Tom Voutsos

In retrospect, all the China cope over the last decade or so was really just the stealth on the Chinese stealth bomber. Hide your strength and bide your time was Deng's strategy. Amazingly, denying China's strength somehow also became America's strategy. For example, all the cope on China's demographics somehow being uniquely bad...when they have 1.4B+ people that crush every international science competition with minimal drug addiction, crime, or fatherlessness...and when their demographic problems have obvious robotic solutions. Or, for another example, how MAGA sought to mimic China's manufacturing buildout and industrial policy without deeply understanding China's strengths in this area, which is like competing with Google by setting up a website. Vague references to 1945 substituted for understanding the year 2025. One consequence of the cope is that China knows far more about America's strengths than vice versa. Surprisingly few Americans interested in re-industrialization have ever set foot in Shenzhen. Those who have, like @Molson_Hart, understand what modern China actually is. Anyway, what @DoggyDog1208 calls the "skull chart" is the same phenomenon @yishan and I commented on months ago. Once China truly enters a vertical, like electric cars or solar, their pace of ascent[1] is so rapid that incumbents often don't even have time to react. Now apply this at country level. China has flipped America so quickly on so many axes[2], particularly military ones like hypersonics or military-adjacent ones like power, that it can no longer be contained. A major contributing factor was the dollar illusion. All that money printing made America think it was richer than China. And China was happy to let America persist in the illusion. But an illusion it was. Yet another way in which Keynesianism becomes the epitaph of empire. [1]: asiatimes.com/2025/07/thucyd… [2]: x.com/balajis/status…

For many, owning a home seems to be a dream that is getting less attainable every year. Two groups in Toledo are bridging the wealth gap by providing an alternative pathway to homeownership. 13abc.com/2025/07/29/com…