I really think that western leadership gobbles up its own propaganda at this point. We already saw this with the proxy war against Russia where they genuinely expected Russia to collapse both militarily and economically because they convinced themselves that it's just a gas station with nukes. We can see the same kind of mindset exists regarding China where they thought they could cut China off from chips and China just wouldn't be able to figure this stuff out. Neocons are just an echo chamber of clowns telling each other what they want to hear.