It will not surprise you to learn that not only am I several books deep into both Soviet/Russian and Chinese espionage, but that I grew up with it! Wen Ho Lee wasn't exactly a friend? But he was a customer at my book shop. And my high school was one of the very, very few in the United States that taught Russian in the middle of the Cold War for... reasons.

The link between Russia and US elections is clear. It's also clear that for all their meddling around on Facebook, they didn't actually tilt things that much. The link between Russia and Donald Trump is much, much clearer. He was big on the USSR in the '80s, they kept him solvent in the '00s and the whole of the Trump organization exists to launder oligarch money.

And I mean, c'mon. Melania is a swallow. That woman gave up her future to be Putin's conduit to a usefully stupid American oligarch. Everything makes sense about Melania if you look at her as an employee who ended up overworked and underpaid.

China?

China has always suffered from, what's the word? Racism. What immigrants built the American west and were immediately kicked out? The Chinese. Who mired the Japanese down to the point where the Americans could beat them and were then effectively abandoned? The Chinese. In fairness to the Americans, it's not just the Chinese, it's anyone with epicanthic folds... to the point where "Russian" has always been "White Russian" not Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Tuvan or any other minority who had to not only deal with being in the USSR but also be lower than any kulak. But the Chinese have always lacked access to power in the US.

The structure of Chinese intelligence is also very not Machiavellian. Western intelligence operations derive from feudal politics, where there's a heterogeneous mix of hierarchies to play against each other with a constant churn of status and opportunity. China, on the other hand, has always been the divine on earth calling the shots absolutely and everyone under him jockeying for relative power. This structure presupposes that really, nobody matters but the sovereign.

The direct consequence of this is that Chinese intelligence operations are low-value operatives performing low-value operations against low-value targets over and over and over and over again. Chinese intelligence is TikTok - a thing you try to put on every phone to snoop on everyone so that if anyone ever catches your interest, you query their phone. Chinese intelligence is Huawei - a thing you put on their network with the brazen ability to snoop whenever you need to, they'll never know they're idiots. The European-and-therefore-American approach is "weaponize just one or two things, hide the shit out of them, spare no effort or expense to get them near their target, scuttle that pipeline."

You wanna know how Chinese surveillance works? You go to NAB, you visit the creepy Chinese floor, you chat up some odd manufacturer of gimbal mounts, and within six months someone Chinese is taking you to dinner to pick your brain about cinematography while dangling the prospect of you shooting a movie in Mongolia. The movie will never happen, and they'll ghost the minute they've learned everything they can about how you work? And they never even broke the law. Or, you go to IMTS, you visit the creepy Chinese floor, you chat up some odd manufacturer of CNC routers, and for the next two years they send you "hello how are you friend would you like to be our distributor" emails.

Westerners spear-phish. Easterners spam. It reflects their fundamental understanding of culture. So yes - China has far too much influence over US affairs, primarily because they are paying for it. The difference between TikTok and Vine is that Vine was not an intelligence project fully subsidized and maintained by a state entity for the express purpose of influencing an adversary.

But it only takes a few instances of Shaq groveling before Xi for saying something vaguely offensive before that shit's over. You don't hear about One Belt One Road much anymore because the carrot has been supplanted by the stick.

Chinese policy towards Taiwan looks a lot like American policy towards Cuba... in 1962. There's 60 years of geopolitics between thar and hyar but fundamentally, Chinese foreign policy is "we don't have to know what you're thinking, you're animals." It doesn't take more than a couple interactions like that before you're no longer negotiating as if you have Most Favored Nation status. China has effectively squandered foreign influence for domestic control, which is what they tend to do every couple hundred years.

As far as fascism and Madison Square Garden, there's a Ken Burns for that. Yes, there were elements in the United States that were very pro-Nazi. There were far more elements in the United States that were very pro-isolationism. There has been and always shall be evil in the United States. I think I've come around to the recognition, however, that Americans will fight like hell for our right to be left the fuck alone. While "I'm in your business" is definitely the guiding light for far too many Americans, "live and let live" is dominant and "live and let live" doesn't attend rallies. It doesn't stop foreign holocausts either so it's not all upside... but I think Americans have far more apathy towards foreign catastrophes than we do for domestic ones.

Something to consider about populists - they come from outside the system, by definition. Which means the system will reject the infection if it's strong enough. Someone with cunning and vision will realize they have more power within the system, presuming the system is strong enough to withstand frontal assault. The court of Henry the Eighth will give rise to Thomas Cromwell; the Imperial Russian Monarchy will give rise to Vladimir Lenin.

Moseley was Lord Curzon's son-in-law. He was mutherfucking anointed. There were Nazi sympathizers at the very top. Mosely was taken down by antifa.

And that, really, is the difference between places with fascism and places without. Is there a tradition of self-determinism? Britain did execute a king who got too big for his britches. It didn't stick? But it definitely colored the future.