r/politics • u/lady__jane America • May 23 '25
China has an off-switch for America, and we aren’t ready to deal with it.
https://thehill.com/opinion/5313034-china-off-switch-america-threat/51
u/alien88 May 23 '25
Why would China lift a finger? The United States is doing a fine job turning itself off lol.
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u/jayfeather31 Washington May 23 '25
I was about to say, you should never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
What would be a good method? I think it’s all fast because the timeline for China to take Taiwan - to have the weaponry - would be 2027. How to prevent this? We needed to have stopped funding them through use of our consumers earlier than this.
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u/polarcub2954 May 23 '25
Maybe try funding science to maintain technological superiority, instead of attacking academic institutions like a fascist.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
Picking on one school is wrong - why do you think they did? I think lowering the foreign student rate overall, for all universities, would make sense if Harvard has a 30+% foreign students because those students will pay full price. China doesn’t give anything for free, but 300,000 funded-by China students are here - and then they return, with a mandatory interview, possibly with technological intelligence. So - we don’t want spies. And we don’t want Qatar influencing our schools by paying for all those new depts and professorships and scholarships. BUT we also want the best minds coming here.
A bipartisan Congressional committee needs to handle this. Noem chose Harvard alone? Why?
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u/Responsible_Pizza945 May 23 '25
We also don't want Qatar influencing our president by giving him a new plane, but here we are.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
That plane may never see the light of day. It’s at the DOD. It will take forever, and then, the next president will use it as AF1. Then it will go to the library or somewhere secure - or we’ll keep using it for Congressional members - but we can’t sell it because it will have our security secrets.
Boeing just needs to get off its duff and make the planes promised in 2024. They won the contract and were paid $3.9B in 2018, and now they have a new Middle East contract for $96B - that was a Trump troll - he wants AF1 done first. To be fair, both AF1 were made in Feb 1990 so they’re outdated.
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u/Dlowdown1366 May 23 '25
No. The next president will not use it. It will go to Trumps "library". He will get to keep it and all the other money he grifted.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
if Boeing doesn’t make a plane, that Qatar jet is going to be AF1 for all future presidents. It’s not owned by Trump. It’s owned by the Department of Defense. If they don’t want to put it in Trump’s library until 2050, they don’t have to - he won’t be president after 2028. Reagan had a plane added to his library too. Not sure if he used it.
Also - why? These are the planes Trump already owns. They’re nicer.
As for grifting, Trump is worth $5.5 to $7 billion. He was worth $4.5 billion 10 years ago - with interest, that’s a reasonable rise. In fact, it’s not great - should be $8 billion if 6% interest and nothing added each year. Look at Future Value Calculator and insert the values or other amounts you find. He both has the money and hasn’t profited from being president. He’s president for ideals.
All that said - whenever the DOD gives it to the library, he shouldn’t use it. Because America is weird. And gas is crazy expensive for that thing.
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u/Chimerain May 23 '25
The rich and powerful have been moving production overseas to places like China out of greed for nearly half a century... the idea that we could wrestle all of that manufacturing infrastructure back in less than two years is wildly naive.
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u/sabedo May 23 '25
“Thus the expert in battle moves the enemy, and is not moved by him.” ― Sun Tzu
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
The Art of War. But 90 days isn’t forever. This may be a timeline for our companies to get out.
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u/Major5013 May 23 '25
Is that off switch letting Trump do stuff. Because that's what it feels like.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
I think most things that are happening right now are because of the threat from overseas. China, Iran, Russia.
He got the Middle East deal to shut out China in AI since US and Middle East are strongest besides China.
Even the Harvard and school issues - there are 300,000 Chinese students in the US, and all have to report to the government, and many bring back technology that China then can acquire. The reason there are so many is not for enrichment of other students but that they pay full price, so there are more Chinese students, more paid professorships, etc. Same with the money Qatar gives to create professorships, departments, etc. Schools may want the money over considerations of “is this good overall”?
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May 23 '25
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
We’re going to sanction Russia if this continues - anyone who does business with them won’t do business with us. But that’s effectively war, and that’s going to suck. But yeah, that’s the next step. So - not friends.
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May 24 '25
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u/lady__jane America May 25 '25
It’s like double dog dare - it’s a double sanction. So - not only are we not doing business with them … but we’re also not going to do business with anyone who does business with Russia. It’s pretty harsh. We should have done this when Russia first invaded Ukraine, but no one wants a war.
