Are they really this clueless?

I’ve always had a low opinion of our intelligence community, but I was nonetheless taken aback when commenter Mark directed me to the recent public assessment of election interference by foreign powers:

CHINA – We assess that China prefers that President Trump – whom Beijing sees as unpredictable – does not win reelection. China has been expanding its influence efforts ahead of November 2020 to shape the policy environment in the United States, pressure political figures it views as opposed to China’s interests, and deflect and counter criticism of China. Although China will continue to weigh the risks and benefits of aggressive action, its public rhetoric over the past few months has grown increasingly critical of the current Administration’s COVID-19 response, closure of China’s Houston Consulate, and actions on other issues. For example, it has harshly criticized the Administration’s statements and actions on Hong Kong, TikTok, the legal status of the South China Sea, and China’s efforts to dominate the 5G market. Beijing recognizes that all of these efforts might affect the presidential race.

Let’s work backwards:

Beijing recognizes that all of these efforts might affect the presidential race.

Says who? Do the spooks know this, or are they just speculating?

For example, it has harshly criticized the Administration’s statements and actions on Hong Kong, TikTok, the legal status of the South China Sea, and China’s efforts to dominate the 5G market.

So we are to believe that these public statements are an attempt by “China”, or is it “Beijing”, to tip the election toward Biden? The masterminds in Beijing realize that if voters find out that Trump spoke out against China’s crackdown on Hong Kong, they’d be more likely to vote for . . . Biden? Do the Chinese believe that the American public is favorably inclined toward the Chinese Communist Party, and doesn’t like it when our government takes a tough stand with China?

This stuff doesn’t even pass the laugh test. Start with the fact that a public complaint about US policy is not “election interference”. Then add in the fact that if they wanted to help Biden they would not complain about the Administration’s tough stance on China’s HK crackdown, rather they’d gloat about the fact that Trump encouraged the Xi Jinping to put vast numbers of Uighurs into concentration camps. Are we really to assume that that the Chinese are so clueless that they don’t know what sort of things will influence American voters? Or is it someone else who is “clueless”?

In the future, when I hear people tell me that I should “listen to the experts in the US government who understand the threat from China”, I’ll think back to this report.

And laugh.

PS. I need a vacation. Ever since the Italians elected Berlusconi I’ve have this perception that the world is getting steadily stupider. Or am I getting more senile? (Probably both.)

And check out today’s Bloomberg headline:

I wish I had a job that allowed me to “fix” racial wealth gaps. And what does “fix” mean? Eliminate?

Seriously, do I need to consult a psychiatrist? Is the whole world going crazy or is it just me?

PPS. And this:

After all, the president had told her in the Oval Office that he aspired to have his image etched on the monument. And last year, a White House aide reached out to the governor’s office with a question, according to a Republican official familiar with the conversation: What’s the process to add additional presidents to Mount Rushmore?

Dying would help.


Tags:

 
 
 

21 Responses to “Are they really this clueless?”

  1. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    9. August 2020 at 12:21

    Scott,

    In this case, I don’t mind admitting that it sounds ridiculous indeed. The shortened statement went through news agencies and the media, so one really had to believe that China was going to interfere in the elections, unless one googled the complete original statement, which I didn’t do, so I admit that I am guilty in this case. Admitting a mistake: it can be that easy.

    The statement is difficult to explain rationally, perhaps it is implying that CCP China is willing to enforce its interests illegally, for example through TikTok. But this is not spoken out.

    The other part of the explanation might be that CCP China was metioned because of political correctness to please Trump and to balance things out: Russia for Trump and China for Biden, so it’s a politically correct wash, although there is no evidence that CCP China interferes in such a way. There’s hardly any evidence regarding Russia, there’s even less evidence in the case of CCP China.

    The more honest statement might be that US intelligence hasn’t done a good job for years, but what agency admits that it doesn’t do a good job?

  2. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    9. August 2020 at 12:24

    “Democrats introduce bill to give the Federal Reserve a new mission: Ending racial inequality”–headline Washington Post

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/05/fed-racial-inequality-democrats/

    So…is the idea not crazy…and the WaPo and Donks are so deep into woke-ism they think a central bank can “end racial inequality”…and Trump is preventing this…

    On the next episode of Gilligan’s Island we learn the answers!

  3. Gravatar of Joseph Joseph
    9. August 2020 at 12:35

    Did the idea of Russian interference cause the same reaction? If not – why?

