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Is Washington prepared for a geopolitical ‘tech race’?

When Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sat down with Chinese officials in Anchorage, Alaska for the first high-level bilateral summit of the new administration, it was not a typical diplomatic meeting. Instead..

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When Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sat down with Chinese officials in Anchorage, Alaska for the first high-level bilateral summit of the new administration, it was not a typical diplomatic meeting. Instead of a polite but restrained diplomatic exchange, the two sides traded pointed barbs for almost two hours. “There is growing consensus that the era of engagement with China has come to an unceremonious close,” wrote Sullivan and Kurt Campbell, the Administration’s Asia czar also in attendance, back in 2019. How apt that they were present for that moment’s arrival.

A little more than one hundred days into the Biden Administration, there is no shortage of views on how it should handle this new era of Sino-American relations. From a blue-ribbon panel assembled by former Google Chairman Eric Schmidt to a Politico essay from an anonymous former Trump Administration official that consciously echoes (in both its name and its author’s anonymity) George Kennan’s famous “Long Telegram” laying out the theory of Cold War containment, to countless think tank reports, it seems everyone is having their say.

What is largely uncontroversial though is that technology is at the center of U.S.-China relations, and any competition with China will be won or lost in the digital and cyber spheres. “Part of the goal of the Alaska meeting was to convince the Chinese that the Biden administration is determined to compete with Beijing across the board to offer competitive technology,” wrote David Sanger in the New York Times shortly afterward.

But what, exactly, does a tech-centered China strategy look like? And what would it take for one to succeed?

Tech has brought Republicans and Democrats uneasily together

One encouraging sign is that China has emerged as one of the few issues on which even Democrats agree that President Trump had some valid points. “Trump really was the spark that reframed the entire debate around U.S.-China relations in DC,” says Jordan Schneider, a China analyst at the Rhodium Group and the host of the ChinaTalk podcast and newsletter.

While many in the foreign policy community favored some degree of cooperation with China before the Trump presidency, now competition – if not outright rivalry – is widely assumed. “Democrats, even those who served in the Obama Administration, have become much more hawkish,” says Erik Brattberg of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Trump has caused “the Overton Window on China [to become] a lot narrower than it was before,” adds Schneider.

The US delegation led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken face their Chinese counterparts at the opening session of US-China talks at the Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska on March 18, 2021. Image Credits: FREDERIC J. BROWN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

As the U.S.-China rivalry has evolved, it has become more and more centered around competing philosophies on the use of technology. “At their core, democracies are open systems that believe in the free flow of information, whereas for autocrats, information is something to be weaponized and stifled in the service of the regime,” says Lindsay Gorman, Fellow for Emerging Technologies at the German Marshall Fund. “So it’s not too surprising that technology, so much of which is about how we store and process and leverage information, has become such a focus of the U.S.-China relationship and of the [broader] democratic-autocratic competition around the world.”

Tech touches everything now – and the stakes could not be higher. “Tech and the business models around tech are really ‘embedded ideology,’’ says Tyson Barker of the German Council on Foreign Relations. “So what tech is and how it is used is a form of governance.”

What does that mean in practice? When Chinese firms expand around the world, Barker tells me, they bring their norms with them. So when Huawei builds a 5G network in Latin America, or Alipay is adopted for digital payments in Central Europe, or Xiaomi takes more market share in Southeast Asia, they are helping digitize those economies on Chinese terms using Chinese norms (as opposed to American ones). The implication is clear: whoever defines the future of technology will determine the rest of the twenty-first century.

That shifting balance has focused minds in Washington. “I think there is a strong bipartisan consensus that technology is at the core of U.S.-China competition,” says Brattberg. But, adds Gorman, “there’s less agreement on what the prescription should be.” While the Democratic experts now ascendant in Washington agree with Trump’s diagnosis of the China challenge, they believe in a vastly different approach from their Trump Administration predecessors.

