Where Disenchantment, Budget Cuts & Anger from Fired Federal Employees Makes China Great Again

 

Where Disenchantment, Budget Cuts & Anger from Fired Federal Employees Makes China Great Again

Sometimes, I have to ask myself if Trump is getting paid somehow by Xi Jinping for all his assistance to accelerating China’s ascent to being the world’s greatest superpower. Or, as his wandering speeches and failure to use the correct words or remember major facts and names seem to underscore, is his 79-year-old mind simply failing? Sure, the tariffs are slamming manufacturing in the People’s Republic, but US farmers sit idly by as China shifts her agricultural purchasing power to other nations, like the Brazilian equivalent “California vegetable capital” (Mato Grosso) or Argentina’s massive soybean capacity. All of Asia seems to be following suit.

As Army Reservist Major Pete Hegseth (also Secretary of the Department of “War”), speaking at Quantico at the end of September (with Donald Trump standing “Patton-like” behind him), he humiliated his vastly more experienced and highest ranking generals, admirals and NCOs, imposing a Rambo-like “warrior ethos” white MALE Christian nationalist mandate on his now-designated Trump-loyalist military. Was Major Pete setting meaningless standards of “male equivalent physical testing” on women in military services – even where they are not direct soldiers in the field – was trying simply to purge women from combat roles in any branch of military? Is our military so fat and inept that it no longer poses a threat to anyone? Or is he pleasing the boss by emphasizing this is Trump’s personal military… now ready for training suppressing “crime” and Trump opponents in American cities? Do Trump budget cuts supporting local police enforcement now seem suspicious somehow?

Are Trump, Major Pete and DNI head Tulsi “Assad was good” Gabbard remotely concerned that somewhere in that vast pool of federal employees lurks more than a few furiously angry ex-federal employees with massive knowledge of national security secrets who just might be susceptible to share those secrets with China for more than a few bucks? It doesn’t take too many to leak valuable information to Chinese operatives. And reports from Washington suggest that such recruiting efforts are most definitely on the rise.

But the greatest damage seems to be Trump’s efforts to shut down America’s best universities, no longer bringing the best and the brightest to the United States to enhance our student bodies at top schools with the hope that they would continue to do what they have in the past: remain in the US after graduation (often from highly technical graduate or business schools, some future politicos preferred law school) founding or running our most important tech companies (like Microsoft or Google). Many of those who return to their home countries after graduation rise within the business and political ranks in those nations… forming valuable permanent connections for the United States thereafter.

Graduates of the famous India Institutes of Technology probably comprise the greatest assembly of high IQ minds on earth. The computer science IIT has 250,000 applications per admission, and most of their alumni are among the richest engineers in the world. Yet IITs don’t have the money to fund the expensive equipment of our finest universities, so until Trump’s recent attacks on those universities, those IIT grads gravitated to our best and well-equipped grad schools, and most of them remained here to create and nurture start-ups that were the envy of the earth.

When Trump began to terminate foreign student visas, the best and the brightest switched to Canada, England, mainland Europe and China… each often attracting big tech’s main research and development facilities (and jobs) with them. But although India is the most populous nation, they’re not trying to be a world-dominating superpower… but China is… and Xi Jinping (as well as Vladimir Putin) is absolutely certain that Trump is so unraveling the United States that it is merely a question of when, not if, China rules… this is a blog about China’s rise with the vital assistance of Donald J Trump and his MAGA base.

As Trump strips research funding from our greatest research universities, although his base is science, medicine and “elite” skeptic, Trump is very aware that an educated electorate, able to think on its own, is his worst enemy. This is an ongoing theme among American extreme conservatives. Vice President JD Vance once said, "The professors are the enemy,’ mirroring former President Richard Nixon who first said that "The professors are the enemy" during a 1972 conversation with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. Trump has recently threatened to turn Harvard into a trade school. There is a slight catch to all this: the United States cannot lead the world in technology (military and otherwise) without keeping the best and the brightest here.

Writing for the September 29th CNN.com, Simone McCarthy, Joyce Jiang and Yong Xiong provide some of those self-destructive details: “A Princeton nuclear physicist. A mechanical engineer who helped NASA explore manufacturing in space. A US National Institutes of Health neurobiologist. Celebrated mathematicians. And over half a dozen AI experts. The list of research talent leaving the US to work in China is glittering – and growing.

“At least 85 rising and established scientists working in the US have joined Chinese research institutions full-time since the start of last year, with more than half making the move in 2025, according to a CNN tally – a trend experts say is poised to expand as the White House pushes to slash research budgets and steps up scrutiny of foreign talent, while Beijing increases investment in homegrown innovation.

“Most are part of a so-called reverse brain drain that is raising questions about the US’ long-term ability to attract and keep top-tier foreign scientists – a singular quality that has underpinned its status as the world’s undisputed leader in tech and science throughout the post-World War II period… The Chinese government has for years looked for ways to attract talented international scientists, including the thousands of Chinese researchers who left the country to pursue advanced degrees in the US and other countries, many of whom went on to become pioneers and leaders in American science and technology.

“That mission has only become more critical as the US maintains tight tech controls over China, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping increasingly sees the country’s ability to innovate as the only path to economic security… Now, as the administration of US President Donald Trump pushes for massive cuts to federal research budgets, ramps up government oversight of research, dramatically hikes the price of H1-B visas for specialized foreign workers, and uses federal funding as leverage against universities, the mission is getting a boost…

“Lu Wuyuan, a protein chemist who was a tenured professor at the University of Maryland before moving to Shanghai’s prestigious Fudan University in 2020, told CNN there was a ‘clear surge in the number of job applicants from overseas’…. ‘Without a shred of doubt, the short-sighted policies by the current administration have effectively choked off mutually beneficial US-Sino collaboration in science,’ he said… ‘The irony is that the irreparable and self-inflicted harm these policies have instigated is likely far greater to the US than to China, as the latter is quickly and confidently ascending to become a scientific and technological powerhouse.’”

And once you lose those minds, once those research universities and facilities locate other than in the United States, they do not tend to move to United States later. Instead, they build that vital teaching and research infrastructure – the biggest single component of job creation – anywhere but here… and often in the halls of excellence in our most committed enemies.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it sure seems as if Manchurian Candidate Trump seems to now be the Manchurian Candiate President.