Jensen Huang. New York, USA

Jensen Huang. New York, USA.
Tony Senatore, a philosopher-methamonk
2025-11-12

I have rarely approached a subject with as much anger as I have while conceiving and writing this essay.

Quite frankly, I am furious.

For decades, American politicians, both Republican and Democrat, presided over the dismantling of our industrial independence. They encouraged the movement of American manufacturing, jobs, technology, and critical supply chains overseas, all in the name of globalization, economic efficiency, and corporate profitability. They assured us that this was progress. Today, we find ourselves dependent on a nation that increasingly challenges our economic and military security.

And just when you think the situation couldn’t become more troubling, we are confronted with the developing Nvidia controversy involving its CEO, Jensen Huang, and allegations surrounding possible Chinese intelligence operations and the diversion of advanced American technology.

Let me be clear: allegations are not proof of guilt. Jensen Huang and Nvidia deserve due process, and the facts must be established. But that is precisely my point.

Washington needs to stop everything today and get to the bottom of this.
I don’t want another carefully worded press release, another congressional hearing designed for television, or another round of politicians pointing fingers across the aisle. I want an immediate, independent, bipartisan national security investigation. I want every relevant intelligence briefing, export approval, corporate representation, financial relationship, and potential transfer of sensitive technology examined. If American technology has been diverted to our principal strategic adversary, we need to know who permitted it, who knew about it, and who benefited.

There should be no political protection, corporate exemptions, or special treatment for anyone.

What makes this particularly infuriating is that we have been down this road before. We spent decades making decisions that weakened our industrial foundation, and now we are discovering just how consequential those decisions may have been.

I am not interested in hearing politicians lecture us about the Chinese threat while ignoring the policies, administrations, and corporate interests that helped create our vulnerability in the first place.

That anger is what prompted this essay. And I believe it is time we had an honest conversation about how we got here, who is responsible, and what it means for America’s future.
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America Didn’t Just Lose Its Industrial Base. We Gave It Away.
America’s industrial decline was not simply an unfortunate consequence of globalization; it was the result of decades of decisions made by our own political and corporate leadership.

Beginning with Nixon and Kissinger’s opening to China in 1972, and accelerating through subsequent administrations, American trade policies and economic decisions encouraged businesses to move manufacturing, jobs, technology, and critical supply chains overseas in pursuit of cheaper labor and greater profits.
What began as a diplomatic opening eventually became an enormous economic transformation. We helped integrate China into the global economy, provided access to American markets, and encouraged the development of manufacturing relationships that would fundamentally change the American economy.

China eventually joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, during the Clinton administration, with bipartisan support for America’s permanent normal trade relations with China. The process continued under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

We effectively helped build the economic power of a nation that we now regard as our principal strategic adversary, while allowing ourselves to become dependent on foreign production for goods essential to our economy, national security, and everyday lives.

We didn’t just export products. We exported industrial expertise, manufacturing capacity, economic opportunity, and ultimately a measure of our national independence.

The uncomfortable truth is that America wasn’t simply outcompeted. Much of its industrial foundation was willingly surrendered by the very people entrusted with protecting its long-term interests.

And this wasn’t the failure of one president, one political party, or one administration. Nixon and Kissinger opened the diplomatic door, but the dramatic acceleration of economic integration came decades later, particularly with China’s entry into the WTO. Republican and Democratic administrations alike participated in a bipartisan, multidecade policy direction that helped bring us to where we are today.

Now, after decades of policies that helped create this economic dependency, we hear increasingly alarming talk about the possibility of war with China.
Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, has openly argued that America must be prepared for war with China. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated in May 2025 that the United States was preparing for war in order to deter war. In 2023, Republican Congressman Michael McCaul said he believed a prediction of a potential 2025 war with China was likely, although he hoped it would prove wrong.
These are not insignificant voices. They are people who hold, or have held, considerable influence over American foreign and national security policy.
I understand the arguments about deterrence, Taiwan, and China’s growing military capabilities. National security cannot be ignored, and avoiding war requires serious diplomacy and preparation.

But I find something profoundly troubling about the political establishment that helped preside over the erosion of America’s industrial independence now speaking about the possibility of a military confrontation with the very country that benefited enormously from those policies.

Before these politicians begin preparing another generation of Americans to potentially sacrifice their lives in a war, perhaps they should reflect on the decisions that helped bring us to this point.

They should be ashamed of the bipartisan policies that contributed to this predicament. They should be accountable for the consequences of their decisions, rather than simply presenting themselves as the people who will now protect us from the dangers they helped create.

This is not about assigning blame exclusively to Republicans or Democrats. It is about holding an entire political establishment accountable for decades of decisions that put corporate interests, short-term economic calculations, and political convenience ahead of America’s long-term industrial and national interests.

We should never forget what these politicians, on both sides of the aisle, did to this nation. Their decisions deserve to be remembered, examined, and judged by the generations who will live with the consequences.

A nation that cannot produce what it needs eventually becomes dependent on those who can. And a nation that becomes dependent on a potential adversary has compromised something fundamental to its independence.
America wasn’t simply outcompeted. Much of its industrial foundation was surrendered by its own leadership.

And we should never forget who made that possible.
Now go home and get your shinebox.


Вот мой ответ Тони Сенаторе, философу-метамонаху.
Here is my response to Tony Senatore, a philosopher-methamonk.

