I’m guessing Saudis are gonna hedge their bets the way Turkiye is doing. The very fact that they are starting to hedge against the US is an indication of a huge shift in my opinion.

BRICS is definitely what G7 sees as the big threat going forward

Indeed, and I’d argue most of actual useful industry exists outside the west at this point.

I use Lemmy and Mastodon about equally. I find I like Lemmy for discussions, while Mastodon is good for news just because there are a lot more users overall, and you can follow different news feeds on it.

There’s a famous Lenin quote saying that every society is three hot meals away from chaos, and I think there’s a lot of truth in that.

I don’t think numbers on a computer matter all that much though. US can issue as much currency as it likes, but it’s the material reality that matters in the end. In order to prop up Europe, US needs to produce weapons to send there, same with Israel, and Taiwan. US manufacturing capacity is pretty limited at this point, so they have to pick where to allocate the resources.

Meanwhile, Europe has major problems with its energy supply, and so far the US has been profiteering from selling LNG to Europe at high prices, and poaching European industry. So, we can already see that the whole relationship is turning predatory. This will only get worse going forward. Ultimately, people living in Europe don’t give a shit about stuff like AI, crypto, and so on. They care about being able to feed themselves and keep lights on.

Confirmed by the US navy https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/13/houthis-launch-missile-drone-attacks-on-us-warships-off-yemens-coast

UBI is the wrong solution in general in my opinion. The proper approach is to have universal basic services. People should have access to all the basic needs provided unconditionally. I think it will be interesting to see how China will handle automation as it will definitively show whether it is moving towards communism or not. In a capitalist society, rapid automation would mean mass unemployment and economic strife. However, in a socialist society automation can simply translate into having a shorter work week.

What it comes down to is that the US has finite resources and the oligarchs see China as a bigger threat than Russia. Chinese companies are now directly competing with US companies, and China is starting to dominate a lot of markets like EVs, telecom infrastructure, renewable energy production, and so on. This is one reason the tech oligarchs largely went over to republicans now.

If you read the article, you’ll see that these are being used in combination with traditional automation. The advantage of humanoid robots is versatility and ability to work in spaces designed for humans. As a side note, I always find it amusing how people always assume that nobody bothered to think of these obvious arguments before going ahead and building these robots.

This indeed would be a big problem in a capitalist society where people have to work for the sake of working.

it’s even more stark if you compare by population

yeah, I’m pretty sure that as a westerner you have zero agency over either government in practice

If I have to choose which government I’m going to share my secrets with it’s going to be the one that doesn’t have agency over me.

I’m convinced that’s precisely what drives the insane policy the west pursues. The fall of USSR and the unipolar moment that followed were the formative years for these people. The world has moved on, but these people never adjusted their thinking.

The only good Russia is one that’s Balakanized and exploited by western oligarchs.

The other option is to just not make enemies in the east, and learn to coexist with the rest of humanity.

Unlikely to end well for the current Atlanticist political establishment that sucks on the US teat in order to exist. The whole article is basically preparing the public for the austerity that’s going to come in order to ramp up military spending. All that said, I do think that the US will leave Europe to hang as it shifts focus on Asia. This was gonna happen regardless of who won, but it will be happening much more in the open under Trump.

the world is healing

There’s some truth to that, but realistically speaking I think the window of opportunity on that has closed now. The US has lost every one of their own war games against China in South China Sea. So, if China decided to take military action there’s little the US can do short of starting a nuclear war.