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Comment by ang_cire | Hacker News Reader

The author is naive.

> The whole background of this AI conversation is that we’re in a race with China, and we have to win. But what is the reason we want America to win the AI race? It’s because we want to make sure free open societies can defend themselves. We don’t want the winner of the AI race to be a government which operates on the principle that there is no such thing as a truly private company or a private citizen.

In the US currently, there are private citizens, and there are 'not-the-1%' citizens, where a Kavanaugh stop is legal, your voter information may be (or may have already been) seized by the DoJ or FBI, you may be tracked by out of state or federal agents on ALPRs with no warrant, for any reason, and where attending a legal protest may have your biometrics added to a database of potential domestic terrorists.

Or maybe your tax money will just be used to blow up unidentified boaters or bomb girls' schools and homes, and you'll get no say in whether that's the case because the elected body that is there to issue a declaration of war (or not) as representatives of you, has abdicated that power to a cabinet of unelected white nationalists.

But go off about how we're such a better country that believes in freedom and goodness.

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Great take. If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way. Many of these things have been happening for years, but war crimes, disregard for international law, blackmailing allies, killing their own citizens without accountability, and allowing foreign governments to heavily influence policy are all troubling signs.

It’s easy to point to China as a place where freedom of speech isn’t present, but try asking members of the current administration or even Supreme Court judges who won the 2020 election and see what kind of responses you get. That alone says a lot about the current state of things.

> If the past year has taught us anything, it’s that the US can’t really be seen as the “good guys” in such a simple way.

More like the past 200 years. America have never been the "good guys", and it is only Americans who seem to think they ever were.

If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy.

Similarly normal for the population of any country that has net negative externalities from America to view them as the "bad guys".

The current and growing anti-US sentiment is an expected result of an increasing gap between the US and the rest of the first world on economy and defense. The existence of a superpower is precluded on being viewed negatively by the rest of the world

> If a majority of the Americans believed America was not generally the "good guys" it would be a sign of a failed democracy.

No, it would be a sign of critical thinking and self reflection.

I've thought about it a lot, and done some self reflection, and concluded that America is, in fact, the "good guys".

Imagine democracy playing out in literally any measurable field. Think about society getting to vote on who should be on a basketball team, but without any real knowledge of the candidates' abilities beyond what they said and advertised about themselves. And then we put the winners of the vote on a team. They'd get face-stomped by a D-tier NBA team pretty much always.

Democracy isn't about maximizing outcomes, because maximizing outcomes entails the possibility of minimizing outcomes. Marcus Aurelius was perhaps one of the best rulers in all of history. His son, Commodus - raised by him from birth, was certainly one of the worst rulers in all of history. Minority rule systems oscillate between extremes of the best of times and the worst of times. Democracy is always just kind of meh, never particularly great, never particularly awful.

But it creates a stable system because while it's meh in the present, you can always envision that things will be totally different in 4 years. Of course they won't be, but there's this weird bug in our psychology that we can't help but remain optimistic, even though in reality candidate after candidate it always feels like 'well it can't get any worse than this at least' and then the next guy is like 'hold my beer.'

To be fair, almost every society portrays itself as the defender of whatever is right/good.

And, to be equally as fair, the only genuinely good guys are the ones that are too small to enforce their will upon others directly - small countries without arms who are forced to find other ways to engage with others in order to achieve whatever goals they have (resource acquisition)

The Americans have been extremely adept at dominating the discourse via non-government pathways (Hollywood)

An American and a Soviet Russian were on a plane chatting. The American says "I'm very impressed with the quality of Soviet propaganda". The Soviet says thanks, but it's nothing compared to American propaganda.

The American says "But we don't have propaganda", the Soviet says "Exactly".

And been written about since the 80s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

If only Americans think we're the good guys, then why does everyone want to live here?

Well, first, that's two overgeneralizations.

But, second, often precisely because they think we’re the bad guys.

If you see the world as dominated by an evil, overwhelmingly powerful empire that uses violence in a way that shows no concern for the continuation or quality of human life outside of the metropole then, even if it is bigoted, repressive, and unjust within the metropole, you still want to be in the metropole rather rhan peripheries.

