300k airplanes in five years
construction-physics.com
construction-physics.com
People now take for granted that "the sleeping giant" was going to awake after being attacked. But in WW1 the US was also the largest economy in the world, and it did not transform overnight in a weapons manufacturing behemoth, like it did in WW2.
If a conflict with China ever comes to pass, it is not at all predestined that the US will repeat its WW2 feat rather than its WW1 experience.
China is heavily investing in munitions and acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the United States. China is also the world’s largest shipbuilder and has a shipbuilding capacity that is roughly 230 times larger than the United States. One of China’s large shipyards, such as Jiangnan Shipyard, has more capacity than all U.S. shipyards combined.
"U.S. Defense Industrial Base Is Not Prepared for a Possible Conflict with China"
https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-t...
Or are you saying people wouldn’t do something short sighted if it made them super rich in the meantime?
It's not clear that we predicted that shift, so it's a good reason to maintain some manufacturing capability in pretty much all areas, comparative advantage be damned.
Near as I can tell, at the moment we’re mostly confused and tired.
I.e. greed will be the downfall.
So corporations and consumers outsourced because quantity at price beat quality and strategic concerns.
The reality is that a monopoly is incredibly hard to sustain without government. And even in the cases where something close to it can be created, they can seldomly really push up the price as much as they think.
Historically its governments creating the monopolies most of the time.
It kinda did. Large stagnant industries tend to collapse into monopolies. However, this was masked either by new more nimble companies pushing out the incumbents by utilizing newer technologies, or by industries fading away entirely.
Defining monopoly is pretty hard in the first place. Only Will Smith can play Will Smith. Or is he in a market against all black actors? Or all actors? Or is it he also competing against the NBA/NFL?
If a single company exist to provide some service in a small town, is that company a monopoly.
If a company dominates a market for a decade+, is that a monopoly? There is a question of time.
One can answers these question different ways. And even if they are monopoly, sometimes that is not a actually a problem.
There are certainty some cases where some monopoly exist and are harmful. Mostly those are created by governments. However one can certainty have harmful situation in a relatively free market as well.
But I think the argument that there was ever a case to be made that the Marxist idea of all companies merging in a single mega cooperation has never even been remotely true. And you have industries that are reasonably unregulated (in terms of market entry) and still have lots of competition.
So the facts are 100% for sure much more complex then Marx and those that claim 'Capitalism always leads to centralization' believe. Or at least if it does it operates at timescales that makes it unclear that we should act on their recommendations.
Often Standard Oil is the best example people can come up with and they are not even remotely close to taking over much outside of their specialty.
Of course the whole discussion gets even more complex once multiple government (and cultures, and geographies, and climates and so on) are involved and we aren't taking about a single unified market.
Well, and why would we expect them to take that into account?
Btw, there are good and (mostly) bad ways to do these interventions. Tariffs are especially bad.
A lot of the discussion of these measures also treats all foreigners the same. Eg in practice a chip being produced in eg Canada is virtually as good for national security as one produced in the US. But acts like the 'CHIPS and Science Act' don't see it that way.
The US industrialized itself with tariffs and deindustrialized itself by removing them.
Is it a benefit if that efficiency turns your industrialized economy into a financialized economy that can't manufacture enough bullets to fight a war that you start?
In classical capitalism, there aren't two or three monopolistic players that dominate each industry, there are thousands of companies competing with each other. And that competition brings costs down, so no outsourcing is needed.
Capitalism = private ownership of means of production
Socialism = collective ownership of means of production
Capitalist monopolies are privately owned. A monopoly is no less privately owned than a minor company in a sector with healthy competition, and there is nothing remotely collective about a monopoly. A lack of competition does not in any way mean that "the people" own the organization. Not theoretically, and not actually.
Collectively owned socialist enterprises are not necessarily free of competition. In fact, heated competition over quotas had a lot to do with many of socialism's worst blunders.
Competition does not remotely guarantee that costs are low by international standards either.
They are orthogonal; it is possible to have socialist corporatism, but there is nothing inherently socialist about corporatism (or inherently corporatist about socialism.)
Imo markets tend to have 2 trajectories. Either the market leader builds a moat that precludes competition (often through semi-illegal means).
Or the companies engange in fierce competition and the big players will either outspend or outproduce or straight up buy their competitors which tends to result in either monopolies or oligopolies with barely any competition.
This is when the enshittification begins.
