Politics of Technology: Chip War (II)
The Trump phenomenon says pretty much everything about America today. He quintessentially represents the American Dream in the early 21st century – fame, a lot of debt, infinitely narcissistic, and as big a numskull as he wants to be. Most amazing about Trump is not the man, but the reaction of the American establishment upon his ascension to the pinnacle of American political power. America's elite saw in Trump an unappealing, too true reflection of themselves. America's political class, completely self-absorbed and lacking all self-awareness, were not simply befuddled, but frightened of Trump's ascendancy.
Until Trump, America's bipartisan political class ignored the preceding decades destruction rained across large swathes of the American landscape by deindustrialization. In the popular victim politics of America's cultural revolution there were far older transgressions to be reckoned with and righted. Deindustrialization’s victims were just complaining losers. In the infamous words of one of America's preeminent bottom of the barrel scraping politicians, they were a “basket of deplorables.”
Trump however saw opportunity. By acknowledging to this great mass of non-university educated unwashed, “You've been fucked,” he won. Trump pointed to decades of deindustrialization and then pointed at the Chinese. Just like that, decades of uncontested economic inevitability was overturned with revived old fears of a “Yellow Peril.”
Blaming the Chinese was always scapegoating. They did not come across the ocean and dismantle American manufacturing, on the contrary, this was done voluntarily by America's banks and leviathan corporations scouring the globe for labor arbitrage. Laying in wait was a powerful if muted force of opposition, the American National Security State, they sought to take full advantage of the opportunity offered.
The National Security State was always uncomfortable at best and largely opposed to Nixon's opening and American business embracing China. After all, the very creation of the NSS, its raison d'etre, was direct opposition to the godless threat of communism. China remains a communist state. Over the decades of corporate globalization, the NSS continually offered muffled murmurs of opposition, Trump unleashed them.
Miller writes,
“Far from the political limelight, however, on the National Security Council, a handful of discreet officials led by Matt Pottinger, a former journalist and Marine, who eventually rose to become Trump’s deputy national security advisor, were transforming America’s policy toward China, casting off several decades of technology policy in the process. Rather than tariffs, the China hawks on the NSC were fixated on Beijing’s geopolitical agenda and its technological foundation. They thought America’s position had weakened dangerously and Washington’s inaction was to blame.”
This is an extremely important paragraph revealing two things. First the unbounded, unaccountable, entrenched power of America's unelected NSS. Secondly, the NSS’ campaign to militarily value information technology as a vital national interest. As much as there is to despise about the processes of corporate globalization, selling things to each other is a quantum moral leap above blowing each other up, and accepting all citizens as political equals a leap above that.
Miller succinctly sums up the new policy, “Semiconductors weren’t simply the 'cornerstone' of 'everything we’re competing on,' as one administration official had put it. They could also be a devastatingly powerful weapon.” Making chips a military necessity, Miller explains since the 1970s chips have increasingly become part of all weaponry, “smart” weapons now deemed essential for military victory.
While Trump mainly focused on China's trade implications, the NSS loudly pushed the military threat. Miller writes,
“Among the many products that Trump imposed tariffs on were chips, causing some analysts to see semiconductors as mostly a trade issue. Within the government’s national security bureaucracy, though, the president’s tariffs and his trade war were seen as a distraction from the high-stakes technological struggle underway.”
He adds,
“The new NSC (National Security Council) adopted a much more combative, zero-sum approach to technology policy. From the officials in the Treasury Department’s investment screening unit to those managing the Pentagon’s supply chains for military systems, key elements of the government began focusing on semiconductors as part of their strategy for dealing with China.”
As stated previously, Miller himself shows a China far more dependent on other foreign countries than the US for chip development. Miller's book revives an old artifice of the National Security State from the heart of the 1950s Cold War. In 1957, the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite causing panic across the US military and political class. In 1958, from the bowels of the security state came very false assessments the US was behind the Soviets in missiles and missile development.
These warnings were picked up by an ardent cold warrior, a young Senator from Massachusetts running for reelection, who understood scaring the American people about foreign threats was always a useful election strategy. John Kennedy ran hard on the fictional “missile gap” in his senate reelection and his presidential campaign. In the famous Kennedy/Nixon presidential debates of 1960, Kennedy asserts, “By 1961, 62, 63 they (the Soviets) will be outnumbering us in missiles.”
Upon reaching the Oval Office in 1961, in a taped conversation, Kennedy's missile gap thinking is corrected by his new Defense Secretary Robert McNamara,
“There was created a myth in the country that did great harm to the nation. It was created by, I would say, emotionally guided but nonetheless patriotic individuals in the Pentagon. There are still people of that kind in the Pentagon. I wouldn't give them any foundation for creating another myth.”
Kennedy jokingly responds, “That missile gap, as one of those who put that myth around – a patriotic and misguided man,” then adding, "I wonder if we could get someone over there (Pentagon) to analyze this story of the missile gap, because it's bound to be of historic interest."
Of course that was never done, as in almost all its actions since its inception 75 years ago, the National Security State remains completely unaccountable. Far and away the most distressing thing about this book is there is no Chip War. In order to better conjure it, Miller writes, “The Pentagon’s public reports on Chinese military power have identified multiple ways China could use force against Taiwan.”
At this point it's imperative to point out, the official American stance on Taiwan is, since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met with Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek at the Cairo Conference in 1943, Taiwan is part of China. Any other thinking is a change of American policy, not China's.
A half-century after losing control, Chip War is a profile of the National Security State's attempt to regain control both of the technology and policy towards China. Not simply folly, but if allowed to continue in the words of Robert McNamara on the past's missile gap fiction, it will do “great harm to the nation.”
Amusingly enough, Donald Trump's China agenda became even more detrimental under supposed nemesis successor Joe Biden. At the beginning of October, the Biden administration announced greater escalation. The NYT reported, “While similar to the Trump administration’s crackdown on the telecom giant Huawei, the new rules are far wider in scope, affecting dozens of Chinese firms.”
In keeping with the Security State's entrenched Cold War mindset, Jake Sullivan, Biden's National Security Adviser bellows, “Given the foundational nature of certain technologies, such as advanced logic and memory chips, we must maintain as large of a lead as possible.” Chips have become new weapons.
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