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That's a backwards projection. In the early 2000s we were still blithely confident that China would just slot into a world order dominated by us. The end of history and all that.

The record was that the Bush administration came in and immediately dropped the MS antitrust case because they were 'pro-business'. I suspect GWB genuinely believed in all this.

>"Bush administration came in and immediately dropped the MS antitrust case because they were 'pro-business'"

From what I remember it was definitely Bush's doing.

That’s a claim that requires evidence. And either way you’re making a classic fallacy via the rational actor model, where you’re personifying the US and asserting that the US “realized” something.

A far more accurate take is that big business continued to consolidate money and power and successfully used political influence to neuter the regulatory agencies.

Alternatively: tech companies have used the fear of China to entrench their own power and avoid even the most reasonable forms of regulation.