Transcription
Today I'm going to be explaining a crazy controversy that demonstrates how the United States is still waging a new cold war against China. And this scandal includes a bit of everything. It includes great power competition and geopolitical conflict. It includes an attempt by the US to literally colonize part of the territory of one of its so-called allies. It involves corruption and artificial intelligence and Silicon Valley and big tech corporations and much more.
So in order to understand the larger context of this controversy, I need to emphasize that if you listen to hawkish think tanks in Washington DC, they for years now have been openly saying that the United States is waging a new cold war against China, cold war. And just because Donald Trump took a visit to Beijing this May does not mean that we're not in a new cold war. In fact, it has been widely acknowledged in the Western media that this trip was largely a failure because Trump failed to pressure China to sign trade agreements that benefit the US, which Trump thought he could do, but of course he failed to do so. But regardless of whether or not it was considered a failure, just because Trump took this trip to Beijing does not mean that the US is suddenly not trying to contain China and prevent China from technologically and economically developing.
In fact, just a few days before Trump visited China, the US government imposed more sanctions on Chinese companies because they're doing business with Iran. And this led Beijing to push back and order all domestic companies to ignore US sanctions. And that's not all. While the US is continuing this economic war against China, the Trump administration has also been making some moves to try to cut China out of a new supply chain. So just a few days after Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio traveled to China, Rubio then went to India and this May the US and India signed a historic agreement to try to create a new supply chain for critical minerals. And if you read the Indian media's coverage of this agreement, it makes it very clear that this is all about China because China dominates the global supply chain for critical minerals. And these critical minerals are very important not only for big tech corporations in order to make tech products like computers and phones and electric vehicles and semiconductors but also because the military-industrial complex in the US. The US military needs these critical minerals in order to make its weapon systems.
So this is why the US government under Trump's second administration launched an initiative called pox silica which is an attempt to create a new global supply chain for semiconductors for chips for US big tech corporations and that new supply chain will cut out China. That's the goal of pox silica and the Trump administration succeeded in pressuring India to join this new initiative. So the US government wants to pressure many of these big tech corporations to move their factories and their investment out of China and instead to reshore or friendshore those factories and that investment in India to create this new US dominated supply chain. And another country that's involved in this initiative aside from India is the Philippines.
And today I'm going to be explaining how the US government has been trying to colonize part of the Philippines which it considers to be a so-called ally. This has been a huge scandal inside the Philippines and it's getting a little coverage in the Western media although it's not getting enough attention which is why I wanted to do this analysis today. And this issue was brought to my attention by a friend of the show, Arno Bertan, who's a great French geopolitical analyst and he's a very good writer who has a Substack that you should subscribe to. And on Twitter, Arno shared this story about how the US is literally trying to recolonize part of the Philippines as part of the so-called pox silica initiative. and he noted that this has caused outrage in the Philippines.
For months now, there have been large protests in general about the US militarization of the Philippines. Protesters have burned effiges of Donald Trump to protest joint military exercise conducted between the US and the Philippines. The current leader of the country is a right-wing Trump ally. His name is Ferdinand Marcos Jr. He's known as Bong Bong Marcos. And he is the son of the former right-wing dictator of the Philippines, Ferdan Marcos, who governed with an iron fist from 1965 until 1981. And he was an obedient US ally in the first cold war, who was extremely anti-communist, very right-wing, very pro- capitalist. The Marcos dictatorship backed by the US stole at least $10 billion from the people of the Philippines. And that's a conservative figure. Some scholars and journalists have estimated that up to $30 billion dollars was stolen by this corrupt dynasty of the US backed dictator Ferdon Marcos and his wife Alda Marcos. And she was notorious for having thousands of pairs of shoes and luxury goods and fancy clothes. Meanwhile, during his dictatorship, more than 3,200 Filipinos were killed or disappeared. 70,000 were imprisoned and 34,000 were tortured. Again, this was carried out by one of the closest US allies during the first cold war. And today, his son is the new president of the Philippines. And by the way, Fernan Marcos Jr., Bangmong Marcos, is also extremely corrupt. A clear example of this that caused a scandal in the Philippines was how Bong Mong Marcos used the presidential helicopter to fly to go see a Coldplay concert, which by the way, he also has horrible taste in music in addition to being a corrupt US puppet.
