Policy Tensor @policytensor Twitter profile

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Policy Tensor

@policytensor

2 months

Russia is a gas station with a pump and some old nukes, right? Certainly we're vastly richer and better off than Russians right? Right? If that is roughly correct, then tell me why: (1) Six times as many Americans die of nutritional deficiencies per capita than Russians*? 1/🧵

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@policytensor

2 months

The actual truth, revealed by these vital statistics, is that Russian society has stabilized and grown healthier under Putin's authoritarian rule, while we're getting sicker and destabilized with our monkey democracy. 7/

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@policytensor

1 year

What is the New Yellow Peril? That this handsome 40-year old, the son of a construction worker, and the CEO of one of the most innovative firms that has given Google and Facebook a run for their money, has to submit to hours of harassment by Karens in Congress.

The New York Times

@nytimes

1 year

TikTok's CEO, Shou Chew, faced over five hours of questioning from lawmakers of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, reflecting their distrust of the popular video app over its ties to China, data practices and the app's potential effects on children.

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@policytensor

2 years

Looks like Europe will consume Romanian forests to stay warm this winter. According to the EU, wood "qualifies as renewable energy."

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@policytensor

7 months

Argentina paid its June debt payment to the IMF in yuan. 👀

China’s Yuan Revolution Reaches Brazil and Argentina

China’s currency is becoming increasingly prominent in Latin America, but there’s a long way to go before it will challenge the greenback.

thediplomat.com

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@policytensor

2 months

(2) Five times as many Americans as Russians are overdosing on opioids? 3/

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@policytensor

4 months

A greater proportion of Gaza has been destroyed than any strategic bombing campaign in history—Guernica, Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Now that Sebald is dead, who will rewrite The Natural History of Destruction?

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@policytensor

1 year

Indeed, @DrSJaishankar has emerged as world statesmen of some historical significance. India faces great challenges and a tricky world situation. But it has prudently followed an independent line marked by great strategic restraint and realism. Biden needs to pivot, and fast!

Elbridge Colby

@ElbridgeColby

1 year

India’s foreign policy is a model for the rest of us. I’m envious!

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@policytensor

2 months

Russians, ofc, drink a lot more. But (3) why have deaths due to alcohol poisoning been falling for the past two decades in Russia and rising in the US? 3/

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@policytensor

2 months

We're so fucking rich and powerful, and Russia so weak and pathetic. But why oh why (6) are we literally dying faster and faster and the Russians slower and slower for twenty years now? 6/

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@policytensor

8 months

The chips escalation is turning even an even bigger failure than the Russia sanctions and for similar reasons — the misguided idea that we’re so powerful than the other guy will simply have to grin and bear it.

Apple is only the latest casualty of the Sino-American tech war

The conflict also has some surprising winners

www.economist.com

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@policytensor

2 months

(4) why has the rate of birth defects been falling faster in Russia than the US and is now even lower than ours? 4/

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@policytensor

2 months

While our war mongering elites scold their enemies, internal and external, they have presided over a social catastrophe that has harmed the biological population they oversee. 8/

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@policytensor

2 months

This rapacious, parasitic elite has lost all legitimacy and must now be kicked out of power—and permanently so. How to tell who they are: they're they one telling us we need to fight Russians instead of husbanding our own house. 9/

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@policytensor

2 months

(5) Why is the rate of multiple sclerosis falling in Russia since exactly 1994 (the bottom of the Soviet collapse) but rising for the US, so much so that its now more than twice as high here? 5/

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@policytensor

2 years

Mumford calls patents “a device that enables one man to claim special financial rewards for being the last link in the complicated social process that produced the invention.”