Out, for instance, are restrictions on Chinese firms just for being Chinese. “That was one of the problems with Trump,” says Walter Kerr, a former U.S. diplomat who publishes the China Journal Review. “Trump cast broad strokes, targeting firms whether it was merited or not. Sticking it to the Chinese is not a good policy.”

Instead the focus is on inward investment – and outward cooperation.

Foreign policy is domestic policy

Democrats are first shoring up America domestically – in short, be strong at home to be strong abroad. “There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy,” President Biden said in his first major foreign policy speech. “Every action we take in our conduct abroad, we must take with American working families in mind. Advancing a foreign policy for the middle class demands urgent focus on our domestic economic renewal.”

This is a particular passion of Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, who immersed himself in domestic policy while he was Hillary Clinton’s chief policy aide during her 2016 presidential campaign. “We’ve reached a point where foreign policy is domestic policy, and domestic policy is foreign policy,” he told NPR during the transition.

Jake Sullivan, White House national security adviser, speaks during a news conference Image Credits: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This is increasingly important for technology, as concern grows that America is lagging behind on research and development. “We’re realizing that we’ve underinvested in the government grants and research and development projects that American companies [need] to become highly innovative in fields like quantum computing, AI, biotechnology, etc,” says Kerr.

“Rebuilding” or “sustaining” America’s “technological leadership” is a major theme of the Longer Telegram and is the very operating premise of the report of the China Strategy Group assembled by Eric Schmidt, former executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and the first chair of the Department of Defense’s Innovation Advisory Board. Those priorities have only become more important during the pandemic. It’s a question of “how do we orient the research system to fill in the industrial gaps that have been made very clear by the COVID crisis?” says Schneider of Rhodium.

While it hasn’t gone so far as to adopt a national industrial strategy, the Administration’s most ambitious officials are looking to prod along tech research in critical sectors. To that end, the National Security Council, which Sullivan runs, is reshaping itself around technology issues; Biden appointed the first deputy national security advisor focusing on technology issues as well as a high-profile senior director for technology. Their goal: to harness the same energy that drove the development of Silicon Valley during the Cold War into out-competing China.

That said, the ingredients to American (and Western) innovation aren’t exactly a secret: investment in education, research, and talent. “The West still has [most of] the universities, R&D and leading companies,” says Brattberg. “There’s still a lot of competitiveness and leverage.” Unsurprisingly, investing to retain that edge is a key theme of Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which includes funds for basic research, supply chain support, broadband connectivity, and support for the semiconductor industry.

As almost anyone in Silicon Valley will tell you, a functioning and welcoming immigration system is a crucial ingredient, too. “The U.S. is at its best when it welcomes talent from around the world and gives people the tools to succeed and thrive here,” says Gorman. Whether the Biden Administration can strike a deal with Senate Republicans on comprehensive immigration reform – or even funding basic research – remains an open question, though. And even if it can succeed, American ingenuity is no longer sufficient on its own.

Team America

Whether it’s for talent or partnerships, the U.S.-China tech competition will be won overseas. Allies are “the most salient and straightforward way Biden can bring leverage to the table compared to Trump,” says Schneider.

Biden, Blinken, and other senior administration officials have loudly and repeatedly pronounced their preferences to work with democratic partners on international challenges, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. It is no accident that Blinken and Sullivan’s meeting in Anchorage was preceded by a trip to Japan and South Korea, two of America’s closest allies in the region, and that Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was the first foreign leader to visit Biden at the White House. “If you add the U.S. to the EU, Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea, you tilt the balance of economic heft and technological prowess back toward us,” he adds.

U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan hold a news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 16, 2021. Image Credits: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)

The ground for Blinken and company is increasingly fertile. Chinese diplomats have been aggressive, if not downright condescending, to countries they perceive have slighted China. In one recent example, the Chinese embassy in Dublin sent a series of tweets targeting an Irish-British journalist couple who had been forced to relocate to Taiwan as a result of a harassment campaign over their critical coverage of China’s Uyghur policy in Xinjiang. This so-called ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy (a reference to a jingoist action film) is prompting a backlash, and helping convince many policy elites in countries who had hoped to sit out a U.S.-China conflict that perhaps Washignton’s China skeptics have a point.

