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Noah Smith: Manufacturing is a war now

noahpinion.blog

Industrial policy has been a frequent subject on Smith's blog, for those who don't follow it. (He's for it, and thinks that Biden's industrial policy was mostly good - it's worth following the links in this post.) This post focuses on defense-related geopolitical industrial policy goals and pros and cons of anticipated changes under the incoming Trump administration and Chinese responses. Particularly, he highlights two major things China can do: Restrict exports of raw materials (recently announced) and use their own industrial policy to hamper the West's peacetime industrial policy (de facto policy of the last 30 years). These are not extraordinary insights, but it's a good primer on the current state of affairs and policies to pay attention to in the near-future.

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Ah yes, such agency, much wow. Supporting Nazi larping snipers and having CIA handlers on the ground, very democracy, lots of self determination. Russia also wouldn't be invading Ukraine if NATO wasn't trying to cut them off the black sea.

and genocide the Ukrainian nation

If they wanted to genocide the Ukrainin nation they would have nuked it already.

Russia also wouldn't be invading Ukraine if NATO wasn't trying to cut them off the black sea.

NATO was planning on taking Krasnodar Krai? That's a new one to me.

Nazi larping snipers

There's a weird overlap between wokes, who think everyone right wing is a Nazi, and Russian nationalists, who think anyone who doesn't want Russia to invade them is a Nazi.

For clarity, Nazi refers to the National Socialist German Workers Party, which was in power in Germany in the 1930s and 40s. Using it outside of that is just a lazy slur and the kind of thing we try to avoid on this site.

CIA handlers on the ground

Do you genuinely believe that if the CIA hadn't had any involvement, the Maidan wouldn't have happened and the Ukrainian people would have happily seen their country tied to the poor dictatorship to the East rather than the wealthy democracies to the West? You really think a handful of intelligence agents have so much power that they are able to control the actions of hundreds of thousands of people who would otherwise have done nothing?

There are always dissatisfied factions in any country. As the country’s condition worsen, dissenting factions become stronger, but I’m pretty sure foreign support can significantly affect: a) which dissenting faction ends up on top, b) whether they’re strong enough to beat the existing government.

These things are exponential, like avalanches, or pandemics. That’s why repression almost always aims to wipe out dissidents when they’re weak and isolated.

It seems entirely plausible to me that no US support = no Maidan revolution.

Why would no US support for a primarily European supported pro-European movement mean no European support for a pro-European movement?