I think that should be fairly obvious - money + ease of traveling to. America is, relative to the world, perceived as quite wealthy. South America is full of places that are quite poor. Put the two side by side and many guys coming here speaking not a lick of English, and with no skills to boot, probably envision themselves coming home rich.

It's even relatively easy to put yourselves in their shoes. Columbia's GDP/capita is about $8k. In the US it's about $80k. Imagine how you'd feel if Canada had a GDP/capita of $800k. To many people it'd seem like a great idea to move there completely regardless of everything else about the country. People warning you that you'll end up mowing yards and painting houses while making barely enough to put a roof over your head. Bah! Nonsense! How can that be true on $800k/year!? Canada, here I come!

You can see this play out the same in places like Saudi Arabia. Not many place have the taste for their policies, religion, or much of anything else - yet they have a massive immigrant population, far higher than the US (as a percent) precisely because they pay stupidly high wages, often tax free, and have a low cost of living. You can easily become a dollar millionaire teaching English there if money is what you're after simply because you can easily save thousands of dollars a month. And if you get bored you can go watch somebody get crucified for witchcraft on a weekend now and again.

I see this comment a lot. People don't want to live there. They want the dollars to send back to their home countries and families.

This make Americans suckers, if anything.

Not everybody wants to live there; heck, I know plenty of Americans that after living abroad in Europe and Japan don't want to go back.

And before you say that the US gets a bazillion immigrants per year, Europe gets many more.

Well, if that was true then why does everyone get really mad when we try to restrict who gets to come to the United States?

I think, as a formative experience, most Americans should go through the "wow Europe is great (if you go to the right spots)" if only to understand the history and where America came from, and also the "awakening" that happens when one visits Japan. Their trains really do run on time!

Don't ask me, I don't know of anybody who wants to move to the US.

What people get mad about is

1) The hypocrisy of a country created by immigrants, people obsessed with their "heritage" and calling themselves $country-American even when they have zero relation to said $country, now hating immigrants so much.

2) The brutality of the TSA and ICE against anybody they don't like. Do I really need to expand this point?

3) The arrogance of assuming that we all want to move there. Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are not the centre of the world.

>but you are not the centre of the world.

11 CVNs and 6 flags says differently.

>It’s easy to point to China as a place where freedom of speech isn’t present, but try asking members of the current administration or even Supreme Court judges who won the 2020 election and see what kind of responses you get.

Freedom of speech and regard for the facts are independent concerns. People absolutely have the right to call out lies about the 2020 election and have repeatedly done so.

> People absolutely have the right to call out lies about the 2020 election and have repeatedly done so.

Some at the cost of their careers and a few now face the threat of prosecution.

China is a low bar. We shouldn't accept any of this as normal.

The US was never the good guy. I don't think there are any.

-- signed, rest of the world :|

> go off about how we're such a better country that believes in freedom and goodness

Better than China as a global model? Still, yes, probably. Potentially. Depends on how the next few years ago.

Even if America fails, I’d argue a global republic is a brighter potential future than a global dictatorship.

As much a republic as Rome was under Caligula.

A republic without the rule of law is not a republic anymore.

> republic without the rule of law is not a republic anymore

An observation one can make when comparing a republic with the rule of law to one that ain’t, whether across time or geography. There is a real benefit to having the American experiment prominent and continuing.

Is there actually a benefit? Or are we just watching the slow motion collapse of another empire convinced of its own immortality? History is a graveyard of experiments that thought they were the exception to the rule.

> Is there actually a benefit? Or are we just watching the slow motion collapse of another empire convinced of its own immortality?

These aren’t mutually exclusive. The world is better off for Athens and the Roman and Harrapan and Haudenosaunee republics. (Book request: history of the republic. I’ve struggled to find one.)

The CCP with internal elections was interesting and a genuine riposte to broadly-enfranchised republics. Xi as a dictator is not, not.

But we are not talking about china.

> There is a real benefit to having the American experiment prominent and continuing.

The American 'experiment' is one long history of the US doing really horrible things, but giving ourselves a pass because we dress it up in the name of freedom and self-determination.