That is why states that created capitalism like Dutch and British always had a strong comportment of fiscal-military state where the government made sure that they could defend their country and their trade.
The problem is that if somebody much larger then you comes along, this gets increasingly difficult. Specially if they are part of the same world and market as you. As Britain learned with the rise of Germany and far more so the US.
The US basically invited China, because they were concerned about the Soviets. This was smart in a struggle with the soviets. But unfortunately China was the much larger strategic danger all along.
The good thing is, that if China continues on along the same lines, the US will continue to do pretty well in a China dominated world. Just as Britain do in a US one. And as the Dutch did in a British one.
The question is, if China will behave the same or not in the long term given that they are not democratic and not even slightly germanic.
I moved to Singapore a while ago. Not for those reasons, but being on good terms with almost anyone certainly is a nice bonus.
Though my question was rather, what policies would a country want to adopt?
> Manufacturing technology is has improved in leaps and bounds. It's much easier that it used to be. And I can do all this from a self sufficient homestead deep in the forest.
Yes, but that's essentially just a hobby or at most craft production. So that is neither competitive as mass production in peace time, nor of much use for mass production in wartime.
(It definitely sounds like a great hobby, though!)
And the user you're replying to is advocating for that way of life because they are predicting a severe downfall in the quality of life for those who stay in the global system.
I have a sneaking suspicion that they're going to be right.
Over what time horizon? The market consensus is definitely not giving this a big probability any time soon.
If we had proper prediction markets for arbitrary events, I would just directly talk about what those prices are. In the real world, we have to look at the prices of existing financial instruments and see which of these can be used as proxies for the events we are interested in.
For some events that fairly easy: if Russian government bonds trade at high prices in 2021, it's unlikely that Russia's dictator will start a senseless war of aggression soon. (In reality, the price of Russia's bonds went down in the runup to the war.)
For other events you have to be more clever: if you want to get a sense of the market estimate for the probability that an asteroid impact (or similar) will erase all life on earth, you can't just look at the price of a straightforward bet that pays out one dollar, if the asteroid hits: most of us would be dead, and the dollar would likely be worthless.
However you can create a bet that has the right structure: Alice gives Bob 100 dollar now, and in five years, Bob gives Alice 500 dollars (but obviously only if the asteroid hasn't killed Alice and Bob). The market price of such a contract can tell you something about the market consensus estimate of a collapse.
My argument wouldn't be that the market consensus is particularly good at prediction, just that it's better than any other prediction mechanism we have; because it can and will incorporate those other prediction mechanisms, and people have a financial incentive to do so.
Btw, why do you think markets would be particularly bad at forecasting ecological collapse? Is there any ecology you are particularly worried about?
It won't account for a volcano erupting and burying a society in the ashes as happened in Pompeii, or the global equivalent.
Yes, the market consensus can only reflect the information that available to (at least some) market participants.
Of course, the market mechanisms also give people incentives to acquire that information. Because any informational advantage gets rewarded with money.
> It won't account for a volcano erupting and burying a society in the ashes as happened in Pompeii, or the global equivalent.
It can account for the best estimates we have for the probability of that happening.
Again, I'm not suggesting that market estimates are perfect, nor even necessarily any good. I'm just saying that market estimates tend to be at least as good as any other estimates we have. Ie market estimates tend to be the best ones available.
That's good, and enough justification for your lifestyle. No need to come up with stories of imminent global collapse (unless that kind of roleplay enhances your enjoyment of your lifestyle, I guess?)
While I am treating it as a hobby I do have a garage full of CNCs, 3D printers, laser cutters, a pretty complete machine shop and the ability to do some foundry work. I am not expecting a complete collapse of society, mainly the collapse of the middle class as gradually the things they need get more expensive and they earn less. Being able to make stuff myself is already saving me money - you’d be surprised that for many of the bespoke things I need it is far cheaper to make it myself than send it out to a job shop. The idea is to be able to make replacement parts to contribute to the success of my local community so that it’s in their interest to shield me from whatever is going on beyond my gates.
So if you see any trends that only show up after Bretton Woods was _formally_ abandoned, then those trends can't have been kicked off by the unmooring.
What trends are you worried about anyway?
You want to subsidize a failing company?
The deeper problem is that, while the war isn't happening, the war products are not critical. It doesn't matter whether they work or are delivered. Even the medium scale wars the US did maintain over the past couple of decades to keep the machine going showed that various areas were just fleecing them for inadequate products or regular grift (like the vanishing Afghan government). Much of the Pacific fleet's maintenance budget was being stolen by one guy named "Fat Leonard". This sort of thing doesn't go away until the war is actually critical rather than something you can escape by turning off the news.
