China

Hyundai was a joke. The maker of the cheapest cars with the oldest technology. The only thing that you could buy that was worse was a Yugo.

But Yugo tanked, and Hyundai and its sister company Kia improved and then thrived over the ensuing thirty years they have played in the American market. And not only has Hyundai expanded into luxury, with its Genesis line, most analysts consider the Ioniq 5 and its sister Kia, the EV6, to be the only reasonably priced challengers to Tesla in the American market.

And then comes BYD:

"BYD, Tesla's Chinese Rival, Is Coming Into Its Own - China's top electric-vehicle maker has emerged as a formidable force—one that could soon be felt globally": https://on.wsj.com/3R5PIfO

But Bob, you say, GM and Ford are moving into electric vehicles!

And I'll respond with the tiny recalled Chevy Bolt, a statement car as opposed to a usable automobile. As for Ford's triumphs with the Mustang and F-150 Lightning... I'll tell you they're essentially conversions, gas cars made electric, as opposed to clean slate vehicles like those of Tesla and BYD.

But we don't need no stinkin' electric cars in America. Drill, baby drill. And why combat climate change, even if it exists, because look at how China pollutes!

But this is an old story, the truth is China is addressing climate change more directly than the U.S. these days, that's the essence of electric vehicle penetration in the country, China wants to clean up its air.

You see as Americans lobby for a return to the past, the Chinese are moving directly to the future, in many cases eating our lunch.

We don't need no stinkin' foreigners here, keep 'em out. Everyone thinks of migrants at the southern border, but this also includes technologists, who are now staying home in not only China, but India, so innovation is coming out of those countries now as opposed to the U.S. We've shot ourselves in the foot.

The belief is all innovation comes from America, especially in social media. Our hero/enemy is Mark Zuckerberg, who superseded MySpace to build a colossus with Facebook.

Now give Zuck credit, he saw the penetration of WhatsApp in the rest of the world and purchased it when most Congresspeople had no idea what it was, never mind blow a whistle.

And Zuck ended up buying Instagram, but innovation petered out and...

Twitter was a revolution. Pooh-poohed to this day, it's where the news is batted around and built. You may not be on Twitter, but all the people who create the news you consume are.

And then Twitter became a hotbed of discussion over free speech. Forget that it's a private company and can do what it wants, the concept was that free speech could eclipse truth.

And then America's tech hero Elon Musk, the heir to Steve Jobs for those who did not live through the Jobs era, the bros who Jobs could never relate to, said he was going to purchase the whole thing and turn it into the free-for-all it was supposed to be.

But that ended up being a sideshow.

And today's show in America is the whistleblower, talking about Twitter's security lapses. And the whole issue becomes whether Musk will be forced to buy the company or not.

But the truth is America is one big security lapse. Twenty years after 9/11 and our infrastructure still goes unprotected. Our water supply, our electric grid.

As for the corporations, whether they be traditional, brick and mortar, or online, or even banks, security breaches are a regular occurrence, kind of like school shootings. You get an e-mail telling you to change your password and life goes on.

So Zuckerberg wakes up and realizes there's nothing left to buy and he comes up with his meta concept, the virtual world. Something which is not brand new, and has never scaled previously. Meanwhile, China comes up with Musical.ly which turns into TikTok.

America had an early competitor, Vine, but it was allowed to wither under the ownership of Twitter and was eventually killed while Musical.ly was seen as kids' stuff. Young kids' stuff. After all, the money, the gravitas, was in the full-length song marketed by the music industry.

And then Musical.ly was purchased by ByteDance, and the product evolved into TikTok and now not only is TikTok the primary social medium, it's where young people go to shop and just like with Twitter, to this day, oldsters, those who think they know better, decry TikTok, see it as a sewer populated by the young and ignorant not realizing the joke is on them.

Oh, they'll get uptight about the Chinese ownership of data, but understanding what the platform represents...IMPOSSIBLE!

We live in a land of Luddites. As far as their plan for making America great again, it seems to be focused on making the rural dominant and halting progress to ensure that America continues to lose not only status in the world, but power, with innovation not supported, certainly not with government money. That's the number one bitch on the "Wall Street Journal" editorial and opinion pages, the government supporting electric automobiles. But without the government, we wouldn't even have this internet I'm using to communicate with you.

We're so caught up in the penumbra in the United States, that we're missing the main point. All these social issues, bathroom access, gay marriage, they're just sideshows ginned up by monied interests who want no change so they can continue to rape and pillage and reign. That's the number one goal of the corporation in America, to sustain. Innovate? Hopefully they can kill competition to avoid it. Look at Amazon, if you come up with a new idea they haven't they compete and kill you or buy you.

As for innovation...

This electric car thing is just like photography, with a lot more zeros and cultural, financial and environmental impact. It's going to flip seemingly overnight. Buzz has already started, you don't want to buy a new gasoline powered car because when electric reaches critical mass it'll be worth nothing. All this blowback about the lack of charging stations... You don't hold back the future because its evolution is bumpy.

Let's be clear, China is an authoritarian state. Therefore decisions can be made and implemented quickly. Whereas America is something akin to democracy.

Now one party is leaning towards autocracy, but once again its goal is not a great leap forward, but a theoretical leap back. Putting its finger in the dike of progress, which happens elsewhere and then the dam breaks and America is overwhelmed by the flood.

We used to have national goals, like putting a man on the moon.

Now all we've got is gotcha. That's what the news is. This or that person was caught in flagrante delicto.

Most Americans have no idea what is going on in the rest of the world. Forget having a driver's license to vote, every American needs a passport. And a national program taking every American citizen to a foreign country, so their horizons are widened, discussion is fomented, and a path forward can be created. Instead, we're arguing about teaching race in school, removing books from libraries. All that does is create an ever more ignorant populace, which those in power like, know-nothings are easier to control.

In truth, we're in the equivalent of a space race with China. Never mind the Asian nation buying up natural resources to make electric automobiles while Americans debate their utility. We're debating the present with no vision into the future. And if anybody wants to push the nation forward they're a crank. Yes, it happens on the left too.

We need a national reset. Instead of patting ourselves on the back, telling ourselves how great we are, we must realize that our self-professed title as the greatest country in the world is in jeopardy, if not already history. I don't want to hear about everybody wanting to immigrate here... Sure, America is still great in some aspects but we need to stop trumpeting those and see what we're missing, what we need to achieve!

This is what leaders are supposed to do.

And the tired old man in the White House can't, because he's not digitally native.

As for his opponent...he doesn't even appear smart enough to understand the concepts, never mind take appropriate action. He'd rather share state secrets with our enemies, become friends with dictators while the countries run under democracies run circles around them. Can you say North Korea and South Korea, can you say Russia and Western Europe?

We are at a critical point in American history. We cannot survive without the rest of the world. The pandemic taught us this. Furthermore, we cannot bring all manufacturing back to the States, it does not make economic sense. No, what we need to do is strengthen ourselves, create new bargaining chips. And for the past few decades that's always been intellectual property, whether it be entertainment or technology. Not only is the biggest social media company the Chinese TikTok, but the biggest musical act is Bad Bunny, who sings in Spanish!

That's why we can't make our country smaller, but bigger. We need to look outside our boundaries, see the advancements of others, the changes. We can't be so nationalistic that we close the doors, that's economic death, never mind cultural decline.

But we want to debate whether Elon Musk, a myopic bro, should be forced to buy Twitter.

Our entire nation has a security issue. And it's not only e-mail addresses and passwords, it's raw economics. We're fighting over social issues while China is eating our lunch.

We need to wake up, get our priorities straight and take action.

NOW!


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