This perhaps explains the proliferating alpha-numeric soup of coalitions and alliances being floated to secure a free and democratic internet for the future. There’s the D10, a secure supply chain network floated by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, which adds Australia, India, and South Korea to the existing G7 countries (U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan). Schmidt’s report calls for a T-12 (the D10 minus Italy plus Finland, Sweden, and Israel). Others look to expand existing technology-related groupings like the Five Eyes signals intelligence alliance of the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, or harness burgeoning non-technical ones like the Quad. Gorman points to the significance of the news that the Quad itself – Australia, India, Japan, and the US – announced the creation of a working group on emerging technology at its first-ever (virtual) leaders summit in March.

Meanwhile, Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, has proposed a technology partnership to be run out of the State Department to coordinate with allies – including a $5 billion fund for research – with the explicit purpose of countering China.

International tech standards are increasingly not set by the West

Even if it can shephard its allies, the U.S. still faces stiff international headwinds. The Trump Administration’s decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal negotiated by the Obama Administration with ten other Pacific Rim countries with the intent of setting trade standards in the Asia-Pacific, was taken as a sign that perhaps the U.S. pivot to Asia was less ambitious than advertised. The pact, rebranded as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), has continued without the U.S.  – and now even China has expressed interest in joining.

Trump’s disdain for working within multilateral forums has also meant that Washington has essentially ceded the field of global technical standard-setting. Beijing has taken advantage, aggressively working the UN system so that Chinese officials now lead four of the 15 specialized UN agencies, including the two most focused on regulating technology: the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which helps set global technical standards, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which is responsible for protecting intellectual property rights around the world.

China is also backing Russian efforts to rewrite internet governance. With Chinese support, Russia won a UN General Assembly vote in 2019 to start drafting a new cybercrime treaty. Their goal is to replace the U.S-backed 2001 Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, which was  created by democracies through the Council of Europe, with a treaty that one critic said would include provisions “likely to provide cover to authoritarian governments to persecute their political opponents.” Russia and China also unsuccessfully tried to use the (now Chinese-led) ITU to replace the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private body of experts that governs internet domain names.

These efforts are all part of China Standards 2035, an explicit plan to internationalize standards to Chinese preferences in areas like 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT). As Emily de La Bruyère and Nathan Picarsic wrote on TechCrunch last year, “Beijing has spent the past two decades establishing influential footholds in multilateral bodies and targeted industrial areas. Now, it is using those footholds to set their rules – with them, to define the infrastructure of the future world.”

Hawks, doves, and U.S. divisions

Even within the new consensus on China, there are fissures on how to handle China itself.

On the hawkish side, the Schmidt Report concedes that “some degree of technological bifurcation is in U.S. interests.” But calibrating just how much is a difficult question. “It’s already a reality,” says Barker of the German Council on Foreign Relations. “The question is: how deep does the split have to be?”

Few argue for complete decoupling, Brattberg, the Carnegie scholar who has written extensively on tech diplomacy, says. After all, many are loath to concede completely separate ‘free’ and ‘authoritarian’ internets. There are other implications as well: a “bipolar, bifurcated internet … would have some very serious adverse implications in terms of cost [and] a slowdown in innovation,” one former UK intelligence official told me last year.

The key is to pinpoint which specific technologies are essential to produce domestically. “To the extent we [decouple from China], we have to do it in a smart way,” says Gorman. “There’s a risk of going too far and hurting potential innovation in the U.S. So the debate going forward is going to be: How do you address true national security vulnerabilities without emulating an authoritarian approach that might say ‘just ban everything from a certain country.’”

