Arnaud Bertrand(@RnaudBertrand):I'll save you the read: Noah Smith's "argument", if you can call it so, is that the U.S. has lost any moral superiority over China, is building "a sort of gulag archipelago", attacks weaker countries and is run by people "far less competent" than the Communist Party. His conclusion: "we" can still beat China, and the trick is "to let them beat themselves." Because it's China, you see, that apparently suffers from internal contradictions. And all this after admitting, at the very start of his piece, that that he basically doesn't know anything about China. You genuinely couldn't make this up. Puzzles me how anyone can still read this guy's slope unironically.

2026.09.21 03:08

I'll save you the read: Noah Smith's "argument", if you can call it so, is that the U.S. has lost any moral superiority over China, is building "a sort of gulag archipelago", attacks weaker countries and is run by people "far less competent" than the Communist Party. His conclusion: "we" can still beat China, and the trick is "to let them beat themselves." Because it's China, you see, that apparently suffers from internal contradictions. And all this after admitting, at the very start of his piece, that that he basically doesn't know anything about China. You genuinely couldn't make this up. Puzzles me how anyone can still read this guy's slope unironically.