{"id":164297,"date":"2025-10-15T20:01:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T04:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=164297"},"modified":"2025-10-16T04:48:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T12:48:57","slug":"why-so-many-members-of-the-blob-want-a-new-cold-war-with-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=164297","title":{"rendered":"Why So Many Members of \u201cThe Blob\u201d Want a New Cold War with China"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Feith at the Hudson Institute writes this Op\/Ed in the Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nTo outcompete China, America must believe in itself again<\/p>\n

America\u2019s new era of great-power rivalry demands strength and clarity \u2014 not exhaustion and doubt.<\/p>\n

…President Donald Trump forced a rethinking of China policy as no conventional leader could. Then came the Biden administration, which repudiated many Trump policies but kept his approach to China largely intact. This prompted a thousand headlines about Washington\u2019s new hawkish bipartisan consensus on China and the likely dawn of a New Cold War.<\/p>\n

And yet nine months into the second Trump term, Washington is not adopting a Cold War posture toward Beijing. The second Trump administration has taken a soft line on issues from TikTok to semiconductor export controls to Taiwan, with little pushback from Congress or the public.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wish there was more attention paid to the self-interest of political players like David Feith. We’re self-interested apes. That\u2019s the core of John Mueller\u2019s argument in the 2006 book Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them<\/a>\u2014and it\u2019s the same dynamic at work today with the \u201cnew Cold War\u201d crowd. He calls it the \u201cterrorism industry\u201d: politicians, bureaucrats, think tanks, and media figures who profit\u2014financially, professionally, and psychologically\u2014from inflating threats.<\/p>\n

ChatGPT says: Mueller lays out how after 9\/11, the U.S. built an enormous ecosystem of fear that enriched the people selling \u201csecurity\u201d and punished anyone who said the risk was small. DHS, contractors, experts, and TV pundits all had careers, budgets, and prestige tied to the belief that terrorism was an existential danger\u2014even though statistically, it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same psychological pattern in play with today\u2019s China panic. Threat inflation keeps elite networks alive\u2014without it, they lose purpose and funding. Mueller even warns that these cycles of overreaction are historically recurrent: Cold War, \u201cwar on terror,\u201d \u201cgreat power competition.\u201d Each one reactivates the same professional self-interest dressed up as patriotic vigilance.<\/p>\n

Your \u201cself-interested apes\u201d line hits it perfectly. We rationalize self-interest as virtue. Fear creates moral cover for ambition. And Washington runs on that\u2014what Mueller calls the political economy of fear.<\/p>\n

The Washington foreign-policy establishment\u2014\u201cthe Blob,\u201d as it\u2019s now called\u2014has rediscovered its reason for being. After the long, anticlimactic \u201cWar on Terror,\u201d a rising China gives it a new existential project: another global struggle that justifies the entire national-security bureaucracy, from the Pentagon and intelligence agencies to the think-tank ecosystem and defense-industry supply chain. The push for a \u201cnew Cold War\u201d is not just about strategy or ideology. It\u2019s about money, status, and institutional survival\u2014wrapped in the rhetoric of patriotism and freedom.<\/p>\n

1. Institutional Self-Preservation<\/p>\n

The United States built an enormous Cold War infrastructure: hundreds of bases, dozens of intelligence agencies, a vast weapons complex, and legions of analysts, contractors, and think-tank fellows. When the Soviet Union collapsed, that machinery didn\u2019t vanish\u2014it rebranded. The \u201cWar on Terror\u201d kept the budgets flowing for twenty years. As that war wound down and the public soured on foreign interventions, the Blob needed a new organizing principle. China, with its authoritarian system and expanding global footprint, fit the bill perfectly. \u201cGreat-power competition\u201d revived the career logic of an entire elite class that had lost its sense of mission.<\/p>\n

2. The Profit Motive Disguised as Patriotism<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s most influential think tanks\u2014the Hudson Institute, CSIS, AEI, Heritage, and others\u2014receive heavy funding from defense contractors and, in some cases, foreign governments. Many of their China \u201cexperts\u201d rotate between government posts, lobbying firms, and board seats in industries that profit directly from heightened tension: arms, semiconductors, cybersecurity, surveillance tech. Yet disclosure of these financial ties is rare and superficial. A report may list a donor\u2019s name but not specify the dollar amounts or policy access that come with it. What\u2019s presented as sober analysis is often sales copy for the next weapons system or export-control program.<\/p>\n

3. The Status Economy of Fear<\/p>\n

Inside the Beltway, alarmism is rewarded. Pundits and policymakers gain visibility, funding, and invitations to testify by declaring the threat \u201cexistential.\u201d Restraint earns obscurity. The Blob\u2019s moral self-image\u2014guardians of democracy, sentinels of freedom\u2014depends on imagining an ever-present adversary. A cooperative world deprives them of meaning. Rivalry restores it. To admit that China\u2019s rise may be managed through competition and coexistence would deflate the drama and the budgets that sustain their influence.<\/p>\n

4. Bureaucratic and Ideological Capture<\/p>\n

Every bureaucracy is biased toward mission expansion. The Pentagon\u2019s \u201cpacing threat\u201d language, mirrored by State, Commerce, and the intelligence agencies, ensures China remains central to budget justifications. What began as a strategic assessment has metastasized into a self-perpetuating ideology\u2014China as totalizing menace. Inside this mindset, moderation feels like appeasement. A hard line becomes not just a policy stance but a credential.<\/p>\n