And even if we can form a consensus at home, America’s allies are no less divided as I wrote last year with regards to Huawei. While the debate over the Chinese company’s role in 5G has evolved, with both France and the U.K. (in a reversal) moving to phase out its kit, the debate over what role China should play economically and technologically in Europe is still very much alive.

The U.K. government is clear-eyed; in its Integrated Review of foreign and defense policy published in March, it acknowledged that China’s “growing international assertiveness … will pose an increasing risk to UK interests” and set an explicit goal for itself to be a third “science and tech superpower.” France, meanwhile, laid out an Indo-Pacific strategy backing the principle of a free and open Pacific, an explicit challenge to Chinese preferences.

But many are still equivocal. As Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wrote last year in Foreign Affairs, “Asian countries do not want to be forced to choose between the two.” Berlin made clear in its Indo-Pacific strategy last year that it was also reticent to make an outright choice. New Zealand, conscious of its important trade with China, is reluctant to expand the use of Five Eyes beyond intelligence sharing. Meanwhile, Italy endorsed China’s infrastructure-focused Belt and Road Initiative in 2019 and called the country a “strategic partner” last year. And the European Union moved forward on a trade deal with China late last year despite very public lobbying against it from the United States.

A world of tradeoffs

The challenge for the Biden Administration will be to assemble practical coalitions without asking allies and partners to make impossible choices. They will succeed if they can reframe the question. “In Europe, they don’t like ‘decoupling’ but they do like ‘diversification’,” says Brattberg. They also don’t like the idea of joining a U.S.-led alliance. Instead, he says, Washington should frame cooperation as “coalitions among like-minded democrtaic partners.”

For that to work, the U.S. will have to work out the bilateral issues it has with its allies first. “We need to be much more savvy on engaging directly with the EU on resolving issues like data transfers, digital taxation, and data privacy,” he said. “Digital sovereignty shouldn’t come at the expense of partnership with like-minded partners.”

Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel gives a speech during the press conference at the end of the meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (not pictured) of at The Great Hall Of The People on September 06, 2019 in Beijing, China. Image Credits: Andrea Verdelli-Pool/Getty Images

Nimbleness will be key – multiple experts told me it will be far better to create ad hoc coalitions on particular issues than to create a single fixed democratic tech alliance. This would have the benefit of keeping groupings tight without excluding countries with key expertise in particular areas (think Sweden and 5G or Taiwan and semiconductors). Washington should also take a collegiate approach, recognizing and respecting that its allies will not always be in lock-step on every aspect of the relations with China. In other words, the U.S. shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as agreement most of the time on most issues is probably sufficient to create the momentum Washington needs.

The U.S. can still compete globally and widen the circle of like-minded countries, Gorman, the scholar at GMF, tells me, but it has to invest in them if they are going to build out their tech sectors in a way that is aligned with democratic values and standards. “It’s really about providing an attractive counteroffer,” she said.

Even if the United States retains its technological edge for the near future, Americans should start adjusting to a future where Silicon Valley’s dominance is no longer inevitable. Chinese technologists are pulling ahead in areas like 5G while Chinese firms are competing on price (mobile phones) and increasingly on quality (e-commerce) and innovation (see: TikTok). China also exerts enormous clout through its control of supply chains and rare earth metals as well as its vast customer base.

Perhaps China’s greatest leverage point is its looming presence over Taiwan. As long as Taiwan remains one of the leading manufacturers of semiconductors (chip giant TSMC manufactures 90% of the world’s most advanced chips), the world’s technology industry will be vulnerable to the precarity of cross-Strait relations.

Will technology become just another chip in the geopolitical game the U.S. and China are playing, then? The Biden Administration is more prepared than its predecessor to weigh the tradeoffs, Barker of the German Council on Foreign Relation retells me. But it’s unclear how Washington, so early in this administration, will prioritize technology issues if faced with the prospects of Chinese cooperation on other priorities.