But anyway, regardless, the point that I'm emphasizing here is that in this new cold war that the US is waging against China, the Philippines, under this corrupt comprador leader who is willing to sell out his country to the US to enrich himself. Under Marcos, the Philippines has become yet another key US proxy in the new cold war against China. And in fact, Bang Bang Marcos has given the US military permission to use several other bases in the Philippines. The US military now has access to at least nine military bases in the Philippines. And that's probably a conservative estimate. There may be more we don't know about. And why does the US military want to use all of these bases in the Philippines? Well, it's because the US military is using them to threaten China. And this is bipartisan. It's not just Trump. In fact, under the Joe Biden administration, the US military deployed offensive missile systems to Japan and the Philippines. The missile systems located in the northern part of the Philippines are called the Typhen medium-range missile systems and they have the range of several thousand kilometers and can hit most of the major cities in the Chinese mainland. So the US military is directly threatening China. And again, this deployment started under Biden and has continued under Trump in his second term despite the fact that Trump took this trip to Beijing and tried to butter up China's President Cingping and act as though everything was okay. But obviously Beijing understood that the US is still waging this new cold war. And the US is still trying to contain China and threaten China, not only economically but also militarily. Which explains, by the way, why it was not a surprise that Trump's trip was a complete failure. Beijing was not interested in helping out the country that is waging a new cold war against it.
So, this brings us back to this scandal that was discussed by the geopolitical analyst Arno Bertran. Arno was responding to an article that was published in the Wall Street Journal titled US to create high-tech manufacturing zone in Philippines. And this report makes it clear that this is all about trying to contain China. I'm reading here from the Wall Street Journal. Quote, "An agreement with the Philippines to establish a high-tech industrial hub is the Trump administration's latest effort to lessen China's dominance over global supply chains." End quote. And the article noted that the Philippine government has given the US access to a massive 4,000 acre site and this is located on the northernmost island of the Philippines, Lon.
Now, what is especially scandalous about this story is that it's essentially colonialism because the Philippine government is not just giving the US government access to its land. According to the Wall Street Journal, I'm reading, quote, the US will occupy the site rentree and administer it as a special economic zone. The hub will have diplomatic immunity, such as the protections afforded to an American embassy, and operate under US common law, the first agreement of its kind anywhere in the world. The 2-year lease is renewable for 99 years." End quote. This is straight up colonialism. The right-wing corrupt regime in the Philippines run by the son of the former US puppet dictator, according to the Wall Street Journal, is allowing the US to take over 4,000 acres of territory in this geostrategic location to create a manufacturing hub. And this territory will follow US law in the Philippines. And what's even crazier, adding insult to injury, making it so clear that this is a colonial agreement, is the fact that the US is being offered a concession of 99 years. Now, if you know the history of Western colonialism, that should sound familiar. This is exactly what the British Empire did and the French Empire and other Western colonial empires. when they took over territory in countries in the global south, they forced the governments in those global south countries to give them concessions of 99 years. For instance, during what's known in China as the century of humiliation, after the British Empire waged the two opium wars, which were colonial wars of aggression against China at that time under theQing dynasty, the British Empire forced the Chinese authorities to give the UK a 99-year lease to control Hong Kong. And as the British newspaper, The Independent, pointed out, at the time, it was assumed that the British Empire would always control Hong Kong. The concession of 99 years was expected to be renewed every 99 years and that Hong Kong would forever be a British colony. And by the way, this is why the western imperial powers have been very angry about the fact that China did reincorporate Hong Kong into its territory and ended British colonialism in Hong Kong and ended Portuguese colonialism in Macau.
And by the way, I should point out that this is especially scandalous in the case of the Philippines because the US Empire literally colonized the Philippines after the SpanishAmerican War in 1898, which was an interimperialist war between the declining Spanish Empire and the rising US Empire. And the US Empire took over several Spanish colonial possessions including the Philippines as well as Guam, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. And today, the Trump administration is trying to recolonize Cuba and Puerto Rico still to this day along with Guam remain US colonies. They are so-called territories. They're colonies. And the Philippines was previously a US colony until it did eventually achieve independence in the 20th century. So this is why the details laid out in this article in the Wall Street Journal are especially scandalous because the US Empire is now trying to recolonize the Philippines and the corrupt right-wing comprador government in the Philippines is willing to sell out its country to the US Empire. So, it's entirely understandable why this has caused massive outrage in the Philippines with large protests.
But what's especially ironic about all of this is the US tells the Philippines that it's going to supposedly protect it. And the US claims that China is supposedly such a threat. So, US propaganda tries to warn people in the Philippines, be afraid of China. Be so so afraid. Well, it's actually the US Empire that is colonizing Philippine territory while claiming to protect the Philippines from China. And of course, the reason the US is using to justify all of this is China. I mean, it's just so insanely hypocritical. This article in the Wall Street Journal cites a top US State Department official, the under secretary of state for economic affairs, Jacob Hellberg. I'll explain who he is in a second. He's very closely linked to Silicon Valley billionaire oligarchs. And in this article in the Wall Street Journal, he made it clear that everything is about China. He said, quote, if you look at the whole supply chain stack layer after layer, it is totally dominated by China. End quote.
