Russia is more a symptom of cultural greed/theft combined with being ruled by an oligarchy. For example, one thing people don't realize is that Russia is probably the least likely country to start a global thermonuclear war as they, somehow, have the absolute best checks and balances on that. Based on publicly available information, the Russian model is that putin requires the sign off of at least one high ranking military official to launch nukes. And said military officials are the ones most likely to depose him in a coup.

Similarly, North Korea has a very strong military (relative to the rest of the country). As do many "African Warlords". The key is to have leverage on said military leaders so that they need to be ready to sacrifice EVERYTHING to lead a coup.

That said, I also think the US is speedrunning the Russian model. Moreso because all of trump's cronies are some of the dumbest and most incompetent mother fuckers on the planet.

Also, I would strongly encourage refraining from "China is lazy" rhetoric. Most of that is sinophobic bullshit that came out of the US factory/car industry when we refused to modernize/innovate and now have those pesky labor laws preventing true competition. Yeah, China Don't Care (TM) and a lot of knockoffs are literally after hour runs from the exact same production lines (often using the exact same materials...). But a lot of it is also that drop shipping and (now closed?) import exceptions meant it was trivially easy to get Chinese white label products to The West for dirt cheap.

And just look at the EV space for Chinese innovation. Like... they are probably at the forefront of that.

The topic that often comes up is how ridiculously fake so many of the Chinese military weapons are. And... yeah. Lots of proof of concepts and prototypes that get paraded around and never used again. But that is kind of true of all militaries and is a function of a runaway military industrial complex. It is just that we tend to see the US perspective where "Cool ass littoral battleship technology. Please stop saying you are the clit commander" and then we never hear about it again. But you can look at online discourse about the new XM7 rifle for a good laugh about massive overspending to solve a problem that arguably doesn't even exist (even though much of the soldier complaints are the same as with the FAL back in the day and boil down to "it takes a lot more training and practice to fire a heavy round accurately").

Nah, there is a LOT of reason to criticize China (see: sweat shops and genocide). But "China is lazy" is just sinophobic bullshit.