by liberal japonicus
Another post, but this is more about energy, oil, Iran, China, yada yada. This Foreign Affairs podcast discusses the Iran Shock, and I’ve consumed so much discussion of all of this so it’s all a jumble, but I have a take that I haven’t really seen put forward, so I wanted to get it down.
Here’s roughly what I think happened. When the Iran War started, lots of people were discussing the traumatic effects a blocked Strait of Hormuz would create. Not only that, a lot of governments took steps to deal with them, especially developing countries. This article, from April, describes some of the policies put into effect.
And while the blocking of the strait has created problems, nothing like the expected collapse has come to pass. It seems that a lot of those problems were alleviated by China allowing oil they would have purchased for their strategic reserve and inventories to go out on the market, cushioning the price shock, reducing demand, and ramping up coal. Yes, China restricted exports of petroleum products, but by holding off the purchase of oil, they prevented global crude prices from spiking even higher than they did. The export ban did put a squeeze on refined petroleum products, but that was a longer run up.
As the podcast notes,
I think the three of us would probably recognize that over the the last decade, you know, a consistent failing of American foreign policy analysts is like anything that China does, we assume it is part of a deep strategy when in case it may just be China responding to what makes the most sense at that particular moment.
Now normally, I’d be quite happy to hear this. I’ve often taken the position that China isn’t some strange outlier, it generally behaves like other countries behave. However, the conundrum they take up, of a China doing something like this but it isn’t with some overarching attempt to defeat the West, is one I’ve heard in a few other places, and none of them suggest the obvious conclusion, which is that having Trump in power is a boon for the Chinese.
In this case, especially with the strategic petroleum reserve, the Chinese did what they did because a huge global crisis would have put more pressure on Trump to resolve the Strait of Hormuz. By reducing that pressure (imagine what would have happened if oil had gone up to $200 a barrel), it encouraged Trump to keep fighting with Iran. In short, they are happy to have Trump in office, fucking up right and left, and they are happy to do just enough of that to keep him where he is. I’ve never seen or heard anyone suggest this. I don’t know if it is they can’t imagine China acting in this way and feel that somehow, the global energy system merrily plods along. China accounts for 1/3 of worldwide primary energy consumption, and putting just enough pain into it encourages investment in renewables (all those solar panels from China) seems like a good play to me. Trump keeps doing whatever, which must have the rest of the world look at the US and think fuck that.
China’s advantage in STEM research means they can keep piling up discoveries while the US seems intent on kneecapping US higher ed. I was particularly interested in Huawei’s new Logic Folding breakthrough. The amazing thing to me is that the breakthrough is thanks to the fact that because the US administration was working so hard to keep advanced lithography machines out of Chinese hands (and has banned Huawei from selling to the US and from getting any exports from the US), it created the conditions to have Huawei come up with this.
This tracks with a lot of other things to me. Everyone was expecting China to swoop into the Middle East and take over the US role. A special group of pundits keep warning how China is going to invade Taiwan because this time, they are going to do it because the conditions are right. China is going to do neither of these things because they are happy the way things are.
Parallel with this is the talk that pops up from time to time that Trump is a Russian asset. Here’s the Punch and Judy show that is The Rest is Politics, and their first question is Trump’s status as a Russian asset. Somehow, all of this is how we deal with individuals, and how individuals behave. No one says Trump is a Chinese asset, but he behaves in ways that mirror how much he seems to help out Putin.
I note that the Wall Street Journal had this article pointing to Chinese imagery guiding Iranian strikes which was echoed in a number of conservative sites. It’s interesting that those sites don’t have much time for discussing how Iran and other state actors are using US based AI. Here is Anthropic’s report on that.
God, this version of the multiverse sucks.
I can see why Trump might be suspected of being a Russian asset. Just ask the question: if he was, what would he do differently? Much the same applies with China.
But I think the reality follows from the truism: “Don’t attribute to malice/conspiracy what can be adequately explained by stupidity.” And Trump has stupidity in spades. Even before his dementia and general mental deterioration became hard to miss.
I’m sure Russia, and especially China, have trouble believing their good fortune. For Russia, it’s Ukrainian adventure would have collapsed long since, without Trump blundering around the issue. And for China, Trump is the gift that just keeps on giving.
If it ain’t (from their perspective) broke, don’t fix it. Doing nothing gives them the best of all worlds: American influence (and technical and educational prowess) imploding, and no Chinese effort required.
I’m basically with wj – I don’t see that Russia had or has the need to cultivate Trump as an asset. Certainly not through the traditional means of kompromat or similar.
Trump admires the way Putin governs (aka rules) Russia. IMO it’s more a matter of Trump trying to emulate that model than Russia managing him in any particular way.
Not so much an asset as a fanboi. He wishes he could be more like Vlad.
I think China is just responding to the clown show in real time and making the most of it. We’re handing them the future on a plate.
Why would they go to the trouble and expense of invading Taiwan? Things are going just fine for them with the situation as it is.
FWIW Krugman has shared some interesting points of view (his own and others) on the general topic of geo-economic chokepoints over the last few days. I get his stuff by email but I think it’s also on his Substack.