  4. Gravatar of rayward rayward
    9. August 2020 at 12:38

    Actually, the current Fed policy increases inequality. What? Well, by supporting asset (i.e., stock) prices by “whatever it takes”, the Fed increases inequality. How? The already wealthy own most of the assets and, hence, increasing asset prices increases inequality. Duh. Now, I’m not complaining, just pointing out the obvious. Can the Fed decrease the racial wealth gap? Yes. How? By adopting policies that result in falling asset (stock) prices. But that would be stupid, right? I mean, the purpose of the Fed is to keep asset prices rising, which the Fed does remarkably well.

  5. Gravatar of Alan Goldhammer Alan Goldhammer
    9. August 2020 at 12:39

    You are certainly not going crazy! We all need a vacation from all this zany craziness. Unfortunately there are not a lot of options right now.

    Regarding China, I have no admiration for the political leadership but I do for their scientists have have been prolifically publishing on COVID-19. What I don’t understand about Navarro and the rest of the anti-China folks in the Trump administration is they appear to have no plan if the Chinese market is lost to American companies. How can you ignore a billion person market? If there is any madness it is within the Trumpistas.

  6. Gravatar of Christian List Christian List
    9. August 2020 at 12:55

    In most (truly) socialist countries there is no inequality, let alone racist inequality: the vast majority of people are equal. Equally poor.

    And the populations are mostly very homogeneous, there is usually one hyper-nationalistic homogeneous population group, and virtually no one wants to immigrate to these countries. See North Korea as an example.

    Maybe this is the ultimate goal of those currently dominant Democrats who introduce such bills? Someone has to tell them that they have to do the dirty work themselves though, the Fed is not going to help them.

  7. Gravatar of Gene Frenkle Gene Frenkle
    9. August 2020 at 13:07

    The NYTimes had an excerpt from Draper’s new book “To Start a War” that sheds some light on the intelligence “failures” leading up to the Iraq War. So at least from what I read the book makes the intelligence community and Powell look better while Bush looks even worse. Plus I have read two articles which allege the Bush White House was trying to get the CIA to use torture to elicit false confessions from detainees tying Iraq to 9/11 and the agents resisted their pressure. So if the Bush WH did engage in that behavior that is worse than anything Trump has done and it isn’t even close.

  8. Gravatar of janice janice
    9. August 2020 at 13:25

    I don’t think you are going insane. But…

    1. Many people view banning Chinese tech as a smart decision. Not just because the CCP bans our tech, but because they can abuse the open nature of our economy to violate privacy, steal data, and fund academics and politicians that are more in line with their authoritarian view. Tencent is not a private company. Neither is Alibaba. The CCP owns large stakes in both. Imagine the CIA owning Facebook, and asking to operate freely in China, or anywhere else for that matter. Nobody would trust them, and we should not trust China either.

    2. Fixing wealth gaps is a utilitarian, totalitarian concept. Any redistribution based on immutable characteristics or some prevailing notion of utility (subjective morality) is a dangerous proposition. That is precisely why I don’t identify as utilitarian, and cannot understand anyone who would. If you don’t subscribe to inalienable rights, and universal morality, then you allow these apparatchiks to violate rights based on their own self interests.

    2. I doubt Donald Trump encouraged detainment of the Uighurs. You are using a third party source (probably Bolton). And Bolton is not an intellectual. He’s an opportunist and mouth piece for the military industrial complex. He was also upset at being terminated from his position. Same guy who said Iraq had WMD’s. Zero credibility.

    3. You are very callous towards the private sector, which overwhelming supports less govt regulation and more protection from cheap labor. The reason this country continues to move towards socialism is because the disenfranchised have misplaced their self righteous indignation. In other words, politicians and economists, not businessmen, destroyed inner city communities and mom and pop stores. But those workers have to blame someone. And the politician offering free things is a lot easier to side with than the politician who discusses hard topics such as social security being unsustainable. That is a non starter if you are trying to get elected. And looking at GDP only tells one side of the story. RFK spoke about this in the late 60s. Nobody listened! Have you seen the ghost towns and homelessness in the USA heartland where factories used to exist?

    4. China prohibits American tech for two reasons: 1. it provides very little benefit to the economy. The purchases are typically made through a third party merchant located in the USA, and the tech company operates in such a way that they don’t even need to provide service (bots). This creates an extraordinary profit margin for the tech company without contributing to the local economy — other than providing a service people like — but that service brings no jobs. And 2. They also understand the risks of spying and the ease of adding malware.

    5. The idea that economies evolve into the service sector as they “mature” is a fallacy. And it’s arrogant to think that other people cannot provide “services”. They can! And they are! And the USA is also losing those jobs too. Not just because machines can provide many of these services, but because the workers are not any more competent than workers in Vietnam where the cost of labor is significantly cheaper. In fact, you could make the argument that the Vietnamese are better at providing service, because they actually take pride in being employed. They don’t throw rocks at police officers and ask for “safe spaces”.

