I partly agree with this, but I think they’re missing a lot. Social media has dissolved into a soft power war. Full stop.

A glance at reddit, facebook, or even lemmy’s bigger instances makes it pretty clear pretty quickly that the internet’s packed full of astroturfers. Some of them for private companies or for scammers, some of them for governments, but they’re all over the place. And people are really bad at spotting them.

I think it makes sense to want to head off another Facebook, but I don’t think this is necessarily the right approach. Educating the public would probably go a lot further.

But Current Affairs takes some truly weird perspectives on US foreign policy. I read the article about the Bin Laden letter (which I fully agree with), and at the bottom there’s a link to an article about how Americans shouldn’t be bothered by Chinese spy balloons or make a big deal about it at all.

Like, what? Okay, yeah, we spy on China too. Espionage between the world’s two most significant superpowers is pretty expected. Anyone who’s played Civ will not be shocked. But anyone who’s played Civ also knows that it’s bad for diplomacy. Yes, spying will happen. But yes also, it’s bad when they get caught.

It’s pretty meaningless to morally censure spying. It’s just a country doing what countries do. Are you going to get morally angry when someone scores a goal against your team? Of course not. You might get frustrated and boo and root harder for your own team, but that’s not the same thing as thinking that the other team shouldn’t be allowed to score goals on yours.

I feel like Current Affairs wants the US to stop rooting for itself and root for China. Which is silly.