It's so amusing seeing the society that lionizes itself as the paragon of open society and can't stop boasting about the effectiveness of free-speech soft-power compared to sclerotic communist propaganda now having panics over short video apps.
Bush Sr. or Bill Clinton could never think that.
Well, maybe we will be on yeltsin-on-supermarket stage soon?
It's not hard to imagine the messages China will be pushing to weaken support for assisting Taiwan in a conflict. "Don't waste money propping up the corrupt Taiwanese government, spend it on health care /tax cuts at home!"
Then China gains control over TSMC without a fight and much of the American economy is at their mercy.
This whole "Taiwan is super important to USA" narrative is itself pure government propaganda, related to military power projection over China's coastline. Surely you can at least admit this. It's just a battle of propaganda, except China unfortunately has common sense on its side in many of these arenas:
USA should not be spending hundreds of billions maintaining a WW2 power projection strategy, 80 years later.
That's the problem. There's massive lack of historical education on this topic. The Taiwan issue greatly predates TSMC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_chain_strategy
Yo can we drop the whole “our government executes on the will of the people charade”. If you think your average American has any say in their governments foreign policy I have a bridge to sell you.
> Much of the American economy is already at China's mercy, due to the $500,000,000,000+ in goods we rely on from them annually.
Yes, but let's not use that as a justification for letting it get worse.
> This whole "Taiwan is super important to USA" narrative is itself pure government propaganda, related to military power projection over China's coastline.
The whole f*ing modern economy runs on semiconductors, and the most advanced ones are fabbed in Taiwan. You might have a point if Intel wasn't falling on its face, but it is, so you don't
Rebuild the republic instead of wasting everything on hopeless adventurism and imperial expansion.
Reducing risk from Chinese influence is "rebuild[ing] the republic" and is not " hopeless adventurism and imperial expansion."
Also, letting China encroach and control more vital supplies is a good way to make "rebuild[ing] the republic" a lot harder.
This is just updating the standard. TikTok is clearly a massive threat, how is that not obvious?
https://www.fcc.gov/general/foreign-ownership-rules-and-poli....
Additionally, it was required to register as a foreign agent before shutting down...
This rather proves my point