After all, at any given moment, the U.S. (and its allies) must weigh a host of priorities vis-à-vis China. And for all of the downsides to its bellicosity, the Trump Administration’s fixation on a handful of issues gave it leverage: it was willing to ignore Uyghurs and other human rights abuses in order to get a trade deal (even if it was deeply flawed).

The Biden Administration, on the other hand, has not yet articulated any priorities at all. If the rhetoric from Washington can be believed, the White House thinks it can make progress on climate, Taiwan, trade, human rights, and any number of other areas, all at once. This on its own creates a vulnerability. As historian Niall Ferguson reminded us in a recent Bloomberg column, then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger was outmaneuvered when he went to China in 1971 with a multi-issue agenda and China singularly focused on Taiwan.

Beijing’s diplomats, despite their wolf-warrior missteps, are still savvy negotiators. If they are allowed to do so, they will once again try to play different parts of the Administration against each other, conditioning progress on climate, for example, on a softening over geopolitics, as the Brookings scholar Thomas Wright has warned. In that light, it simply strains credulity that an ‘all of the above’ approach will work, especially when Biden’s wish list keeps the issues Trump cared about, like trade, 5G, and Taiwan, and adds those he ignored, like human rights, democracy, and climate change.

This is where America’s alliances may prove to be Biden’s hidden ace. If Biden can forge a common-enough front with a wide-enough spectrum of allies, the U.S. will be better able to withstand Chinese pressure to trade progress on one issue against another. Instead, forcing China to negotiate with the U.S. and its allies on an issue-by-issue basis may put Washington in a better position to succeed.

Of all the issues in America’s China portfolio, though, the tech race provides one extra advantage: for all the talk of industrial strategy, alliances, and diplomatic maneuvers, Washington is not the only or even primary actor involved. The Biden Administration can help set the rules, invest in basic research, and defend American interests abroad, but American innovation depends on its innovators – and there are still bountiful numbers of them tinkering away.

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International

United Airlines adds new flights to faraway destinations

The airline said that it has been working hard to "find hidden gem destinations."

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Since countries started opening up after the pandemic in 2021 and 2022, airlines have been seeing demand soar not just for major global cities and popular routes but also for farther-away destinations.

Numerous reports, including a recent TripAdvisor survey of trending destinations, showed that there has been a rise in U.S. traveler interest in Asian countries such as Japan, South Korea and Vietnam as well as growing tourism traction in off-the-beaten-path European countries such as Slovenia, Estonia and Montenegro.

Related: 'No more flying for you': Travel agency sounds alarm over risk of 'carbon passports'

As a result, airlines have been looking at their networks to include more faraway destinations as well as smaller cities that are growing increasingly popular with tourists and may not be served by their competitors.

The Philippines has been popular among tourists in recent years.

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United brings back more routes, says it is committed to 'finding hidden gems'

This week, United Airlines  (UAL)  announced that it will be launching a new route from Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Morocco's Marrakesh. While it is only the country's fourth-largest city, Marrakesh is a particularly popular place for tourists to seek out the sights and experiences that many associate with the country — colorful souks, gardens with ornate architecture and mosques from the Moorish period.

More Travel:

"We have consistently been ahead of the curve in finding hidden gem destinations for our customers to explore and remain committed to providing the most unique slate of travel options for their adventures abroad," United's SVP of Global Network Planning Patrick Quayle, said in a press statement.

The new route will launch on Oct. 24 and take place three times a week on a Boeing 767-300ER  (BA)  plane that is equipped with 46 Polaris business class and 22 Premium Plus seats. The plane choice was a way to reach a luxury customer customer looking to start their holiday in Marrakesh in the plane.

Along with the new Morocco route, United is also launching a flight between Houston (IAH) and Colombia's Medellín on Oct. 27 as well as a route between Tokyo and Cebu in the Philippines on July 31 — the latter is known as a "fifth freedom" flight in which the airline flies to the larger hub from the mainland U.S. and then goes on to smaller Asian city popular with tourists after some travelers get off (and others get on) in Tokyo.

