@CuzinEd
I have to put on welding glasses every time I watch his videos, the glow is so goddamn bright. Another major red flag is Zeihan's takes on nuclear energy and renewables. Even Wikipedia-tier "research" can deboonk his talking points on these subjects. So, either he swallowed mainstream narrative without analyzing it first or he pushes mainstream narrative to others.
His take on war crimes and companies leaving is also childishly naive. Those who left, left in Feb-Mar last year or left later due to sanctions or logistical/operational difficulties, not HECKIN' WARCRIMERINOOS. People are getting more desensitized, generating public outrage is getting progressively harder, plus remaining companies are less likely to fold to it.
To add cherry on top, Schlumberger is still here, their training and R&D facilities are still here, operated through a shell company. I wonder how many smaller and less known companies (esp. those not dealing with sanctioned goods and entities) bit the bullet, stayed and grabbed their competitors' market share. "Buy when the streets are covered in blood"
And it's one thing to sanction 2% of world economy (Russia), sanctioning 18% (China) would be another story. US can't even sanction Chinese fentanyl imports, Chinese spying phone apps and Chinese bribes for American universities (who, coincidentally, start dishing out chink propaganda to your future ruling class).
Are SRBMs and IRBMs even regulated by START? As far as I remember, there was a separate treaty, denounced by Trump admin. Anyway, China's hundreds of
presumably fake missile silos and vast network of underground tunnels for transporting/storing their missiles and bombers are fundamentally incompatible with the START.
They may be building their own ICBMs right now (judging by their space program, technological capability is there) or have already built some and keep them hidden. Their strategic missile forces are super secretive, even when compared to other branches of PLA. US intelligence outlets admit they don't know how many IRBMs and warheads China has. Then, add a massive buildup of nuclear power plants to this.
US have chosen first disarming strike as their doctrine in the 80s, China tries to counter that, first and foremost.