Speaker 1: Hot fucking Moses. Welcome to it could happen here. The
Speaker 1: podcast that is sometimes introduced by me Robert Evans, other
Speaker 1: times it's introduced by James Stout or Mia Wong, who
Speaker 1: are both on the call today. How's everybody doing pretty good?
Speaker 1: We've we've we've declared victory over the balloon. Yeah we
Speaker 1: we Finally the f twenty two gets its first air
Speaker 1: to air kill. Yeah yeah yeah later we we we
Speaker 1: did it. Guys, we did it. We really killed. Like
Speaker 1: the FAY two is like God's perfect killing machine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's thus it is like it is a six
Speaker 1: was like seven billion dollar aircraft. Completely, it is a
Speaker 1: it is afect air. It is a perfect air superiority craft,
Speaker 1: which in modern warfare makes it slightly less useful than
Speaker 1: an eight hundred and fifty dollar d J i'd drone
Speaker 1: with hand grenades. Yea fairly express. I cannot think of
Speaker 1: like a better metaphor to understand how the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army works than shooting using using a sixties seven billion
Speaker 1: dollar aircraft to shoot a three hundred and sixty one
Speaker 1: dollar missile at a balloon, just like listen several balloons
Speaker 1: in his life. A really not this high up. It
Speaker 1: is extremely entertaining. And yeah, I can't fault that pilot.
Speaker 1: I am deeply disappointed in rural America that no crazy
Speaker 1: rich guy with a cessna flew his friend with a
Speaker 1: fifty cow up to like drop that why the seventeen
Speaker 1: incinerator was invented for this specific instance. And yeah, we've
Speaker 1: been let down again. Anyway, what are we talking about today? Mia?
Speaker 1: Obviously we're talking about the balloon a little bit, and
Speaker 1: then we're going to talk about something more interesting, which
Speaker 1: is the sort of history of US China relations and
Speaker 1: how it's not what everyone thinks it is. I've been
Speaker 1: led to believe by the media that there is nothing
Speaker 1: more interesting than the balloon and that we should be
Speaker 1: focusing all our coverage on the balloon. That's true. There
Speaker 1: have been other balloons. There are now a fifth balloon.
Speaker 1: Has it towers? Okay? So yeah, let's let's go Yeah.
Speaker 1: So okay, So I want to start off by, like,
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about the balloon,
Speaker 1: which is that Okay, So we have the American Army's claim,
Speaker 1: but this is a surveillance balloon. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: chance it which just was a random balloon, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know. I I don't want to completely discount the
Speaker 1: fact that it was a balloon. I do want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about sort of balloon surveillance stuff though,
Speaker 1: because I've seen a lot of people both on the
Speaker 1: left and also on the right who are just like,
Speaker 1: why would anyone ever have a spy balloon? It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's talk a little bit. In order to do this,
Speaker 1: we need to talk a little bit about surveillance satellites,
Speaker 1: which I come from a family of astronomers, and one
Speaker 1: of the sort of dark secrets of astronomy is that
Speaker 1: the stuff you point up also be pointed back down again.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, so and you know, one of the
Speaker 1: other things about this is a lot of the companies
Speaker 1: that make telescopes to make the lenses for that are
Speaker 1: companies that work heavily with the n r O, which
Speaker 1: is the National Reconnaissance Office, which is a genuinely terrifying
Speaker 1: organization with an unfathomable black budget to dedicated to just
Speaker 1: like spying on people from aircrafts and from space and
Speaker 1: more people. More people should be like, we we have
Speaker 1: a lot of like people are scared of the n
Speaker 1: s A. People are scared of the CIA, but more
Speaker 1: people should be scared of the n r O because
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, that stuff is who but on the other head. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the n ROW has a bunch of satellites, right.
Speaker 1: But the thing about satellites that they move. Okay, you
Speaker 1: can't prove that. I will, I will prove I will,
Speaker 1: I will, I will, I will do a war thunder,
Speaker 1: I will post classic live underneath of dome. And satellites
Speaker 1: are stationary. The dome rotates in a clockwise direction around them,
Speaker 1: and that's responsible for the illusion of motion in the heavens. Sure, yes,
Speaker 1: there's no competing response today owned so okay, all right,
Speaker 1: So the satellite satellites move. They move in stable, addictable orbits,
Speaker 1: and this means a few things, right. One of the
Speaker 1: things that it means is that a satellite is only
Speaker 1: over the area you wanted to cover for a limited
Speaker 1: amount of time because it's you know, the satellites moving
Speaker 1: around the Earth, right, um. And this means that you know,
Speaker 1: you can you can calculate their orbits, and you can
Speaker 1: calculate when they're going to be in range of whatever
Speaker 1: they want to look at, and you know, and this
Speaker 1: means you can do things like, for example, figuring out
Speaker 1: where the satellite is going to be in hiding whatever
Speaker 1: you're working out when they pass this. This is how
Speaker 1: the CIA, that's how the CIA completely missed India's nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons program. Is that they do when that they didn't
Speaker 1: do when the flies the Spice satellites you're flying over,
Speaker 1: they just hid all their weapons equipment and the CIA
Speaker 1: never figured out they were building dukes. Well actually not
Speaker 1: based bad, but but yeah, it's very funny. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but what do they do? Did they just painted like
Speaker 1: a hot dog o something and just be like they
Speaker 1: just like put torps over it. The satellite came around,
Speaker 1: and then they build things under ground. It's very funny.