Fat Leaonard fleeced the Navy, but did provide services.
People like to complain that it's the labour market, that nobody wanted the jobs.. but that's a lie told to stop the masses from organizing and putting some heads on pikes.
One mistake the US did was switching from defined benefit pensions to individual retirement savings. When the stock market is something you hear about in the news, most people don't really care about it. But when you see it in your retirement account balance, it becomes relevant. If outsourcing to China is good for the stock market, you vote politicians who make it easier.
Depending on how the pension system is setup, it could become an indefinite pyramid scheme. You end with countries like Canada (and many in places like Europe) constantly importing immigrant labor just to prop up the older generations' retirement. It kicks the ball down the road.
IDK if the book of journalist Robin Alexander "Die Getriebenen" (the driven ones, meaning top German politicians driven by events) was ever translated to English, but that guy had daily access to the Chancellory and describes the situation to a T.
Merkel built her career on media appeasement and an illusion that Germany is in such good hands that nothing untoward can happen to it. It sort-of worked until 2015, when the outside world could not be kept at bay anymore.
The reason why governments promote immigration is because they want to increase the workforce (and in the case of Portugal, replace all the emigrants from Portugal). As the population is aging, if you want to keep cheap labor you need new arms to work, no matter who pays for the pensions.
But the supply of workers needed to provide the basic goods your aging population needs (including healthcare) shrinks and if you don't accept immigrants you end up with labor shortage (Or you raise the salaries for these jobs, but then the rest of your economy disappears because there's no one working there anymore).
Yes, but that's the biggest EU countries and they take a lot of migrants. Wikipedia says 18% of Germany population are first-generation immigrants. In comparison, in US it's only 14%. For the whole EU the number is around 11%.
> generally Europe is very anti-immigrant.
From what I know about "how to legally immigrate to US" vs "how to legally immigrate to Europe", the latter is much easier. The public sentiment might be there, but the laws say the other way.
Remember that EU has a free flow of work force, so I expect lots of those 18% will come from Netherlands or France.
In Sweden at least, immigration was always biggest from neighboring countries (e.g. Finland/Norway)
But if you take the broader, official definition then you get something like 30% apparently:
https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-situ...
What's the point for the native citizen of Netherlands or France in moving to Germany? The quality of life and salaries are similar, but the culture context is just so different between these countries. Completely different languages, different customs, etc. The numbers surely confirm that - the France is in the bottom of the list, and Netherlands are not even included. [1]
Anyway, out of ~14 million foreigners in Germany only 5 million are from other EU states, and most of them (~3 million) are from Eastern European countries (Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Hungary).
> In Sweden at least, immigration was always biggest from neighboring countries (e.g. Finland/Norway)
There are less cultural differences between Sweden, Finland and Norway. At least they have more or less similar languages (ok, Finnish is different, but Sweden is also an official language in Finland).
1. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Popula...
Ukraine (oustide EU sofar) is number two on the list afger Turkey and also Russia is pretty far up.
Then, why is it misleading to compare Polish and Romanian immigrants to Germany with Mexican immigrants to US?
1. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Popula...
I don't know what your experience is, but immigrating legally to the EU is not easy unless you're from a rich country like the US.
If you are thinking like my Portuguese friend complaining about how "hard" it was because it took six months to immigrate to the US, you have no idea how hard it is for other people to come to the US legally.
I'm not talking about filing paperwork taking a long time.
I agree it's harder if you're not from a developed country, but it's hard for a lot of people across the board.
Legally immigrating to the US (getting a residence permit) is either a matter of luck (lotteries), extraordinary skills, very long waiting lists, or a combination of these.
On the contrary, immigrating to the EU is "just" finding a job on the local market and applying for some paperwork. And the EU does not discriminate you on the basis of the country where you've been born.
Anyhow, revisiting the thread I can see that the post I answered to could be meant differently. I thank you for that and would like to advance my apologies to the OP in that case.
...was a response to this quote from original OP:
> generally Europe is very anti-immigrant
and there is "might be there" not "is there" in my post. I just don't really know the public sentiment in Europe enough to argue with original OP, so referred to the laws instead, to show that Europe is not anti-immigrant.