So the plan of the US government and big tech corporations in Silicon Valley. And of course, the US government serves the interests of these large corporations. Their goal is to use the natural resources of the Philippines to exploit those resources in order to cut out China. I'm reading here from the Wall Street Journal. Quote, "The Philippines has sources of nickel, copper, chromite, and cobalt that will be both used by American companies operating there and exported back to the US for manufacturing." Hellberg said, "The Philippines is among the most mineral-rich countries and the world's second largest producer of nickel." End quote. So, it's all so clear what the US government's initiative, Pox Silica, is all about. It's about cutting China out of the supply chain and creating a new supply chain that enriches US corporations, big billionaire capitalist oligarchs. This was admitted openly now in the Wall Street Journal.
In the photo that I'm showing here of the US government launching Poxilica, you can see the man who was involved in helping to create this initiative. It is the under secretary of state for economic affairs, Jacob Hellberg. He's the one with the glasses on. Now, who is Jacob Hellberg? He is Silicon Valley's representative in the State Department. The US media has dubbed him Silicon Valley's Trump whisperer. And it's not a coincidence that he's married to one of the most powerful billionaire oligarchs in Silicon Valley, Keith Ra boy. Now, who exactly is Keith Ra boy? He was one of the Silicon Valley oligarchs who was part of what Fortune magazine dubbed the PayPal mafia. This is a group of Silicon Valley tech bros and venture capitalists, many of whom later became powerful right-wing oligarchs who support Donald Trump. In the middle of the photo here, you can see Keith Ra boy, who is the husband of the US under secretary of state for economic affairs, overseeing Poxilica and these anti-China operations. Also in the photo of the PayPal mafia, you can see Peter Teal, the far-right billionaire oligarch venture capitalist who funded Donald Trump. And behind him, you can see another billionaire oligarch, David Saxs, who is now officially working for Donald Trump. He is the Trump administration's AI and cryptozar. That's his official title, the AI and cryptozar. And Elon Musk was also part of the PayPal mafia, but he was not there for that photo shoot. And as is often the case, Musk had a falling out with many of these other oligarchs in Silicon Valley.
But anyway, the point is that Jacob Hellberg, this top US State Department official, is married to this powerful billionaire oligarch in Silicon Valley, and he represents the interests of big tech corporations in the US government. And what's quite funny is that Jacob Hellberg saw the viral post that was written by Arnob Khan and of course many Trump administration officials just spend all day sitting on Twitter now that it's owned by their friend and oligarch patron Elon Musk and Hellberg angrily attacked Arno on Twitter. He boasted that Poxilica is quote fundamentally a capitalist project. This might be foreign to you end quote. And this US government official repeatedly emphasized the fact that Arno is French, that he's a foreigner, that he's not American. Therefore, Hellberg's implication is that no one should care what Arno has to say, which is completely ridiculous, especially coming from a top US State Department official. And the State Department is supposed to oversee diplomacy, although we all know that the US Empire doesn't actually engage in diplomacy. It engages in threats and blackmail and war, not diplomacy.
Anyway, this is the most important part of the post, which says so much about the priorities of the US government and the State Department. This top US State Department official wrote on Twitter, quote, "The US is home to the world's largest technology companies. A fact I'm sure deeply irritates you." End quote. And then he said that Arno has a quote ignorant loser mentality. Again, this is a top state department official who is publicly saying on Twitter that a critic has an ignorance loser mentality and that actually he's just jealous because France doesn't have the large tech companies, these big tech monopolies that Silicon Valley has. Once again, Hellberg was demonstrating whose interests he truly serves. It's not the interests of the American people, not the working class. It's the interests of Silicon Valley capitalist oligarchs. These big billionaires like his husband, the billionaire oligarch from Silicon Valley, Keith Rabo, and Donald Trump, who is himself a billionaire oligarch who is extremely corrupt and has made billions of dollars from being president.
But I should point out that Arnoban had an excellent response to Jacob Hellberg. He pointed out, you know, Hellberg denied the facts that were reported in this Wall Street Journal article, but the source in the Wall Street Journal article was him. It was Hellberg himself. So, he's now denying the details that he revealed in the Wall Street Journal. Moreover, Arno pointed out the hypocrisy that Hellberg praised the Taiwanese company TSMC, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. This is the world's most important company when it comes to manufacturing advanced chips used for AI training. Nvidia, the US company, which is now the most valuable company on Earth by market capitalization. It has a market cap of more than $5.5 trillion. Nvidia designs the chips, but they are physically manufactured by TSMC. And Arno pointed out the irony that under Trump, the US government has accused TSMC of supposedly stealing US technology. And the US has been trying to blackmail and pressure Taiwan to force TSMC to move its factories over to the US. The US forced TSMC and provided some subsidies and such to build a factory in Arizona. And Arno pointed out that when a US so-called partner has real capabilities, it's unbearable to Washington. Washington does not reward those capabilities, it calls its so-called partners and allies thieves and tries to take their industry away from them. And we see this not only with the pro- US separatist forces in Taiwan whom the US has been supporting for many years, but when a Taiwanese company challenges Silicon Valley big tech monopolies, suddenly the US turns against its so-called allies. We also see the same thing in the Philippines.
