It's amazing that pretty much every economist, journalist, business school professor and overpaid McKinsey consultant miss this critical point about how innovation works.

Indeed. And it is even more amazing that "staunch free market advocates" among this leadership cadre mostly do not see the parallels between evolution and capitalism. And they blithely praise the innovative superiority of capitalism in one meeting, then create elaborate narratives how selling off "non-core" capabilities shrinking their innovation Petri dish agar surface area increases innovation in the next meeting.

Somehow the innovation spurred by capitalism from the freewheeling, chaotic free market is suddenly amenable when it crosses the corporate threshold to sprints, top-down grand corporate architectural visions, and five-year plans. I wish as much as anyone innovation wasn't such a massively, messily, wasteful, organic process. But after decades of experience bashing my head against the wall with everyone else trying the top-down, bottle-it-up-and-sell-it hopeium, I've been pleasantly surprised with "letting go" and letting the "floor" mix it up, take input from it, feed back into it, and create a constantly-boiling stew of ideas. The finance management part in me has to be locked away in the padded cell here and there for their own good, but they and I can't argue with the results.

I think the consultants get paid for it, which helps.

Yep. China figured out that they can just pay the hand to shoot the foot. The hand commissions some academic opinions on the virtues of foot-shooting so that in the unlikely case someone tries to hold it accountable it can claim it didn't know that foot-shooting was bad.

Sorry, but China didn't do this, it was the US that did it to itself. China just saw the opportunity and acted on it.

It takes two to tango.

There is a big difference. The US was led astray due to its economic ideology. There was a concerted effort to move industry to other countries, so that salaries in the US would be depressed for lower income classes and the owners of industry could realize larger profits for a generation. Now the country is finally realizing that this is a losing proposition, while China saw the opportunity and based its economy on industrialization and scientific research.

Yes, that's what happened. Yes, the US was incredibly stupid and had a big hand (the biggest) in its own downfall. No, that doesn't mean China's hands are clean in the matter. Ultimately, politics are amoral and it doesn't matter, but to the extent that we're interested in making purely academic moral distinctions there's no need to whitewash China's actions. They did us dirty, and if we have the option to do them dirty back, we should take it without the slightest sliver of shame or guilt. Politics is amoral.

In any case, we absolutely should not let our natural inclinations towards an underdog story cloud our judgement. China isn't an underdog anymore.

Let's make things clear: China didn't invade the US. China didn't steal natural resources from the US. China didn't make Americans slaves. China didn't promise something they couldn't deliver. They just played the capitalist game with the US and became rich. Why should I harbor bad intentions against them?

Let's make things clear: you shouldn't. You should aspire to amorality, just as they have done. It's not about revenge, it's about winning, and doing what it takes to win.

Half of the people in America look at foreign policy through the lens of naive capitalism and the other half look at foreign policy through the lens of naive morality. Both are incredibly foolish, as China has taught us.

To be clear, the current administration has matched rhetoric about "winning" with some very stupid moves. I'm not a fan of stupid moves, but I see people object to both smart and stupid moves on the basis that they aren't good, or right, or fair -- and I object to that. Politics is amoral.

I have just not learned anything from this. The way China got there was working hard and developing its industrial and scientific capacity. I don't think at this point the US has even a military upper hand over China. If there is a hot war, China will be able to produce weapons quicker than the US can assemble a coalition against China, and at the same time China will stop supplying every vital export to the USA. The only way out for the US is to do what it used to do in the past, which is to develop its industrial and scientific capacity. There is no way to solve this problem through war.