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China is more MAGA than MAGA. The Internet is more America than America. That is: China has the heavily armed, highly industrialized, culturally traditionalist, monoethnic society that MAGA wants. Meanwhile, the Internet is global equality and uniform rule-of-code. It’s free markets and free speech, and the next version of what America once was. At this late stage, I don’t think the ~77M in MAGA can realistically out-manufacture the 1.4B of China. But the 7B+ on the global Internet could eventually balance the 1.4B of China. The Internet was built to resist a nuclear attack. So you can’t easily use physical force against it. Even cutting undersea cables can be thwarted by satellite internet. https://t.co/xoLeGgCjdy At first that may be what’ll happen. But think about how the US was balanced for decades by the USSR. And during that period, the US was a better actor than the USSR. West Germany was better off than East Germany, South Korea was more prosperous than North Korea, and in general the US strengthened its allies while the Soviets didn’t. However, once the USSR fell, the US gradually became unbalanced. After 1991, it invaded too many countries and printed too much money — both to its own citizens’ detriment and to the world’s. Similarly, for decades China has de facto been balanced abroad by America. At home China is a one-party state, but abroad it is a two-party state — because America also gets a vote. China has to play nice with the world, because the world has a choice. What happens when the world doesn’t have a choice? When the US pulls back its troops to focus on its internal conflicts, much as the USSR did three decades ago? When China has a completely free hand? Sure, it probably won’t throw its weight around in exactly the same way the US did. China is historically a much more inward-looking civilization, and may not want Chinese troops on the ground everywhere. Still, China is rational. And as a hyperpower they’ll see no need to bargain, so they won’t. The cost of participating in their new tributary system will just continuously rise, unless there is some kind of Yin to balance the Chinese Yang. And the Internet is the only thing on earth with comparable economic scale to China. So if there is a balance, it may come from the Internet.