I don’t see any news to corroborate that claim. Link?

As a Trump-hating American working in defense, I always tried to tell people that our economic dominance was enforced with the barrel of a gun. Friends working in international relations would also reference books like “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” that also pointed to usage of the CIA and international lending terms to enrich ourselves at the expanse of the 3rd world, especially Latin America. I completely agree that a capricious, bi-polar US is an untenable world leader.

But in general, it’s very hard to get most Americans to care about our relationships and interactions with the rest of the world, much less acknowledge the ways we are dependent on it. There is some US-centric vanity involved, as well as some stubborn ignorance due to never interacting with the rest of the world at all. But I think in part it’s also due to the hyper competitive nature of simply trying to live in the US, such that there is no brainspace for anything not directly affecting you. Stressors include corporate expectations that everyone should live to work, so many people a few paychecks away from losing their homes and lifestyle with no social safety net, the struggle to afford to live in areas with good schools for your kids, etc etc. In some ways, I’m hopeful that losing global pre-eminence could make life easier for us, especially if it brings about government reform (I don’t mean the MAGA version of this, obviously).

China, the obvious successor to American influence, assuming a more commanding role on the world stage is a mixed bag. On one hand, they certainly prize stability above almost everything, and an authoritarian state run by technocrats indeed seems more effective at addressing climate change than a Corporatocracy that profits from destroying the planet. On the other, there’s not even acknowledgement of unethical practices (e.g.: labor conditions in Chinese companies in DRC, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) when there is no free press. As the US spread it’s influence and democracy after WWII, I kind of worry that the entire world may be forced to get in line with the CCP.

I think you are misreading my tone. I’m not proud or excited about the changes in the US; I’m just stating a fact about the size and capacity of our existing military.

I don’t know if you’re Canadian or Mexican, but the two countries combined only have a little over a quarter of the number of military personnel of the US. Population-wise, the two countries have about half the population of the US, which, while it’s more competitive than current enlisted numbers, still limits your total military size and more importantly, your industrial production of military equipment (presuming the war drags on long enough for all sides to have time to ramp up).

China has more bodies to throw at us and a vastly deeper reserve of production capacity. They also are one of the few countries to already have their own military industry (equipment wholly divorced from the US supply chain and manufacturers). Demographically, all of Europe acting together might have a chance, but they consistently fail to act as a unit and they are aging faster than the US.

Anyway, all of this is justification for a quip which was not my main point. My main point is that the US will have to get itself out of this. Though, I did issue a plea somewhere else for certain countries to perform extrajudicial renditions of their malevolent billionaires that got exported here. That would help us.

I think it’s more that a huge chunk of the population have externally defined morality and thus are very malleable. Many many people do not enjoy the hard work of figuring out their own self-consistent views of right and wrong. So they let their culture define it for them, which the people in charge are more than happy to do. So when the prevailing culture told them it was wrong to be racist against black Americans, they believed it. And now that the culture they stew in tells them (e.g.) black Americans are lazy moochers, they believe that.

Look, as an American, all I’m asking for is a little extrajudicial redition of Musk and Thiel by South Africa. If we could just get rid of some of the malevolent billionaires that have made the pilgrimage to the land of greed, we might stand a chance of holding on to some of our civil liberties.

Don’t you worry. Civil War is still on the horizon. Gotta see how 2026 goes.

No one is coming to bail us out of fascism. The only country with enough military power to oppose us on our own soil is China, and that is diametrically opposed to their historical stance on foreign policy.

You’ll do well to shore up your own Democracies against the tide of foreign-backed propaganda and billionaire oligarchs.

TSA and Customs both scan your face instead of your ID/ passport now for adults. It seems like the government has confidence in it?

As if he’d ever see a kid walking in front of that thing.

I guess you’ve never have neighbors with bamboo!

It has long since become a problem for every neighbor that borders their yard. I’ve been digging the runners our of my yard since we moved in 8 years ago, and I’m about ready to spend ~$10k on remediation (burying a wall that the roots can’t penetrate).

It is not native and grows out of control where I live. It takes over acres too densely for anything else to grow.

Can we harvest bamboo to extinction next?! Starting with my neighbor’s yard…

As a parent: happiness is about expectations. The exhuberance of youth can carry them as long as we aren’t preparing them for the halcyon, easy days of the 1990s. Life will be hard, it always has been, but there can still be fun and rewarding experiences. They need to know resilience, independence, and be quick on their feet both mentally and physically.

There are many Great Filters, but this one is mine (ours).

Sure, but whether you’re talking about military might or economic might, more people is more leverage. That was my point.

This “too dangerous to exist” argument is seemingly more true for nuclear technology, but the world recognized the threat and came together to manage it.

I will grant you that database and ability to search it lends itself easily to popular oppression, but it still requires thinking, breathing humans to do the oppressing.

Most technology is not dangerous without psychopaths in power, and damn near everything is dangerous with psychopaths in power.

I came here to make this comment less cogently. You have it exactly.

Now, does it violate US law and multiple Executive Orders to search the database to get dirt on US Citizens and use it against their election campaign? Yes. Yes it does. But this administration thinks laws are for sissies.

I think the argument to make space for them is more practical than compassionate. WTF are we going to do if we just refuse to speak to or have any dealings with 1/3 of the working age population. Are we relocating all Trump voters South of Virginia and splitting the Union here?

Setting aside our own authoritarian problems for a second, if you want to have a wealthy country that can oppose authoritarian regimes (like China and Russia), you need all 350 million of us. (And you need Europe, India, and democratic Asia on board, perhaps even some middle eastern countries, all people you may have philosophical differences with that you have to learn to work with).

The US has needed rank choice voting since Nixon at least.

I’m not a Luddite in general, but as for AI I will probably only use it as necessary in the workplace. So far the main LLM AI I have gotten any use out of is Google’s Gemini. It lists the citations of its facts when I ask it physics questions, and it seems like there is some kind of filter on the quality of the sources than can be cited. Mostly it cities professional publications, Wikipedia, etc.

I don’t think Google is currently winning the AI arms race (not do i think they have stood by their initial mantra of ‘Don’t be evil’), but it seems like that should be the gold standard. And Google/Alphabet was also the company responsible for Alpha Fold, IMO the most impressive application of learning algorithms to date.