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@policytensor

2 months

They're the ones insisting on smaller slaughters (Yemen) to protect bigger slaughters (Gaza) carried out under the protection of the same oligarchs (the megadonors behind Israeli supremacy in DC). 10/

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@policytensor

1 year

I had to see with my own eyes. In terms of value-added at market rates, China ($4.9tn) is now as big a mfg power as US ($2.5tn) and EU ($2.5tn) COMBINED. 👀

Richard Baldwin

@BaldwinRE

1 year

FYI chart: shocking share shift

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@policytensor

2 months

And if the left has any conscience left, they will join forces with the antiwar right to take down the centrists warmongers who have driven the car so fucking far into the ditch. /fin

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@policytensor

2 years

Central to fascism was the totalizing identity: state=people=nation=race. However monstrous, it was a coherent "narrative" sensu @mgurri . The very possibility of such a narrative having vanished, fascism cannot, and indeed does not, exist today. 1/n

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@policytensor

2 months

We have to fix our own house. And that process only gets started when these assholes get kicked out in January. They'll tell you any democrat is better than Trump. But that is not true and you know it. Anyone is better than these butchers, incl Trump. 12/

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@policytensor

6 months

"If war breaks out with Iran, we would be fighting in a context where the Iranians own the Palestinian cause simply by openly fighting for it and precisely when the salience of it is greatly magnified. This is a recipe for losing the entire Islamic world and most of the Global…

Policy Tensor

@policytensor

7 months

Let me be very clear: Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq. Iran has as many engineers as the United States! A real US-Iran war would be very painful indeed. It would be unwinnable with the combined might of the air-weapon and the economic weapon (already long exhausted with Iran).…

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@policytensor

2 months

The fundamental fact is that we can no longer afford the world power pretentions of these entire class of losers who insist on relentless slaughter, not only bc they are committing the slaughter in our name, but more importantly, bc we have bigger to fry. 11/

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2 years

Gandhi on a midcentury Irish stamp; Lenin on an Indian one.

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@policytensor

8 months

Um …

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@policytensor

7 months

Let me be very clear: Iran is not Afghanistan or Iraq. Iran has as many engineers as the United States! A real US-Iran war would be very painful indeed. It would be unwinnable with the combined might of the air-weapon and the economic weapon (already long exhausted with Iran).…

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@policytensor

5 months

China is quite unambiguously the dominant industrial power in the world. Before you guys get us into a long and costly cold war (or, god forbid, a hot war), you better get the math right. This isn't Germany, Japan or the USSR. This is a New America staring us in the face.

Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

@ITIFdc

5 months

📉 New @ITIFdc report & interactive dataset shows China running away w/ strategic industries: It is the biggest producer across the 10 key industries in ITIF’s #HamiltonIndex —and, top 10 aside, it now produces more than all other nations combined.🧵

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@policytensor

10 months

Even the editors of the FT are living in la-la land. People don’t seem to understand that US-EU divergence on China is a necessary condition for global stability—if the EU follows the US lead, there’s no incentive for China to hold back.

Germany’s strategy to ‘de-risk’ ties with China

Restrictions in sensitive areas should allow commerce to flourish in others

www.ft.com

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@policytensor

2 years

The Little Ice Age was caused by the Amerindian genocide. Graeber and Wengrow cite Koch et al. But the result is probably due to Dull et al. and has since been well replicated.

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@policytensor

1 year

A cop out by ⁦ @Max_Fisher ⁩. We didn’t invade Iraq bc neocons gained control of US foreign policy. We invaded Iraq bc no one—incl the ⁦ @nytimes ⁩—had the wisdom or the balls to challenge the dominant narrative of Saddam as evil dictator. 1/

20 Years On, a Question Lingers About Iraq: Why Did the U.S. Invade? (Published 2023)

Two decades after the Bush administration said it wanted to disarm weapons of mass destruction and free Iraqis, the debates rage on about who knew what when, and which motive mattered most.

www.nytimes.com

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@policytensor

1 year

To add to Bridge’s point: China may grow old before it grows rich, but it will almost sure become extremely powerful regardless of whether it’s gdp and productivity falters. Here’s why. 🧵 1/

Elbridge Colby

@ElbridgeColby

1 year

U.S. shouldn't put its bets on China's demographics leading to near/medium-term decline. I'm not an economist but was exchanging notes with someone who is a very good one. Some key points on this. 1/

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@policytensor

2 years

Manoj Pradhan and Charles Goodhart argued in The Great Demographic Reversal that aging societies will slow growth; revive wages, inflation and rates; and test pension and care systems world over in the coming decades. Is their thesis quite right? 1/

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@policytensor

2 years

"$54,900 from executives at KKR, $35,000 from Carlyle, $27,300 from Apollo, $24,500 from Crow Holdings Capital and $23,300 from Riverside Partners"

Kyrsten Sinema is significant beneficiary of private equity lobbying machine

FT analysis shows centrist Democrat has received more than half a million dollars from industry this election cycle

www.ft.com

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@policytensor

22 days

We should be honest about what's going on. We dropped the ball on the transition. And now the Chinese are going to transition the world while we watch from the sidelines.

