Please don’t take these as endorsements that this thinking is correct, just that it’s what I see when I inspect my instincts about this
Appreciated.
These psychological (and real) factors seem very plausible to me for explaining why mistakes in thinking and communication are made.
maybe we can think of the US companies as simultaneously closer friends and closer enemies with each other?
Mhm, this seems less lossy as a hypothetical model. Even if they were only ‘closer friends’, though, I don’t think it’s at all clearcut enough for it to be appropriate to glom them (and with the govt!) when thinking about strategy. And the more so when tempered by ‘closer enemies’. As in, I expect anyone doing that to systematically be (harmfully) wrong in their thinking and writing.
I understand what you’re gesturing at regarding anticipation that US actors might associate more with other US than with Chinese actors. I don’t know what to think here but it seems far from set in stone.
Some personal anecdata. I worked in a growing internet company for some years. One of the big talking points was doing business in China, which involved making deals with Chinese entities. I wasn’t directly involved but I want to say it was… somewhat hard but not prohibitive? We ended up with offices in Shanghai, some employees there, and some folks who travelled back and forth sometimes.[1] I tentatively think we did more business with China-based entities than with US-based market-competitors. I confidently know we did more business with non-US-based entities than with US-based market-competitors.
Meanwhile and less anecdotally, the stories about smuggling and rules-lawyering sales under the US govt’s limit are literally examples of US- and China- based actors colluding! It’s beyond sloppy to summarise that by drawing boundaries around ‘US’ and ‘China’.
I could of course find examples which reinforce the ‘intra-bloc harmony’ hypothesis. Point is that it seems far from settled, so resting on implicit assumptions here will predictably lead to errors.
As a tongue-in-cheek aside, shockingly, Chinese colleagues I’ve had in industry and academia are not weird aliens with dangerous values (at least not more than usual). Anyone who reasons on bases like these has basically failed (in a very human and understandable way) to reason at all, as far as I’m concerned. Most of the weird aliens with dangerous values I’ve met have been Americans and Brits! (There is obviously an egregious sampling bias.) Reasoning on the basis that others will reason like this is entirely valid, unfortunately.
Thanks Ben!
Appreciated.
These psychological (and real) factors seem very plausible to me for explaining why mistakes in thinking and communication are made.
Mhm, this seems less lossy as a hypothetical model. Even if they were only ‘closer friends’, though, I don’t think it’s at all clearcut enough for it to be appropriate to glom them (and with the govt!) when thinking about strategy. And the more so when tempered by ‘closer enemies’. As in, I expect anyone doing that to systematically be (harmfully) wrong in their thinking and writing.
I understand what you’re gesturing at regarding anticipation that US actors might associate more with other US than with Chinese actors. I don’t know what to think here but it seems far from set in stone.
Some personal anecdata. I worked in a growing internet company for some years. One of the big talking points was doing business in China, which involved making deals with Chinese entities. I wasn’t directly involved but I want to say it was… somewhat hard but not prohibitive? We ended up with offices in Shanghai, some employees there, and some folks who travelled back and forth sometimes.[1] I tentatively think we did more business with China-based entities than with US-based market-competitors. I confidently know we did more business with non-US-based entities than with US-based market-competitors.
Meanwhile and less anecdotally, the stories about smuggling and rules-lawyering sales under the US govt’s limit are literally examples of US- and China- based actors colluding! It’s beyond sloppy to summarise that by drawing boundaries around ‘US’ and ‘China’.
I could of course find examples which reinforce the ‘intra-bloc harmony’ hypothesis. Point is that it seems far from settled, so resting on implicit assumptions here will predictably lead to errors.
As a tongue-in-cheek aside, shockingly, Chinese colleagues I’ve had in industry and academia are not weird aliens with dangerous values (at least not more than usual). Anyone who reasons on bases like these has basically failed (in a very human and understandable way) to reason at all, as far as I’m concerned. Most of the weird aliens with dangerous values I’ve met have been Americans and Brits! (There is obviously an egregious sampling bias.) Reasoning on the basis that others will reason like this is entirely valid, unfortunately.