If you ignore our slavery and the genocide of Native Americans, it's easy to paint China's slavery and genocide as evils that are unique somehow.

The real experiment of America is in seeing how self-deluded we can become if we continuously reinforce the false premise that our institutions are intrinsically good (or at least, nebulously "better").

The difference is that China's slavery and genocide is happening today, within its own borders.

Is that true of the US? Is there state-sanctioned/supported slavery in the US? Is the US committing genocide within its own borders? Arguably not?

This doesn't make the US perfect or wonderful. We've been politically and militarily supporting a genocide in Gaza, as a stark example.

But "the US did slavery and genocide in the past" and "China is doing slavery and genocide now" doesn't make the US and China equivalent today.

And on top of that, I can go out and protest my country supporting Israel's garbage in Gaza. If I were a Chinese citizen and tried to do something like that in China, I'd be jailed.

> Is there state-sanctioned/supported slavery in the US?

Thank you for proving my point about our propaganda. Yes, it absolutely is. Slave labor is explicitly allowed for prisoners, under the 13th Amendment's "Penal exception clause"[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_exception_clause

And that's not some unused vestigial thing, forced labor of prisoners (slavery) is endemic. [2]

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_Stat...

Many states make prison labor optional at least in principle (though some like Alabama have been proven to punish prisoners with e.g. solitary confinement to 'compel' them to work). Some (Red States, mostly) do not make it optional, and even don't pay prisoners:

> Arkansas possesses a concerning history of coercive and uncompensated prison work. Inmates, primarily Black, have been compelled to labor on extensive state prison farms, including the Cummins and Tucker Units, located on former slave estates.

> In fiscal year 2019, Arkansas' unpaid jail labor generated over $4.4 million in externally marketed agricultural products, alongside an extra $7.5 million designated for prison food services.[69] Eyewitness testimonies indicate that imprisoned laborers experienced severe mistreatment—disordered working environments, maltreatment, and insufficient safeguards—evoking parallels to historical slavery.[70]

> real experiment of America is in seeing how self-deluded we can become

How would you contrast the responses to the Tiananmen Square Massacre [1] and that of Pretti’s shooting?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...

I think this is a meaningless question. Being allowed to discuss your atrocities versus not, but not having the choice to actually stop doing atrocities, is a strange point of pride. Being allowed to discuss our wars in the Middle East clearly doesn't prevent them. Being allowed to discuss our immoral and unconstitutional treatment of immigrants clearly isn't stopping it.

We are just as unwilling as a society forcefully to halt our governments' evils as China is their's. Our government is just as bloodthirsty and fascist as their's, regardless of whether you're allowed to point that out or not (also, Palantir is adding you to the database if you do, we just haven't found out what they're planning to do with the database yet).

The real lie here is that there's an ethical superpower.

Just like being a billionaire (or, super-wealther, if you will), you don't get to be a superpower by doing good things.

China and the US can both be bad, and they're both going to use AI for mass internal and external surveillance and weapon targeting.

> real lie here is that there's an ethical superpower

It’s a lie in the way cats are round is a lie—actually a lie, but one nobody brought up.

I don’t think Dwarkesh is arguing for global American hegemony. Just that if AI becomes dominant, having AIs embedded with American cultural values, broadly, is probably better than having ones seeded with Xi Jinping thought.

> China and the US can both be bad, and they're both going to use AI for mass internal and external surveillance and weapon targeting

Agree. But I don’t think any Chinese AI companies get to sue the CCP over it.

>AIs embedded with American cultural values, broadly, is probably better than having ones seeded with Xi Jinping thought.

I'd really rather have a choice of both rather than be forced to accept "AI that downplays a 2 year old genocide" over "AI that covers up a 40 year massacre".

> rather have a choice of both

You do. So do I. If American AI goes by the wayside, we cease to have that choice anymore.

That is also true if Chinese AI goes by the wayside, though. :P

This is both (1) not necessarily true -- there's no first-principles reason why being powerful implies being unethical -- and (2) deeply pessimistic and defeatist. You can apply whataboutism and say that everyone's equally bad, but I assure you that there's a pretty big difference, even down to your quality life, between the types of systems you choose to participate in.

