Okay, but would you rather be assassinated by a shot in the head, or a shot in the heart???
Not sure why people need to chose between the US or China, and especially why you started thinking about this when someone seems to just want to share their feeling that they've lost their trust in their government. So what if they trust China more/less, what is that supposed to mean with their relationship with US government? Suddenly they shouldn't actually have a lost it, because some people prefer US over China?
I just don't understand this train of thought, and how it's even relevant here.
The EU in general does have a bit more of a track record of doing domestic spying, but that's balanced out by Germany being very conservative about putting it under legal framework due to remembering the Stasi. The EU and ECHR in general are postwar experiments in constraining the powers of the state for good.
In practice .. for a lot of people, including a lot of Americans, the Chinese surveillance threat is a lot less immediate and a lot less likely to result in negative consequences for them personally than the US one. (Important exception: overseas Chinese! The extraterritorial police stations are really quite alarming)
If the war with Denmark goes hot, then the US companies become an extreme national security threat very quickly.
What is the purpose of saying this? It's being unnecessarily antagonistic towards a genuine sentiment. It's not like you are offering any solution either. Are you proposing nihilism, maybe?
I am probably right to say that invading Venezuela would constitute a serious violation of international law. However, I am probably wrong when I say that this closer look analysis from Cloudflare feels very blurry (mostly because my technical skills regarding this article are close to zero, and I cannot clearly explain why). I have read other articles that were more precise and far less “nothing to see here” in tone.
I then find myself speculating (probably wrongly) about the intentions behind writing such an article. This has raised doubts and left me with an uncomfortable feeling, as if I were drifting toward conspiracy-theory thinking. All of this stems from reading that article.
Still, it would make sense to disrupt communications (and collect large amounts of data) prior to invading a country. Ultimately, for me, the core issue is the illegality of such actions when they are carried out by the most influential and powerful country in the world: a country that, increasingly, no one can fully trust anymore.
I am sorry for letting my emotions flow like that. It may not be the adequate spot to do so, but let me be clear: this Cloudflare article smells badly.
On the one hand, the Cloudflare article doesn’t smell bad to me. As someone who gets to pay attention to this type of thing, these kinds of things really do happen frequently, and mistakes are the most common cause.
If the US government had enough access to try to intentionally do this, they had enough access to snoop on traffic with methods that would not be visible to the outside world, and they would work more reliably than these BGP shenanigans. So I’d suggest you are right about the lack of trust, even if this particular event is probably not supporting evidence. I’d also agree with other posters that any such trust was misplaced in the first place.
Between the USA and China, definitely China. Seems pretty simple. They have much higher standards of living and while it's very bad you can't say Tiananmen Square, that doesn't overrule food and shelter. They have all the job openings for advanced technology work as well - they no longer just manufacture US designs but are rapidly expanding into making better versions of most things, and the main reason we haven't heard about them is that none of the documentation is in English.
They're going to soon find out their stash of dollars is toilet paper, but that won't make too much of a difference with such an advanced economy of their own - the USA will surely have yuan reserves in 30 years.
The key words are "essential" and "temporary" - the nouns can be replaced with pretty much anything.
In what way do you think the USA is currently doing better than China? Yes you can talk about Tiananmen Square, obviously, but there are other things you can't talk about.
Safety protects liberty, otherwise you get public safety authoritarians like Duterte or Bukele. This is not advocacy for authoritarianism. It's advocacy for assertive liberalism that is effective at delivering a core human need in order to protect liberalism from itself.
the chinese are definitely going to pull ahead, but we're definitely not going to see US fall like that.
it's too easy to assassinate world leaders for a state sponsored government so you have to beg the question: why has nobody done it? the relative peace we have is built on top of mutual destruction and realistically US won't fall without taking most of the world with it.
the reason I believe it's easy because US SS seemingly lost their edge as there haven't been many real threats against the president to begin with. I just can't imagine that there is much any government could do against a 400-500km/h drone specialized for a 20 second mission from being to accomplish the goal, the world leader would be dead by the time anyone even registered that there is a threat.