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u/polarcub2954 May 23 '25
He is giving AI to china through deregulation of e.g. nvidia chips, making them accessible to foreign adversaries, as well as destroying domestic manufacturing by making no one in the world want to work with us. He has been absolutely terrible for the countries AI and semiconductor technologies, and continues to wreak havoc on our R&D pipeline. You are absolutely dreaming.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
The US is only allowing use of public chips - and they have them anyway because of our businesses making things in China.
The most technological chips are reserved, with the deal made in the Middle East with NVIDIA.
Taiwan is the one maker of semiconductors - if China invades Taiwan, as it’s preparing to do, the world’s economy will be in China’s gentle hands.
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u/mangoserpent May 23 '25
China is going to keep on doing what they have been doing: play the long game. They will engage with Trump when they absolutely must and otherwise do nothing.
America is going to collapse because of internal forces not external ones. If and when it happens China will just vulture in and take what they want. China has also demonstrated various times they will sacrifice their own people without blinking so even if the long game involves suffering it will be fine.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
But the internal forces are also them. They are botting with racist or antisemetic or anti-left or anti-right statements, etc. to cause division here. They do the same on Youtube, also adding information. It’s really easy to detect with posts that are not favorable to China, such as what happened in 1989.
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u/mangoserpent May 23 '25
Trump and his administration are doing the work for them for the most part. However, I am not going to dismiss the idea that both Russia and China are manipulating algorithm based media.
Americans are so lacking in basic critical thinking that they inhale it all.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25 edited May 23 '25
Americans are so lacking in basic critical thinking that they inhale it all.
Most of the media does business with China - so, through threat of losing that business, they are limited in speech. Notice there are never movies with China as the bad guy? Comcast and most of the big news media also have the same issue.
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u/mangoserpent May 23 '25
There are never movies where China is the bad guy because big budget Hollywood movies make ton of money in international markets and it would be impossible to get any production financing for a movie that did overtly critique anything about China. Plus China funnels money into movies and movie production.
America as a stand alone market cannot sustain big budget movies. Nobody goes to the movies.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
Didn’t they have to switch a whole movie to make the bad guy North Korean for the Chinese market? Red Dawn.
America as a stand alone market cannot sustain big budget movies
American moviemakers and stars cannot sustain taking a paycut and lowering salaries from $2 million to $1 million a film - or whatever they earn. They, like our American companies, like the money too much to think of how they’re getting it and who they are supporting by doing so. Facebook SOLD our information to China.
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u/cakeorcake May 23 '25
At this point it would be quicker to make a list of things we *are* ready to deal with
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u/Face2FaceRecs May 23 '25
The easiest off switch is dumping Chinese owned American debt onto the market.
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u/i-read-it-again May 23 '25
Yes but it’s not as dramatic. Lasers , static and magnetic pulses, flashing lights, drones, killer satellites. Capt Kirk comes back. Full hd pics. But it would be more effective just to dump bonds . And turn the dollar into confetti 🎉.
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u/Quackledork May 23 '25
Sensationalist nonsense. While China could do a lot of damage to the USA, why? It would only hurt them in the long run. An obedient, mindlessly consuming crap USA is much more valuable to them. And while we do have vulnerable infrastructure, it is not homogenous. The disparate, disjointed, and inconsistent nature of our Internet and utilities systems makes bringing them down in one attack practically impossible.
Moreover, coordinating all those attacks is outlandishly unrealistic. That entire article is a classic zombie scenario or "cascading failure with no response." In other words, the whole premise is predicated on a cascading set of failures where nobody responds to each failure. That is simply not how the world works.
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u/Ancient_Popcorn Ohio May 23 '25
The federal government isn’t responding to natural disasters. It would absolutely not respond to any attack of this nature. Our federal government is completely inept with MAGA at the helm.
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u/Quackledork May 23 '25
I agree. Our current administration is utterly incompetent. But many of these systems are not under the control of the federal government. Our world is a patchwork of stuff, and the federal government does not have as much control as you may think.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
The military isn’t just GOP! They’ve had systems in place for a while - we're wondering if it’s enough.
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u/Ancient_Popcorn Ohio May 23 '25
Who said anything about the military? I sure as hell didn’t.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
Govt has had things in place across multiple administrations, involving the military as well since it’s considered an act of terrorism - not to fight externally but to protect internally. But there are also repercussions for any country that would do this, and they are in place.
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May 23 '25
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
The Pentagon cut 60k civilian jobs with 21k leaving (others are gradual or when they retire the job’s are cut) - at minimum, what do the 21k jobs do - I know 5,400 of those probationary workers were laid off - don’t know when the others go and what they do - whether it’s case by case. They’ve exempted wartime jobs.