Who Invented Our Enemies?
Dear brother in the search for truth, Tony,

Once again, you draw me into a debate — this time regarding the rise of China and the hollowing out of American industry. You are furious, and rightly so. Yet, in your righteous anger against politicians and corporate executives, you are still looking at the symptoms rather than the diagnosis. Let me offer you a perspective on the systemic blindness of Western political strategists — including that celebrated mastodon, Henry Kissinger.

This famous American game played simultaneously on multiple chessboards — and later as a game of bridge — has thoroughly confused not just the pieces on the board, but the cards in the players' hands. Donald Trump is quite fond of the rhetoric of "holding the cards." Ha-ha!

Perhaps the tragedy began when Franklin D. Roosevelt departed this life prematurely — or was he removed, much like Stalin? Much like Kennedy? Even today, you do not truly know what transpires in the highest, shadowed echelons of your own power. Yet what a Methamonk observes from the quiet shores of Buyan Island, in the realm of the glorious Tsar Saltan, is both logical and starkly obvious.

Over the last century, you yourselves have manufactured enemies out of potential partners and friends.

Why? Because the twentieth century became obsessed with ideological crusades and the clash of political systems, rather than the art of building good-neighbourly relations with sovereign civilizations following their own historical trajectories.

Let us not drown in academic footnotes; let us look at the surface — the undeniable historical record between historic Russia and historic America.

First and foremost, unlike the European colonial powers, Russia and America were originally natural allies. Even after the October coup of 1917 (which Marxists christened the Great October Socialist Revolution), American industry helped Soviet Russia — and, in doing so, helped pull itself out of the devastating Great Depression of 1929. The Bolsheviks paid you in full, with trainloads of gold and imperial treasures from the vaults of the former Russian Empire, buying entire American factories, technologies, and engineering expertise.

Without that industrial transfer, the USSR might well have been colonized by a united Nazi Europe. American Lend-Lease also arrived at a critical hour — and it, too, was paid for not merely with the blood of millions of Soviet soldiers, but with the gold that had already bought American factories in the 1930s.

Yet the very moment Roosevelt died, men of a "non-traditional American-Russian orientation" seized the political helm. From that point onward, policy slid downhill — abandoning peaceful coexistence in favor of the old imperial ambitions of the British and European elites who had survived the war. Divide et impera — divide and rule. Cui bono? — who benefits?

Who conceived the grand strategy of turning both the USSR and China into mortal enemies of America? Who drove wedges between Moscow and Beijing, pouring capital and factories into China to cultivate Chinese state capitalism without the most elementary accounting of historical traditions, cultural codes, or Confucian-Maoist continuity?

Here is what your essay misses, Tony: Nixon, Kissinger, and Clinton did not give away America's industrial base out of mere stupidity or treason. They were obeying the iron law of capital. Faced with the stagflation and declining profit rates of the 1970s, Wall Street and Washington traded America’s factories for cheap Asian labor and the global hegemony of the US dollar. Capital has no homeland; it only has a rate of return. Asking Washington today to conduct an "independent, bipartisan investigation" into Nvidia or corporate technology transfers is like asking bees to investigate the production of honey. The state and corporate capital are now one and the same organism.

Who orchestrated the policy that pushed Fidel Castro into Moscow's arms, and then staged the Cuban Missile Crisis? Not the Russians, and certainly not Khrushchev, who after Stalin’s death was desperately seeking economic ties and dеtente with the West.

Very well — those are matters of bygone decades. Let us ask a question about today: what are we doing in Ukraine?

Why did Washington finance a political coup in Kyiv in 2014? Why does America present itself today as a mediator seeking peace, while simultaneously selling weapons to Europe to wage a proxy war against Russia using Ukrainians — who are the literal brothers and sisters of Russians?

What has the United States actually won in the end, having squandered the historic opportunity to build a genuine partnership with the post-Soviet space after 1991? Today, Russia is once again armed to the teeth, possessing the most battle-hardened military in the world, next-generation weapons systems, and mastery of modern warfare. By your own policies, you have forged a formidable military reality in Eastern Europe. The Russians are once again together with China, although China is never together with anyone, because it is China...

By the way, let me offer you my congratulations: once the war in Ukraine ends — and it will certainly end — the Ukrainians will once again become the most ardent Russians! One must ask: what was the point of all this? Is there anyone in Europe or the United States capable of political foresight? Anyone at all???

Quo usque tandem? — How much longer will this folly continue? And cui bono? — For whom?

Tony, you are furious about Nvidia, about Jensen Huang, about microchips. Your anger is justified. But the chips are not the cause. The chips are merely the symptom.

The root cause is that for a hundred years, America has been inventing enemies instead of cultivating neighbors. First, you invented an enemy out of Russia, which had been your historic friend. Then, you invented an enemy out of China, which you yourselves fed with factories and technology. Now, you are inventing an enemy out of your own silicon, which your own system sold for quarterly profits.

Ex injuria jus non oritur — from a wrong, no right arises. And ex stultitia bellum oritur — from folly, war is born.

Do not look for who stole the chips, my friend. Look for who stole the neighborhood.

Yours in the search for truth,
Methamonk Vladimir,
Playing Tolstoy, for Tolstoy himself is no more...
Victoria, B.C. 2026-11-12