The Brutality Cascade - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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In certain sorts of competitions, the most brutal player gets to set the rules. Everybody else feels pressure to imitate, whether they want to or not.
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Brutality cascades are very hard to get out of. You can declare war and simply try to crush the people you think are despoiling the competition. Or you can try what might be called friendship circles. In this approach, you first establish the norms of legitimacy that should govern the competition. You create a Geneva Convention of domestic political conduct or global cyberespionage. Then you organize as broad a coalition as possible to agree to uphold these norms.
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In a brutality cascade the Chinese don’t become more like us as the competition continues. We become more like them. And that is indeed what’s happening
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But China’s cybermercantilists regard deceit as a natural tool of warfare. Cyberattacks make perfect sense. Your competitors have worked hard to acquire intellectual property. Your system is more closed so innovation is not your competitive advantage. It is quicker and cheaper to steal. They will hate you for it, but who cares? They were going to hate you anyway. C’est la guerre.
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But along comes China, an economic superpower with a more mercantilist mind-set. Many Chinese, at least in the military-industrial complex, see global economics as a form of warfare, a struggle for national dominance.
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take a case in world affairs. The United States is a traditional capitalist nation that has championed an open-seas economic doctrine. We think everybody benefits if global economics is like a conversation, with maximum openness, mutual trust and free exchange.
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Pretty soon the global economy looks less like Monopoly and more like a game of Risk, with a Chinese military-industrial complex on one part of the board and the Western military-industrial complex on another part.
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Finally, you isolate the remaining violators and deliver a message: If you join our friendship circle and abide by our norms, the benefits will be overwhelming, but if you stay outside, the costs will be devastating.