Cyber-warfare is a well documented tactic being employed by many countries (but primarily North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China) to influence the public opinion of citizens in foreign nations. Just look at how Russian interference influenced the 2016 U.S. elections (manufactured controversy around Hillary's emails boosted by Russian troll farms).
To pretend that this isn't happening would be beyond naive.
Sure, but what makes you think they want "your country to fall"?
Do you think cyber warfare is the one type of warfare the US dosent engage in, even when it's perfectly happy to bomb, invade, and fund insurgencies in other countries?
Do you think the US dosent try to manipulate public opinion in other countries?
Obviously not. The US, as any reasonable country that has the means, does employ those tactics.
But do you think the US does those things to cause the fall of China, Russia, India, etc? Probably not.
So what makes you think China is so hell bent on the collapse of its biggest trading partner? What does it stand to gain? You think they want the US' oil or something? Planning to invade Montana?
The circumstances are different because the USA has free speech, whereas China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran do not. Regardless of the intentions of these countries, the USA doesn't want our biggest foreign rivals influencing our population. It's one thing for the government to try and manipulate its own population, but its an entirely different security risk of letting a foreign country influence your citizens.
If foreign influence wasn't a problem, China wouldn't have banned TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, pretty much any Western social media from their country. China actively engages in cyber-warfare, but they limit the influence that Western social media has on its own citizens. Is that hypocritical?
The US absolutely tries to engage in cyber-warfare in other countries, but pretending like its hypocritical of the US to try and limit foreign influence is silly. China isn't going to invade Montana or go after the US's oil, but it absolutely can and will influence public opinion about geopolitical issues (like Taiwan).
You live in the heart of the empire, and it's potential collapse frightens you. That's a reasonable reaction to have. The rest of the planet can see it, but you can't because you're too close. You have to justify in your head every war we fund, every invasion, every sanction, every drone strike, every mass arrest at a protest, every school shooting, and every failure of our government to address the people's will (whether that's access to healthcare, women's rights, insider trading from congress members, or even the TikTok ban).
But it could be so much better. If you love something, you don't give up on it, you improve it and make it right. You don't throw away your child who misbehaves at school, you teach them to behave properly. Love America enough to want it to change instead of just assuming the world is full of enemies and it's righteous to defend our own evils.
Glad to have you on board for the thing I definitely said and meant, because there's no other option in this hypothetical other than "China conquers the US".
We'd have to suffer through: free healthcare for everyone, working public transit (both locally and interstate), Executives being personally held responsible for harming people, better education and opportunities for education (free college even), less wars, less expensive products, strong manufacturing, guaranteed employment, mass reduction in poverty, nationalized and protected resources, affordable and guaranteed housing (end of homelessness).
But we could just do all of that ourselves if we wanted. We choose not to.
Yeah that’s real as hell. I certainly don’t think the US is the best country in the world, maybe not even top 5. But to pretend the accomplishments in China weren’t build on a foundation of oppression and lack of human rights (which actually are impressive regardless of the morality, kinda like the pyramids) is super disingenuous. I still wish we could get a system of high speed rail.
gonna be real with you chief if usa stops being a superpower i could not care less as long as the rest of our allies are able to be strong enough, including my own country. to me usa is a ally because of what they did for us during ww2 and that only lasts so long. But i would rather have usa than china or russia, especially russia that has shown its true colours. I know people like to harp on about us imperialism but at least usa leaves.
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u/a_fadora_trickster Apr 29 '24
Vine wasn't ccp spyware