by alephnerd | 2025-12-15 03:41:59+00:00
> My biggest worry about India is that they'll ally, to some degree, with China

> But those are resolvable or manageable...

It won't happen unless China gives up claims on Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. The issue is China cannot because these are ethnic Tibetan regions.

Additionally, Paharis (a catch all term for the Indo-European speaking ethnic group that straddles the High Himalayas) are overrepresented in the Indian Armed Forces, and everyone in the community is 1-2 degrees separated from someone who was either impacted in one of the various Indo-China standoffs or knows people impacted by the Chinese invasion of Tibet. For a large portion of Paharis, the view on China is similar to how Poles view Russian aggression in Ukraine.

> but how do you crank this out? Do you just know what you're looking for and search nytimes.com or have an LLM find the articles

The former. I concentrated in Computer Science but got a secondary in Government primarily concentrating on an institutionalist approach to Asia and MidEast studies.

You remember that Watson quote in A Study in Scarlet about Sherlock Holmes' limited knowledge outside of a couple areas [0] - that's the same for me.

I cannot differentiate between Brad Pitt and Leonardo DeCaprio (I do watch movies and shows - I just don't know or care about the names of most actors), I don't know any song by Taylor Swift (I do listen to music, but I'm not the most knowledgeable of the latest trend), I have almost no knowledge of contemporary literature (I do read modern lit, but I'm usually 3-5 years behind the trend or zeitgeist), and I don't really follow sports aside from UFC (but I have been actively cross-training BJJ/Judo, Muay Thai/TKD, and trail running from grade school to yesterday). I also never read the news aside from a couple of primary and industry sources (eg. Reuters, Bloomberg Terminal, FT, The Economist, Axios, Politico (US and EU), TechCrunch, and a couple region specific sources) and constantly avoid narrative-based journalism (they are fun to read, but tend to waste time when trying to get to the point). I also don't use social media except hate-posting on HN or nerding out on Lobsters.

Basically, my equivalent of gossip and faux moi is the intersection of tech (I have another similarly in-depth throwaway for the technical niches I'm interested in), policy, and business.

> I'd love to find these things that quickly

If your actually interested in these topics and can afford it, I'd recommend doing a part-time masters at the Harvard Extension School in Government [1], the MLA program at Stanford [2], or the distance MA in War Studies at KCL [3].

Alternatively, intensely studying the reading list for a specific field (eg. The PPE required reading list for Balliol College, Oxford [4] or the CS tripos at Cambridge) builds the conceptual foundation needed to apply to a field.

Once you build the conceptual models and table stakes skills needed for a specific field, everything else falls into place.

[0] - https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9097989-his-ignorance-was-a...

[1] - https://extension.harvard.edu/academics/programs/government-...

[2] - https://mla.stanford.edu/

[3] - https://www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies/study-with-us/online

[4] - https://www.balliol.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate-admiss...

[5] - https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1920/cst/