And at a minimum they knew he is former military thanks to that huge OPM hack several years ago. As he would have shown up on the list along with having a security clearance.
You are a new hire at the US-Mexico border control. One day a suspicious looking guy passes through, and you find a ton of white powder in his suitcase. You look him up in a database and find he has previously been charged with drug possession. You have been warned by your higher-ups that many people have recently trying to get through precisely your station smuggling drugs. So you detain him out of caution, but it turns out, for some weird reason, he just wanted to ship a suitcase full of baking soda to the US!
So since baking soda is totally harmless, this obviously means that your action must have been part of a plot on the US's part to put pressure on Mexico to fund the wall, right? What other explanation could there possibly be?
I have, of course, just gone through the article paragraph by paragraph and changed the subject to America. (Also, I am a US citizen.) No doubt, events like this happen constantly, and nobody cares, because mistakes happen. Only when the subject is China is everything a grand conspiracy.
> That's just how power works: the Chinese govt will leverage that capture to gain something from Trump
It doesn't actually work like this. Detentions happen constantly on all sides. One detention does not do anything to affect policy. I would bet that after a week this guy will be back home, to absolutely no consequence in the trade war, and you'll never hear about it in the news because it doesn't cause enough fear.
Ascribing the most sinister possible motives to everything a foreigner does is something that feels sophisticated and intellectual. But it's not. It's the oldest cognitive bias that exists. It is from the stone age and it will take us back.
It's of course totally dumb. Might as well arrest anyone carrying rice in their pockets.
Chinese retaliatory arrests are typically calculated, i.e. the two Canadians detained in response to Huawei were arrested by the Ministry of State Security and fit all the profile of being spies (ex government employee working for NGOs & North Korean connection). The Canadian drug smuggler expedited for death sentence after he repealed was convicted in Canada prior for smuggling as well and basically trolling Canadians who thought China was lax on drugs and rule of law. There's also a Canadian coup detained under espionage years prior. During Senkaku incident, a few Japanese employees at Fujita was serendipitously arrested for taking pictures of a military base which the company confessed to as an accident. Then you the drama behind exit VISAs which basically sums up to corruption, espionage, dissidents. The common thread behind these arrests is that the motivations are typically non trivial or ridiculous.
Shortly after the Huawei arrests, the hysterical Canadian media was blowing up routine / administrative arrests: a political dissident who got held up at the airport for a few hours during a flight transit and a Canadian teacher whose VISA expired. After it was noted that detainment levels has not elevated and in the teacher's case, govern officials had to go out of their way to clarify that the arrest had nothing to do with Huawei.
This pilot arrest is interesting though, the excuse is... extremely weak, yet there's political motivations because China is pissed at Fedex for diverting the Huawei package a while ago. Still it's very strange they went out of the way to arrest him in Hong Kong, if they have to nab a Fedex employee on flimsy grounds, why not just do it on the mainland. Also why do it so close to 70th anniversary - it's just very... not smart timing.
If you were born in Arkansas, this would be all be clearly crazy, because you would know that your family in Arkansas are ordinary human beings, not heartless government spies. And it would be rather alarming, even if you had moved out of Arkansas, and hated its current government, because you would be next on the chopping block.
It would be even more disappointing if, when you tried to argue otherwise, you were dismissed without a thought by the same Arkansas paranoia. That's how witch hunts work.
If you really aren't, you're extraordinarily lucky. If you are, you know where I'm coming from.
Moreover, I'm not defending any governments. I'm just pointing out in this thread that an act that is stupid in retrospect might have just been that -- one person's stupid mistake. There's no need to talk about it in such conspiratorial tones.
You don't need that. Just search names in Google and Facebook and spend 15mins for it. Works for 90% of military personals. People share what they do, eat, and where they go these days.