Now imagine we went to war, and China was not on our side. We have the headstart, but if we needed to start manufacturing more equipment, we're at a disadvantage.
I think this kind of supply chain issue is a national security concern.
I think this kind of supply chain issue is a national security concern.
[0] https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/05/2002048904/-1/-1/1/ASS...
This is a great read on the disparity of supply chain / manufacturing capabilities of China vs US and makes this new "cold war" era much different than previous between Soviet Union where we had not outsourced a large quorum of our productive capacity.
If you want manufacturing to move back to the US (or Europe) you need to have tariffs that are so high that it's more profitable to move to the US even with supply chains that need to be built back up.
It's not easy to move manufacturing, that's why there's a lot of incentive to stay where you are.
In a large scale war consumer electronics and massive quantities of consumer goods would not be a priority. Thing s like food, bullets, clothing, fuel, tanks etc would be and all of that can easily be manufactured in the US.
It's a bit of a bummer about Apple's computers. On my self-built desktops there are basically two types of screws that are interchangeable between any computer I've ever built (the normal ones and the ones that self-thread into plastic fan). If I add a PCI card and need an extra, the ones that came with a Pentium 4 motherboard will do just fine.
I kinda get the "we need this very specific screw" thing for laptops or phones where thinness matters, but the trashcan Mac Pro is an exercise in weird priorities.
It feels like Apple's design team has forgotten that standard parts exist even when they'd work fine, or even better than some crazy integrated solution. Custom screws for everything just because you can. PCIe GPUs? Who needs em!? Gotta fit in this cylinder.
It's a problem they've created for themselves, and if they wanted to stop having it the solution is "Stop doing that." Go buy a normal screw like everyone else.
I'm not so sure. A modern army also needs things like radios, navigation aids, data-link terminals, etc. in massive quantities. The supply chains for those things have more in common with consumer electronics than with those for food, fuel, and bullets.
In WWII, I understand that the US converted its civilian manufacturing base from making things like civilian cars to making tanks and airplanes. I'd think it'd be a lot easier to covert a manufacturing base than to build one from scratch.
Of note, the minimal types of equipment, large existing stockpiles, and lower percentage of servicemen vs civilians even in a total war situation makes this a vastly smaller market than consumer electronics. The risk vs benifits of offshoring is simply not worth it. Especially becase it allows congressional spending in specific districts.
PS: While manufacturing would need to be expanded, stockpiles allows for a significant ramp up period.
I'm skeptical that peacetime military-dedicated manufacturing capability + peacetime stockpiles would be able to scale to meet wartime needs. I would think it would be significantly advantageous to have plenty of slack, state-of-the-art civilian capacity (+ related expertise) in all needed areas.
At 1.3 million active duty military and more than 800,000 reserve forces the infrastructure to maintain that is already significant manufacturing capacity. Training more people takes time so you get various projections around force mobilization vs war footing etc. But while some lag is expected, you can get a lot done with even 1 year of critical supplies on hand.
Remember this is the same group that designed the internet to keep working even as major cities where nuked. Going to war is very much part of long term planning.
Stopping European and American companies from making business with Chinese companies puts us closer to a war.
From 1980 to now, wealthy people have sold out the well-being of the US for slight increases in their personal wealth.
Historically, the solution is to kill wealthy people until they start acting better.
Setting your house on fire is also an "efficient" way to generate heat, unless you account for the full future reckoning, which was similarly ignored in the move of manufacturing to China.
A war doesn't have to be likely for the location of supply chains to have a negative geopolitical effect. For instance: China could use the knowledge that globalization has become the US military's achilles heel to confidently take aggressive action elsewhere, knowing the US can't respond because it can't sustain a response without Chinese cooperation.
In a similar vein, economic dependence limits the pressure the US and other western countries can put on China in the name of Chinese human rights.
Serious question, what pressure does the US currently put on China in the name of Chinese human rights?
The reality is that the rich simply pocketed the labor arbitrage as profit rather than passing the savings on to consumers, they have 0 incentive not to because their is no punishment for doing so. That's why corporate profits and income inequality the highest in decades.
Sure, but many of the really wealthy usually manage to flee elsewhere or get on the good side of the people in charge of the killing. You wind up having to settle for killing a bunch of the middle/upper middle class. Usually you start by killing the university professors, the engineers, doctors and other middle/upper middle class people who might say things that could undermine the new regime.
Then you lose a generation or two to rebuilding. All of the "successful" revolts I can think of were either a) deposing despots who used populist uprisings to seize power b) mostly autonomous territories/colonies gaining independence.
The counter-argument is that on the long term, killing a bunch of wealthy people seems to be the only mechanism that resets the behavior and norms of the wealthy.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-07-23/china-exe...
Deterrence is achieved. No-one is going to try to invade the USA or start an all out war against them.
This is FUD for power and money.
Check this out for full scope of current disparities [0]
[0] https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/05/2002048904/-1/-1/1/ASS...
America mines its own minerals and pumps its own oil. China cannot. This was the same weakness Japan had. In an American-Chinese conventional or proxy war, among the first Chinese targets would be its ports, pipelines and oil tankers.
Russia also pumps oil for export and shares a land border with China. It's also relatively friendly to China and relatively antagonistic to the US.
US would blockade Brazil and stop exports of soy and corn to China. China would starve within months if not weeks
China has zero force projection ability
We're still in Iraq and Afghanistan to some extent all these years later and those countries had armies weaker than some states' national guard
Lay waste to everything of value until the enemy surrenders on terms you can accept then leave. Sure there will be resentment but traditionally this is how wars were "won" prior to 1945. The rebuilding of Europe and Japan after WW2 was the first big break from the status quo.
Obviously this assumes a conventional war without nukes. Nuclear powers don't get in shooting wars with other nuclear powers (see Cuban missile crisis) so it doesn't really matter.
I wouldn't worry about an attack on the US by China, but I would worry about an attack on Taiwan which the US has promised to defend and has an awful lot of chip manufacturing in the form of TSMC.
Realistically a major US-China conflict could mean the end of affordable smartphones and a huge dent in the US civilian tech industry. I suspect it would also see drastic measures against information warfare, First Amendment notwithstanding.
Really? That's what you are concerned about? A major US-China war would likely drag the rest of the world in and burn a major world economic pillar within a week or so.
You won't simply miss your smartphone and live your life like nothing happened because all the ordinance is dropped thousands of miles away - China is not Afghanistan where you can simply ignore the violence. It's an enemy that can and will strike back with infinitely more potential than WW2 Japan. And then you're still leaving Iran, North Korea and Russia out of the equation.
What better time for NK to invade the South than during a major Pacific conflict where troops from Taiwan to Guam will be quite busy.
Only because the US isn't willing to use Mongol tactics to win. US could end it tomorrow if we said we'd nuke any village found to be working with the Taliban or use our numerous chemical and biological weapons to wipe out the native population
Believing in basic human rights is why the US is still in the middle east
No shots would be fired, you'd just see a slow withering and take-over of your economy.