Noah, I love your writings in general. And I love sci-fi as well. But each time you venture into China-related topics, I feel quite embarrassed. It seems most of the time you are only piecing together what you imagine about the country, this time using a sci-fi writer to make your point. It's interesting that you put Liu Cixin and Hitler in the same breadth here. I really ponder what you are trying to do here and what the assumptions you hold. In fact, I recently wrote an article "Noah Smith is clueless about China, and that's a problem for you (Part 1)" where I specifically critiqued one of your underlying beliefs that China but a version of Nazi Germany robertwoo.substack.com/…

Not to mention, the Dark Forest is one of many Liu Cixin's many ideas. It is an interesting attempt to explain the famous Fermi Paradox. You focus on the cosmological struggles between alien species, but you fail to mention the collaboration between nations to solve mankind's problems that's also inherent in his books. That somehow you can link him to Hitler is beyond me.