> What the average American does not need to worry about is the Chinese coming after him because he smoked pot on the weekend. The primary threat to American civil liberties is their own government, not distant foreign ones.
Sure, your own government is responsible for not trampling on your civil liberties; that doesn't mean it's somehow not worse to be also surveilled by the Chinese government, in addition to your own.
When China is spying on you, that doesn't mean the U.S. isn't; it means they both are.
As far as I can tell, your argument is: Because governments in the U.S. don't recognize some things you consider civil liberties, like smoking cannabis recreationally, you don't care that the Chinese government is also spying on you, and you don't think the U.S. government should take a stance on that spying?
It seems pretty incoherent to me.
> Since when is the Chinese government in the business of compromising ordinary Americans?
Roughly since they have had intelligence services. It's not like the Soviets invented Kompromat, and it's not as though they were the last to use it.
I simply responded to the point literally made in the post above which was
>you can’t really argue that America and China are equally bad to Americans.
Yes, the American government can be a 'bigger bad' for Americans than the Chinese government. And it's also not incoherent in a general context, because using China or some other cold war enemy as a strawman to divert attention from domestic civil rights violation is as relevant as it has always been in the US. The Soviet Union was no danger to ordinary Americans either (well nukes aside), because by definition ordinary Americans are.. well ordinary and entirely uninteresting.
Instead of falling in line with the US government circus of blaming China, Americans would do well to pay close attention to their own government. As another poster pointed out, one of the primary reasons for this in the 5G arena is companies struggling to compete with Huawei.
> Yes, the American government can be a 'bigger bad' for Americans than the Chinese government.
I didn't say the thing you are refuting, that was somebody else paraphrasing my more precise statement.
I said that the Chinese government is more willing to be evil to Americans than the U.S. government. The outcomes are a matter of proximity and control.
The reason I made this distinction is because right now we are at a crossroads, deciding whether or not to potentially give the Chinese government more proximity and control when it comes to ordinary Americans. My point is that they really don't have your best interests at heart.
> Instead of falling in line with the US government circus of blaming China, Americans would do well to pay close attention to their own government.
This is not an either-or sort of situation. Americans would do well to pay close attention to both the domestic actions of the U.S. government (and their local and state governments), and equally close attention the foreign actions of the government of the PRC.
> As another poster pointed out, one of the primary reasons for this in the 5G arena is companies struggling to compete with Huawei.
I'm not even convinced there's much of a market for 5G in the U.S; but sure, there is a competitive angle to this. Tell me, though, why Huawei is so interested in making the carrier equipment, but the modems so much less so?
Sure, your own government is responsible for not trampling on your civil liberties; that doesn't mean it's somehow not worse to be also surveilled by the Chinese government, in addition to your own.
When China is spying on you, that doesn't mean the U.S. isn't; it means they both are.
As far as I can tell, your argument is: Because governments in the U.S. don't recognize some things you consider civil liberties, like smoking cannabis recreationally, you don't care that the Chinese government is also spying on you, and you don't think the U.S. government should take a stance on that spying?
It seems pretty incoherent to me.
> Since when is the Chinese government in the business of compromising ordinary Americans?
Roughly since they have had intelligence services. It's not like the Soviets invented Kompromat, and it's not as though they were the last to use it.