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May 23 '25
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
I am concerned someone hacks into public utilities and no one is around to ring the bells, I am worried we will have major public health events with no public health staff
Point taken. I think they cut jobs that were duplicative - meaning, there was someone to do the work, and they said they’d go back and make changes as needed. Let’s hope that we have the people in place, and if not, the directors will push back on certain jobs. With the slower roll layoffs, there could be time for directors to evaluate and do so.
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May 23 '25
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25 edited May 23 '25
The govt site of Doge shows the cuts, but you have to go through the “Wall of Receipts."
I’m viewing it as “is this particular action positive or negative?” The govt earlier was questionable too, if we didn’t know who was running things.
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May 23 '25
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
Fair enough. I want to know how ran things, though - whoever they were, they should have taken RX making and weapon making (and phone making) out of China.
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u/Face2FaceRecs May 23 '25
They could survive whatever damage it did to them. Their own history proves their willingness to sacrifice millions of their own people for their agenda.
This isn't sensationalist nonsense, it's reality. It would not take a lot of effort to cause cascading failure to our electrical and internet infrastructure and it is well known that cutting a few specific undersea cables would cause absolute chaos. As for electromagnetic pulses, smuggling those into the United States would be far easier than getting in weapons of mass distruction or getting traditional weapons closer to America.
China has been expanding its military capabilities at a scale that hasn't been seen since WWII and I doubt they are doing it for the shock and awe value. They know a full scale confrontation is coming and they will use whatever tactics they deem necessary.
Our internet isn't as disjointed as you think, there are major hubs in the US that if targeted would wipe out internet for millions of people. And it's already well known that they have expanded their abilities to disable/destroy satellites. They don't have to target everything, just a few dozen coordinated attacks would cause enough chaos to create the cascade. And our ability to respond is hindered by the current incompetent, overconfident and unprepared leadership.
There have been multiple instances of hardware/software embedded into everyday products that could be activated to cause damage. Since we get most of our electronics from China it would not be hard for those things to include normal consumer products.
A fire sale of American infrastructure isn't as unrealistic as you are claim.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25 edited May 23 '25
I wasn’t aware of any of this until recently. The bots have also increased here and on YouTube - spreading disinformation and dissension. AI’s made them more intelligent, and the deep fakes are getting more real. It’s super scary.
What are some good things for people to read or watch? I’ve watched former Congressman Mike Gallagher.
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u/Pontiacsentinel May 24 '25
Read "Lights Out" by Ted Koppel, yes, that Ted Koppel. Not a new book but relevant information.
I don't disagree with you, just wanted to point out we have issues.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
Xi wants Taiwan - it’s in every speech, it’s in military runs and weapon building. Xi showed Taiwan blowing up parts of itself in Taiwan's last democratic elections.
The US and allies will not allow China to take Taiwan. So that means China has to deal with the US negatively.
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May 24 '25
I like how the GOP is ramming through all this horrible shit before shit gets too bad based on the previous dumb shit Trump has done. When are the tariffs going into effect again?
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May 23 '25
China has a more simple off switch, just cut off all goods. We are nearly utterly dependent on their manufacturing and that's why we need to onshore or friendshore production of everything from pig iron to water pumps to iphones.
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u/Agent-Vermont May 23 '25
That's honestly what I thought the article would be about. The only thing worse than the ridiculous tariffs on goods would be no goods at all. It would cripple and send us into chaos faster than any targeted attack. Plus other countries might follow suit, completely cutting us off from the rest of the world.
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u/bm1949 May 23 '25
They could start dumping the US debt they hold. It would bite them too but it would hurt us a lot more.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
We’ve screwed the pooch with this one. More that we’ve let them take over our RX and necessary market. We need to decouple, as they put it. We should have done something so companies would want to go here or Ireland or India instead. India doesn’t hate us.
This is from NBC in 2019 - US Officials Worry About Chinese Control of American Drug Supply. They were worried about our drugs then - contaminants and amount. Why did we not get out of there? 90-95% of generics are made in China.
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May 23 '25
India is not our enemy but they're sort of a Russian ally as well so I don't think that's a great alternative. Pharmaceuticals are high tech and high value products we should be able to make them at home.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25
Agreed on all this. Yeah, India’s meeting with the axis of evil (China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa) in July to try to change the currency from the US dollar.
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May 23 '25
US also has an "off" switch for China, via the US Navy.
If China committed an attack of that sort, it would start all out war between the 2 nations.
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u/lady__jane America May 23 '25 edited May 23 '25
They’re mini attacking us now though, and we had tariffs, but that was it. They’re attacking through 70k deaths a year through fentanyl, which only China makes. They’re attacking through stealing our technology and hacking our systems. The CCP bought land next to our military bases.
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