Speaker 1: I passioning the world's biggest hot dog eyed day in
Speaker 1: case someone else does. Yeah, I think Jamie Loftus actually
Speaker 1: might if you beat to that. Don't have to do
Speaker 1: all to the deaths and think we're not supposed to
Speaker 1: talk about in the podcast. Well, look, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like the Israeli secret Arsenal. It's it's an open
Speaker 1: secret and not a closed secret. So okay, you can
Speaker 1: solve this problem of of sort of telescope go move um,
Speaker 1: either by having just a bunch of satellites going constantly,
Speaker 1: or by having a geosynchronous satellite, which is in which
Speaker 1: is in an orbit where it's like basically over the
Speaker 1: same spot of the Earth at one time. The problem
Speaker 1: is that both of these are like unfathomably expensive. And
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that governments don't do that, Like the
Speaker 1: US is a multi spy satellites, like lots of countries
Speaker 1: by satellites, but you know, it's really really expensive, and
Speaker 1: that there's there's you know, there's a few other reasons
Speaker 1: why you would use a balloon um, which are you
Speaker 1: know some of the reasons the US uses that use
Speaker 1: them in Afghanistan. One is that you have really limited
Speaker 1: space on a satellite, which means that there's the you know,
Speaker 1: you can only fit certain kinds of equipment onto each satellite.
Speaker 1: There's another issue, which is that okay, um, if you're
Speaker 1: putting spy stuff on a satellite that has to work
Speaker 1: in space and it turns out that space sucks, and
Speaker 1: I mean wanting to kill you, I didn't like it.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a mark of how like bad people
Speaker 1: are at strategic thinking that they would ever ask why
Speaker 1: would you put spy stuff on the balloon, especially like
Speaker 1: it's a little weirder to float it over the US
Speaker 1: if that's what happened. But like if you are the
Speaker 1: US or China or Russia engaging in most of the
Speaker 1: conflicts those countries engage in where they're not dealing with
Speaker 1: state level actors, a balloon provides perfect surveillance, very cheaply,
Speaker 1: it doesn't require refueling, Like, it's an incredibly reasonable platform
Speaker 1: to spy on people with. Yeah, and I think that
Speaker 1: there's another thing which I think has been less talked about,
Speaker 1: which is that, Okay, there's an equipment gap basically between
Speaker 1: when you design a camera for a satellite and when
Speaker 1: the satellite goes up. And this means that whatever you
Speaker 1: whatever kind of cameras and technology you're putting in a
Speaker 1: satellite are going to be by definition a few years
Speaker 1: out of date, because that's just how long it takes
Speaker 1: a design the equipment and putting it and put it
Speaker 1: into the air. But you know, for a balloon, you
Speaker 1: could you can you could use sulf that's more modern
Speaker 1: than what you would have on a spy satellite. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, and and also like you can you can
Speaker 1: also just put other stuff on the balloon that's not
Speaker 1: a cameras, like you can do sig and stuff you
Speaker 1: can use. So okay, the moral of this story is that, like,
Speaker 1: the spy balloon is not like a completely implausible thing.
Speaker 1: If if you like put a gun to my head
Speaker 1: and said, Mia, what happened here, my guests would be
Speaker 1: it was like the spy balloon went off course, so
Speaker 1: ship and they's lost control of it. Now, yeah, it
Speaker 1: probably was not meant for the continentally United States, because
Speaker 1: that's a weird move. But it's happening. So Hi, this
Speaker 1: is Mia in post. So. But back when we recorded
Speaker 1: this episode in the heavy days of early February, there
Speaker 1: had been but two balloons. There have now been so
Speaker 1: so many more balloons. Oh my god. There the US
Speaker 1: just has balloon mania. We we now know a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the sort of suspected Chinese balloon. It
Speaker 1: does that that balloon seems to be an actual balloon
Speaker 1: at the very least. The U. S Government claims that
Speaker 1: they've recovered an enormous amounts of sort of technical and
Speaker 1: observational equipment from it. They said it was, well, what
Speaker 1: was the exact line, the size of three school buses,
Speaker 1: a bunch of signals intelligence stuff, which is something we
Speaker 1: didn't mention an enormous amount, but yeah, like that, that's
Speaker 1: an Everything you can use the balloon for is intercepting
Speaker 1: phone communications, at radio communications, etcetera, etcetera. Okay, so, like
Speaker 1: it seems like they're like they're the first balloon may
Speaker 1: have been an actual balloon. Every subsequent balloon, however, we
Speaker 1: have learned more so at least one, and my my
Speaker 1: assumption is this is every single subsequent balloon after the
Speaker 1: first balloon. Um, we have confirmation that so one of
Speaker 1: the balloons is shot down over for Canada by n
Speaker 1: F twenty two and this seems to be a Pico
Speaker 1: balloon from the Northern Illinois Bottle Cap Balloon Brigade. Uh,
Speaker 1: these are just like these are these just like tiny
Speaker 1: balloons that people send out so they can serve can
Speaker 1: navigate the globecause these people are just like balloon hobbyists.
Speaker 1: They just they just like balloons, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: just honestly really sad, like these are just people who
Speaker 1: like they just like putting balloons up and watching them
Speaker 1: go around the world and they were met with the
Speaker 1: entire aerial bite of the world's greatest superpower, which spent
Speaker 1: literally more money than I have ever seen in my
Speaker 1: entire life to annihilate literally like about a hundred or
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars worth of essentially foil and some GPS equipment. Uh.
Speaker 1: These people apparently tried to contact the U. S Government
Speaker 1: and tell them what was going on. In the US
Speaker 1: government was like, so, yeah, congratulations to the US government
Speaker 1: which has uh, it has one, it has one an
Speaker 1: important geo strategic victory over the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is this has been this has been breaking news
Speaker 1: from me uh in in in the in the balloon War. Yeah,
Speaker 1: enjoy the rest of the episode. But you know, I
Speaker 1: wanted to use this to talk about something more interesting,
Speaker 1: which is again like the sort of arc of of U. S.
Speaker 1: China relations and what actually drives it, because I think
Speaker 1: people have a really really not very good understanding of
Speaker 1: how it works and why. Okay, I think it's reasonable
Speaker 1: to ask you, why why are you talking about the
Speaker 1: arc of US China relations. Aren't US shininga relations always bad?