> Combined with a description that seemed to lament the apparent lack of stricter controls led me to question why it would be important where you are born if you obey the law.
It's not! To the contrary, my description was meant to show how harsh US immigration system is compared to the EU's.
> would like to advance my apologies to the OP in that case.
Please, nevermind. Your question was okayish in the context of the thread, plus I'm not the kind of person that can be offended by an Internet discussion.
Are they counting EU citizens living in Germany?
The alternative is having the worldview that money is something that shows up on your bank account on the first days of the month.
I think that is how normal people (is the term "unsophisticated investors" or does that mean something importantly different?) view sock market investments — sure, it says your investment may go down as well as up, but how many normal people doing investments act like that's true?
Even one step up from that, my dad's advice to me was: "Invest in Lloyds bank, if they go under we have bigger problems". We had bigger problems.
(To riff off what some ancient dead Greek philosopher said, the only reason I can meaningfully regard myself as better informed than most, is that I am aware of how little I know).
Similar thing happened e.g. after fall of USSR -- elderly people simply became poorer with way less buying power they expected.
You are describing an implosion - something getting smaller.
Two problems with this:
First, it will get small enough that you won't have a retirement and will work till you die.
Second, reducing pensions tends to be quite unpopular, and when chasing profits for the current quarter, CFO's don't care about the unsustainability of pensions decades down the road. By the time they have to deal with it, it's too late.
Oregon still has a defined benefits pension for its workers, and the problem is here and now. Small towns cannot afford to hire more firefighters, police, etc as their population grows because more and more of the money they have is going into paying out the defined pensions. They keep getting around this problem by taking out more loans to sustain those pensions. Despite the problem being now, they cannot politically reduce benefits for new hires.
For the longest time Chinese made Toyotas were of much lower quality than Japanese ones, simply due to precision robots being used in Japan for work that was being done manually in Chinese factories. Now that China made is also hitting a demographic cliff, one thinks that maybe again automation will take hold…or maybe Africa and India will develop next.
undercutting and destroying the financial viability of unions and labor
The rich don't actually care about how much money they have, they care about how much money they have relative to other people. Hollowing out the middle class meant while milking profits from cheap overseas near-slave labor? My god, so many billionaire boners.
Why do you think nothing tangible has been done about illegal immigration in, what, 40, 50 years now? Something that massively increases the number of desperate workers to undermine labor supply and union-based manual labor and trades?
As it stands now, this problem will self-correct because manufacturing WILL onshore. It has to. China is dropping the hammer on economic reforms and ratcheting up totalitarian control, to say nothing of demographic bombs, the real estate / regional debt crisis, and the inevitable sanctions from a Taiwan invasion.
Don't worry about the shipbuilding. China doesn't have carriers. They don't have a navy that can leave shore more than a hundred miles or so.
The fact is the US Navy can blockade China's food imports and petroleum (as in, fertilizer so ... most domestic food) shipments in Malaysia at will and ... China starves a couple months later.
The policy that needs to be pursued isn't one of China as a dangerous peer state. That has already passed. The policy is to deal with China as a dangerous collapsing state. It's kind of the same effect (manufactured goods being shut off, reestablishing more domestic production and manufacturing), just with or without overt warfare.
IMO this is an opportunity for greenfield modern manufacturing construction: lots of automation, lots of modern EV-based low cost low carbon transportation and infrastructure, building up the domestic energy industry around alternative energy on a fundamentally cheap basis never seen before.
One way to do this is to intelligently allow the best and brightest in China to immigrate. They'll certainly want to get out...
As for the article, it was a lot easier to crank out airplanes when they were basically automobiles with different body shapes. These weren't turbojets, they were ICE engine-powered prop planes. Yes that handwaves a massive amount of engineering and retooling, but it wasn't like ICE engine designers suddenly needed to learn how chip manufacturing worked.
It can't, as long as China has atomic bombs and ICBMs to deliver them.
2) That is suicide for the CCP. They may be crazy authoritarian, but they aren't suicidal.
By the same justification, China won't invade Taiwan because we "have atomic bombs and the ICBMs to deliver them". But it's pretty inevitable they will.
Pirates can almost never fully cut off a shipping lane.
While it would be a particularly horrific way to deal with the problem, the local people in the area of the Bab-el Mandeb strait and their capacity to interfere with international shipping can, in fact, be stopped with ICBMs.
>The fact is the US Navy can blockade China's food imports and petroleum (as in, fertilizer so ... most domestic food) shipments in Malaysia at will and ... China starves a couple months later.
