The comment about use of capital letters is a fair one, pointing it out is also fair comment. This is a good thing to learn in the mini-echo-chamber of HN, other forums don't bother to nit-pick enough yet writing style is extremely important.

Regarding your main point, it is not about not being allowed to play with the toys. The whole post 9/11 doctrine of militarism that has ended up as 'America First' has gone awry. A play was made to secure the world's energy supplies by military means and it has not worked out as planned. Iran is still a sovereign nation, Russia is back then there is China, the world's new big consumer of oil using the tactic of being nice to people. War is inevitable with many, many provocations made by the US and the junior UK partner. Neo-liberal capitalism just demands war.

The thing is that 'where there is smoke there must be fire' and a lot of people slowly get convinced that some of the nonsense is true. There is no appreciation that some of the supposed adversaries are smarter than us with cultural heritages that are different. in the West anything less than neo-liberal economics with 'democracy' is considered wrong, meanwhile, on the other side of the world, this way of running the show is seen for its shortcomings. The memes in our media are many, but regardless of the facts, people end up believing them. There is no evidence that the Russians meddled in the election, that the Russians poisoned some spy in Britain, that Huawei kit is used to spy on people in the West, that President Xi brutally murders thousands of people in China or that these Cuban folk are doing nasty things to U.S. diplomats.

However, I know that I will never be able to convince people in my own family that this much is true, I also know that getting downmodded is a result of writing such things. Or, on other forums, getting accused of being a 'Russian troll'.

Therefore, given that you take the stance that you do, please do take on board the comments about use of capitals. Don't give people any spurious reasons to dismiss your writing for style points instead of content. This I have learned from HN.

Evidence - citations of facts - is also important and another lesson to be learned from HN. For instance, in the Huawei case your opinion might be that Huawei would be mad to sell kit with backdoors in it because if they were caught then they would have a disaster on their hands that would destroy their business, as per the Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal of a few years back. Now if you found something you could quote from an important Huawei person explaining this then you can argue your point from evidence.

Also with the Huawei kit there is the problem that the Five Eyes can't backdoor it because they don't have the deals they have with Huawei that they do have with the Cisco's of this world. This cannot be backed up with facts. Again, fair down-modding to be expected. You might believe this to be true and you might even have gossip to back up your hunches. But it is not enough. You lose.

Therefore, what else could be going on? When you look at Huawei products the facts are that they are really good. Unless you are deeply invested in Apple products (or Cisco) then the Huawei products are what you want - they aren't just really good, they are vastly better on almost every metric if you can prove it with something on the end of a link. If you have another link that proves China are planning to dominate the market by 2025 (or whatever) then that point has been made without having to mention 'Five Eyes'. There is also the matter of lobbying, Huawei haven't spent what their rivals have.

Of course no facts will work when trying to discuss the matter with people that just believe the news and what they are told, guided by xenophobia instead of respect for hard working bright people in China. They will just mumble the lies parrot fashion and shout loudly if challenged. You can expect 'what about Tibet?' next. Again, for the made up mind that can't be won. The Dalai Lama being CIA funded matters not.

Another bete noir is how the Chinese steal 'our' IP. Now I don't have any patents however I wasn't a big fan of stealing software or music in my earlier years. Yes I was that idiot who paid for products from Silicon Valley and bought vinyl records en-masse. Silly me, I should have just used hacked versions. Invariably those that claim the Chinese 'just steal our IP' are people that have never bought any legitimate software in their life, unless it is for a Playstation. Same with music and DVDs, always ripped off with a few exceptions. If not that then there can be that silk shirt, IP ripped off from China, albeit a long time ago.

This can be dismissed as 'whataboutism' by those who insist China steal IP from the West but can't cite a single patent violation.

'Whataboutism' can be exhausting. Russia can be moved on to, not to mention Iran and Cuba. How can anyone defend such dastardly regimes? They don't have 'fair democracy', they don't respect 'human rights' and so on. Every day the papers are filled with more and more reasons to hate these and other countries. Syria is obviously utterly beyond the pale. North Korea too.

After so many years I nowadays think it is best to go 'Rosa Parks' on people when it comes to these important matters of hate. Rosa Parks was kind of an accidental revolutionary hero in not wanting to give up her seat on the bus for a white person. She was just too tired that day to give a damn. It was too much effort. She wasn't wanting to start a revolution, she was just tired.

So there is a disarming tactic of just going AWOL when it comes to who we are supposed to hate. Cuba? Haven't they got the best doctors in the world and aren't they the only country that is environmentally sustainable? Love to go there!!! Let's try Iran. Did you know they have built a wall the envy of the Trump that keeps a flood wave of heroin out of Europe from coming that way from NATO's Afghanistan? In Europe we should be eternally grateful to them for that, even if they don't let women go to football matches? Aren't their religious temple things more splendid than anything found in the West with civilised culture that pre-dates the West by millennia? There is no answer if you go full-on 'Rosa Parks' with people on these things, you might not win over the dedicated haters but you just might win over their friends by having genuinely nice things to say about our brothers and sisters in far off parts of the world.

It is in this way that I think the war of ideas has to be won. Over the last few years we have seen protest movements that have not achieved anything, right now in Paris there is an example of this, years ago there was Occupy Wall Street. They failed. Even worse is the meme that Jewish people secretly control everything with dog-whistle words like 'globalists' being used. Being too tired to hate is better, the traps are avoided.