It's not pessimistic or defeatist; you first have to recognize the limitations and failure modes of your system before you can think about changing it.

Is it possible to live in a world where powerful entities have gotten there through ethical means? Sure. We don't live in that world, though.

And yes, if I said "name me one powerful person/entity that got there through ethical means", I'm sure you could give me a name. But that name would surely be an outlier.

Help me through the practical implications of this logic. We should concede to Chinese AI dominance because we can’t do it perfectly?

Add to that all the military posturing over Taiwan and it's clear that it's not "China doesn't do what the US does", it's "China hasn't done it...yet."

The idea that anyone would be better off with China supplanting the US is asinine. This is the same government that committed the Tiananmen square massacre and still doesn't acknowledge that anything happened.

> it's "China hasn't done it...yet.”

China invaded and annexed Tibet in 1959. To the degree we had a classical definition of intent-based genocide, Beijing continues to commit it in Tibet and Xinjiang.

America’s conscious is stained. But it’s downright nonsense to go off about surveillance when the comparison is China.

I’m surveilled across pretty much every aspect of my life between basic Snowden level scooping of my data and public tracking like flock cameras. Democracy is increasingly becoming a joke as the richest in our society explicitly are trying to break it and we look more and more like mid 90s Russia.

I want the US to win because I live in the US and it will probably benefit me, but we’ve largely stopped pretending to value the republic so I don’t think we can claim a moral standing on these topics anymore.

To reference your other comment, the common American man has as much de facto ability to sue our government and/or leaders as the common Chinese man

1800 people detained at "alligator Alcatraz" had their records purged from ICE databases, and are completely unaccounted for. Literally disappeared, and the only people whose word we have they're alive are the same people who disappeared them.

Yes, the Uyghur genocide and paramilitary suppression and settler-colonialism of Tibet and Xinjiang is horrific, and will (hopefully) be recognized in the future as a genocide on par with others that 'enjoy' historical notoriety, but let's not pretend we're not well on our way to doing that here.

The rhetoric of ethnic superiority and nationalism and birthright that exists in our government is the exact same rhetoric that exists in Xi Jinping's "Imperial Han" nationalism.

I dunno, personally I think it's actively worse; for instance I've read enough WEB DuBois and similar to know that chattel slavery didn't end because of some "goodness" in the part of the government which still is ruling us.

The same government that helped murder 2M folks in Iraq. The same gov that paid death squads to kill nuns in El Salvador.

At least China isn't in a position to have to reckon with how deep white supremacy runs in its culture.

In fact, when I hear folks from the US talk about china without understanding their own history of racism and genocide and how that shit is still going on, all I can conclude is that they are operating under the same racist delusions that have historically brought the US to do such horrific things to the world.

> At least China isn't in a position to have to reckon with how deep white supremacy runs in its culture.

Han Nationalism is rooted in racial supremacy.

It's explicitly been pushed as the People and the Culture being inseparable, and the Culture being superior. That is the same "don't say the ipso facto part" that white supremacy uses to whitewash its bigotry too:

"It's not 'white nationalism, it's Christian nationalism, but not like, all Christians, just the white ones, but it's totally definitely not white nationalism!"

I think it's instructive that all 3 superpowers of the 20th and 21st centuries (and certainly most that I can think of historically) have a history of racial supremacy and nationalism, and engaging in genocide.

I think you don't do the stuff that gets you to be a superpower without it. Hence, why I assert that ALL superpowers are immoral.

The only purpose in trying to argue for a hierarchy between them is to lessen the impermissibility of one. They are impermissible, period.

I don't see anyone arguing that we'd be better off with China, but I am arguing that neither the US or China can be trusted with this, so the author positing "US AI dominance good to keep China at bay" is bad.

> the author positing "US AI dominance good to keep China at bay" is bad

My read is they’re saying we need an alternative to Chinese AI. Because with its industrial might, the default future is Chinese technological dominance.

People are certainly arguing this, and it's something I've come to believe as well.