United's network expansion includes new 'fifth freedom' flight

In the fall of 2023, United became the first U.S. airline to fly to the Philippines with a new Manila-San Francisco flight. It has expanded its service to Asia from different U.S. cities earlier last year. Cebu has been on its radar amid growing tourist interest in the region known for marine parks, rainforests and Spanish-style architecture.

With the summer coming up, United also announced that it plans to run its current flights to Hong Kong, Seoul, and Portugal's Porto more frequently at different points of the week and reach four weekly flights between Los Angeles and Shanghai by August 29.

"This is your normal, exciting network planning team back in action," Quayle told travel website The Points Guy of the airline's plans for the new routes.

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International

Walmart launches clever answer to Target’s new membership program

The retail superstore is adding a new feature to its Walmart+ plan — and customers will be happy.

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It's just been a few days since Target  (TGT)  launched its new Target Circle 360 paid membership plan. 

The plan offers free and fast shipping on many products to customers, initially for $49 a year and then $99 after the initial promotional signup period. It promises to be a success, since many Target customers are loyal to the brand and will go out of their way to shop at one instead of at its two larger peers, Walmart and Amazon.

Related: Walmart makes a major price cut that will delight customers

And stop us if this sounds familiar: Target will rely on its more than 2,000 stores to act as fulfillment hubs. 

This model is a proven winner; Walmart also uses its more than 4,600 stores as fulfillment and shipping locations to get orders to customers as soon as possible.

Sometimes, this means shipping goods from the nearest warehouse. But if a desired product is in-store and closer to a customer, it reduces miles on the road and delivery time. It's a kind of logistical magic that makes any efficiency lover's (or retail nerd's) heart go pitter patter. 

Walmart rolls out answer to Target's new membership tier

Walmart has certainly had more time than Target to develop and work out the kinks in Walmart+. It first launched the paid membership in 2020 during the height of the pandemic, when many shoppers sheltered at home but still required many staples they might ordinarily pick up at a Walmart, like cleaning supplies, personal-care products, pantry goods and, of course, toilet paper. 

It also undercut Amazon  (AMZN)  Prime, which costs customers $139 a year for free and fast shipping (plus several other benefits including access to its streaming service, Amazon Prime Video). 

Walmart+ costs $98 a year, which also gets you free and speedy delivery, plus access to a Paramount+ streaming subscription, fuel savings, and more. 

An employee at a Merida, Mexico, Walmart. (Photo by Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Jeff Greenberg/Getty Images

If that's not enough to tempt you, however, Walmart+ just added a new benefit to its membership program, ostensibly to compete directly with something Target now has: ultrafast delivery. 

Target Circle 360 particularly attracts customers with free same-day delivery for select orders over $35 and as little as one-hour delivery on select items. Target executes this through its Shipt subsidiary.

We've seen this lightning-fast delivery speed only in snippets from Amazon, the king of delivery efficiency. Who better to take on Target, though, than Walmart, which is using a similar store-as-fulfillment-center model? 

"Walmart is stepping up to save our customers even more time with our latest delivery offering: Express On-Demand Early Morning Delivery," Walmart said in a statement, just a day after Target Circle 360 launched. "Starting at 6 a.m., earlier than ever before, customers can enjoy the convenience of On-Demand delivery."

Walmart  (WMT)  clearly sees consumers' desire for near-instant delivery, which obviously saves time and trips to the store. Rather than waiting a day for your order to show up, it might be on your doorstep when you wake up. 

Consumers also tend to spend more money when they shop online, and they remain stickier as paying annual members. So, to a growing number of retail giants, almost instant gratification like this seems like something worth striving for.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

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Government

President Biden Delivers The “Darkest, Most Un-American Speech Given By A President”

President Biden Delivers The "Darkest, Most Un-American Speech Given By A President"

Having successfully raged, ranted, lied, and yelled through…

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President Biden Delivers The "Darkest, Most Un-American Speech Given By A President"

Having successfully raged, ranted, lied, and yelled through the State of The Union, President Biden can go back to his crypt now.

