...Highly disagree. China can (and has) manipulate the hearts and minds of the American public—skewing their biases in a way that creates internal chaos and dissent, disrupting institutional order, and sewing distrust of thy neighbor. They've been doing this for at least a decade now, and have played a silent hand in reshaping American politics. If (when) a conflict arises, trust that they will use this tool to manipulate the electorate in a way that benefits them in a zero sum way.
>China can (and has) manipulate the hearts and minds of the American public—skewing their biases in a way that creates internal chaos and dissent, disrupting institutional order, and sewing distrust of thy neighbor
Nothing a tin-foil hat can't prevent
As if the public needed any manipulation. You can just read what actual public figures, journalists, and such have been openly saying for the last 15-20 years...
When a long-time political player, wife of a President, and presidential candidate calls a big chunk of the population "deplorables", when opposing candidates call for the jailing or even shooting of their opponent, or when the current President is saying what he says and doing what he does, you need more to get "chaos" and "distrust of the neighbor"?
No tin-foil hat needed. There is published research documenting that this is happening [0] on certain topics and there is a lot of reason to believe it is happening in others. Yes, I'm not saying China is the only source of the state of our domestic discontent; but it's fuel to the fire and will be used against us at times in the future when we need national cohesion. See also [1] a 60 minutes episode on a related thread of China infiltrating the US in other ways.
Two things can be true at the same time. It's not just China. Russia does it. So does Israel, many countries, as well as many institutions in the US, both public and private.
It's no secret they do this, they openly discuss it. The things they want can differ but they want to convince you of things. That's obvious.
What makes the game easy for political adversaries (both foreign and domestic) is they don't need to convince the public of a certain thing, they just drive contention. What many people call "engagement". You can see this in 2016 with Russia doing things like forming Facebook groups to spur on protests along with groups to organize counter protests to the protest they helped create. They're not trying to make you pro Russia or pro communist so much as just cause America to be chaotic, ensuring people care less when they do things like invade Ukraine. You also see it in the current administration which, developing the belief in a deep state and saying crazy things left and right so that nothing is to be believed and you're constantly distracted. While we're all talking about Greenland we're not talking about Epstein. Every week it's something new. Even Bannon discussed this strategy early on: throw a million things at them and they'll only be able to focus on a few. It's no surprise this creates chaos and confusion. We argue about the things not being discussed as if it's hidden information rather than logistic overload but there's also not a meaningful difference
The point isn't to convince you, it's to make you exhausted and apathetic
Damn, imagine if an Australian or a South African billionaire did that with big media companies, oh well, that's just a weird thought, nothing to take from that.
> skewing their biases in a way that creates internal chaos and dissent, disrupting institutional order, and sewing distrust of thy neighbor.
I don't really have respect for this idea; we do this to ourselves far more effectively than people who frankly have a pretty hamfisted cultural understanding- just as we have of china or russia.
IMO influence over real concrete choices is much more alarming. Someone with household-level information has an insane amount of advantage in an election. You can target politcal messaging street by street to play up the worst aspects of your opposed candidate and the least repulsive aspects of your own candidate.
But if you're in china, the most you can do is try to push towards whatever of the two candidates is least bad for you. And spoiler, zero american politicians are pro-china.
This is the difficulty with propaganda- you have to tailor it to a foreign audience but then the message is changed.
America has been trying to spread it's way of life for a hundred years. People liked the fridges and cars but never cared much for the Christianity and croony capitalism.
> And spoiler, zero american politicians are pro-china.
..Other than, well possibly, Trump. Maybe not directly, but the Tiktok deal, withdrawing from the TPP, the eventual outcome of the trade war, the praise for Xi—all stands to benefit China at the expense of the US.
> I don't really have respect for this idea; we do this to ourselves far more effectively than people who frankly have a pretty hamfisted cultural understanding- just as we have of china or russia.
Outside competition allows progress because we have been shown time and time again that the US will just not solve its problems without outside pressure. I'd also argue that any other country in its position would act the same. For example when the USSR was actively competing with the US, they could easily lob a major criticism of the US in capturing 'hearts and minds' of other nations: "Look at how they treat their minorities. Do you really want to work with those people?"
Yes there were very active causes and groups in the US to correct this issue, but that outside pressure forced leadership to be nudged towards corrective action and I wonder if the USSR hadn't been there would we have gotten Civil Rights legislation passed when we did?
Maybe the same will happen with China showing the US how fast they can get stuff done and what they provide as benefits to their citizens vs a declining US. Already TikTok has helped Gen-Z realize how Israel gets so many benefits (universal healthcare, college tuition, benefits for birthing kids etc.) while the US is in massive debt and continues to send money to Israel. That continued propaganda may lead to an eventual backlash and subsequent reform.
US aid to Israel is about 0.05% of the federal budget, and around 3% of Israel’s state budget. That’s nowhere near enough to fund healthcare in either country.
I never said it did but the point is that it is money that does not need to go there when we are trillions in debt already. For years whenever any thought of providing some relief to the middle class in the US is brought up, the response is always "How are you going to pay for that?". How come that question is never asked for outlays to israel but only when it involves the American people?