You quoted the article:

> The whole background of this AI conversation is that we’re in a race with China, and we have to win. But what is the reason we want America to win the AI race?

Right now there are two contenders for first in the AI race. The US, and China.

You spent the rest of your comment making the case that it is not good for the US to win. Implying, though not directly saying, we would be better off with China.

You can say "oh wouldn't it be nice if Europe won instead" but they don't have anything in the race right now. We're stuck with the US or China.

> You spent the rest of your comment making the case that it is not good for the US to win. Implying, though not directly saying, we would be better off with China.

This is you putting words in my mouth. It's bad if either wins.

You seem to be operating under an unspoken personal belief that an AI race "win" inevitably spills out into global dominance.

I don't know that it won't, but you likewise don't know that it will, and I'm not beholden to debate things from your chosen premise.

I think AI will be bad for whoever is being targeted by it's controllers, but I don't think it will intrinsically disrupt the military spheres that exist now as a result of nuclear weaponry.

China will use its AI to hurt the people it's hurting now.

The US will use its AI to hurt the people it's hurting now.

Imho, the idea of an AI arms race "winner" is just the new face of the securitization rhetoric that we used to justify our military excursionism during the Cold War.

I'm not putting words in your mouth, and in fact pointed out in my comment you never said this.

Read up on what it means to "imply" something.

Speaking of putting words in people's mouths:

> You seem to be operating under an unspoken personal belief that an AI race "win" inevitably spills out into global dominance.

This is the belief of the article we're all commenting on. Intelligent people are able to discuss concepts without endorsing them.

I know people IRL that are so fed up with the US's bullshit that they do sometimes look at China and think their dominance might be better for the world. "Well, when's the last time China started a war or even deployed military forces in another country?", they ask... and I don't know how to respond to that (because they haven't, for at least 30 years that I can think of). And saying something like "well, they've been expanding their territory through extralegal means, and use coercion and grey-area tactics to get what they want" feels like an unsatisfying retort.

Is Trump really not a dictator? Meanwhile, China has been focusing on domestic development and investing in underdeveloped regions, including across Africa. China hasn't bombed girls' schools and then lied that it's their own country thrown the bomb.

> Is Trump really not a dictator?

No. There is no court in Beijing that can tell Xi to knock it off.

> China hasn't bombed girls' schools

Read up on the treatment of Uyghur girls in the Chinese schools. It’s Indian Removal Act stuff, except right now.

Again, nobody is arguing America is a beacon of anything right now. But between America and China, one is an explicit and proud autocracy.

What's the difference between a court whose orders you can ignore and a court that doesn't exist? Sounds like a question for the philosophers.

> What's the difference between a court whose orders you can ignore and a court that doesn't exist?

SCOTUS isn’t being ignored.

> Sounds like a question for the philosophers

And lawyers. It’s an interesting series of hypotheticals.

> SCOTUS isn’t being ignored.

SCOTUS rules 90%+ for Trump (lower courts are 90%+ against). They've given him freedom from investigation and criminal prosecution. They aren't much of a bulwark.

What the governments have done is different from what the cultural values of the two countries are. Chinese values and American values are different, and people can argue for one or the other. We, westerner, want our values to prevail. Dwarkesh wants to preserve our values of freedom.

> We, westerner, want our values to prevail.

This comes to the core of the issue, and is where I think the disagreement comes from. Many Westerners in fact do not want "Western" values to prevail.

Why? For me those values have led to outcomes so horrendously antithetical to _my_ values, that I would not wish them for the rest of the world. Even worse, this Western centrism has led to jingoist conclusions for at least 400 years.

Even if more illegal wars are started in the Middle East, even if inequality gets more obscene, VCs on HN are still going to insist that We The Good Guys are the champions of freedom, equality, justice, all the good stuff that we don’t practice (but we have great ideas about).

> VCs on HN are still going to insist that We The Good Guys are the champions of freedom, equality, justice, all the good stuff that we don’t practice (but we have great ideas about)

They might. I’m not. There is an analogy here to perfect being the enemy of good. Or, at the very least, the pragmatic better.

