Tag Archives: Apple

If China Were Smart… | Firewall vs. FAANG | Markets Are Dumb 15

It’s amazing to me how much of the Security/geopolitics conversations happens around stuff that will never matter. The Pentagon and their pet think tanks and congresspeople are pushing the “New Cold War” with China because they know that it will keep the money rolling in. But it really doesn’t make sense. All the defense related crap we are buying will be superseded or sunk within the first month or so of an actual shooting war with China. Nobody really knows what such a war would look like, but it’s obvious to me that most of the trillions we spend on weapons will be wasted.

What I have done this week, and with last week’s video, is try to talk about areas of competition that actually matter. Diplomacy, Business, and the degree to which the rest of the world is still willing to put up with US hegemony are vastly more important factors in the resolution of this competition than almost anything that will happen in the South China sea. It’s the management of these other competition spaces that will determine whether war with China happens in the 2030s, the 2130s, or not at all. The Big Tech companies are another one of those great benefits, like the peace dividend at the end of the cold war, that we in the United States may be in the process of wasting. We should maybe spend a billion or two thinking about these companies strategically, among the trillions we’ll spend on useless weapons platforms. Today’s video is a place to start.

If you’d like to earn my undying gratitude, please click where to support this project through Patreon. Please do reach out to us through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or our e-mail newsletter.

Video Transcript after the jump…

Continue reading

Trump’s Judges Are Amazon’s Judges | Antitrust & Abortion

One of the most frustrating things about discussions of the US judicial system is that they always seem to be about abortion. This is, of course, an incredibly important issue. But the courts oversee so much more than that one aspect of life in the United States. The intense feelings involved in that one issue serve to conceal the true significance of Trump’s judges.

Trump loves to trumpet his success in selecting Judges, but what’s often ignored is the way that the judges he is picking will constrain not just his agenda, but everybody else’s as well. For decades to come. In today’s video, we attempt to demystify the issue a bit, and delve in to one of the most successful lobbying groups of the 21st century, the Federalist Society.

If you’d like to earn my undying gratitude, please click where to support this project through Patreon. Please do reach out to us through Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or our e-mail newsletter.

Video Transcript after the jump…

Continue reading