    6. Tech will almost certainly be disrupted again, especially as we move towards Blockchain technologies. Blockchain can destroy data collection companies like google, giving back ownership of data to the user, and returning profits to those who can produce (the most highly skilled). Such a system would essentially collapse the service industry in the United States, decrease the revenue for companies, and subsequently bankrupt the nation.

    There are many variables involved, and I often find that you might look at one or two variables, but no study that is single variate is worth it’s salt. You always need multivariate studies. And the world is a really complex place, which is why most studies turn out to be wrong. It’s incredibly difficult to account for all the variables.

    More humility is needed in academia. And more sympathy for those suffering from bad economic policies. We cannot continue to head down a path that will bankrupt our country, because economists cannot reconcile — or come to grips – with the fact that they have been wrong.

  9. Gravatar of MORGAN WARSTLER MORGAN WARSTLER
    9. August 2020 at 14:17

    CCP is out enemy.

    We want Russia under our umbrella.

    Neither of these are up for debate.

    who they want MATTERS LITTLE

    Biden cant be trusted to beat CCPs ass

  10. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    9. August 2020 at 14:43

    Sumner: “Seriously, do I need to consult a psychiatrist? Is the whole world going crazy or is it just me?”- that is one of the easiest questions Scott has ever posted.

    FYI, Biden is a known Chinaphile, so naturally the Chinese hope he wins. But the “intelligence report” is garbage, as Sumner says, and like most government work.

  11. Gravatar of Skeptical Skeptical
    9. August 2020 at 16:56

    You’re overthinking this.

    Trump is a loose cannon and unpredictably willing to choose “defect” in prisoner’s dilemmas. Plus, anything he does or does not do creates a moth to flame effect for global attention and journalism.

    China is not stupid. If Trump loses the election the “moth to flame” effect goes away for China. Suddenly, no one in the west cares about the Uighers. The tariffs are gone. The trade war is over. Navarro is back to what he should be doing, angrily writing anti-trade screed in his basement.

    Honestly that’s almost reason enough to root for Biden. The world is not going to do anything for the Uighers anyways and no use tripping up global trade flows pretending we’re contemplating otherwise.

  12. Gravatar of Benjamin Cole Benjamin Cole
    9. August 2020 at 17:24

    “The Fed can use its existing authorities to reverse the serious racial gaps in our economy, including in our current recovery from the COVID-19 crisis – and our bill will require the Fed to do so,” Warren said in a statement.—WaPo

    The WaPo thinks Trump is crazy and Elizabeth Warren a serious policy wonk.

    Southern Californians may remember a very left-wing radio station in the old days, KPFK. They had on academics and intellectuals and had serious if stilted discussions that ran for hours.

    The WaPo is like KPFK but without the IQ.

    Add on: Back in the 1980s, the WaPo had a pretty good economics reporter-editor named Hobart Rowen. I can’t imagine he would print this jibberish.

  13. Gravatar of Postkey Postkey
    9. August 2020 at 23:37

    ” . . . no one in the west cares about the Uighers.”

    It appears that most ‘Islamic regimes’ don’t ‘care’ about the Uighurs?

  14. Gravatar of J.V. Dubois J.V. Dubois
    10. August 2020 at 03:51

    I’d hope that you of all people would be innoculated to this – with your endless “do not reason from price change” examples. And to this day one can find Bloomberg articles where one expert or another spews nonsense about low interest rate being identical to easy money or “explain” inflation by change of oil prices or current account deficit or whatnot. I often have a feeling that GPT-3 model trained on these articles would offer similar value as for it to be indistinguishable from real ones. And no wonder: GPT-3 has no understanding of what and why it is saying – similarly to many experts.

    But I’ll give it to you that the recent times seem to be much worse. One explanation I can give is politicization of ever increasing number of topics and areas. As a s known – when talking about politics one can subtract 20 IQ from one’s ability to have reasonable discussion. Maybe we just see this phenomenon taking place across the board. And maybe it was always there but we did not notice.

    And on top of it Scott Alexander no longer blogs ;( Subtract another 10 IQ points as a results of options left in your content diet.

  15. Gravatar of foosion foosion
    10. August 2020 at 06:21

    It’s not cluelessness.

    Having found out that Russia is actively interfering to support Trump they had to say something about other countries opposing Trump or supporting Biden. How else can you soften the Trump news and provoke “both sides” headlines? In the absence of any real interference by China (or Iran or others) to support Biden, they were left with nonsense.

  16. Gravatar of Michael Rulle Michael Rulle
    10. August 2020 at 11:46

    Now you are getting closer to how I think—it is a free for all out there. You think our “intelligence community” is bad because of their comment on China? That is what put you over the top?