Whatever 'they' gave Biden, every American man, woman, and the other should be allowed to take it - though it seems the cocktail brings out 'dark Brandon'?

Tl;dw: Biden's Speech tonight ...

  • Fund Ukraine.

  • Trump is threat to democracy and America itself.

  • Abortion is good.

  • American Economy is stronger than ever.

  • Inflation wasn't Biden's fault.

  • Illegals are Americans too.

  • Republicans are responsible for the border crisis.

  • Trump is bad.

  • Biden stands with trans-children.

  • J6 was the worst insurrection since the Civil War.

(h/t @TCDMS99)

Tucker Carlson's response sums it all up perfectly:

"that was possibly the darkest, most un-American speech given by an American president. It wasn't a speech, it was a rant..."

Carlson continued: "The true measure of a nation's greatness lies within its capacity to control borders, yet Bid refuses to do it."

"In a fair election, Joe Biden cannot win"

And concluded:

“There was not a meaningful word for the entire duration about the things that actually matter to people who live here.”

Victor Davis Hanson added some excellent color, but this was probably the best line on Biden:

"he doesn't care... he lives in an alternative reality."

*  *  *

Watch SOTU Live here...

*   *   *

Mises' Connor O'Keeffe, warns: "Be on the Lookout for These Lies in Biden's State of the Union Address." 

On Thursday evening, President Joe Biden is set to give his third State of the Union address. The political press has been buzzing with speculation over what the president will say. That speculation, however, is focused more on how Biden will perform, and which issues he will prioritize. Much of the speech is expected to be familiar.

The story Biden will tell about what he has done as president and where the country finds itself as a result will be the same dishonest story he's been telling since at least the summer.

He'll cite government statistics to say the economy is growing, unemployment is low, and inflation is down.

Something that has been frustrating Biden, his team, and his allies in the media is that the American people do not feel as economically well off as the official data says they are. Despite what the White House and establishment-friendly journalists say, the problem lies with the data, not the American people's ability to perceive their own well-being.

As I wrote back in January, the reason for the discrepancy is the lack of distinction made between private economic activity and government spending in the most frequently cited economic indicators. There is an important difference between the two:

  • Government, unlike any other entity in the economy, can simply take money and resources from others to spend on things and hire people. Whether or not the spending brings people value is irrelevant

  • It's the private sector that's responsible for producing goods and services that actually meet people's needs and wants. So, the private components of the economy have the most significant effect on people's economic well-being.

Recently, government spending and hiring has accounted for a larger than normal share of both economic activity and employment. This means the government is propping up these traditional measures, making the economy appear better than it actually is. Also, many of the jobs Biden and his allies take credit for creating will quickly go away once it becomes clear that consumers don't actually want whatever the government encouraged these companies to produce.

On top of all that, the administration is dealing with the consequences of their chosen inflation rhetoric.

Since its peak in the summer of 2022, the president's team has talked about inflation "coming back down," which can easily give the impression that it's prices that will eventually come back down.

But that's not what that phrase means. It would be more honest to say that price increases are slowing down.

Americans are finally waking up to the fact that the cost of living will not return to prepandemic levels, and they're not happy about it.

The president has made some clumsy attempts at damage control, such as a Super Bowl Sunday video attacking food companies for "shrinkflation"—selling smaller portions at the same price instead of simply raising prices.

In his speech Thursday, Biden is expected to play up his desire to crack down on the "corporate greed" he's blaming for high prices.

In the name of "bringing down costs for Americans," the administration wants to implement targeted price ceilings - something anyone who has taken even a single economics class could tell you does more harm than good. Biden would never place the blame for the dramatic price increases we've experienced during his term where it actually belongs—on all the government spending that he and President Donald Trump oversaw during the pandemic, funded by the creation of $6 trillion out of thin air - because that kind of spending is precisely what he hopes to kick back up in a second term.

