I think they are stupid for broadcasting the program and threatening Israel with it.
Believe people when they tell you what they are going to do. Even if Iran wouldn’t use it if they had it, threatening to use it shifts the probability for them using it.
I really think the incoherence of modern reform movements (Occupy, BLM, Defund Police, etc) is the result of modern political suppression groups having enough tools in their toolbox to eliminate leaders of these movements.
Without a strong voice, the movement devolves into contradictory platforms, which results in no action.
Krugman discussing the Internet might be like geohot discussing economics.
Or are you referring to the fact that he said it didn’t show up as having caused growth in the underlying economic data? I think he was pointing out something quantitative at the time, and in recent years he speculated that the strong growth in US GDP was finally reflecting efficiency and productivity gains from IT and the Internet. (The US’s strong growth until very very recently was an outgrowth of strong and rare increases in worker productivity.)
Most of this narrative comes from Mike Benz who is a former State Department employee that has began trying to educate people on some of the shadier aspects of US Diplomacy. A major facet that he talks about is how the US combines NGOs and non-government investment in order to achieve diplomatic goals.
After the 2014 invasion, the US realized that breaking EU dependence on Russia natural gas would put a serious dent in Putin's wallet.
In response, various groups within the military industrial complex decided to invest into Burisma, where Hunter Biden was oddly a board member with little experience. Burisma's goal was to develop the mineral and natural gas deposits in the Donbas region. Ultimately, Burisma was prevented from this mission because of the 2022 war.
The US is not going to help defend Taiwan is a fair thesis, but reciprocally, China is not going to attack Taiwan.
Even if Russia gets all of it's demands in the peacemaking process with Ukraine, that war has done permanent and lasting damage to it's economy and global position. For China to attack Taiwan, it would give up any hope of continuing it's healthy trends towards increased economic and political importance.
Eventually, Taiwan will re-join China when it is sufficiently strong. It's symbolism as a continued humiliation by the west is more useful as propaganda than an actual military target.
> that war has done permanent and lasting damage to it's economy and global position
Assuming the Ukraine is forced to surrender and Russia keeps the territories, Russia's reputation will increase. They'll be able to say they fought NATO and won. Even today, people say with a serious face that Ukraine started the war and many believe it.
Russia is damaged, but if it's allowed to win, it will recover and become a beacon for the global authoritarians/south.
Unfortunately, dictators don't care much about damage to it's economy as long as they continue to be in power. When they expand and occupy more land, they will look very good in their country's history book which is a huge motivation for dictators. That's the reason why nobody thought Putin would seriously consider invasion but he did. And China will definitely attack Taiwan when the timing is right. Even if a million people dies, Xi would still be considered a hero by most chinese people if he took back Taiwan.
It remains to be seen if the person I think you are referring to is a non-dictator. He said he would be a "dictator on day one", and he sure was, but then he somehow forgot to revert to non-dictator mode...
Regarding "crashing real estate": actually, most other countries would love to have built enough to bring down real estate prices. Being able to afford a place to live is good for most people! But of course, investing in real estate makes you interested into increasing the value of your property, so you're now incentivized to stop more real estate being built (and also to stop anything else that might decrease the value of your property - thus NIMBYism).
Russia is out of the AI race. That has been lost and there's no way to reverse it.
If Russia wouldn't have started a war, it could have focused on building huge datacenters. It has all the energy it would have needed, now all it can do with it is sell it to China for cheap.
"Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind," [...] "It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world."
The US is not going to defend Taiwan because of chips, but China is also not going to attack Taiwan because of chips - if they do, they'll attack it for the same reason Putin attacked Ukraine: an "us vs them" mentality helps keep dictators in power, and nothing creates such a mentality better than a war. We can only hope that China is sensible enough to see the downsides too, but the current international climate is not a real deterrent. And I have to admit China has a better claim to Taiwan than Russia to Ukraine - they never recognized Taiwan's independence, while Russia (together with the US and the UK) agreed in 1994 to guarantee Ukraine's security in exchange for it renouncing the ex-USSR nuclear weapons stationed on its territory (https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082124528/ukraine-russia-put...) - and now they're "guaranteeing their security" by invading them.
Putin was popular in Russia in 2022 and his domestic enemies were weak. Putin didn't need a war to hold on to power. Wars are sometimes fought to distract from domestic problems, but that wasn't the case here. Putin has argued for more than 20 years that the Russia/Ukraine border was not determined correctly when the USSR fell and that the 1991 borders were "unfair" to Russia. Add to that Ukraine's cultural shift away from Russia, messy elections, NATO, and the belief that Russia would easily defeat Ukraine and it's pretty clear why Putin decided to invade in 2022. No reason to hypothesize alternative theories. Putin is still very popular especially among older generations despite the heavy cost of the war.
> continuing it's healthy trends towards increased economic and political importance.
They "just" need to flip the script: be the single superpower that all countries are dependant upon, and then take over Taiwan. And then announce "Does anyone have something to say about what I just did?", and enjoy the silence. Already China is investing all over Africa, buying their compliance (which is what the US also did in the past).
Thanks to Daddy Issues 1 (Musk) and 2 (Trump) in the White House, their path just got a lot easier.
The response of the Russian 2014 invasion of Crimea was also quite muted because the EU was dependant on Russia's energy..
I can't tell if this is serious or tongue in cheek and I find that both funny and deeply discouraging about the state of the world. For some reason it's giving me Rick and Morty butter robot vibes.
Maybe they are uprooting people's lives to see if they can get them to quit because the employment protections for FBI agents are likely too strong for a layoff or too many people balked at firing J6 investigators.
Likely, they would still conduct the same operations they did in DC, and they can justify the cost savings by having employees allocated to a cheaper COL area. A lot of law enforcement is clerical type work
Absolutely my first thought. This absolutely Silicon Valley-style "layoffs in disguise," like a lot of the "back to the office" ultimatums aimed at remote workers.
I am going to say something a bit controversial around here, but all of this E2E and security stuff is just lip service for marketing to consumers.
These companies have to comply with so many laws and want cozy relationships with governments, so they play both sides. It likely does things differently, but if the keys are not secure, then its not secured
Believe people when they tell you what they are going to do. Even if Iran wouldn’t use it if they had it, threatening to use it shifts the probability for them using it.
Khomeini isn’t on Kim jong un’s level
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