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Comment by throwaway4good | Hacker News Reader

I really don't see the problem here.

In Denmark McKinsey consultants advise the government at a fairly high level. Most of the consultants are Danes and had they not worked for McKinsey they would work for another consultancy (or the government itself) doing the same government work.

Made in China 2025 is an industrial policy aiming for Chinese companies to move up the value chain. This was going to happen regardless of McKinsey.

On contrary the US congressmen are foolish for bullying McKinsey into not doing business in China as it will decrease the US's ability to understand what is going.

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> lawmakers have questioned if consulting in China conflicts with the firm’s work for the US Department of Defense.

Playing both sides against the middle is a legitimate concern, despite your inability to see it as such, in addition to being the oldest trick in the book. That works like this:

1. Supply adversary A for conflict

2. Supply adversary B for conflict

3. Trigger conflict (note the lack of question mark typical in examples of this meme)

4. Profit

I came to the same conclusion. Some additional context which may be helpful to make the point a bit clearer:

> that McKinsey & Company was "the most well-known, most secretive, most high-priced, most prestigious, most consistently successful, most envied, most trusted, most disliked management consulting firm on earth".

Or, in other words, they help shape policy for business and governmental organizations in the US and the larger western world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinsey_%26_Company

They can make money or gather power based off the mutual distrust between China and the Western world, which is an example of the Prisoner's dilemma or a "divide and conquer" strategy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

Legislators are aware.

https://www.hawley.senate.gov/hawley-bill-cracking-down-mcki...

https://www.hawley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2024-02/Ha...

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