Cornel Ban

@cornelban73

23 days

It's not Chinese overcapacity, it's pathetic comittment to decarbonization everywhere else. China really called our bluff on the green transition. They produce several times more than we can absorb while deploying more green infrastructure than most of the world.

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@policytensor

3 years

Wages in the New High-Pressure Economy For the first time since at least 1997, the wages of hourly-paid workers (roughly the working-class) are growing faster than those of salaried workers. 1/

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@policytensor

2 years

“Around two-thirds of people live in countries whose governments are either neutral or Russian-leaning.“

Who are Russia’s supporters?

The West has presented a united front against the invasion of Ukraine. But many people live in countries sympathetic to Russia

www.economist.com

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@policytensor

1 year

Where are the people who confidently proclaimed that self-driving cars will replace human drivers? I have yet to see a mea culpa. Now we have many making confident predictions about “godlike AI”—we can be certain that they will all go quiet without ever conceding the argument.

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@policytensor

9 months

Singaporeans worshipping the ‘bell curve god’ has got to be peak meritocracy! From Wooldridge, The Aristocracy of Talent. ht @nytdavidbrooks

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@policytensor

6 months

In 1895-1975, no decade passed without interstate violence in Asia. Since then it has been stable bc the dominant Asian power has followed a pacifist grand-strategy. Western cold warriors are now forcing China to abandon pacifism—this is a strategic error.

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@policytensor

1 year

One for @NewLeftEViews , @adam_tooze , @martinwolf_ , @gilliantett , @70sBachchan , @kmac , and @phenomenalworld . TOW, we take the polycrisis to the next level.

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@policytensor

1 year

Let's be honest. As long as we're trying to strangle China, there's nothing we can say that would persuade them we're not. The only way to convince the Chinese that we're not out to strangle them, is to behave responsibly ourselves and not actually be out to strangle them.

David Santoro

@DavidSantoro1

1 year

Bridge is spot-on but I fear that ship has sailed. China right now has adopted a very power-centric approach to international relations. Beijing thinks we're past containment & want its rollback & even its defeat. We should correct that perception but it's going to VERY hard. 1/2

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@policytensor

7 months

Israel is now at very serious risk of committing what will almost certainly be seen as a genocidal act. We must stop them immediately, not just bc Israel will become an abominable pariah of the international system, but also bc it will backfire on our world position.

Eric Levitz

@EricLevitz

7 months

The U.S. is giving Israel permission to commit war crimes

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@policytensor

10 months

The Indian one percent own 42% of all wealth—compared to 35% for the US. The only countries with a higher share are some petrostates and mafia states. In Russia, which is both, it’s 48%!

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@policytensor

2 months

Even in that case, it should be handled by the constituted law enforcement and/or intelligence agencies. Congress has no business enacting "capricious" laws (as @gilliantett puts it), that aren't even laws in the constitutional sense but foreign policy by moral panic.

David Sacks

@DavidSacks

2 months

I’m willing to support a TikTok ban if TikTok is found guilty of espionage and the remedy is narrowly tailored. But no hard proof has been given, and the remedy explicitly seeks to “cover” almost all content-sharing apps & websites “subject to direction of” a foreign adversary.

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@policytensor

1 year

Fake Meat is “ultraprocessed” crap. If you want eat less meat start eating Indian food. An aloo paratha is a billion times better than any of this lab-designed nonsense.

Fake Meat Was Supposed to Save the World. It Became Just Another Fad

Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods wanted to upend the world’s $1 trillion meat industry. But plant-based meat is turning out to be a flop.

www.bloomberg.com

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@policytensor

5 months

The total yield of the bombs dropped by Israel on the Gaza Strip so far is 25kt. That's larger than Hiroshima (15kt) or Nagasaki (21kt). Gaza is smaller and an order of magnitude more populous. If this isn't a war crime, there are no war crimes.