The fact is that China do not have ships because they don't intend to do large scale invasions thousands of miles from home.
US Navy can't blockade China because the have enough missiles to destroy 100 times more ships. And they have the capacity to fab more than 1000 missiles per day.
He’s one of these folks who are really engaging to listen to and he uses a fun argument style like Simon Sinek where he presents stuff in a way that leaves you to put 2+2 together and feel smart about yourself when you think “aha! 4!” Just before he says “4”.
That argument style seems to be like catnip for me so when I recognise it I have to force myself out of the “well that’s obviously true” mindset I’ve fallen into and go spot check a few of the facts he shares during his opinions. Maybe about 1/3rd of them don’t hold.
It leaves me thinking he’s probably meaningfully wrong but like I say I don’t have enough knowledge to say for sure, just using a simple heuristic of “is this person’s argument consistent?”. I haven’t decided one way or the other, I just rate his thesis “caution, may not be true”
He's been saying China would collapse for quite a while, but only recently have I seen a lot of other geopolitical types go from poo-pooing him to essentially agreeing with him.
He still has a very strongly petrodollar/petroleum dominates the economy/alt energy isn't important, but a lot of that is because the tech churn in batteries/solar panels is so rapid. He doesn't really appreciate what sodium ion will bring to the table for example, he still thinks batteries can't scale because of limited cobalt and nickel, which is a two year old take.
He is still a bit too dramatic on open seas piracy/reduction of the US Navy, but I've seen him reduce that take. Really the open seas and global trade are going to disrupt because between Russia in Ukraine and China doing the Taiwan invasion, there's going to be a LOT of global trade disruption.
At this point I agree with his China take because it has four different fronts which are conspiring. Demographic collapse didn't cause Japan to completely fall apart, but demographic collapse + totalitarian incompetence absolutely can.
I also haven't seen as many rebuke videos of his China take, and the US and its megaconglomerates are definitely shortening their supply chain and re-shoring manufacturing already. The most public one is the fab act (which will also expose Taiwan to a higher risk of invasion).
Yeah sure, just like Russian economy was supposed to fall in a few months after sanctions.
China does not. It is that simple, basically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_gas_pipeline
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/putin-says-oil-pipel...
Ukraine alone can take that out. Cruise missiles, sabotage, special forces, mercenaries. You don't even need to explicitly destroy it, Russians and Chinese build poor infrastructure.
Sarah Paine, a prof at the Naval War college really opened my eyes to this and the Belt and Road. Marine shipping is basically free. Keeping rail lines and pipelines intact over thousands and thousands of miles in Asia through desert wastes, mountains, tundra, and a half dozen politically iffy -stans is not a recipe for efficient trade logistics.
And China and Russia hate each other. Strange bedfellows, but would China want to rely on Russia for oil if it invades Taiwan and Russia has their country's oil supply in a firm iron grip? Putin? Nope nope nope.
As another comment in this thread has already mentioned, they have sufficient local production to fuel their war machine, while restricting other uses.
> Ukraine alone can take that out.
It's actually quite interesting. Are you aware that there is a pipeline running from Russia through Ukraine that pumps Russian gas to the EU? Ukraine earns $800 million USD a year from this. Then, they buy back that gas. Life is a little more complicated than it seems.
> And China and Russia hate each other. Strange bedfellows, but would China want to rely on Russia for oil if it invades Taiwan and Russia has their country's oil supply in a firm iron grip? Putin? Nope nope nope.
It doesn't matter whether they hate or love each other, the only thing that matters is interests. Stalin was called a dictator and a ruthless killer by the West, but when he changed sides, he was suddenly 'Uncle Joe.'
China will only invade Taiwan if the US forces their hand. In the short term, it's against their interests to invade Taiwan, just as Taiwan prefers to maintain the status quo. They know that if they invade, the US can say, 'You see? We told you. Look what they are doing' which would result in sanctions from the US and EU and lead to internal problems. Why would they do it? It's neither logical nor rational, and it goes against their culture. There's a Chinese saying: 'The wise win before the fight while the ignorant fight to win'.
Now when I say that, I mean "in 5-10 years for some substantively detectible change" not "next month".
