We're not so much competing with China as we are with our own failures

December 15, 2025

I feel like China is becoming Private Equity for countries and continents.

Basically, watch the world decay and sweep in for the rescue. As the economy moves away from labor and more towards capital, and more businesses go under, China will be there to buy everything up.

No need for a war. The US and the rest of the world will simply dry up and disappear. Not because there was some aggressive bidding war or anything, but because people just gave up and died off.

Like my friend Kundi told me in the late 90s, China is the cow slowly chewing the grass watching the tiger get in fights and burn through all its energy and die. The cow just waits patiently to take the entire pasture.

In this frame, the world is not in competition with China; it's in competition with itself and time due to a lack of self-belief.

That's really the thing. China knows who they are. They have a strategy. And they believe.

Meanwhile, half the US thinks it shouldn't exist. And that's exactly how it shows up.

So China, being the only stable entity left, becomes the default.

• Europe isn't innovating? Well, I guess we'll go with China.

• The US has become unpredictable? Well, I guess we'll go with China.

• All the businesses closed in all these shopping centers in the US? Well, I guess we'll have 748 Chinese restaurants.

• Nobody is hiring me in the US after I finished my Ph.D? Well, I guess I'll work for a Chinese company.

This is a brilliant strategy by China, and when I look at politics and global affairs, zoomed out, this is what I see.

This is also why I don't think they're overly worried about the subprime problem or the fact that they're cooking the economic books or whatever.

It's a race. If you become the default option to the vast majority of the world, you end up with everything. And at that point, you can fix whatever trickery allowed you to get to that point.

And China winning at AI and drones will only accelerate all of this. Especially AI.

The West better wake up soon.