1. China is actively genociding an entire ethnic people.
2. They are actively building a military larger and faster than any country on earth in all of history.
3. They are actively threatening ALL of their neighbors with war. Actively attacking their ships and building military bases in other countries territory.
4. China's open stated goals are to conquer and control its neighbors and every single step over the last 10 years is proof of that.
The US stupidly withdrawing from the world stage is definitely making this worse, of course, but it is not the catalyst. It's unfortunately a very likely side effect of a social media campaign by the same actor to make said hot war easier to win.
At least admit the double standard. I don't mind realpolitik but it's so tedious when it's not plainly stated and there's this veneer of civility.
Yes, the US is allowed to do whatever it wants to in South America. No, other nation states don't have a sphere of geographic influence if the US doesn't want them to.
If you care about democracy and human rights, it's morally reprehensible NOT to support Taiwan. We can debate the ethics of intervening in strongman dictatorships like Venezuela, Cuba, or Iran, but Taiwan is clear.
It’s ridiculous to compare China to the US when it comes to warmongering. They’re not even in the same ballpark.
China didn't make us do this any more than they made us bomb civilian fishing boats in South America. We are a major destabilizing force at the moment, China existing does not somehow negate the actions we take of our own free will.
Refusing to acknowledge our role in destabilizing the globe at the moment is a level of infantilization that I, and many others, find unacceptable. We are all adults, China is responsible for their role and the US is responsible for its role. A social media campaign is not forcing the folks in Washington to drop bombs on Iranian civilian infrastructure, the jack asses in Washington did all of this on their own
> Our biggest geopolitical rival that's been threatening a hot war also distilling the things we build is not a good thing
They didn't distill Fable, it is impossible on any timeline. So where do we go next, the start of this thread is a complete dead-end as it is asserting a falsehood
This was the comment i responded to so we can get back on track to that comment if you'd like
> I think the major destabilizing force is the country that has been building the infrastructure for a hot war over Taiwan for the last decade while simultaneously blatantly funding the conquest of Ukraine.
We are refusing to aid Ukraine and actively antagonize their leader. We are kidnapping leaders from other countries. We are bombing civilian infrastructure. We are the major destabilizing force, not the one planning a hypothetical invasion
All of them. Pretending there is a benevolent bully among Russia, China and America is baseless.
This is probably the strongest moral argument for open-weight models. It decouples AI, somewhat, from military-industrial might.
This is a thought-terminating cliche. (The folks telling you to stop being sheeple are unusually consistently claimed independent thinkers.)
> How much damage has China done recently militarily?
Exempting the Iran war, which has no justification, as much as America. We’re both backing proxies. (Though we’ve had a while since we shot at or annexed our neighbours.)
I’m not. I’m saying exempting that, we have an even field of conflict mongering. Counting Iran, the field is biased, but we have significant sampling-timing issues for something like “is there war.”
China has violently annexed sovereign countries in the past decades. Its threats to do the same again are at least as serious as Trump’s Greenland nonsense. There can be more than one baddie.
If China had special forces deployed and conducting ops in random African countries it would be a massive aggression. When we do it, it doesn't even make the headlines.
It’s literally doing this across its maritime and mountain boundaries! It does cause outrage, albeit less so in mass media.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_border_dispute
We're talking about this kind of thing balancing out, say, Fallujah or shock and awe over Baghdad.
Nonsense. For that comparison you’d look to the invasion and annexation of Tibet. (And it’s not ancient history if it’s currently endorsed and un-apologized for.)
Any fair look at both countries' records puts the US as doing 10-100x more military intervention, on a global rather than regional scale. It is actually a little bit "sheeple" to look at that scoreboard and start calling China aggressive. They're less aggressive than every other UNSC member without even going to a pound for pound basis.
Sure. I never claimed otherwise. I’m saying it would be news to anyone in Asia-Pacific (or Eastern Europe) that America is or has been the destabilizing force. That was the original claim.
If the choice is 10x or 1x, go with the latter. But that is a false dichotomy. You can be anti-invasion and annexation broadly. There is no moral high ground in choosing Chinese models; no more than a person in China choosing Anthropic or OpenAI.
To be clear, American fuckery is broader. But if we agree we’re discussing magnitudes and not kind, we agree on all I’m arguing.
An outright lie. The only possible candidate is Tibet but it's former sovereignty is very questionable and not clear cut
Same as Taliban-run Afghanistan, same as Iraq, same as Ukraine, same as Taiwan. If you’re Tibetan, the line is academic—you faced, by modern definitions, genocide all the same.
Calling the territory you’re invading and/or annexing illegitimately independent, illegitimately governed is how these always go.