    While I agree it sounds idiotic—-we do not even know what they really think—although we know they are prone to make things up–in the old days they did not get caught. Yes headlines on Fed actually made me laugh—but then I realized that when Kamala (or whomever) wins she just might pick Fed head who thinks that way.

    Do you remember who owns Bloomberg? They are as bad as any of them. Its one thing to hate Trump—-its quite another when your own party starts hating its other half. Bloomberg news is ridiculous—as most news is—although I do like to soothing boringness of the WSJ.

    It does seem crazy—but let me toss a fantasy bone out there

    While our reaction to Covid (which is real and kills) is like a 4 year old afraid of snakes—–bring back the good old days of 68-69—but once the genie is released its out there forever—

    The fantasy bone is that deaths will decline nationwide like it has in NY—and we will have eliminated a huge chunk of fearful distraction. We want boredom mixed with tech fantasy. We really do hate all this stuff.

    But it will get worse before it gets better

  17. Gravatar of Michael Rulle Michael Rulle
    10. August 2020 at 11:50

    Now you are getting closer to how I think—it is a free for all out there. You think our “intelligence community” is bad because of their comment on China? That is what put you over the top?

    While I agree it sounds idiotic—-we do not even know what they really think—although we know they are prone to make things up–in the old days they did not get caught. News is not news—it is click bait. I dare you to read Drudge without going crazy. I cannot look at it.

    Yes headlines on Fed actually made me laugh—but then I realized that when Kamala (or whomever) wins she just might pick Fed head who thinks that way. But I doubt it.

    Do you remember who owns Bloomberg? They are as bad as any of them. Its one thing to hate Trump—-its quite another when your own party starts hating its other half. Bloomberg news is ridiculous—as most news is—although I do like to soothing boringness of the WSJ.

    It does seem crazy—but let me toss a fantasy bone out there

    While our reaction to Covid (which is real and kills) is like a 4 year old afraid of snakes—–bring back the good old days of 68-69—but once the genie is released its out there forever—when it goes away–and it will–lets say in 12-24 months—there will be
    some return to our normal stupidity.

    The fantasy bone is that deaths will decline nationwide like it has in NY—and we will have eliminated a huge chunk of fearful distraction. We want boredom mixed with tech fantasy. We really do hate all this stuff.

    But it will get worse before it gets better.

    And I know you think I am crazy—–but the cat is the better choice

  18. Gravatar of Michael Rulle Michael Rulle
    10. August 2020 at 11:51

    sorry i wrote 2 of same—see what this crap does?

  19. Gravatar of larry larry
    10. August 2020 at 13:06

    foosion got it right.

    The Russians are once again working to get Trump reelected and no one, including you, is talking about it.

    Why is that??????

    Have we seen Trump’s tax returns yet?????

  20. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    11. August 2020 at 13:45

    Janice, I am a utilitarian and I assure you that fixing wealth gaps is not a utilitarian concept. We believe in maximizing aggregate utility.

    You said:

    “You are very callous towards the private sector, which overwhelming supports less govt regulation and more protection from cheap labor.”

    Clever oxymoron. Yes, I frequently meet business owners that want to be protected from cheap labor.

    Skeptical, You said:

    “If Trump loses the election the “moth to flame” effect goes away for China. Suddenly, no one in the west cares about the Uighers.”

    Trump “cares” about the Uighurs in the sense that he wants them put in concentration camps.

    JV, In my case you want to subtract 30 IQ points.

    Larry, Everyone knew the Russians were trying to elect Trump in 2016 and no one cared. Heck Trump publicly encouraged the Russians to put out dirt on Hillary, right in the middle of the 2016 campaign, and no one cared. It’s hopeless.

  21. Gravatar of Postkey Postkey
    19. August 2020 at 03:42

    According to this article:
    “Muslim Countries Support China
    However, to the dismay of propagandists, no Muslim country is buying the “concentration camps” narrative. Turkey is the closest to Uyghurs, who are of Turkic origin. Turkish leader Erdogan was in China in 2019 and said that the Uyghur re-education centers won’t affect China-Turkey relations.
    Indonesia — the largest Muslim country in the world —has also said that it understands China’s predicament of dealing with separatists. Similarly Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and even Saudi Arabia have dismissed the sensational stories. Many diplomats and reporters have visited these Xinjiang camps and have come out reassured. Even the World Bank went to Xinjiang in 2019 and looked at the vocational programs and came back fully satisfied! “ https://worldaffairs.blog/2019/07/05/xinjiang-and-uyghurs-what-youre-not-being-told/

Leave a Reply