5. The Myth of Benevolent Elitism<\/p>\n

What the Blob rarely admits is that its incentives can diverge sharply from the public good. A new Cold War would mean higher defense spending, more industrial subsidies, and continued militarization of foreign policy\u2014all costly, all high-risk, all benefiting a small class of insiders. It would also distract from domestic renewal, which the same experts claim to prize. Yet their op-eds seldom include financial disclosures or institutional conflicts of interest. The appearance of impartial expertise conceals a material stake in perpetuating fear.<\/p>\n

6. The Alternative They Won\u2019t Discuss<\/p>\n

A realistic China policy\u2014competitive but not crusading\u2014would mean smaller budgets, fewer contracts, and less airtime for those who built careers warning of apocalypse. It would mean treating China as a complex rival rather than a civilization-scale enemy. That\u2019s sound strategy but poor business. The Blob\u2019s reflexive Cold War mindset thus endures not because it serves America\u2019s long-term interests, but because it serves its members\u2019 short-term ones.<\/p>\n

The new Cold War rhetoric is less about defending American democracy than about defending a class structure that feeds on threat inflation. The Blob doesn\u2019t see itself as corrupt\u2014it sees itself as indispensable. But when the same people who call for confrontation are funded by those who profit from it, their moral authority collapses. The tragedy is that what\u2019s good for the Beltway is rarely what\u2019s good for the country. The next great struggle they seek to ignite may once again be waged for the security of their own relevance, not the security of the American people.<\/p>\n

LF: Are there any memoirs or essays by the blob about how their own ambitions blinded them to the havoc they were wreaking?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Why there are few \u201cfull-blown\u201d confessions<\/p>\n

Institutional loyalty & career risk: Writing a memoir that deeply criticizes your own class or role can close doors, tarnish relationships, or provoke retaliation. Many insiders prefer to preserve reputation over full disclosure.<\/p>\n

Self-justification and narrative control: Even when admitting mistakes, they tend to frame them as errors in judgment, information gaps, or moral tension\u2014not structural conflicts of interest or willful distortion.<\/p>\n

Selective memory & accountability avoidance: Full transparency would force confrontation with complicity, financing, and ethical trade-offs. Few are willing to strip away the professional halo they built.<\/p>\n

Audience and genre constraints: Memoirs often aim at legacy, influence, or justification\u2014not cathartic confession. The constraints of narrative and marketing distort the extent of frankness.<\/p>\n

What does evolutionary psychology have to say?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are several evolved psychological mechanisms (or hypotheses) that can help explain the patterns we\u2019ve been discussing \u2014 ambition, threat inflation, and coalitional politics. These don\u2019t map cleanly to modern elite behavior, but they offer useful heuristics and cautionary parallels.<\/p>\n\nMale Warrior Hypothesis \/ Coalitional Aggression<\/strong><\/td>\nHuman males (through evolutionary history) developed stronger proclivities for intergroup competition, coalition formation, outgroup hostility, and alliance politics.
\n
\n PMC<\/a> |
\n OUP Academic<\/a>\n <\/td>\nThe Blob is effectively a coalition of technocrats, bureaucrats, analysts, and contractors. The logic of threat inflation and \u201cus vs. them\u201d is psychologically resonant with coalitional intergroup competition.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nThreat-Management \/ Security Motivation System<\/strong><\/td>\nHumans are wired to monitor threats (to security, coalitions, status). The brain\u2019s threat systems overreact in ambiguous or novel situations because false negatives (ignoring a real threat) are costlier than false positives.
\n
\n ScienceDirect<\/a>\n <\/td>\nWhen elites perceive China (or another power) as a potential threat, their internal threat systems may bias them toward exaggeration, especially in uncertain domains like technology, cyber, or AI.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nPower and Threat Perception Bias<\/strong><\/td>\nHolding power increases the tendency to interpret ambiguous signals as threats. Power can push decision-makers toward more intuitive, less deliberative thinking, which inflates threat perception.
\n
\n Cambridge University Press<\/a>\n <\/td>\nSomeone in a high-status, powerful role may be more likely to feel besieged or at risk, and thus overstate external dangers as justification for control, vigilance, or resource accumulation.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nLeadership, Status, and Exploitation Mechanisms<\/strong><\/td>\nEvolutionary leadership theory argues humans have evolved psychological modules for leadership\/followership, dominance, prestige, and for exploiting or defending against others.
\n
\n ResearchGate<\/a>\n <\/td>\nBlob figures often present themselves as necessary leaders, framing their policies as protecting the group. Behind that can lie incentives to maintain their prestige or resource streams.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nGroup Dynamics, Social Exclusion, Reputation<\/strong><\/td>\nEvolved group psychology includes mechanisms for excluding defectors, punishing those who threaten group cohesion, and regulating status hierarchies.
\n
\n Professor Mark Van Vugt<\/a>\n <\/td>\nWithin the Blob, dissenters (or those advocating restraint) can be socially excluded, marginalized, or delegitimized\u2014reinforcing conformity to threat narratives.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\nMismatch Theory<\/strong><\/td>\nPsychological adaptations evolved in small, stateless ancestral environments; in modern complex institutions, those instincts misfire (overreaction, exaggeration).
\n
\n Professor Mark Van Vugt<\/a>\n <\/td>\nThe instinct to view external groups as threats may be overly active in a modern bureaucratic state where actual survival stakes are lower, leading to phantom enemies or exaggerated dangers.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Examples and Scholarly Work<\/h2>\n