Speaker 1: And the answer is no, In fact, you have shad
Speaker 1: a relations to sometimes actually quite good U. S. China
Speaker 1: relations are driven by these two sort of interlocking forces.
Speaker 1: Right on the one hand, you have the internal domestic
Speaker 1: and also kind of global balance of class forces inside
Speaker 1: the country, and that plays a huge role in a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that are going to happen in
Speaker 1: the US Hina relations. And the other thing that happens
Speaker 1: is what you, I guess would call geopolitics. And we're
Speaker 1: going to kind of start with the geopolitics sign and
Speaker 1: then move back and forth between that and the sort
Speaker 1: of class angle on it. You can get get get
Speaker 1: a kind of understanding of how how this suff actually
Speaker 1: works and how to think about it in ways that
Speaker 1: are just sort of incredibly simplastic and useless. So, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go all the way back to the
Speaker 1: US or whatever, because there are US China relations with
Speaker 1: we we actually invaded China at one point in like
Speaker 1: the eight hundreds for some fucking reason. Uh, then we
Speaker 1: actually we did again the next hundred two. Yeah, But okay,
Speaker 1: So but in terms of dealing with modern China, dealing
Speaker 1: with the U. S U and modern US China relations
Speaker 1: is about the US's relationship with the CCP and weirdly
Speaker 1: dream world War two it was the relations were actually
Speaker 1: really good. Um, you know because obviously China, China is
Speaker 1: the U s IS ally and World War two I
Speaker 1: were there were also allies with China's nationalist party, the KMT.
Speaker 1: But you know what, what what's interesting about this is
Speaker 1: that there's a faction of the U s RM that
Speaker 1: is anti KMT and pro CCP. And they're not pro
Speaker 1: CCP because they're communists. Uh, they're pro CCP because a
Speaker 1: they're kind of racist and they really don't like the
Speaker 1: KMT kind of out of racism. And the second thing
Speaker 1: that that's going on is that the k m teed
Speaker 1: as we've talked about elsewhere, it's just like incredibly corrupt
Speaker 1: esquad party. And that means that, you know, some of
Speaker 1: the people who have to like the people who have
Speaker 1: to work with them on the ground to World War
Speaker 1: two or like, these are literally the worst people who
Speaker 1: have ever lived. Why on earth are we doing this?
Speaker 1: That means that when when the civil war starts, right like,
Speaker 1: the US takes the nationalist side but like nowhere near
Speaker 1: as strongly as they could have, and this creates this
Speaker 1: sort of like this myth around like the loss of
Speaker 1: China that becomes this massive thing in the US is
Speaker 1: because this is one of the things that triggers somelth
Speaker 1: McCarthy ism, etceentric cera is like everyone becomes convinced it
Speaker 1: was like oh my God, like Truman, like like they
Speaker 1: lost China, Like we could have kept China for the communists,
Speaker 1: but like they lost it, and it's like wow, okay.
Speaker 1: But this has another massive impact, which is that it
Speaker 1: creates this thing called the China Lobby. And the China
Speaker 1: Lobby is this is this sort of bank of these
Speaker 1: like incredibly psychopathic right wing like anti communist gouls and
Speaker 1: some also people who had some also people who were
Speaker 1: like had been rich in China and then got owned
Speaker 1: by this ec P, and they start pushing incredibly aggressively
Speaker 1: for like regime change in China for just the US
Speaker 1: and trying to not have a diplomatic relations and this
Speaker 1: this start starts to sort of like tank relations between
Speaker 1: the US and China. And then obviously like so we
Speaker 1: we we fought, we fought a war with China and Korea,
Speaker 1: a thing that I feel like doesn't get talked about
Speaker 1: as much as you would think it would. The Korean
Speaker 1: War is the memory hold war in yeah, and in
Speaker 1: the UK. It's when I was America. But it's still
Speaker 1: war that I mean, the Forgotten War is literally like
Speaker 1: it's it's most common nickname. There's a pretty good book
Speaker 1: by that title too. Yeah, but you know, like like
Speaker 1: that war, like there there are there are U s
Speaker 1: and Chinese troops like shooting the ship out of each other,
Speaker 1: like oh yeah, yeah, like across the entire peninsula, like
Speaker 1: there are there there are Chinese troops doing bayonet charges
Speaker 1: through the road artillery the American lines. My my, the
Speaker 1: last before I bought my place, my last landlord was
Speaker 1: a Chinese citizen um living in the US on a
Speaker 1: green card, and during a pandemic condre station over some wine,
Speaker 1: we kind of figured out that both of our grandfathers
Speaker 1: wound up at the same battles and made very shooting
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah, so that's the melting pot, buddy, she
Speaker 1: became a landlord. Mm hmm. Well, I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: that's a dream the you like there there was a
Speaker 1: reasonable argument that they were and back again. A landlord
Speaker 1: story is the entire course of the of the sort
Speaker 1: of like Chinese Chinese politics in the twenty century any
Speaker 1: respect to the United States. Yeah, well, and also trying
Speaker 1: to writ because lead landlords are back now it sucks.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, land yet not all Chinese people have
Speaker 1: become landlords, but yeah, many a subject to landlord ship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, So like obviously it's really interesting too
Speaker 1: because when people like when people write about US China relations,
Speaker 1: they normally like the thing that they think they picked
Speaker 1: from this period tends to be like the Twiny Straight crisis,
Speaker 1: and it's like, okay, yeah, there was there was this
Speaker 1: race crisis, but again, like the U. S And China
Speaker 1: were like shooting at each other like before this, like
Speaker 1: why why is this that? Why is this the thing
Speaker 1: that you pick for the downturn of your China relations
Speaker 1: like we were at war? Okay, but baffling stuff, right,
Speaker 1: But you know, and relations are not good to like
Speaker 1: the sixties either, like sort of sort of based on
Speaker 1: very very similar sort of lines that you've seen in
Speaker 1: the fifties, Like this is a period where people sort
Speaker 1: of take communism anti communism seriously. Uh, that stops being
Speaker 1: true very quickly. On the other hands, these these sort
Speaker 1: of geopolitics things have real material consequences. Right. You can
Speaker 1: look at this in the American side, where, for example,
Speaker 1: the industrial build up of the Japanese and Korean economies,
Speaker 1: and also the industrial build up like the industrial build
Speaker 1: of California, right, has to do with these sort of
Speaker 1: trade linkuages that are that are being set up in
Speaker 1: order for us to run the war in Korean, run
Speaker 1: the war in Vietnam. And China has its own sort
Speaker 1: of version of this, where which which starts getting more
Speaker 1: and more apparent by it starts around the mid sixties.