It’s the usual feigned comparison. America is a republic and if you don’t agree well, go to Reddit and argue about it; meanwhile China is just a dictatorship. American “crimes“ are dismissed with some rhetorical non-response like “hmmph, no one claimed we are perfect”, or immediately contrasted with some arbitrary Chinese “crime”, then dropped just as fast; even someone bringing up contemporary killing of Iranian schoolchildren gets contrasted with the “Indian Removal Act stuff” as if, you know, someone didn’t just now bring up something that America did last week. You bring up the ideal of “the American experiment”, then when someone brings up inconvenient facts the Tiananmen Square Massacre makes an appearance.

But to your credit you brought up the Pretti shooting. I have to analyze how that demonstrates why the “AI values” should reflect American ones.

Judge my enemies by their actions. Judge me by my words. About myself...

At no point have any of your arguers said they approve of the crimes perpetrated by the United States government. You repeatedly talk past them while only tangentially addressing their points. Your comments assume bad faith and make liberal use of pejoratives. My recommendation is to self-reflect.

He was simply saying that the same actions China takes are repeatedly brought up, while those the US takes are forgotten after a while.

That is a charitable interpretation. I should follow your example.

It’s good that you are reflecting.

He threw out a bunch of non sequiturs and failed to engage with what was actually said.

On what basis do you claim that US wrongdoing is forgotten? If you bring it up it's acknowledged and talked about. Debating it is within the realm of social acceptability. You can look it up on Wikipedia. Our AI models will happily discuss it with you.

Meanwhile the Chinese equivalent gets you the sorts of disingenuous interactions that can be seen here and domestically much of the information appears to be censored.

Pejoratives?

Note that singling out this part is not some tacit acceptance of the rest of that comment.

Crickets.

> American “crimes“ are dismissed with some rhetorical non-response like “hmmph, no one claimed we are perfect”, or immediately contrasted with some arbitrary Chinese “crime”, then dropped just as fast

America debates and exhibits its faults, at least internally. The Tulsa Massacre is a movie and cultural discussion point in a way Tiananmen Square is not in China. Neither should have happened. And neither is universally acknowledged or atoned for. But if we’re debating which system AI should emulate, I know it’s not just the one that explicitly buries its faults.

> Judge my enemies by their actions. Judge me by my words

Judge both by both. The ability to have words about shameful actions is not meaningless.

Yeah you talk about how you stumble into wars. Then you do it again. Then eventually it gets relegated to bah, but who is perfect. (Let me tell you who is not perfect: it’s China)

This is a concept that a twelve-year-old has enough ego formation to understand. Not so for the shared nationalistic consciousness.

Your responses seem politically charged and not in good faith. You've failed to actually engage with what the person you're responding to wrote several times now.

What is your goal here?

> Your responses seem politically charged

We are talking about China and the US.

> and not in good faith.

I am playing with open cards. No hidden agendas.

> You've failed to actually engage with what the person you're responding to wrote several times now.

We disagree on the very premises. That leads to one person saying something then the other one dismissing it then the first person dismissing what the second person says in turn. Completely normal.

> What is your goal here?

To bemoan people glorifying America as it invades countries and causes problems for the whole world.

I love that you are allowed to go off about how we are a worse country without fear of jail or shunning or anything like that. You are using your rights properly!

You are assuming that they are American and that the account is tied to their real identity and that they are not willing to take risks to state the truth. The Trump administration is already attempting to persecute critics[1], including some for random comments posted online[2]. If "freedom of speech" is your metric for what makes you a better country, you are in fact literally proving their point.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/02/13/...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s...

People have also been detained with intention to be deported for their views about Palestine, with online comments being part of how they're chosen for targeting:

[3] https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/01/28/federal-go...

There was also someone jailed for a month for quoting Trump's own words about a school shooting, "we have to get over it", in the context of Charlie Kirk's death, along with many other noted instances of retaliation against online comments around that incident:

[4] https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/17/politics/retired-cop-jailed-o...

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-s...

ICE asking for a list of social media profiles of its detractors doesn't sound like "without fear of jail or shunning or anything like that." to me. Through data mining and 3rd parties, the local PD has a dossier on me based on what I write here that would come up if I did something to get their attention. That has a chilling effect on what say on here in public.

