An example of the EU being a sacrificial pawn in a game they don't even realise they are in.
US 50% BIS export control rule - that would've placed Nexperia on the entity list and therefore cut it out from the supply chain - was suspended for a year after the Trump-Xi meeting in ROK. This was like - one week (?) after Netherlands seized the company back from Wingtech, in order to prevent it from being subject to those rules!
Now European supply gets re-routed to Nexperia China branch, in RMB, whilst the Nexperia workers in Nijmegen have to sit there and hope for the best.
The improvements on public sanitation in China is one of the most obvious signs of social development. When I first visited in around 2008, sanitation was definitely 3rd world - incredibly bad, even in major cities like Beijing and Guangzhuo, no need to say more!
15 years on the change has been incredible
Firstly, availability - there seem to be public toilets every 500 metres so you are never caught short. This is huge for accessibility, especially for older generation. Secondly, cleanliness - either modern + self cleaning or modern + staffed: the result is better hygiene than you find in other people's homes. Thirdly, connected. I'm not sure about this particular example but it wouldn't surprise me to see that these public toilets are connected, so that the data can be used to better understand utility and even public health. It's been great progress
this is the way - 'multi-polarity' is another word for 'diversity' which is another way to understand resiliency. We have seen in recent days what over dependence on single point of failure looks like (AWS outage), so from a species level perspective, it is better that we have many different forms of organisation and narrative. We just have to ensure that these narratives are not evangelical and intolerant!
I think hackernews might be the only place on the internet where a commenter uses an AWS outage as an example for why authoritarianism is a good thing.
That's not what multipolarity means, at least by those leading such propaganda.
By their standards multipolarity means control ove different circles of influence without interference.
That's what Russia wants for example, they want to secure the regime by controlling nearby countries (ideally turning them into Belarus, or by threat of destruction, like Georgia and Moldova, or by annexation, like Ukraine).
China wants to control territories surrounding them as well.
So don't be fooled by multipolarity, it's just a repacked imperialism and colonialism by right, not by earned influence.
"the media" indeed has a credibility crisis but I suspect the rise of alternative narratives about the world (social media) is the main factor behind rise of a sense of generalised distrust, which I'm sure we're all feeling right now.
What we call 'truth' is really just consensus (hence the importance of cancelling / de-platforming / downvoting etc - techniques to secure that consensus) and narrative violations from competing versions of truth which are able to persist is deeply disturbing. We're going to have to get used it - certainty is one of things 'the media' once provided to us but will never be able to do so again
I think the concentration of ownership in Murdoch and Bezos, and like, has not helped. C suite newspaper people have become more craven as the rewards rise. So we see pay-off to politicians for market access. That undermines trust from the top.
I think the emergence of infotainment paid stories eroded the "news is something somebody doesn't want you to read" side.
And I think the fusion of non journalist commentators and editorial meant we get slant and not as much facts.
The willingness of Bezos and Soon-Shiong (for example) to directly interfere definitely decreased trust. Reports are that WaPo lost 350k subscribers since Bezos' open editorial interference last year.
DeepSeek is famously open source, and extremely price competitive, increasing accessible to AI to the many of the regions of the planet which cannot afford Wester prices. What power is being grabbed here? It seems that no China story can be complete without nefarious intent being implied
Very interesting to see US Gov start taking equity stakes into strategically important companies. At some point, we will have to describe these are 'State Own Enterprises or SOE's, not uncommon in other countries. The question is how does the US support the sector, rather than 'pick the winners' - unclear whether US Gov is clear on this, maybe it is matter of feeling your forward, 'crossing the river by feeling for the rocks underneath your feet', as it were
Really interesting analysis on the latest DeepSeek innovation. I’m tempted to connect it to the information density of logographic script, which DeepSeek engineers would all be natively fluent.
Can't see any movement on rare earth unless a commensurate roll back of 50% rule, which placed something like an additional 10,000 Chinese companies on the entity list. It's a quite simple equation for Beijing - if US wants decoupling, then decoupling it is.
Soybean Beijing might buy, you can stockpile this or make it into products which can also be stockpiled. As for fentanyl, China does not export fentanyl so unclear what measures could be taken which would satisfy unreasoned demands, might just have to make something up here.
All of the precursors to make Fentanyl are coming out of China. So while they don't export it directly, they are responsible for it's creation and have refused to work with the WH to crack down on it.
Precursors for fentanyl are common chemicals widely used in pharmaceuticals all over the world. If the issue is exporting country, then simply stop importing the chemicals. US can do this raising tariffs on said precursors
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