Speaker 1: They have this thing called the Third Front, which is okay, So,
Speaker 1: having having now been through like I don't know how literally,
Speaker 1: I don't even know how many wars since the start
Speaker 1: of this century, the CCP goes, okay, we need to
Speaker 1: shift ourt we need to shift our production away from
Speaker 1: sort of the coast and into the middle of the
Speaker 1: country so that they can't be attacked by the Soviets
Speaker 1: and they can't be attacked by the Americans. And this
Speaker 1: this has, this has a really major effect in terms
Speaker 1: of what sort of Chinese industriization looks like. Over the
Speaker 1: course of the mid twentieth centuries. You get, you get
Speaker 1: this industrial belt that's built up and that is going
Speaker 1: to be destroyed later on, and it and it's destroyed
Speaker 1: in part because of of what starts happening in the seventies,
Speaker 1: which is the sort of warm up between the US
Speaker 1: and China based on sort of Nick Nixon and Kissinger's
Speaker 1: attempts to sort of peel the Chinese away from the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. And you know, like Robert, you've you've talked
Speaker 1: about this ambassadors before. Um, but you know, part part
Speaker 1: of part of what's going on here is that China
Speaker 1: like basically gets into a war with the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: at nine. It's not called that, it's setting just called
Speaker 1: the border dispute, but like like there are troops like
Speaker 1: shooting at each other, like all across the border. People
Speaker 1: are beating each other the death with sticks like people
Speaker 1: and people are shooting borders at each other. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a real war. And it's in a grand
Speaker 1: British tradition of course, calling like massive conflicts and emergency
Speaker 1: or the troubles. Yeah, yeah, okay, you know, but this
Speaker 1: but this, this, this really sort of this this really
Speaker 1: sort of drives Chinese sort of international like relations to
Speaker 1: the point where they're like Okay, so I know we're
Speaker 1: supposed to be communists, but also like the other communist
Speaker 1: power next door might like marching army across the border
Speaker 1: at any point. So you know, you get you you
Speaker 1: get the sort of trying to triangle diplomacy of of
Speaker 1: of because when you're trying to sort of bring China
Speaker 1: into the at least away from the Soviet spirit and
Speaker 1: then closer into the U. S bear And you know,
Speaker 1: this starts to work, right, and you can ask you know,
Speaker 1: there's other there's other things going on here, right, It's
Speaker 1: China's not just playing pure Jeo Paul politics. Um there
Speaker 1: there there, there's there's another factor involved, which is that
Speaker 1: part of the sort of conditions for US and Chinese
Speaker 1: sort of like as she called by ladder relations or
Speaker 1: whatever sort of geopolitical can't bullshit you want to say,
Speaker 1: for like getting along closer is the US starts sending
Speaker 1: these technology transfers over to China, like I mean literally
Speaker 1: like like like taking like sometimes like taking factories basically
Speaker 1: and like taking them apart and then putting them in
Speaker 1: boxes and shipping them over to China. And you know, okay,
Speaker 1: and this is this is this is a huge deal
Speaker 1: for the CCP, because like, the Chinese economy in this
Speaker 1: period has been really bad. And part of this is just,
Speaker 1: you know, is what happens when you bow. But a
Speaker 1: secondary part of this is that China's has has had
Speaker 1: a real basically it's it's try. China's been dealing with
Speaker 1: this sort of economic crisis sense like like literally since
Speaker 1: since they came out of World War Two, which is
Speaker 1: that Okay, so, most of China's industrial capacity was completely
Speaker 1: destroying the war. The parchment that weren't were like there's
Speaker 1: this belt in Macharia that had stuff, and then the
Speaker 1: Soviets literally loaded loaded the factories on trains and ship
Speaker 1: them back and ship them back east or back west.