> but we're definitely not going to see US fall like that.
We're already seeing that. You probably live in a coastal city, and so might be unaware of how just undeveloped so much of the country is. Look at things like literacy levels and political unrest as well.
The US is absolutely falling, it can be saved but not with the way half the country seems to vote.
Are they? Please don't forget at least 50M Chinese in abject poverty and a demographic crisis barreling towards them that is not avoidable unless they develop cloning vats that can rapidly age a clone to productive adulthood in a compressed timeframe.
On average, the USA is significantly richer than China and most EU countries, and this shows up in macro indicators such as GDP per capita, median income, and average wealth per adult. Even people at the lower end of the income distribution in the US often have higher nominal incomes than poor people in China, and sometimes higher than in poorer EU countries. Compared to China in particular, a poor person in the US usually has access to far more money and material goods.
However, Europe is not a single comparison point. In many Western European countries (France, Germany, Scandinavia), poor people often have similar or even better effective living standards than poor Americans once public services are included. Free or heavily subsidized healthcare, education, housing support, and transport can compensate for lower cash income and raise real living conditions.
Finally, inequality matters. The US has much higher income inequality and weaker social safety nets than most of Europe. This means that while the country is richer overall, being poor in the US can be harsher than being poor in many EU countries, especially when accounting for healthcare costs and financial risk.
So the claim is broadly true when comparing the US to China, but not universally true when comparing the US to Europe, and it oversimplifies what “having more money” actually means.
ps: I live in Switzerland and it is a whole different story.
Okay, but would you rather be assassinated by a shot in the head, or a shot in the heart???
Not sure why people need to chose between the US or China, and especially why you started thinking about this when someone seems to just want to share their feeling that they've lost their trust in their government. So what if they trust China more/less, what is that supposed to mean with their relationship with US government? Suddenly they shouldn't actually have a lost it, because some people prefer US over China?
I just don't understand this train of thought, and how it's even relevant here.
>someone seems to just want to share their feeling that they've lost their trust in their government
?? I interfered it as someone outside the USA.
Why? Because I hear that sentiment a lot here. USA bad. Okay, now what. They are the most important trade and resource partner.
oh no the feelings
Do something.
Solve something.
Realpolitik.
>Not sure why people need to chose between the US or China
Because the EU needs outside trade partners.
The EU in general does have a bit more of a track record of doing domestic spying, but that's balanced out by Germany being very conservative about putting it under legal framework due to remembering the Stasi. The EU and ECHR in general are postwar experiments in constraining the powers of the state for good.
In practice .. for a lot of people, including a lot of Americans, the Chinese surveillance threat is a lot less immediate and a lot less likely to result in negative consequences for them personally than the US one. (Important exception: overseas Chinese! The extraterritorial police stations are really quite alarming)
If the war with Denmark goes hot, then the US companies become an extreme national security threat very quickly.
What is the purpose of saying this? It's being unnecessarily antagonistic towards a genuine sentiment. It's not like you are offering any solution either. Are you proposing nihilism, maybe?
Like, be more weirdly defensive?
I am probably right to say that invading Venezuela would constitute a serious violation of international law. However, I am probably wrong when I say that this closer look analysis from Cloudflare feels very blurry (mostly because my technical skills regarding this article are close to zero, and I cannot clearly explain why). I have read other articles that were more precise and far less “nothing to see here” in tone.
I then find myself speculating (probably wrongly) about the intentions behind writing such an article. This has raised doubts and left me with an uncomfortable feeling, as if I were drifting toward conspiracy-theory thinking. All of this stems from reading that article.
Still, it would make sense to disrupt communications (and collect large amounts of data) prior to invading a country. Ultimately, for me, the core issue is the illegality of such actions when they are carried out by the most influential and powerful country in the world: a country that, increasingly, no one can fully trust anymore.
I am sorry for letting my emotions flow like that. It may not be the adequate spot to do so, but let me be clear: this Cloudflare article smells badly.