Israel hits Gaza Strip with the equivalent of two nuclear bombs

According to the Geneva-based human rights organisation, the Israeli army has admitted to bombing over 12,000 targets in the Gaza Strip, with a record tally of bombs exceeding 10 kilograms of...

euromedmonitor.org

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@policytensor

6 months

More low iq crap. No, Europe is not prepared to fight Russia. Our only major ally against China is Japan. And Iran is a real fucking power that basically defeated us in a proxy war in the 1980s. Maybe learn something before talking out of your ass.

Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

6 months

The survivors of a nuclear holocaust will look at such casual discussion of a world war w/ disbelief. I think lots of that is due is total lack of exposure to what a war is. US has not faced it on its territory for 160y. UK was last invaded a millennium ago.

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@policytensor

2 years

Six corporations control 90% of media consumed by Americans, the most voracious consumers of media in the world. This degree of concentration in unprecedented. 2/

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@policytensor

5 months

What the fuck is wrong with the Biden team?

Martijn Rasser

@MartijnRasser

5 months

“US moves to choke China’s role in electric vehicle supply chain.” @FT

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1 year

@Noahpinion @scienceisstrat1 15m is about 1% of India’s population. If only 1% of families are in extreme poverty, @Noahpinion , then how come 31% of kids are stunted?

Policy Tensor

@policytensor

1 year

Developmentalism is a marathon—there're no shortcuts. This is true of American developmentalism, as I explained here: ; a fortiori 4 India. It takes 5 years to push down rates of stunting, wasting, and low-weight mothers and children by a mere 1-2 percent!

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@policytensor

3 years

Three graphs of polarization.

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1 month

An estimated 5 billion people will die in a Russia-NATO war.

Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to...

Nature Food - Calorie availability and extent of food shortages for each nation are estimated following regional or global nuclear war, including impacts on major crops, livestock and fishery...

www.nature.com

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@policytensor

6 months

What makes the West truly special is that you have freedom of speech. For instance, in a barbaric nation, a scientist, a professor at a university, say, may be purged for politically unacceptable speech. We have freedoms, you see. That's what makes America the land of the free.

Michael Eisen

@mbeisen

6 months

I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of @eLife for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.

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@policytensor

2 years

You think America is divided along partisan lines now? Here's a county-level map of the 1920 election. That's what we call a divided nation! ht @socialexplorer

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@policytensor

1 year

This hiking cycle is over. Congratulations. Let it rip!

The Fed Will Pivot Now

Why isn't the market rallying?

policytensor.substack.com

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@policytensor

9 months

Zoltan: “The west dreamt of the Brics as a lapdog, that they would accumulate dollars and recycle them into Treasuries, but instead of that they are renegotiating how things are done.” Who opened this door? “The signal moment for them in the past 18 months, argues the former…

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@policytensor

7 months

Israel wants to destroy Hamas. But Hamas can’t be fully destroyed for the same reason that the Taliban or the Vietcong could not. /1

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@policytensor

7 months

She has to go. And it's not just her. 'Europe becoming an American vassal' () and German hegemony on the continent are tied at the hip. How @vonderleyen exposed EU divisions on Israel-Hamas conflict via @ft

How von der Leyen exposed EU divisions on Israel-Hamas conflict

Also in this newsletter: Greece’s migration minister warns of rising migration from the Middle East

www.ft.com

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@policytensor

1 year

Sorry, economically the world is tripolar. This is why the most important strategic question in the early 21st century is whether Europe obtains strategic autonomy. @RnaudBertrand

Policy Tensor

@policytensor

1 year

@WCWohlforth @TheMindScourge @MatthewKroenig China today enjoys nearly as much geopolitical influence as the US—and this is a power resource. Economically, the world is unambiguously bipolar now (do you contest this?) and, with mfg value added the scale of US+EU, China's almost certainly a stronger industrial state.

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@policytensor

4 months

Former chief of CIA’s Russia desk: “The longer this goes on the more we’re going to have to concede up front just to get the Russians to the negotiating table.”