Speaker 1: So bye bye bye. By the by the time, by
Speaker 1: the time that the CCP takes over, like China has
Speaker 1: less industrial capacity than like Russia did at the beginning
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventeen, Jesus, So situations really bleak, right, And
Speaker 1: the other the other thing that's bleak about it is that, Okay, so,
Speaker 1: in order to build an industrial base, right, We've talked
Speaker 1: about this a bit on the show. In order to
Speaker 1: build industrial base, you need food. But in order to
Speaker 1: get like increase your agriculture productivity. You need like mechanical goods,
Speaker 1: but you can't get those mechanical goods unless you can
Speaker 1: increase yourdustrial capacities. You have this bottleneck, and this winds
Speaker 1: up being one of the solutions to the bottleneck is
Speaker 1: getting technology chansfers from the US. And you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of product of this is that now all of
Speaker 1: our products and services which we are about to talk
Speaker 1: about which you should buy, are made in China. So yeah,
Speaker 1: go go, go, bug go buy those things that are
Speaker 1: the product of all of this. That's no problem. Don't
Speaker 1: don't question it. Just purchase. Go to Ali Baba and
Speaker 1: just find the Express Express and just wire them seven
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. Within I'm going to say two weeks to
Speaker 1: seventeen months, you'll get a package of something by it. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if you order something from Ali Express, there's no real
Speaker 1: way to know what you will get. That's the beauty
Speaker 1: of Ali Express. Look you, on the other hand, you
Speaker 1: there there were there was there was a non zero
Speaker 1: chance you get a collection of really really sick Chinese
Speaker 1: shirts that just have absolutely random bullshit on him. The
Speaker 1: Chinese shirts or like knockoff versions of military grade optics
Speaker 1: that work well enough for the Taliban to use the
Speaker 1: liberating people the world over. Ali express all right and
Speaker 1: we're back. So okay. The Chinese swing into sort of
Speaker 1: like aligned with the U. S. They they start doing
Speaker 1: things that are like even a lot of the US's
Speaker 1: right wing allies won't do. Like, for example, China, China
Speaker 1: is one of the first countries to like to diplomatically
Speaker 1: recognize Pinochet Chile, and they like send him a ship
Speaker 1: ton of money, that send the loans they send, they
Speaker 1: send him direct cash transfers, and like this is a
Speaker 1: point where even like France and like the UK are like, oh,
Speaker 1: we wo that. That's like we're we're not We're not
Speaker 1: We're not gonna have We're not gonna acknowledge his military kidship.
Speaker 1: And China is like yeah, this rules. Hell yeah Petochet.
Speaker 1: And you know, they do other stuff that's very sort
Speaker 1: of pro US, right. They invade Vietnam in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine in the war that you know, the only war
Speaker 1: that's more forgotten than the Korean War. That is the
Speaker 1: sign of of these war. Um. That was a really
Speaker 1: good Twitter threats that taught me a lot about China's
Speaker 1: non aggression to its other countries last week. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's a good time. I I can we we could
Speaker 1: all talk about like the Sino Indian War in the
Speaker 1: middle of this where they just invade India, which is great,
Speaker 1: but you know, okay, but like what what what this
Speaker 1: sort of comes up to is in is like you
Speaker 1: you you you get a point where the U s
Speaker 1: and China, by by by the end of the seventies
Speaker 1: and going into the eighties, are very much on the
Speaker 1: same side. Like for example, when when Daniel Payne came
Speaker 1: to visit the US, he he takes he takes like
Speaker 1: an hour out of his schedule to make a secret
Speaker 1: visit to the c i A so that he can
Speaker 1: set up a joint like us A listening posted in
Speaker 1: China to monitor the Soviets. We talked about this a
Speaker 1: lot in the Kissinger episodes from last year. But folks
Speaker 1: should generally be aware that like Chairman maw and Richard
Speaker 1: Nixon legitimately got along, like enjoyed one another's company, as
Speaker 1: did Nixon and Chow Chessco like they were they were
Speaker 1: all good friends. Yeah, which is something something one ruling class, etcetera. Etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's almost a class analysis you could make the yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, okay, we're we're gonna we're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna do a slightly different class analysis, which is
Speaker 1: that like, okay, so US Shanna relations are very good
Speaker 1: literally like basically until tianaman and then everything gets kind
Speaker 1: of messed up because Tienamaneman. It's a very it has
Speaker 1: a set of like very weird and contradictory effects, right,
Speaker 1: you know, we we talked about some of this in
Speaker 1: our Chamman episodes. But it does two things. Right. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, like in the US, people are horrified, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the the the entire media classes like watches,
Speaker 1: this happened other outside their windows. There's just like it
Speaker 1: is an incredible uproar. It becomes one of the sort
Speaker 1: of like central like I don't know, like I sort
Speaker 1: of like it becomes it becomes I think it's like
Speaker 1: incredibly central to just like the memory of what it
Speaker 1: is to be an Asian American is to sort of
Speaker 1: like remember quote unquote Tianneman. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you know, so okay, what do you expect from there?
Speaker 1: Is like the U S and China break off diplomatic
Speaker 1: relations and like the Cold War two starts again immediately
Speaker 1: with the US and China. And it doesn't happen like that.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen like that because the second thing that
Speaker 1: that that Sandeman does is it finally crushes the Chinese
Speaker 1: working class. And you know, once once, once, the once,
Speaker 1: the old once, the last deal Chinese working class is
Speaker 1: just gone, right, and all that's left is an incredibly
Speaker 1: disorganized and incredibly desperate sort of market working class. Suddenly, hey,
Speaker 1: look we have a very highly educated, very poor I
Speaker 1: population that you can that you can just you know,
Speaker 1: just ship labor too. And this is what this is
Speaker 1: what actually happens in sort of terms of the US
Speaker 1: and Chinese relationship over the nineties, which is that you know,
Speaker 1: you you have these this double D industrialization going on.
Speaker 1: You have a D industrization in the US where you know,
Speaker 1: the last field rustbelt falls apart, the sort of like
Speaker 1: mining industrial boom that had happened that the Reagan just implodes.
