
- esseph 9mo ago
  > Donald Trump is wickedly smart This is the exact opposite of what has been said about Trump by his "friends" in the Epstein files.
  - CaptWillard 9mo ago
    His "friends" like Reid Hoffman and Epstein himself? They do talk about Trump a lot in those files.
    - esseph 9mo ago
      There's about half a dozen or more comments about Trump's lack of intelligence or inability to focus from Epstein, Bannon, etc.
- red-iron-pine 9mo ago
  > Donald Trump is wickedly smart. wut. this is a joke, right? Stephen Miller... maybe. He's mostly evil and shiftless, and willing to utilize any and all tools.
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > wut. this is a joke, right? No, it's not. He's smart. His political instincts are well honed. And he's good at surrounding himself with strategists. I'm not sure he's wickedly intelligent. And he's getting old, which cuts into his cleverness and memory. But his wit is quick (recall the Republican debates), retention used to be spectacular and has achieved things which you simply cannot do by being the bumbling dope he's sometimes characterised as.

learingsci 9mo ago

One can view the defensive realist perspective as another application of the 80/20 rule. It’s all economics. Debt determines many outcomes.

epsilonic 9mo ago

We're definitely going in the direction of "might is right". The "palantirization" of data stores (not just those for surveillance) is going to be an enabler of the "hard power" you're alluding to. This whole platform is probably a dragnet for identifying intelligent people with dissident views. Expect things to get uglier and stranger as well.

exe34 9mo ago
Project Insight. Hydra was growing inside S.H.I.E.L.D the entire time!
Revolution1120 9mo ago
Power also needs to be justified. Hitler is an example of "unjustifiable might." And all fools who want to promote Darwinism need to know that causing one's own extinction is far easier than causing one's own evolution. Evolution is merely a survivor bias, and Darwin's On the Origin of Species didn't analyze the patterns of extinction.The evolutionary pattern should be that only when you yourself are perfectly rational can you eliminate the irrational enemy. Some people are inherently irrational, yet they try to use Darwinian "survival of the fittest" as their belief to eliminate rational beings, ultimately leading only to their own extinction. This is what happened, is happening, and will happen.Might makes right is not an Rights; Rights are Rights. Might is might, and Right is Right. The statement "might makes right" is rife with literary folly.
- epsilonic 9mo ago
  Book 1 of Plato: Republic demonstrates the folly of such thinking.
scarecrowbob 9mo ago
I mean, my hope is that the kids at the CIA read all my dumb postings here, report them to their old-men quattos, and try and flip me :D But I'd think that the folks with their hands on the big levers probably care less and less about that kind of thing; I'd imagine it's harder and harder to find the Foucault readers who might even care to collect and monitor dissident views because the newer folks figure all us stupid nerds will show up on flock and get nabbed once they've run out of brown folks to kidnap.

goda90 9mo ago

> It feels to me like they don't feel like it's as useful as the application simple hard power. Soft power is a hard power amplifier though. I don't think it's incompetence and ignorance about how to maintain and use power, I think it's intentional deconstruction of power so that others can fill the vacuum.

idle_zealot 9mo ago

> It feels to me like they don't feel like it's as useful as the application simple hard power. They do feel that way, but I think they're wrong. Pervasive soft power is a lot better for building stable systems of oppression than more overt shows of force. They're either really bad at, or not interested in (probably both) building anything. I don't think this period of brutal oppression they're gearing up for is going to last very long. People in the US react very poorly to roving bands of State goons.

red-iron-pine 9mo ago
this isn't 1820 -- most people's perception is via social media, and failing that, legacy media. which is why the big tech bros and the openAI execs donated money to Trump; "kiss the ring". it's why Larry Ellison desperately wants to buy CBS. recent posts show that 1/3 of the US electorate will still, in all likelihood, vote Republican, again, even after everything that has happened.
- idle_zealot 9mo ago
  You're talking about that effective soft power, yes. There are some smarter authoritarians still maintaining it, but when things get overt it loses a lot of efficacy. We've swung from 1/2 to 1/3 support for Republicans, despite most people going about their lives more-or-less normally outside of one small city. So that swing is attributed to a failure of soft power. Check out opinions in Minneapolis to see what application of hard power looks like.
  - tremon 9mo ago
    > outside of one small city We're conveniently forgetting Chicago, Portland, Houston, Charlotte now?
    - scarecrowbob 9mo ago
      Ah damn, I thought they were talking about the "one small city" I live in in rural CO. Where where ICE kidnapped a bunch of folk who were legitimate parts of our community. Where my anarchistic line of "I have stopped caring about the law and have a hard moral boundary that if a person can live here and keep up a house and job and contribute to our community they are as 'legal' as anyone else" is starting to get a real hold even among my historically Democrat-voting friends. But yeah, I wouldn't forget those comparative metropolises, because I'd figure that the sentiment is even stronger where even more people can see the reality of which humans are being trafficked by the US gov.

mrexcess 9mo ago

[flagged]

iwontberude 9mo ago

It’s the incompetence and low-intelligence of our leaders that scares me most. We need actual clever people in office coming up with decentralized systems that work rather than the mentally deficient demagogues and liars coasting along collecting rent. Californian independence is the best way forward for us.

Revolution1120 9mo ago

Shouldn't the DEA be the weakest agency? Now that the drug problem requires the involvement of the Department of Homeland Security, the War Department, and the U.S. military, shouldn't the DEA be shut down?

gunapologist99 9mo ago

But in some ways publishing your opinions on other countries might be the equivalent of sharing your hand at the poker table, right? So this arguably strengthens the soft-power method as well. (OTOH, to your point: how you describe other countries is itself an exercise in soft power, so your point is well taken in that respect.)