On the one hand, the Cloudflare article doesn’t smell bad to me. As someone who gets to pay attention to this type of thing, these kinds of things really do happen frequently, and mistakes are the most common cause.
If the US government had enough access to try to intentionally do this, they had enough access to snoop on traffic with methods that would not be visible to the outside world, and they would work more reliably than these BGP shenanigans. So I’d suggest you are right about the lack of trust, even if this particular event is probably not supporting evidence. I’d also agree with other posters that any such trust was misplaced in the first place.
Reality isn’t simple or perfect, but pretending you live in utopia is stupidity
Between the USA and China, definitely China. Seems pretty simple. They have much higher standards of living and while it's very bad you can't say Tiananmen Square, that doesn't overrule food and shelter. They have all the job openings for advanced technology work as well - they no longer just manufacture US designs but are rapidly expanding into making better versions of most things, and the main reason we haven't heard about them is that none of the documentation is in English.
They're going to soon find out their stash of dollars is toilet paper, but that won't make too much of a difference with such an advanced economy of their own - the USA will surely have yuan reserves in 30 years.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
The key words are "essential" and "temporary" - the nouns can be replaced with pretty much anything.
In what way do you think the USA is currently doing better than China? Yes you can talk about Tiananmen Square, obviously, but there are other things you can't talk about.
Safety protects liberty, otherwise you get public safety authoritarians like Duterte or Bukele. This is not advocacy for authoritarianism. It's advocacy for assertive liberalism that is effective at delivering a core human need in order to protect liberalism from itself.
Which essential Liberty you think Chinese people do not have?
8 replies →
the chinese are definitely going to pull ahead, but we're definitely not going to see US fall like that.
it's too easy to assassinate world leaders for a state sponsored government so you have to beg the question: why has nobody done it? the relative peace we have is built on top of mutual destruction and realistically US won't fall without taking most of the world with it.
the reason I believe it's easy because US SS seemingly lost their edge as there haven't been many real threats against the president to begin with. I just can't imagine that there is much any government could do against a 400-500km/h drone specialized for a 20 second mission from being to accomplish the goal, the world leader would be dead by the time anyone even registered that there is a threat.
> but we're definitely not going to see US fall like that.
We're already seeing that. You probably live in a coastal city, and so might be unaware of how just undeveloped so much of the country is. Look at things like literacy levels and political unrest as well.
The US is absolutely falling, it can be saved but not with the way half the country seems to vote.
4 replies →
> the chinese are definitely going to pull ahead
Are they? Please don't forget at least 50M Chinese in abject poverty and a demographic crisis barreling towards them that is not avoidable unless they develop cloning vats that can rapidly age a clone to productive adulthood in a compressed timeframe.
3 replies →
>They have much higher standards of living
Are you serious? You cannot be. A poor person in the USA has way more money than EU or China. They just love to complain on Reddit.
The rest of your post is delusion. What is your nationality?
Partly true but misleading.
On average, the USA is significantly richer than China and most EU countries, and this shows up in macro indicators such as GDP per capita, median income, and average wealth per adult. Even people at the lower end of the income distribution in the US often have higher nominal incomes than poor people in China, and sometimes higher than in poorer EU countries. Compared to China in particular, a poor person in the US usually has access to far more money and material goods.
However, Europe is not a single comparison point. In many Western European countries (France, Germany, Scandinavia), poor people often have similar or even better effective living standards than poor Americans once public services are included. Free or heavily subsidized healthcare, education, housing support, and transport can compensate for lower cash income and raise real living conditions. Finally, inequality matters. The US has much higher income inequality and weaker social safety nets than most of Europe. This means that while the country is richer overall, being poor in the US can be harsher than being poor in many EU countries, especially when accounting for healthcare costs and financial risk.
So the claim is broadly true when comparing the US to China, but not universally true when comparing the US to Europe, and it oversimplifies what “having more money” actually means.
ps: I live in Switzerland and it is a whole different story.
1 reply →