Speaker 1: And you know, some of this is some of this
Speaker 1: is the centralization. Some of this is these jobs go
Speaker 1: to like the suburbs and ship or like in places
Speaker 1: like decalb that are just incredibly accursed but real call
Speaker 1: out there. Man. I look, I'm sorry to anyone who
Speaker 1: listened to CALB. I wish you best luck fleeing that
Speaker 1: guys at the CALP Tourist Board sponsorship that we've been
Speaker 1: looking for. Yeah, but you know, but but tetal Tanacly
Speaker 1: there's there there. There's another wave of the industrial relation
Speaker 1: happening in China too, which is that that old third
Speaker 1: wave industrial belt that I was talking about. Right, those
Speaker 1: people had worked in like basically the equivalent of like
Speaker 1: the Chinese equivalent of sort of like good union jobs. Right,
Speaker 1: They're they're they're working. They're working for state for state
Speaker 1: on enterprises, so they have housing, they have healthcare, they
Speaker 1: have pensions, and all of that is just destroyed. Like
Speaker 1: all these people lose their pensions, they lose everything. There
Speaker 1: are like millions of people who are pushed out of
Speaker 1: their jobs. And you know when when both both of
Speaker 1: both of these things happen at the same time, and
Speaker 1: a lot of companies who are watching the sort of
Speaker 1: v station companies like like economies collapse, you're watching the
Speaker 1: vo music Sorry sorry, who are watching the South Korean
Speaker 1: economy collapse or watching the Japanese economy collapse, suddenly start
Speaker 1: looking at China, and throughout the course of ninety sort
Speaker 1: of more and more American capital. I mean there's already
Speaker 1: has been capital from East Asia sort of flowing in
Speaker 1: the China, more and more American capital starts flowing in.
Speaker 1: And what you get here is you get this battle
Speaker 1: between geopolitics and economics, right that the sort of geopolitics
Speaker 1: side and the sort of like you know that this
Speaker 1: this this society that like the media is on and
Speaker 1: the side is that this sort of like the sort
Speaker 1: of intellectual etcetera, etcetera, like anti China classes on is
Speaker 1: you know, they don't they don't want to let China
Speaker 1: into the World Trade Organization. But it doesn't work, right,
Speaker 1: those guys just get destroyed China. China get submitted into
Speaker 1: the World Trade Organization. Both Bill Clinton and George W.
Speaker 1: Bush support China entering the w t O. And they
Speaker 1: do it because they can they can see when I'm
Speaker 1: partially a little bit of it is because they for
Speaker 1: some like they they've they've been drinking the kool aid
Speaker 1: and they believe that like if you have capitalism, then
Speaker 1: democracy will follow, which empirical data suggesting yeah, okay, sure,
Speaker 1: sure in thee O CON's like whatever, but you know,
Speaker 1: but it's also it's also because these these these people
Speaker 1: have financial backers, and their financial backs are telling them like, hey,
Speaker 1: look we can you know, if if if if if
Speaker 1: like if all of the sort of weird sanction regime
Speaker 1: ship has worked out, and if trying is fully integrated
Speaker 1: into the capital system, like we can make a lot
Speaker 1: of money. And they do that that this is what
Speaker 1: the two thousands is, right, like Walmart and like Walgreens
Speaker 1: and Ship like directly integrate all of their supply lines
Speaker 1: in Chinese supply lines that make deals with Chinese government
Speaker 1: in order to do this, and suddenly by you know,
Speaker 1: by in two thousand one, China's i think, like the
Speaker 1: fourth exporter of goods in the world. By two nine,
Speaker 1: they are number one by like an order of mons
Speaker 1: on order of magnitude. But they're like very very much
Speaker 1: the dominant export like world's dominant export economy. And this
Speaker 1: is a problem, right because on the one hand, you know,
Speaker 1: if if like American Chinese relations get there, they're actually
Speaker 1: really good at around nine and eleven are actually really good, right,
Speaker 1: Like the the US, like there were there. There were
Speaker 1: guys from sing Jong who like China sends the Guantanamo.
Speaker 1: It's like, here, take these people in the U S
Speaker 1: torch with them for China, like you know, yeah, like
Speaker 1: relations are like relations are good, right, It's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we both have like this like quote Muslim extremist threat
Speaker 1: that we're like dealing with, you know, and they try
Speaker 1: to get on the war on terror. But eventually relations
Speaker 1: kind of degrade, like you have the whole Olympics thing.
Speaker 1: You have there's like in Tens there's this whole fight
Speaker 1: over these islands that the Philippines claim. But you know,
Speaker 1: but but the problem with this is it like okay,
Speaker 1: so you get, on the one hand, a faction of
Speaker 1: the American right that is really and also and also
Speaker 1: like there's actually American right that's really really hard line
Speaker 1: anti Chinese based on sort of racism. There's American liberalism,
Speaker 1: which you know has this thing about like the rule
Speaker 1: space international order that like China's violating. They're also racist,
Speaker 1: and then there's like progressives like Elizabeth Warred who are
Speaker 1: also racist and um also but you know who's thing
Speaker 1: is like, oh, well, workers rights in China are really bad.
Speaker 1: So we need to do like competition with them. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's how do you fix it with more capitalism? Yeah? Right,
Speaker 1: And but they have a political issue, which is that
Speaker 1: there's another massive section of American capital that has enormous
Speaker 1: investments moth sort of financially in terms of where their
Speaker 1: factories are, where the logistics are, where the supply lines are.
Speaker 1: That makes them incredibly supportive of sort of close to
Speaker 1: US Hina relations or at the very least makes them
Speaker 1: oppose any kind of sort of like real like anything
Speaker 1: that goes beyond kind of geopolitical posturing. That makes it
Speaker 1: harder to do business for them. And this is something
Speaker 1: that I think people have a tendency to forget when
Speaker 1: they when they try to think about U. S. China
Speaker 1: relationship terms of economics, is that like, Okay, so there
Speaker 1: is the U. S has a military industrial complex, but
Speaker 1: that's not the that's not the entire U. S. Economy.
Speaker 1: Like there are other people in the US who have
Speaker 1: lots of money. There was an entire financial sector, there
Speaker 1: was an entire tech sector, and those people also have
Speaker 1: a ship ton of money. And and then and even
Speaker 1: even sort of tech companies, right who who have a
Speaker 1: foot in sort of the American contracting business also often
Speaker 1: have a bunch of their you know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: the places where the technology is built is in China. Right,
Speaker 1: So you know, even even people who could theoretically be
Speaker 1: brought into a sort of like like amality industrial complex
Speaker 1: political coalition against China, like have reasons not to do it.