The Trump family has a longstanding financial relationship with Russian oligarchs. I would not be at all surprised if Trump Casino’s failure was actually a very successful money laundering operation for Russian organized crime. A lot of the Trump debt is also held by Russian banks.
No need for kompromat. The financial entanglement is enough to keep their interests aligned.
>No one says Trump is a Chinese asset
just yesterday, a commenter on LGM suggested Trump might be a puppet for the Chinese. i didn’t ask WTF, but i thought it.
They just need to encourage him a little to listen to Miller and some of the other advisors on what is essentially “Fortress America”. Put up walls, retreat behind them. There’s always been an isolationist streak in America that emerges from time to time.
Speaking of Trump family ties to Russia, little Donnie Jr.’s wedding was paid for in large part by a Russian oligarch. But of course that won’t be a scandal on par with Hunter having a laptop and selling some paintings.
IOKIYAR
I don’t know about russell’s theory on the Russia thing; it’s certainly benefitted Putin on the Ukraine war and how the US has treated Zelensky. Today’s best example: Trump talked to Zelensky and told him to stop bombing Russia’s diesel refineries because it’s putting up world diesel prices. Words fail.
(I mean, I know it’s harder to refine diesel than normal oil, but still. Pot, meet Kettle.)
IOKIYAR
IOKIYAB (It’s Okay If You’re A Billionaire). Don’t forget the billionaire’s mantra: “Never spend your own dollar if you can spend someone else’s dollar instead.”
https://digbysblog.net/2026/09/14/the-global-grift-guarantee/
Read the gift link to the the Atlantic’s Annie Applebaum article.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fbi-nspm-7-joint-mission-center
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/15/bo-french-texas-republicans-xenophobic-worries-01076388
The Axis of Evil is us.
Goodbye.
Writing anything further here will merely guarantee my murder.
Do what you have to do to survive the horror.
I’ll add another link to those three that feels to me like it fits with the Applebaum article…this one from Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor related to their latest book, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/sep/13/end-times-fascists-essay
I’m interested in Klein and Taylor’s book. They have put a name to the death cult tendency that’s been with us since the Millennium.
I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that the tech billionaires are basically insane. They are afraid of dying and are engaged in a variety of bizarre projects to somehow live forever. Blood transfusions from young people, uploading their consciousness to the cloud, whatever.
They are fucking nuts. The money has gone to their heads and they’ve lost their minds.
4500 years ago they’d be building pyramids…
>I’m interested in Klein and Taylor’s book.
i’ve liked the interviews and discussions they’ve done about it.
i just don’t think i could stomach a whole book of it, though. there’s only so much room in my brain and i don’t want to dedicate much more of it to the list of reasons to hate techbro billionaires.
Klein insists that the book is not all doom and gloom, and is hopeful and forward looking at its core.
I’m sure I’ll check it out in the near future, but right now I’m still racing to build a syllabus and a review portfolio before classes start.
Gaaah.
Tech (and other) billionaires today remind me of far too many fictional characters – off the top of my head: Yutani and Boy Kavalier from Alien Earth and Peter Weyland from Prometheus, Lex Luthor, various Bond villains (and their comical derivative, Doctor Evil), a number of characters from Fallout and Succession.
They seem to have caught up with what once were fictional exaggerations and there’s no longer any need for fiction to exaggerate such characters.
Once their Utopia was a floating artificial island (already satirized in Jules Verne’s Propeller Island). But that’s not grandiose (or safe) enough anymore and with Earth going down the drain not suitable in the long term.
That’s the times we live in. After all, we have an Executive Branch which is immune to satire by the simply expedient of really saying and doing things which would have been obvious satire if attributed to their predecessors. It’s got to be a terrible time to try to write for The Onion.
On the topic of the insanity of our AI tech overlords, via BJ:
https://balloon-juice.com/2026/09/16/late-night-creepshow-open-thread-the-accursed-sankey-chart/
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder.
These people are basically the AV squad run amok.
now freed from monetary and legal concerns, the members of the tribe look elsewhere for boundaries to overcome.
I saw that BJ post and have been resisting the siren call of sweet apocalyptic conspiracy – with little to no success.
One thing that bubbled to the top of my attention stack out of all of that AI Rationalist Sex Cult stuff was the Effective Altruism connection. I’m thinking that EA is where the Musk bit about empathy being the fundamental weakness of Wester Civ comes from. IOW there’s a thread connecting these apocalyptic narcissist weirdos and Charlie Kirk (with Vance as a likely connector).
And here’s the best argument for the importance of a humanities education… the literary side of the science fiction community is somehow not getting pulled into the bad sci fi trope that has captured Silicon Valley and sees it as the unhealthy obsession that it is. It’s that whole “literature as exercise in empathy” thing. The Dark Enlightenment types are Mary Sues in their own dumb apocalyptic cyberpunk fanfic.
seems appropriately techy that there is an acronym for the overall philosophy these sociopaths are into: TESCREAL
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL
🙁
my HREF got FUBAR.
It does have the virtue of serving usefully as a pejorative.
My hope is that there’s a big enough backlash toward these kooks to push them where they belong – under a large rock AND in the ash heap of history.
where they belong – under a large rock
Together with the immortal head of the Hydra. Birds of a feather (or more appropriate: reptiloids of the same scale).
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/09/trump-midterms-2026/688716/