Bruno Maçães

@MacaesBruno

4 months

Biden administration says (off the record) that Ukraine will have to sacrifice territory in a negotiation with Russia and “That’s been our theory of the case throughout”

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@policytensor

1 year

The vision of a low trust society is at the heart of the crypto idea — permission-less automated compliance, smart contracts, and other devices for purely arms-length transactions designed for a world where no one can be trusted. 1/

Izabella Kaminska

@izakaminska

1 year

The amazon surveillance store of course is just the updated technological version of this paradigm. Preparation for a low trust society where you can’t even go into a store until you have proven yourself to be credit worthy in the system, and hence de facto pre funded.

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10 months

This blinkered report from the war room well illustrates my problem with the Schmidt-Jake gamble: the issue isn’t China’s response in the narrow chips sector; the issue is China’s global response to the US attempt at strangulation!

‘An Act of War’: Inside America’s Silicon Blockade Against China

The Biden administration thinks it can preserve America’s technological primacy by cutting China off from advanced computer chips. Could the plan backfire?

www.nytimes.com

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@policytensor

9 months

The scale of intellectual incompetence here is staggering. What will happen if @oren_cass ’s ideas become US policy? This scenario is a distinct possibility. If it comes to pass, what will be the consequences? 🧵

Ionut Popescu

@ICPopescu

9 months

Really excellent job @oren_cass outlining the need for 🇺🇸🇨🇳decoupling - good for US workers, even more important as the geoeconomic component to a grand strategy of containment! @ElbridgeColby @ELuttwak

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1 month

Workforce size and skill are industry-specific. If you let them atrophy, they decline and vanish. This is of great policy concern. Here we look at industrial workforce sizes by power. 1/🧵

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5 months

It is quite something for Western scolds to lecture the Chinese on Islamophobia. 😂 BTW, the Arabization/salafization of Islam in the 1980s was a global phenomenon driven by the powerful combination of the Islamic revolution and the bonanza of the oil monarchies following the…

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@policytensor

9 months

Just finished Deneen. Very serious—not to be lightly dismissed. Will have more to say soon. He’s really thrown down the gauntlet in his war on the ideology of Progress, and calls for “Machiavellian means to secure Aristotelian ends.”

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@policytensor

3 months

I don't wish him badly. But the man is clearly in cognitive decline. So, we're possibly looking at a Harris administration — if he makes it to election day. How come no one has challenged him? In a word: presidentialization. 1/🧵

Bruno Maçães

@MacaesBruno

3 months

Dems think US democracy is on the line but this is the candidate they field

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@policytensor

1 year

The idea that Russia is “a gas station with a nuclear arsenal” is totally wrong. Economic war at this scale has never been waged before and Russia has just shrugged it off. It has fought the combined might of the West to a draw. And now it’ll solve China’s Malacca dilemma.

devcroix ⚔️ 🏵

@devarbol

1 year

@sadwerkl If Russia losses, the exports and imports will resume, and the ties with China will be not that radical, Russia was and is a middle-income country that is not that relevant to some global schemes outside of material exports in an economic sense.

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@policytensor

11 months

"China overtakes United States on contribution to research in Nature Index."

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11 months

Fantastic, must-read essay from Grey Anderson on NATO as a “mechanism for disciplining allies, mediating their disputes, managing imperial problems,” and “enforcing American hegemony over Europe.”

Grey Anderson, Weapon of Power, Matrix of Management, NLR 140/141, March–June 2023

NATO’s twin dynamics—eastward expansionism within Europe, aggregated military operations outside—have brought it to the brink of a major international war, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But what...

newleftreview.org

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@policytensor

11 months

Apple, JPMorgan, Tesla, GM, Starbucks, Siemens, Volkswagen, BASF, BMW, Mercedes in outright revolt against the Jake-Biden escalation. Rocky Balboa is back, ⁦ @adam_tooze ⁩!

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@policytensor

2 years

Italy, Sweden and Russia have been charged with the rise of "fascism". This is an information-free charge that gets all its "value" from the moral condemnation integral to it, but offers little insight into the behavior of these actors, or what is happening in these countries.4/

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@policytensor

1 year

Capitalists need to realize that this ends only with a socialized banking system.

John Authers

@johnauthers

1 year

This is still escalating: A coalition of midsize US banks asked regulators to extend FDIC insurance to all deposits for the next two years via @markets

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@policytensor

10 months

This is wrong— @ElbridgeColby , @OrenCNN , #RuyT . 1/ The US has $118bn worth of FDI in China. Chinese investment spending is $7.6 trillion per annum.

