Not sure if this is Corporate America's way of asking for more funding, but it's reported that China's AI and tech is no longer an inferior knock-off. It's possibly on the verge of becoming a peer competitor.
btw, what the heck is Eric Schmidth of Google/Alphabet doing advising the Pentagon?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...i-military-edge-over-u-s-report-idUSKBN1DS0G5
Recently saw interviews and a lecture by US professor McAvoy on the decline of the American Empire [his latest book is "In the shadow of the American Empire"].
Fascinating analysis.
Kicking off some 100 years ago in a lecture where some egghead explain how Euro-Asia is not two continent, but a single landmass being separated into two because of the massive emptiness between the two axis.
How the European empires managed to escape from the barbarian hordes from the East, head further West and South, "discover" the natives weren't using deadly enough weapons so decided to help civilised them and became rich.
Then how, after WWII, the American empire managed to take the French and British imperial holdings, linking up and controlling both the Western and Eastern axis of that Euro-Asian landmass and rule the world, I'm sure he meant free the world, for the past 70 odd years.
Now comes crunch time.
China cannot, at present, match American military or economic might. But it doesn't really need to.
It simply try to make peace [buy off] neighbours it hasn't yet need to help liberate... decide which ones is ripe for picking... and decide where are the weak points in American defences and offence capability to strike at or challenge without serious resistance from the US or anyone. Say, taking over the entirety of the South China Sea.
Then there's the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. That's one of the main thing that managed to not bankrupt the US imperial machine: just print more money.
But like the British Pound some 5 decades ago... the moment the world do not see the need to have the pound as its reserve currency, the empire start goes into the sunset.
What causes the world to see the British as a has-been? Or see the US in the same way? Just some small, minor, relatively insignificant skirmish where it loses to an up and coming power.
He points to the Brits losing its prestige when it team up with the French and Israeli to take back "its" Suez Canal from Egypt in the 1950s. Sending men and arms into Egypt just to be told to go home when the yank dial the number.
Or, from what I read before... the Czarist Russia losing that battle to the rising imperial Japan. That battle lost the Russians most of its holdings in the East. Lost the Czar his rule.
Then there's Trump... who according to McAvoy [?] pretty much do everything to hasten the decline. From pizzing off allies like S.Korea, Japan and insulting our dear Turnbull... all within the first few days or something. Cancelling the TPP - which would seriously diminish the average American [and citizens of those countries who signed up]... take their rights, destroy much of what's left of their democratic liberties, screw them out of their economic security etc. etc. ... but, according to this guy, would at least take away the some 60% of the world's trade away from China.
With China's One Belt, One Road; the trade pact, IMF-equivalent.
Interesting time ahead. Humanity might not live to see the next century.