Speaker 1: And you know, and this this works down the board,
Speaker 1: right if you look at when Trump did the trade war,
Speaker 1: he you know, initially there was a lot of popular
Speaker 1: support among sort of like American like mid sized businesses
Speaker 1: who are like, oh, we can bring industrial capacity back
Speaker 1: to the U S. And then all of them discovered
Speaker 1: that they had to pay, like all discovered that, like
Speaker 1: they had to pay more for their Chinese goods. And
Speaker 1: we're like, wait, hold on, we fucked up. We've made
Speaker 1: a mistake. He's actually screwed us. And like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's another kind of guy, right who there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who you expect to be really antc
Speaker 1: CCP who aren't right, And Elon Musk is the best
Speaker 1: example of this, Like she's the guy I think they'd
Speaker 1: expect Elon Musk to fully support anyone who can fully
Speaker 1: stamp on the face of their working class. Because that's true.
Speaker 1: He's the kind of person who you would expect, by
Speaker 1: pure racism to be like a really hard land ant
Speaker 1: CCP guy, and he's not, because, like he has, there's
Speaker 1: a class consciousness I think which overades even apart Tepe
Speaker 1: boys racism well and and and like he has, the
Speaker 1: Tesla has this like oh god, it's called the Giga factory,
Speaker 1: which is a name that makes me want to die.
Speaker 1: I mean, but the Giga factories in Shanghai, right, and
Speaker 1: like he ha, he has even even dream when like
Speaker 1: the media was like like pretending to care about the
Speaker 1: weaker genocide, like he opened a showroom and Shing John
Speaker 1: like dream that period. So you know, and there's also
Speaker 1: people like Michael Bloomberg who are for very like you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you if you if you read Michael
Speaker 1: Bloomberg talking about China, like in the media, he also
Speaker 1: talking about like how grave leader Jan Ping is and
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's because of people have financial interests
Speaker 1: there and you know, and this this means that like
Speaker 1: you know, even even the sort of media coverage of
Speaker 1: this balloon bullshit, right, and like China has been like
Speaker 1: threatening revenge or whatever for the shooting down to the balloon,
Speaker 1: But like this isn't gonna turn into anything, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's the same in the same way that like the
Speaker 1: last time I watched like straight stuff like didn't turn
Speaker 1: into anything, in the same way that like less seventeen
Speaker 1: goddamn with these scandals isn't gonna go anywhere. And it's
Speaker 1: not gonna go anywhere because there's a there's an enormous
Speaker 1: like faction of American capital who relies on this stuff.
Speaker 1: I think it serves like the manitary industrial complex and
Speaker 1: military specifically to have China be like Schrodinger's Next World
Speaker 1: War right, like like that they're always a threat. That
Speaker 1: like then they're not a threat, you know, like we
Speaker 1: can justify so much spending and allocation of resources if
Speaker 1: if we can always like waive this stick of potential
Speaker 1: conflict with China. Yeah, And I think there's something that's
Speaker 1: kind of like this important to understand is that like
Speaker 1: both the China Hawks and the China Doves are enemies
Speaker 1: of both the American and Chinese working classes. Like the
Speaker 1: China Hawks thing is they want to like you know,
Speaker 1: they want to put the Chinese American working classes against
Speaker 1: each other, and it's like nationalist fervor in order to
Speaker 1: get everyone to ignore the fact that, like both the
Speaker 1: societies are collapsing around them. And by the way, did
Speaker 1: did did we We have not? I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's this has really made the news yet. But
Speaker 1: Norfolk Southern fucking basically set off a chemical weapon in
Speaker 1: Iowa by crashing wanted by crashing a train full of
Speaker 1: toxic chemicals, and it's it's literally exploding like right now
Speaker 1: as as fucking to recording this episode, it's on fire. Good.
Speaker 1: You know. I love how when you deregulate train industry
Speaker 1: so that you can have just like one guy working
Speaker 1: a massive train hauling huge amounts of toxic chemicals, it
Speaker 1: works out great, happens. It's called efficiency. Yeah, look, a
Speaker 1: train crash like this would have normally taken dozens of
Speaker 1: people to engineers, so we have we have improved our
Speaker 1: efficiency markedly well. And also in terms of efficiency, Robert like,
Speaker 1: I think how bad it could have been if we
Speaker 1: hadn't crossed the rail strikes? Yeah, yeah, there might not
Speaker 1: be there might not be a giant poisoned gas quad.
Speaker 1: And what is it Ohio. We can't have that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's Ohio, it's it's Palestine. They don't say American solidarity
Speaker 1: with palestemical Oh, free, free Palestine. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: That's been done already, the first the first, This will
Speaker 1: this will seem like it's in bad taste if a
Speaker 1: lot of people wind up dying. But yeah, I also
Speaker 1: want to mention here that I'm I'm gonna take this
Speaker 1: opportunity to mention that China is the second large Israel,
Speaker 1: second largest trading partner, and they do like yeah, and
Speaker 1: they like they do like security exchanges with each other
Speaker 1: where people trade each other's military is it's great, It's great. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But but you know because really, if someone is oppressing
Speaker 1: working people, they've done a security exchange with Israel. That
Speaker 1: is like its golden lore of cup beating you in
Speaker 1: the head with a stick. It's never more than two
Speaker 1: degrees removed from the idea. Okay, there's one last thing
Speaker 1: I want to talk about really briefly, which is Okay,
Speaker 1: so one of the things you will see people talk
Speaker 1: about who are like pundits, were like people on the
Speaker 1: news talked about this thing called decoupling. And the thing
Speaker 1: you need to understand immediately is at the moment someone
Speaker 1: says the word decoupling, you can stop listening to everything
Speaker 1: they're about to say because they are lying to you,
Speaker 1: like it is bullshit. So the what in theory the
Speaker 1: coupling is this thing where like supposedly, like the U.
