Zizek's take on 300 is so good, here's an excerpt:
it is the story a small and poor country (Greece) invaded by the army of a much larges state (Persia), at that point much more developed, and with a much more developed military technology - are the Persian elephants, giants and large fire arrows not the ancient version of high-tech arms? When the last surviving group of the Spartans and their king Leonidas are killed by the thousands of arrows, are they not in a way bombed to death by techno-soldiers operating sophisticated weapons from a safe distance, like today's US soldiers who push the rocket buttons from the warships safely away in the Persian Gulf?
Furthermore, Xerxes's words when he attempts to convince Leonidas to accept the Persian domination, definitely do not sound as the words of a fanatic Muslim fundamentalist: he tries to seduce Leonidas into subjection by promising him peace and sensual pleasures if he rejoins the Persian global empire. All he asks from him is a formal gesture of kneeling down, of recognizing the Persian supremacy - if the Spartans do this, they will be given supreme authority over the entire Greece. Is this not the same as what President Reagan demanded from Nicaraguan Sandinista government? They should just say "Hey uncle!" to the US..
Why subsidized? A fair comparison would be subsidized home farming vs. subsidized industrial farming, or neither are subsidized.
The exact problem was discussed in Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott, where he reached a very different and nuanced conclusion. You can have a read if you are truly interested.
The Chinese Great Firewall (GFW) has already been using machine learning to detect "illegal" traffics. The arms race is moving towards the Cyberpunk world where AIs are battling against an AI firewall.
I'm not saying everything about China is evil, but 996 is an actual thing, actively resented by Chinese young people. I've got friends working such schedules. I'm presenting their views. I had also visited their offices and saw the folding beds.
For those who don't know, it's not quite new (except for the word that describes it, Ban Wei 班味). Because of the long working time, a lot of Chinese companies (especially in the tech sector) allow very casual dressing, plushies, even folding beds in the office. Sounds good but is actually horrifying.