Evan O'Hara

“The obsession of the two great economic systems with each other’s identity, intentions, strengths, and weaknesses had produced by the 1970s a state of mutual watch-fulness and paranoia that seemed to know no bounds. Each side was ready to pay any sum, take any risk, tell any lie, to gain a seeming intelligence advantage over the other. Neither seemed able to grasp the utter sterility of this situation.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“In polite company in Washington and Silicon Valley, it was easier simply to repeat words like multilateralism, globalization, and innovation, concepts that were too vacuous to offend anyone in a position of power. The chip industry itself—deeply fearful of angering China or TSMC—put its considerable lobbying resources behind repeating false platitudes about how “global” the industry had become. These concepts fit naturally with the liberal internationalist ethos that guided officials of both political parties amid America’s unipolar moment. Meetings with foreign companies and governments were more pleasant when everyone pretended that cooperation was win-win. So Washington kept telling itself that the U.S. was running faster, blindly ignoring the deterioration in the U.S. position, the rise in China’s capabilities, and the staggering reliance on Taiwan and South Korea, which grew more conspicuous every year.”
― Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology

“A little over a year after Hadi’s release, a UN report found that some 700,000 Palestinians had been arrested since the occupation began, equal to roughly 40 percent of all the men and boys in the territories.”
― Nathan Thrall, A Day in the Life of Abed Salama: A Palestine Story

“Rodrigo Duterte was not the first politician in the world to declare war on a domestic issue. Wars on poverty, pornography, hunger, obesity, cancer, and drugs have been launched and fought by presidents and potentates long before Duterte moved into Malacañang Palace. None of these wars have so far been won. None of that matters, because for the politician, the declaration is a victory”
― Patricia Evangelista, Some People Need Killing