If reelected, the president wants to "revive" parts of his so-called Build Back Better agenda, which he tried and failed to pass in his first year. That would bring a significant expansion of domestic spending. And Biden remains committed to the idea that Americans must be forced to continue funding the war in Ukraine. That's another topic Biden is expected to highlight in the State of the Union, likely accompanied by the lie that Ukraine spending is good for the American economy. It isn't.

It's not possible to predict all the ways President Biden will exaggerate, mislead, and outright lie in his speech on Thursday. But we can be sure of two things. The "state of the Union" is not as strong as Biden will say it is. And his policy ambitions risk making it much worse.

*  *  *

The American people will be tuning in on their smartphones, laptops, and televisions on Thursday evening to see if 'sloppy joe' 81-year-old President Joe Biden can coherently put together more than two sentences (even with a teleprompter) as he gives his third State of the Union in front of a divided Congress. 

President Biden will speak on various topics to convince voters why he shouldn't be sent to a retirement home.

According to CNN sources, here are some of the topics Biden will discuss tonight:

  • Economic issues: Biden and his team have been drafting a speech heavy on economic populism, aides said, with calls for higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy – an attempt to draw a sharp contrast with Republicans and their likely presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

  • Health care expenses: Biden will also push for lowering health care costs and discuss his efforts to go after drug manufacturers to lower the cost of prescription medications — all issues his advisers believe can help buoy what have been sagging economic approval ratings.

  • Israel's war with Hamas: Also looming large over Biden's primetime address is the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which has consumed much of the president's time and attention over the past few months. The president's top national security advisers have been working around the clock to try to finalize a ceasefire-hostages release deal by Ramadan, the Muslim holy month that begins next week.

  • An argument for reelection: Aides view Thursday's speech as a critical opportunity for the president to tout his accomplishments in office and lay out his plans for another four years in the nation's top job. Even though viewership has declined over the years, the yearly speech reliably draws tens of millions of households.

Sources provided more color on Biden's SOTU address: 

The speech is expected to be heavy on economic populism. The president will talk about raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. He'll highlight efforts to cut costs for the American people, including pushing Congress to help make prescription drugs more affordable.

Biden will talk about the need to preserve democracy and freedom, a cornerstone of his re-election bid. That includes protecting and bolstering reproductive rights, an issue Democrats believe will energize voters in November. Biden is also expected to promote his unity agenda, a key feature of each of his addresses to Congress while in office.

Biden is also expected to give remarks on border security while the invasion of illegals has become one of the most heated topics among American voters. A majority of voters are frustrated with radical progressives in the White House facilitating the illegal migrant invasion. 

It is probable that the president will attribute the failure of the Senate border bill to the Republicans, a claim many voters view as unfounded. This is because the White House has the option to issue an executive order to restore border security, yet opts not to do so

Maybe this is why? 

While Biden addresses the nation, the Biden administration will be armed with a social media team to pump propaganda to at least 100 million Americans. 

"The White House hosted about 70 creators, digital publishers, and influencers across three separate events" on Wednesday and Thursday, a White House official told CNN. 

Not a very capable social media team... 

The administration's move to ramp up social media operations comes as users on X are mostly free from government censorship with Elon Musk at the helm. This infuriates Democrats, who can no longer censor their political enemies on X. 

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers tell Axios that the president's SOTU performance will be critical as he tries to dispel voter concerns about his elderly age. The address reached as many as 27 million people in 2023. 

"We are all nervous," said one House Democrat, citing concerns about the president's "ability to speak without blowing things."

The SOTU address comes as Biden's polling data is in the dumps

BetOnline has created several money-making opportunities for gamblers tonight, such as betting on what word Biden mentions the most. 

As well as...

We will update you when Tucker Carlson's live feed of SOTU is published. 

Tyler Durden Fri, 03/08/2024 - 07:44

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