Speaker 1: S And Chinese economy is gonna decouple, right and like
Speaker 1: all of the American firgoms in China are gonna pull out,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna pull all their supply jays and they're
Speaker 1: gonna relocate them to somewhere else in the world. And
Speaker 1: the US and Chinese economy suddenly were like not be
Speaker 1: coupled to each other. It's like, no, they're not, Like
Speaker 1: this has never happened. It didn't. It didn't Like if
Speaker 1: it was gonna happen, it would have happened to us
Speaker 1: in seventeen and like doesn't eighteen when Trump was Trump
Speaker 1: was doing the trade war. It didn't happen. Then. The
Speaker 1: only time it's ever happened, or the only time American
Speaker 1: companies ever sort of pulled out of China like on
Speaker 1: match or tried to was Ironic Quendries two thousand and eleven.
Speaker 1: But in two thousand eleven they are trying to pull
Speaker 1: out because of the Wukan riots and this like massive
Speaker 1: surge of strikes in China, and suddenly all these companies
Speaker 1: were like, oh my god, trying them, might not be
Speaker 1: able to keep our might be not be able to
Speaker 1: suppressed the working class hard enough. And then they, yeah,
Speaker 1: they got horribly crushed. And one the other thing that
Speaker 1: happened was like company they like companies tried to go
Speaker 1: elsewhere and they couldn't do it because no one, like
Speaker 1: no other countries had the combination of like like things
Speaker 1: like a stable electrical grid and like working roads, like
Speaker 1: an actually highly educated population. So like they didn't have
Speaker 1: all of these things at once. So they all came
Speaker 1: back and you know that that was that was close
Speaker 1: as ever came to happening. Everyone talks about this all
Speaker 1: the time. They're lying to you ignore them. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not it's not gonna happen. The the U
Speaker 1: S And Chinese economies are inextorably bound to each other
Speaker 1: and they're going to continue to be. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: we can't run like our economy to a loge extent
Speaker 1: on an economy, but our society runs and like providing
Speaker 1: treats to the working class just enough to prevent them
Speaker 1: from a battle angle from trying to ractually change anything,
Speaker 1: and like we can't keep the constant stream of treats
Speaker 1: running if if we decouple from China, right, like cheap
Speaker 1: consumer goods. And also like the Chinese economy relies on
Speaker 1: like as an expert economy, right like they've they've they've
Speaker 1: been trying to turn to an internal consumption economy for
Speaker 1: a decade. It's like not really working because hilariously, it's
Speaker 1: not working because they don't pay people enough to buy
Speaker 1: ship and surely no one will ever do that because yeahomy, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, but yeah it's great. But you know, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess like the gist of what I wanted to
Speaker 1: say here is that, like, like us trying to relations
Speaker 1: are driven by forces that are more complicated than man
Speaker 1: on TV yell at balloon, and as as powerful as
Speaker 1: man on TV yell at balloon, seems like in the moment,
Speaker 1: it's not actually the thing underlying what's going on here,
Speaker 1: And you need to be able to look past man
Speaker 1: yell at balloon on TV in order to look at
Speaker 1: the sort of the broader, the broader political and social
Speaker 1: forces that are that are going on here. And I
Speaker 1: think beyond that, what we need to do is recognized
Speaker 1: that there's a deep emptiness at the center of American
Speaker 1: society that should have, in this case been filled by
Speaker 1: rich people in Cessna's and their friends with high caliber
Speaker 1: precision rifles flying into the sky and a noble cahote
Speaker 1: is uh quest to shoot that fucking balloon down? Just
Speaker 1: having Sancho Panza, I'm so disappointed in this country. Um,
Speaker 1: I expected forty or fifty people to die, but that
Speaker 1: balloon to be taken down. There was a time when
Speaker 1: we had a country. Yeah, found our founding fathers would
Speaker 1: have dropped that son of a bit. Yeah. Joe Brandon
Speaker 1: has forced some mode into retirement. Yeah, and China has
Speaker 1: revealed anyway. I hope China sends another balloon. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: else we gonna do? I feel be like a Mickey
Speaker 1: Mouse fucking Frozen balloon. You know, if they do, like
Speaker 1: the girl from Frozen, it'll be cool. I'd like to
Speaker 1: see that. They should stop pranking us with character balloons.
Speaker 1: I'd fucking love that. Oh God, but but but but
Speaker 1: then the US would start sending like the balloon would
Speaker 1: commissioner Moana balloon to legal for raising fun to happen.
Speaker 1: We would have like a balloon based Cold War where
Speaker 1: the United States starts shooting over balloons across China and
Speaker 1: the Russians start floating, and it's just yeah, we got
Speaker 1: a closer balloon Gap becomes the number one world power,
Speaker 1: green Chili jack boots stamping over the face of humanity
Speaker 1: some minutary capacity. The developers of Balloons Tower Defense get
Speaker 1: hauled before a Senate committee for supposedly doing the future God. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got a nationalized MYLA production in order to monopolize it. Alright,
Speaker 1: well the balloon pause. Yeah, I think that's our episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah all until next time, everybody go forth in balloon.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Float a balloon into the airspace of a
Speaker 1: sovereign nation just to talk with them a little bit
Speaker 1: by Cameron all express, put it on a balloon, send
Speaker 1: it somewhere. But you can be the c i A.
Speaker 1: You want to see in the skies over a sovereign
Speaker 1: country on the balloon spredated on the side. Why not?
Speaker 1: Why not? What's the harm? What could possibly go wrong?
Speaker 1: Let's send up now I'm going to listen. On an
Speaker 1: unrelated note, I'm finally going to listen to the song
Speaker 1: Red Balloons for the very first time changes my opinion
Speaker 1: on what people should do with balloons. All right, everyone out.
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: slash sources. Thanks for listening,