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@policytensor

11 months

Every contemporary unipolar party system seems to have the same class configuration. Erdoğan “represents a settlement between the government-connected ultra-rich and the working class of central Anatolia, the Black Sea and the exurbs.” @TomFStevenson

Tom Stevenson · One More Term: Erdoğan’s Third Term

The tone of commentary both internationally and within opposition circles in Turkey was badly affected by wishful...

www.lrb.co.uk

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@policytensor

5 months

As far as investors are concerned, the world is still decidedly unipolar.

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@policytensor

2 years

From the TimesMachine. Enthusiasm for Italian fascism among American bankers and elites was considerable in the 1920s.

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@policytensor

9 months

Systematic Portfolios LLC is the most informed trader of US equities in the world. We're looking to hire a junior quant. Python expertise is essential; quant experience is a plus. Send your resume to @davideoks at david @systematicportfolios .com.

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@policytensor

7 months

Four of every nine Americans with only a high school diploma are not even looking for a job. And no, this is not confounded by gender composition. This is not the only signal of working-class despair—it is, in fact, impossible to not see this signal in ANY variable that contains…

Policy Tensor

@policytensor

7 months

@EricLevitz @mattyglesias @Noahpinion Sorry, @EricLevitz . This is a load of ignorant nonsense. It’s not like our only signal for working-class despair is deaths of despair: family formation rates, child-out-of-wedlock rates, mortality rates, morbidity rates, labor force participation, reported well-being—pick…

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@policytensor

6 months

I’ve heard that the White House takes this fellow seriously. If that’s right, it points to one source of the problem: the poor intellectual level of this foreign policy team.

Matthew Yglesias

@mattyglesias

6 months

@policytensor I think that’s fine if people want to say they’re voting for Trump because he’ll help Russia win the war in Ukraine and they agree with that policy goal.

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@policytensor

8 months

They’re so dependent that it took them forever to cross 7 nanometers despite US strangulation. Oh wait.

General Spalding

@robert_spalding

8 months

Sorry, this makes no sense. China is resource constrained, while the US is not. The vulnerable one is China. Take away American technology, talent and capital and they fold like a cheap tent.

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@policytensor

1 year

These are two books that we must read to make sense of India at this conjuncture in 2023—one from @jaffrelotc and the other from @AshokaMody .

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@policytensor

2 years

Whirlwind tour of the new nonalignment by @70sBachchan . "The map of countries that remained neutral on Russia sanctions is no bleeding-heart protest for global justice, but a hard-nosed security play."

Non-alignment: The BRICS' New Bargaining Chip - Groupe d'études géopolitiques

On March 25th, as Russia's war in Ukraine intensified, the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi visited New Delhi and entreated “If China and India spoke with one voice, the whole world will listen. If...

geopolitique.eu

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@policytensor

1 year

. @JosephEStiglitz "US policymakers contributed to global “vaccine apartheid” … [The Chinese] have made their vaccines readily available to others at or below cost, while also helping countries develop their own vaccine-production facilities."

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@policytensor

2 years

Let's hope the French are able to hold the line on green nuclear energy.

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@policytensor

2 years

This is exactly the sort of thing that historians speak of when they talk about processes that cause structures of power to decay and transform under the weight of their own contradictions. ht @matt_levine

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@policytensor

1 year

I think Eric Schmidt convinced the Biden team to go ahead with the chips escalation. If so, it’s important to understand what’s wrong with the AI Kool-Aid that he’s selling. The AGI idea is basically the discredited “technological singularity” idea …

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@policytensor

1 month

I think @Copela1492 is wrong about China being deterred by the prospect that "economic cutoffs by the western partners that would cause a devastating effect on China's economy." China already exports more to the Global South than the West (). Decoupling…

Johan Bartoš

@BartosJohan

1 month

@randomusernamw @policytensor @ElbridgeColby Germany in 1913 was pretty dependent on international trade. That didn't really make a difference. State's decisions to start or not to start wars usually do not have much to do with trade.

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@policytensor

6 months

Dunno about Marxism, but Stalinism saved the world from Nazism. If we had any integrity at all, we would recognize Stalin as the unambiguous hero of the twentieth century—the man who slayed the dragon and saved the world.

Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

6 months

IMO, the Soviet Union under Stalin did incredible damage to Marxism first, by killing all those who were original & then by promoting among the population adulation of the founders, ignorance of social sciences and closed attitude to the rest of the world.

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@policytensor

2 years

During the Cold War, much heat and light was wasted on the concept of "Totalitarianism", by which was meant the cannibalization of civil society by the state. But it was merely a discourse of Western self-congratulation, offering little by way of analytical purchase. 9/

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@policytensor

1 year

Since the breakthrough to modern economic growth around 1870, the world have never been as unambiguously bipolar as it is today.

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@policytensor

1 month

Israel has dropped more explosives on the concentration camp at Gaza than the combined total of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but it is the “The Houthis Have Declared War on the Environment.”

The Houthis Have Declared War on the Environment

The green movement must speak out about pollution from Red Sea maritime terrorism, which will devastate livelihoods and the oceans.

foreignpolicy.com

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@policytensor

1 year

It’s more important, as a matter of intellectual hygiene, to read people whom you disagree with, even if they they’re wrong, than to modulate your diet in such a way as to make confirming your priors a systematic feature. The latter is guaranteed to make you badly misinformed.

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@policytensor

8 months

The tragedy is not that the West failed to tutor Russia and China into the ways of liberal democracy. It is that the West first refused to include Russia in its arrangements (the Russians wanted to join NATO), and has now pushed China into a zero-sum game.

Branko Milanovic

@BrankoMilan

8 months

Perhaps the most costly example of total disconnect between the comparador intelligentsia and domestic knowledge-generation is Russia. For almost 40y, the West, through govt organizations, semi-govt organizations and non-govt organizations

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@policytensor

2 years

RIP Barbara Ehrenreich. One of the greats.

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@policytensor

8 months

Fascinating this from @polycrisis . @70sBachchan on Biden's China escalation: "even if one believes that it is necessary to contain China, it’s unclear to me that technological decoupling can succeed on its own terms."

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@policytensor

1 year

What is alarming is not that our main allies have defied us; what is alarming is that no one in DC seems to have anticipated it. Now they're assuming that everyone will toe our line on China. They're again wrong. And the price of this miscalculation is going to be much higher.

Collingwood 🇬🇧

@admcollingwood

1 year

Japan is not following the oil price cap imposed against Russia. It said recently that it intended to continue buying oil from Sakhalin, arguing it was crucial for Japan's energy security. The WSJ reports Japan buying Russian oil for around $70 a barrel. Sanctions aren't working.

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@policytensor

2 years

Absolutely. However, Russia under Putin is a textbook case of a Sultanistic oligarchy (Cf. Russia under Yeltsin, a wild oligarchy) whereas the US is a civil oligarchy. This has first-order implications for regime stability and double security dilemmas.

Anton Jäger

@AntonJaegermm

2 years

Will die on this hill: despite obvious difference in political systems, it’s still lowkey Orientalist to call Russian capitalists ‘oligarchs’ while Bezos, Musk, Branson consistently go by title ‘billionaires’ and their hold over Atlantic politics is arguably more oligarchical.

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@policytensor

3 months

Why is GDP a poor proxy of underlying war-making capabilities? Bc, to sharpen and rephrase Todd’s argument a bit tongue in cheek: skilled personnel in finance are permanently not available to industry.👇🏼

Policy Tensor

@policytensor

3 months

What matters is the military instrument and the defense-industrial base. What the social scientific theory misses is that guns and butter are not fungible bc forty year old bakers make poor gunsmiths so to speak. There’s path dependence in guns and butter choices. 8/

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@policytensor

1 year

Secretary Blinken warned recently that the Chinese might supply arms to the Russians. I don't know if that is a direct response to the chips escalation. But what is clear is that East-West relations are at their lowest point since 1986. Who's interest is this serving? 1/

Matthew Pines

@matthew_pines

1 year

One asymmetry that @policytensor noted is giving me concern. Militaries fighting (but not defeated) tend to learn (& strengthen, ceteris paribus). RU & Ukraine are getting better at fighting. NATO & Iran are getting better at supplying/targeting. China? (gearing itself up…)

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