Declan Hayes
Musk, much like Hitler's rocketmen before him, is aiming for a project that is far beyond his financial and other limitations.
American hot shot Elon Musk has revived interest in Das Marsprojekt, a semi-fictional novel renowned Nazi/American rocket man Wernher von Braun penned in 1953. If we leave aside the fact that von Braun was a much better scientist than he was a social scientist, novelist or anthropologist and that the Mr Big of the Martians is called Elon, the Mars Project's detailed mathematical calculations show, if any proof were needed, that von Braun was well ahead of the curve when it came to doing convoluted sums.
And, though Elon Musk might well be ahead of that same curve too, because he has half of China hot on his heels, it is impossible to see how the United States can stay ahead of the Chinese tsunami no matter how many von Brauns or Musks they kidnap or cajole into collaborating with them.
Take the case of TikTok, which was given a 90 day stay of execution by Trump, as long as they hand over half of their assets to Uncle Sam. But TikTok is not a bunch of Russian gold bars in a Manhattan bank that can be stolen whenever Hunter Biden and Zelensky feel the urge to jack up. TikTok is, at heart, a product of smart Chinese engineers catering to the whims of young Chinese women who, like their Japanese counterparts of a generation ago, are the trail blazers in adopting such products. Unless Trump wants to kidnap half of China's young women and cutting edge engineers, he cannot have what are, in essence, the crown jewels of TikTok. He is best to follow the examples of Russian teenyboppers Betsy and Maria Yankovskaya, and their international confreres and confine himself to uploading his own dopey dances there.
Important though Betsy and Maria Yankovskaya are, they are dwarfed by the Chinese teeny bopper and young female market and, more generally, by the entire Chinese consumer market which account for over 80% of the revenue of ByteDance (TikTok's parent company) through Douyin and similar products that are aimed exclusively at the domestic Chinese market. The bottom line is TikTok is relatively small beans to ByteDance and, even more so, to China, which has taken on board the advice of the World Bank, the IMF and sundry NATO think tanks to develop, with China's usual panache, its own domestic consumer market.
This TikTok experience, the World Bank, the IMF and sundry think tanks should be happy to hear,. is replicated throughout China's entire consumer sector. Take Haier, which went, at China's by now normal break neck speed, from being a lowly, local fridge manufacturer to being How Haier Went from Breaking Fridges to Global Domination: The Untold Story in all sorts of lucrative pies.
Or take the Li Auto, which retails for about $66,000 US in China but which would set you back more than triple that amount in the United States for a comparable rig. The importance of the Li Auto, as Never Seen an SUV do All This , is what is top-of-the line luxury in America is now common-place in China. And in Russia too where, thanks to the nonsense of NATO's Ukrainian kerfuffle, a healthy market exists for all such Chinese products, which come with the added bonus of no pesky European sanctions.
No big deal say NATO's ostriches as much of Russia is tough terrain, where luxury cars most definitely do not belong. But NATO has gifted all of Russia and more to China's trucking and heavy truck sectors. Fancy if you are an African or Latin American mining big shot and you have the choice of buying overpriced NATO crap or Chinese merchandise that has been tested in Siberia and on the great central Asian plains. Throw in the fact that China's State owned FAW auto group (revenue $90 billion per annum) thrives on the sorts of ( flathead) challenges Russian, African and Latin American terrain present and the less flexible China leads global truck sales with Flathead Trucks; a contrast to U.S.' Longhead Trucks. , which rarely looks beyond its own excellent autobahns, has never really been in the race for those markets.
Más se perdió en Cuba. More was lost in Cuba, say the Spaniards, when they compare personal tragedies to America's 1898 theft of the jewel in their empire. But NATO cannot say that about their latest Russian adventurism, where they have handed Russia and more besides to China on a plate. Although we should also comment on NATO's terror campaign against Huawei, there is nothing new to see there, as it is the same old template of NATO bullying its way to the trough.
Though NATO will always have its Wernher and Elon von Brauns, they are now hopelessly outnumbered and intellectually outgunned by China which, though it is Japan on steroids, is not and never will be under the same sort of American dominance Japan has been forced to endure since 1945.
Although NATO's proposed naval blockade of China may produce the same sort of dividends a similar siege did against Japan prior to Pearl Harbor, I wouldn't bet on it. That is because India, Vietnam and other countries pivotal to such a success have their own manifest destinies to follow and, though Vietnam has developed another deep sea port on Barque Canada Reef on the Spratly Islands, there is an alternative to war if China backs off from its neo mercantilist trajectory. That alternative entails China working through Russia with Vietnam, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and those other countries with a genuine stake in those seas.
And, if it does come to a missile war in the South China Sea, no doubt NATO's Wernher and Elon von Brauns will acquit themselves as well as von Braun's crew did for Hitler but, if luck is on the side of the big battalions, then China has to win and Elon will lose the race not only in the South China Sea but the race to Mars and anywhere else of consequence as well. And, though it is good that Musk, like von Braun before him, has his dreams of Martian conquest, all such dreams must be factored around the reality of China's economic might that stretches not only from TikTok to the Li Auto but far beyond them to Mars and the furthermost galaxies as well.
Though SS-Sturmbannführer Wernher von Braun was undoubtedly a genius of the highest calibre, he had the misfortune to work under Herr Hitler, who spread Germany's great talent in engineers and physicists much too thinly, given the scarcity of resources the Third Reich laboured under. In the case of Hans von Ohain, von Braun's Operation Paperclip chum, that included developing a range of jet fighters from 1938 onwards, instead of concentrating on one defence jet and training its crews in how to properly use it to blast their Yankee enemies out of the sky.
Although NATO's sanctions give Kim Jong Un, North Korea's own rocket man, little choice but to produce guns (or rather rockets) instead of butter, Musk, much like Hitler's rocketmen before him, is aiming for a project that is far beyond his financial and other limitations. Though Musk, playing the fox, may well complete his own Das Marsprojekt before the Chinese hounds that are in hot pursuit, not only would the smart money have to be on the Chinese to be big players in that market as well, but the big money is more likely to bankroll the Chinese than it is to bet the bank on go-it-alone Musk, who will be as assuredly out-muscled, as was SS-Sturmbannführer Wernher von Braun, NATO's original rocket man.