China V. America?

My bro sent me this pleasingly bizaare video a couple days back. An early dubloon unearthed by Google's treasure-finding algorithm applied to video, it's made the rounds, but if you haven't yet seen it, do wait for it to load. I promise full fun. Note the guy in the back playing Half-Life or whatever. And the precious but brief moment when the guy on the left reveals his love for the guy on the right with a longing look. Don't miss it!

Also important is that no one seems to have picked up on the obvious geopolitical implications -- because this, of course, is how we will beat China, with our avalanche of irresistably lowbrow culture. Guess the world is flat afer all. Sure, China may seem scary with their economy surpassing ours in 2050, and 2 billion plus people by then, but not if those 2 billion people are obsessed with the Back Street Boys and the Houston Rockets and spending all their new capital on iSights to record home videos and send them to each others' Sidekick II's. That Atlantic cover story from a few months back needs to be revised. As usual, Robert "epic struggles" Kaplan misses the trees for the forest. Navies, Pacific Theater -- feh! The battles of the future will be fought on TRL. Talk about soft power -- kill 'em with culture, the generals should be saying. If the Chinese navy gets too big, we'll just convince their teenagers to join our "cool American" navy instead -- because ours is just like one big boy band! Get on it, DARPA. There's a whole new PSY OPS horizon to explore. Sadly, this is our one ace up the sleeve: cheap sports wear and Justin Timberlake.