You didn’t find this part naive?

> But within 20 years, 99% of the workforce in the military, the government, and the private sector will be AIs. This includes the soldiers (by which I mean the robot armies), the superhumanly intelligent advisors and engineers, the police, you name it.

Frankly, I find that less 'naive' than I do 'dangerously possible'.

Autonomous weaponry is one of the few ways that a fascist state could reasonably maintain violent control over a large and hostile populace.

I guarantee Trump would rather have perfectly obedient killbots than critically thinking soldiers, or even just the 5 murderous assholes required to oversee tasking for 1000 semi-autonomous police drones.

The least plausible part is the private sector, which just doesn't work that way.

People who buy the USA-vs-China race to a specific goal - do they really believe if China gets "AGI" first, they will immediately try to conquer the USA? How exactly will that go?

It's more likely they will continue expansionist policy in Asia which counters several American diplomatic goals:

1. Democracy and freedom worldwide

2. Economic access+prosperity with Asia

3. Pro-American sentiment

(Not in order of importance, which shifts constantly)

I think assuming China would beat the US in conventional war if they reach 'AGI' first is a stretch, even if this actually grants them a force advantage it's not like the US can no longer reach AGI. The risk is really more that if they reach 'AGI' and subsequently a force advantage, that they would no longer be deterred and more decisively move on Taiwan next year. Taiwan is key to [1] and [2] above.

There is nothing unconstitutional about the first paragraph of your criticism. What is unconstitutional is restricting your ability to write this criticism, which is not breached.

You _could_ argue that this is a flaw in the constitution, and that none of the above should be legal, and that people who support those things should be restricted in their speech or ability to hold office. This was the status quo in politics for a while! These things have all existed for a long time but this seems particularly targeted at Trump, who was famously banned from most social media platforms for years.

There are a lot of democracies (most of the EU for example) that take this stance on freedoms and will even overturn elections to prevent those who support those policies. The question is really 'does doing that protect freedom and democracy or infringe it?'

As for the second paragraph, this is just a lie, Congress has not abdicated any type of war powers to the Cabinet. There has not been any type of declaration of war, and if Congress wanted to stop the DoD, they very much could and in fact came very close to doing so. If your Congress representative did not represent your interests (in this case voted nay), you can call email etc. them and their office or vote them out.

> better country that believes in freedom and goodness

I think you're letting your strong feelings here cloud your judgement, you can hold all of these opinions above without needing to fellate China, which is objectively worse on freedoms than the US. It's also important not to conflate "believes in freedom" with "perfectly meets my line of freedom."

Please point out where I "fellated" China.

Saying the US is not a better country on terms of freedom and goodness?

"US not inherently better" is tantamount to fellatio to you?

You have some low standards of praise.

You're being disingenuous, but yes, if you believe the US is not inherently better than China you are fellating the most well documented modern authoritarian state, which was borne from the largest genocide in history, and has decades of examples of breaching freedoms and silencing dissidents, and is viewed negatively even by a large portion of communists. If the two are even comparable in your eyes, you are fellating China.

There's a phenomenon when PRC comes up where people actively root for the United States to lose. Some of these people are even Americans (at least on paper). Regardless of the wisdom of the Iran war, there is a sizable amount that wants to see dead Americans result from it because it would allow them to do the same moral preening that is going on in this thread with regard to China. The Americans finally "got what they had coming", or some such silliness. I expect to see the same thing as the race, such as you can call it a race, to return to the moon gets going. I don't have a good explanation for this because, like you say, it's bonkers to look at PRC and think it's at all comparable on any given freedom metric, so I think these people are simply lying.

The one plausible claim they could make is, ironically, one similar to Altman's claim a while back that visiting China was "easier" (I don't recall his precise phrasing) because there is a very clear and public list of things you are not allowed to talk about and actions you are not allowed to take. This list is, of course, subject to change.

yes everyone who has a different opinion to you is lying. that's a great worldview

That isn't what I said, can you read what I wrote? There's no need to, ya know, lie about the words I put on the page.

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