> And the whole point of discretionary spending is that it's money that could have been spent on society instead of e.g. setting up fake social media sites to try to cause chaos in another country.
You think that's where most of USAID money is going?
> $34 billion is $100 from every man, woman, and child in the US.
Substantially less than unrest and unchecked disease in entire continents would cost us.
> Imagine if all of this money was spent domestically.
We'd probably blow it on some full-body MRIs.
> China's pharma companies are establishing production factories within Africa for the local production of trade-level quantities of pharmaceuticals meaning they'll be able to provide not only for their own needs, but have enough production to turn drugs into exports.
It's how China got big in the first place, even; we shipped our manufacturing there!
> It's not like African nations don't realize what we're doing, while we then go and try to lecture them about the Chinese debt trap. What a shock that they're not listening.
Certainly. But that's just trading one hegemon for another.
I think literally nobody knows where much, if not most, of USAID's money was going. It was a highly opaque organization that was regularly weaponized. Contrary to what most people think, Congress doesn't just automatically gain classified clearance. They are given information only a need-to-know basis and even then often only in briefing format. So you remember when USAID was being shut down and there was an all-hands-on-deck burning and shredding day getting rid of as much classified information as possible? [1] Great way to show they nothing to hide.
Your link reads like LLM slop and the very few specific details it offers ($ amount) is contradicted by the page it linked to. It also isn't related to Africa which is what we were talking about, and in any case you're obviously not going to kickstart manufacturing for $5 million ($2.5 million in the linked announcement). It also postdates China's actions by decades. The first Chinese factory in Africa opened up in 1998. [2]
China isn't a hegemon, does not seem to be pursuing hegemony, and I don't think that will change. They've had centuries of being the most powerful nation/empire in existence, but always remained within their own region, working more as a merchant than a conqueror. The US obsession with ruling the world is really kind of weird and nonsensical, because it's not only obviously an unobtainable goal in modern times, but it's not even in our own best interest.
> So you remember when USAID was being shut down and there was an all-hands-on-deck burning and shredding day getting rid of as much classified information as possible? Great way to show they nothing to hide.
Great way for Trump to prevent the agency from being able to rebuild effectively when courts order it open or Dems take over, you mean? This was an explicit tactic of the Trump administration; to make it hard to undo things.
> It also postdates China's actions by decades.
It's a single recent example of the tactic you assert the US wasn't doing. It's hardly the first such project USAID ever did.
> China isn't a hegemon, does not seem to be pursuing hegemony, and I don't think that will change.
Oh, yeah, they're just putting military bases in Africa and building islands for funsies.
When governments direct money to shadowy things it doesn't show up in the records as "money laundered to the CIA to try to foment insurrection" but as another normal sounding disbursal to one entity that hands it off to others (after taking a nice cut) and so on repeatedly. To actually know where the money is going you'd need to follow the path of the money from delivery to actual things being done as opposed to 'disbursed $xxx to shell corp, inc.'
That could be done relatively easily by requiring recipients strictly and recursively record every single dollar disbursed, and then publishing those. But it's not done, because the opacity is desired. The whole NGO scene is a complete racket before you add in the perverse motivations of USAID. The person who directed the mass destruction of classified documents at USAID was Erica Y Carr. [1] She joined USAID under Obama, and was appointed to head it under Biden.
Your last link did not demonstrate the creation of domestic manufacturing, let alone in Africa. If you could find meaningful examples of USAID doing such, you would have shared them. Thus it's safe to conclude that cannot find such, and so are now here trying to claim that nonsense is pertinent when you know it is not. That's not arguing in good faith, akin to you now trying to argue that China is the world hegemon because they have some military bases.
> If you could find meaningful examples of USAID doing such, you would have shared them. Thus it's safe to conclude that cannot find such, and so are now here trying to claim that nonsense is pertinent when you know it is not. That's not arguing in good faith…
A bit rich. Reminder... This was you:
"For instance one project was USAID/CIA starting a fake social media site in Cuba specifically with the goal of trying to create an insurrection, which would undoubtedly be very bloody had they succeeded."
Is it, thus, safe to assume you can't actually demonstrate USAID having done harm of this nature, and that it was raised in bad faith?
Your argument here doesn't make any sense. Do you disagree they were trying to foment an insurrection, or that it would have been bloody if successful? I assume not, because both are rather self evident. So it's not even clear what you're arguing - that USAID always fails? Again, you get weird things when you argue in bad faith.
But whatever, if you want clear examples then there's plenty to be had in the Office of Public Safety. [1] It's as Orwellian as it sounds and was directly under USAID. Modern examples are classified, though have been regularly referenced without detail by government officials speaking on record. Cuba's is the exception in classification, and clearly demonstrates their character as an organization.
You think that's where most of USAID money is going?
> $34 billion is $100 from every man, woman, and child in the US.
Substantially less than unrest and unchecked disease in entire continents would cost us.
> Imagine if all of this money was spent domestically.
We'd probably blow it on some full-body MRIs.
> China's pharma companies are establishing production factories within Africa for the local production of trade-level quantities of pharmaceuticals meaning they'll be able to provide not only for their own needs, but have enough production to turn drugs into exports.
Yeah, they got that one from us. https://www.usp.org/news/usaid-launches-five-million-dollar-...
It's how China got big in the first place, even; we shipped our manufacturing there!
> It's not like African nations don't realize what we're doing, while we then go and try to lecture them about the Chinese debt trap. What a shock that they're not listening.
Certainly. But that's just trading one hegemon for another.