And I'm going to read part of this tweet by Arnoban because I think he put it very well. He noted that the Philippine government agency whose entire reason for existing is to turn former American colonial territory i.e. US military bases into sovereign Philippine land is the one now being asked to hand part of that very same land back under US jurisdiction and apparently declined. It's in a gray area. This scandal that this issue has caused has pressured the Philippine government to take a step back because obviously it's so humiliating on the international stage. But regardless of the fine details, Arno pointed out the bigger picture here. The Philippines is still a signatory of this initiative, Poxilica. And Poxilica itself is structurally neoconial. These foreign countries that are so-called US allies supply the cheap labor and raw materials. They align their export controls and regulations with Washington. They cut themselves off from China, which is the world's rising technological powerhouse. And in exchange, they get a few low-paid assembly jobs and the privilege of getting a pat on the head by Trump and being called a so-called trusted partner. But of course that status of being a trusted partner doesn't mean anything because the US will abandon them anytime it's convenient. This is why as our no put maybe they drop the most cartoonishly colonial demand governing Philippine soil under US law but the underlying architecture is the same. You serve the US supply chain on the USA's terms and you relinquish your sovereign right to trade with whoever offers you the best deal. I think Arno put the nail on the head. He's a friend of the show. He's a great analyst. Again, you should go check out his Substack.
But before I conclude, I want to say a few more words about the Philippines because I think the current US puppet leader of the Philippines, Bong Bong Marcos, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., He is the epitome of what happens when you have a government that is led by these comprador elites who are willing to sell out their country and they do not care one bit about the interests of the working class. The Spanish language has the best word for these corrupt comprodor leaders. It is bendria. Bendipatria. It literally means to sell your homeland. And we see this with many of the right-wing pro- US leaders in Latin America. For instance, Argentina's libertarian self-declared anarcho capitalist leader Javier Mle who has been selling out his country to US corporations and Elon Musk. Or in the case of Ecuador, the current right-wing dictator is named Danielle Looa, who is the son of the richest billionaire oligarch in the country. His family is extremely corrupt and linked to organized crime. And he's also a US citizen. And under his rule, his right-wing dictatorship, Ecuador has become the most dangerous country in Latin America with the highest homicide rate. Public services have collapsed. There are constant blackouts. Infrastructure is falling apart. It's a failed state. And this is exactly what happens when you have these corrupt comprador leaders who serve the interests of the US empire and US capitalists at the expense of their own country.
The data shows it very clearly. If you look at poverty statistics for the Philippines, you can see that if you measure relative poverty at the share of the population living on less than 10 US dollars per day and this is adjusted for living costs with the domestic currency. You can see that in China which has a socialist government led by an independent communist party that does not allow US corporations in Washington to determine its policy to dictate its policy. In China, poverty has collapsed. The Chinese government has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, this poverty rate, there are different ways to measure poverty. This poverty measurement of the share of the population living on less than $10 a day has not changed in the past 30 years. Since 1990, 80% of the population of the Philippines has been living in this measurement of relative poverty. Well, in China, in Brazil, countries that have independent leaders, they have reduced poverty significantly. Another example of a success story is Vietnam. Vietnam has a system that is very similar politically and economically to the socialist system of China. China and Vietnam are both governed by communist parties. China officially calls its system a socialist market economy. Vietnam's system since the reform in the 1990s, the market reforms is called a socialistoriented market economy. And China and Vietnam have been remarkably successful in reducing poverty and raising wages, income, consumption levels. If you measure mean income, that is average income or consumption per day, you can see that in China and Vietnam, it has increased by over 10 times since 1990. In the Philippines, it's increased by one or two dollars. So this is the difference between having an independent workingclassoriented government that represents the interests of the nation and the working class and not the interests of US corporations. Whereas China and Vietnam are major success stories that everyone around the world, everyone in the global south should look toward the model that Vietnam and China implemented to learn from their models. They are major success stories. On the opposite side of the spectrum, you have the Philippines, which is a complete failure in every metric. And yet, instead of trying to reconsider the abject failure of the Philippine government's political and economic policies, the corrupt oligarchs who govern the Philippines are once again betraying their people to serve the interests of US corporations and the US empire as it wages a new cold war against China.
On that note, I'm going to conclude. I am Ben Norton. I want to thank everyone for joining me today. Please like and subscribe. Please share this. I will see you all next time.