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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 22, 2024

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Thirdly, the Friday deadline is probably China's last warning; there was a last Wednesday deadline that's come and gone too. While this assuredly represents a decline in the federal state capacity, that's the bigger story than border posturing.

The funny thing about calling it China's last warning is that the PRC is assuredly watching for signs of chaos in the USA.

Well yes, they definitely are, and I'd have pointed to debt shenanigans as a bigger concern to their "watching for chaos in the USA" desk at Chinese state security previously to this. But there's probably some frantic intelligence reports being generated in Beijing and Moscow right now.