MAGA has thrown in the towel on China. This is completely...
Balaji@balajis
60 views
Sep 06, 2025
~4 min read
1
MAGA has thrown in the towel on China.
This is completely understandable.
But it has many implications.
(1) First, what just happened? The new National Defense Strategy[1] is reportedly pivoting away from China and towards the homeland. Many troops will be brought back...at first to enforce the border, and perhaps soon to patrol the streets as they're doing in DC.
(2) Second, why did it happen? Because the US military is made in China. You can't fight your factory. And the stark numerical reality is that Chinese production in many sectors is unfortunately far beyond anything America can match for the foreseeable future, particularly without its now alienated allies.
After all, there would be no tariffs if US factories could compete with Chinese factories:
(3) Wait, no really, why did it happen? It's also because the Russian military has de facto defeated NATO in Ukraine, the Houthis have kept the Suez closed, and the last twenty years of forever war and political crisis have led many Americans to understandably believe their empire is simply too much of a burden.
After all, there would be no attempt at a peace treaty if US-backed forces could simply defeat the Russian military. Even the journos now admit this:
(4) OK, so what happens next? Right now there are ~750 US military bases globally. Many will get shut down over the next several years as a consequence of both US pullback and international retaliation for the trade war. This is similar to the Soviet wind-down after 1991.
That's what becoming a country, not an empire means: pullback of all this presence to just the homeland.
(5) And then what happens? Well, we'll all miss Uncle Sam when he's gone. Because China is far more MAGA than MAGA. It's a completely self-interested ethnostate that's armed to the teeth and that will bully any country that doesn't do as it sees fit.
Today, it's true that China is making all the right noises about win/win cooperation and the rights of small countries and so on. And it will probably keep that up for a while, as trade routes get recentralized around China thanks to the opportunity provided by MAGA tariffs.
But no individual state, and probably no coalition, can physically go tank-for-tank and plane-for-plane with the Chinese drone armada. So the leverage that China has over the world (and its own citizens) via sheer physical compulsion will eventually prove tempting.
That means we'll need an asymmetric strategy to balance China. A digital yin that constrains their physical yang. I do think the Internet can get there. It is after all the only thing with comparable economic scale to China. And it's actually upstream of all the drones, robots, transactions, and communications. But that's a discussion for another time. The first step is to understand what's happening at this time.
This is completely understandable.
But it has many implications.
(1) First, what just happened? The new National Defense Strategy[1] is reportedly pivoting away from China and towards the homeland. Many troops will be brought back...at first to enforce the border, and perhaps soon to patrol the streets as they're doing in DC.
(2) Second, why did it happen? Because the US military is made in China. You can't fight your factory. And the stark numerical reality is that Chinese production in many sectors is unfortunately far beyond anything America can match for the foreseeable future, particularly without its now alienated allies.
After all, there would be no tariffs if US factories could compete with Chinese factories:
(3) Wait, no really, why did it happen? It's also because the Russian military has de facto defeated NATO in Ukraine, the Houthis have kept the Suez closed, and the last twenty years of forever war and political crisis have led many Americans to understandably believe their empire is simply too much of a burden.
After all, there would be no attempt at a peace treaty if US-backed forces could simply defeat the Russian military. Even the journos now admit this:
(4) OK, so what happens next? Right now there are ~750 US military bases globally. Many will get shut down over the next several years as a consequence of both US pullback and international retaliation for the trade war. This is similar to the Soviet wind-down after 1991.
That's what becoming a country, not an empire means: pullback of all this presence to just the homeland.
(5) And then what happens? Well, we'll all miss Uncle Sam when he's gone. Because China is far more MAGA than MAGA. It's a completely self-interested ethnostate that's armed to the teeth and that will bully any country that doesn't do as it sees fit.
Today, it's true that China is making all the right noises about win/win cooperation and the rights of small countries and so on. And it will probably keep that up for a while, as trade routes get recentralized around China thanks to the opportunity provided by MAGA tariffs.
But no individual state, and probably no coalition, can physically go tank-for-tank and plane-for-plane with the Chinese drone armada. So the leverage that China has over the world (and its own citizens) via sheer physical compulsion will eventually prove tempting.
That means we'll need an asymmetric strategy to balance China. A digital yin that constrains their physical yang. I do think the Internet can get there. It is after all the only thing with comparable economic scale to China. And it's actually upstream of all the drones, robots, transactions, and communications. But that's a discussion for another time. The first step is to understand what's happening at this time.
2
Linked below is the original article[1] from Politico. We'll see what the actual National Defense Strategy 2025 PDF says, but the article is consistent with remarks Hegseth[2] has made about China's military, particularly its hypersonics.
Here's the piece.
Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland over China threat
This marks a major departure from the first Trump administration, which emphasized deterring Beijing.
Pentagon officials are proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military’s yearslong mandate to focus on the threat from China.
A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.
The move would mark a major shift from recent Democrat and Republican administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when he referred to Beijing as America’s greatest rival. And it would likely inflame China hawks in both parties who view the country’s leadership as a danger to U.S. security.
“This is going to be a major shift for the U.S. and its allies on multiple continents,” said one of the people briefed on the draft document. “The old, trusted U.S. promises are being questioned.”
The report usually comes out at the start of each administration, and Hegseth could still make changes to the plan. But in many ways, the shift is already occurring. The Pentagon has activated thousands of National Guard troops to support law enforcement in Los Angeles and Washington, and dispatched multiple warships and F-35 fighter planes to the Caribbean to interdict the flow of drugs to the U.S.
A U.S. military strike this week allegedly killed 11 suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang in international waters, a major step in using the military to kill noncombatants.
The Pentagon also has established a militarized zone across the southern border with Mexico that allows troops to detain civilians, a job normally reserved for law enforcement.
The new strategy would largely overturn the focus of the first Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which placed deterring China at the forefront of the Pentagon’s efforts....
[1]: politico.com/news/2025/09/0…
[2]: youtube.com/shorts/tetPM-R…
Here's the piece.
Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland over China threat
This marks a major departure from the first Trump administration, which emphasized deterring Beijing.
Pentagon officials are proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military’s yearslong mandate to focus on the threat from China.
A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.
The move would mark a major shift from recent Democrat and Republican administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when he referred to Beijing as America’s greatest rival. And it would likely inflame China hawks in both parties who view the country’s leadership as a danger to U.S. security.
“This is going to be a major shift for the U.S. and its allies on multiple continents,” said one of the people briefed on the draft document. “The old, trusted U.S. promises are being questioned.”
The report usually comes out at the start of each administration, and Hegseth could still make changes to the plan. But in many ways, the shift is already occurring. The Pentagon has activated thousands of National Guard troops to support law enforcement in Los Angeles and Washington, and dispatched multiple warships and F-35 fighter planes to the Caribbean to interdict the flow of drugs to the U.S.
A U.S. military strike this week allegedly killed 11 suspected members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang in international waters, a major step in using the military to kill noncombatants.
The Pentagon also has established a militarized zone across the southern border with Mexico that allows troops to detain civilians, a job normally reserved for law enforcement.
The new strategy would largely overturn the focus of the first Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which placed deterring China at the forefront of the Pentagon’s efforts....
[1]: politico.com/news/2025/09/0…
[2]: youtube.com/shorts/tetPM-R…