What You Need to Know About Trump's Tariffs – It's about China

China may not have enormous military or economic power at the present time, but they have successfully hacked U.S. infrastructure. [0] and the precautions that the Biden administration put in place are being backpedaled [1] "Trump admin fires security board investigating Chinese hack of large ISPs" and top security officials are dangerously unqualified, and are using insecure practices. Experienced people are being replaced by political sympathizers. "National Security Agency chief fired" [2]

In my opinion, a massive hack attack by likely culprits China, Russia or North Korea takes down the entire U.S. internet, water and power plants and top-level government communications. Only lower level military and state disaster personnel are operational. What about Starlink? Sloppy security means it is knocked out, and since it ousted Verizon for the White House, confusion reigns.

Key to this is the use of home phones by Hegseth and company. Home phones, despite a secure messaging app like Signal, are trivially hacked to capture the screen, cameras and microphones, making security meaningless.

No security flaw or lax practice goes unexploited. Focusing on DEI instead of defense may be disastrous.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/trump-admin-fire...

[2] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/04/g-s1-58247/national-security-...

Recycling a comment from the past few "explanations":

Hahaha--no. Such a devious long-term plan wouldn't be taxing specific US military bases or populations of penguins, for starters.

I see such a huge outpouring of energy being spent right now trying to develop mutually-incompatible 4D chess explanations for Trump taking a dump onto the chessboard, borne from different flavors of denial.

For some, it's because the first rule of Cult Club is that the cult-leader can't be fallible. For others, it's because they don't want to believe that stupidity sometimes wins.

For fuck sake, stop trying to find a 4d chess angle. There isn’t one! Trump likes tariffs on an instinctual level going back to the 80s! He’s just dumb!

Doesn't make any sense. Why tariff literally the whole world? Is the UK really a conduit for Chinese products into the US? If it is then the tariffs on the UK should be 104% like with China. If not then it should be 10%. If China is a threat (and I think it is) then the US shouldn't be declaring war on its own allies.

I think there's no more pathetic creature than those who try to sanewash and apply 4d chess theory to the mental retardation of Donald Trump. Trump Derangement Syndrome exists, but it's his supporters who have had it all along, not his opponents.