So we know where to invade/sanction next ?
Texas, obviously. The land where the patent attorney roams free.
Otherwise, it's just business mixed with security theatre. If you're in the telecomms tin business, 5G represents a fairly handy chunk of your future EPS. Especially as infrastructure spending in general is down. And especially as a significant chunk of that expenditure has gone to non-$deity fearing American vendors rather than say, Cisco or Juniper, who rely on China for most of their tin anway. Back in the day, investors might have been dubious handing over money for a vendor they'd not heard of, but thanks to security theatre, they've heard of Huawei now.
But that's just one of those roosting chickens that's come home to shite on your lawn. Post-WW2, much the same happened with Japan, which happily took reconstruction money to modernise it's industry & then add their own innovations. The US focused on churning out MBAs who just looked out the bottom line and outsourced everything they could to far-Eastern sweat shops.. Then seem suprised when countries like China took that IP, added their own innovation and out-compete the US and West.
Trump's tried to reinvigorate US manufacturing, but arguably it's too little, too late. Plus he's created other challenges. US benefitted from shale oil & gas, many billions were pumped into extraction and export facilities.. But some bad timing, ie oil & gas prices plunged below $100/bbl and shouldn't head north. Which creates problems for oil & gas lenders, so do a spot of sanctions there as well to encourage buying US Freedom Gas as well as 5G tin. Which hasn't worked out too well, especially if Russia/Syria/Iran build their own pipeline into Europe. So just do the sanctions thing. UK hijacks an Iranian tanker destined for Syria because EU sanctions.. Yet neither Iran nor Syria is in the EU. Iran hijacks a UK tanker in retaliation, so escalates oil shipping costs through the Persian Gulf. Who could have seen that coming?
Such is busines when you've got geopolitics onboard with your marketing.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