The United States/Americas is quite well positioned for resource independence since the Bakken Shale became so productive. They are globally dominant still militarily. The only weakness is the offshored manufacturing, and as I stated in a different comment, the world that supported China being the manufacturing center of the US is OVER. It died with Russia invading Ukraine, COVID disrupting supply lines, the autocratic power convergence of Xi. End of an era. 75 years of free seas trade "end of history" type thinking is over.
"US forces their hand" ummmmmmmmm what would the US do that would "force their hand"? That's a WEIRD comment. Of course the US is quietly and carefully going to draw down their manufacturing dependence over a decade. Of course China can trump up some Gulf of Tonkin incident or affront to provoke casus belli.
You are ascribing FAR too much intellectual stability to the Chinese government. The Chinese government is now an unopposed Kim-style autocrat. There is only what the dear leader wants, and the dear leader wants to be as Dear a Leader with capital letters as possible.
If invading Taiwan is what dear leader wants and it matches some false rallying war rhetoric that dear leader wants about "restoring China" as it demographically declines, then dear leader will do that. The CCP is actively crushing independent action by China's major corporations. They are installing "thought police" in every country, and the population is being subjected to higher and higher degrees of surveillance and control. This is not conducive to a functioning economy in the long run.
Oh, and as for your proverb: China has already lost the long run. They didn't establish themselves as a benevolent world power and construct their own political sphere. They do not have resource independence. Their demographics are collapsing. Their society is becoming closed, oppressive, authoritarian, and corrupt. And the world that powered their economic wunderkind of free open seas trade is ending.
BRICS by the way is NOT a sphere of influence. Russia and India hate China, South Africa is a western country by nature, and Brazil is an Americas country.
If you can explain how the long term economics of China will survive crushing authoritarianism, isolationism, and a sharp demographic decline, I'm all ears.
You have a lot of confidence in the US to implement smart long term thinking industrial policy. Despite the US having shown to be very bad at that for a long time.
For a country that can seem to figure out how to build a single high speed train line or figure out that having a subway makes a lot of sense.
While the other country builds high speed train lines all over the place and has many cities building more subways then all of the US combined.
We can look at EVs as well. China dominates the supply chain and production.
Yes the US
> If you can explain how the long term economics of China will survive crushing authoritarianism, isolationism, and a sharp demographic decline, I'm all ears.
Authoritarianism increases and decreases over time. China has been well functioning for a while now. Claiming that Authoritarianism is gone ruin everything they do is questionable at best. Our actual insight into China government internals isn't mostly guesswork. Specially as there is lots of evidence that US democracy isn't actually producing fantastic long term thinking.
China isn't actually isolated right now. And they wont be unless they make pretty fundamental mistakes.
The West in totality is also suffering demographic decline. Specially Japan.
Its kind of Ironic that the fear of 'overpopulation' pushed by idiot leftists intellectuals in the West was the greatest strategic weapon ever invented against China.
> They didn't establish themselves as a benevolent world power and construct their own political sphere.
They are increasing their influence in lots of places. And lots of other places are willing to go with the flow. One can imagine a future where Russia, Central Asia, Iran, Pakistan and many South East Asian countries become influenced by China over time. The same goes for Africa.
And places like UAE/Saudi and co aren't actually US allies in any meaningful way and would happily turn to China if they thought it gave them an advantage.
China doesn't need to lead them as the US leads NATO, but if they are all opposed to the 'Western Order' its gone be tough.
> They do not have resource independence.
But they do actually have control over lots of resources and refinement currently that would be incredibly hard for the West to be without. It would take very long for the West to produce sufficient amounts of these things. So I think in practice a divided market would be catastrophic for both sides.
Practically speaking the West does not have resource independence. And even best case, it would take decades to have it.
If China really wanted they could mass produce nuclear reactors and produce carbon fuel as needed. Its only a matter of investment. They have the Uranium/Thorium to do it. And if you do it at scale its not that expensive. If China were actually preparing for a serious war they would do this.
This leads me to think that China and the US will continue to rattle their chains at each other for decades to come with neither actually doing anything to throw over the apple cart.
It's such an unrealistic comment. Have you seen the new Navy report in Congress? Have you seen the yearly Congress report about Chinese rocket capabilities from the last few months? Have you seen the results of the war games in the South China Sea, most of which were lost by the US?
"US Congressmen: 90% of US fighter jets in the Western Pacific will be destroyed within hours of a US-China conflicts by missiles. The military bases being mentioned are those in Japan, S Korea, Guam and Northern Marianas." [1]
> to say nothing of demographic bombs, the real estate / regional debt crisis, and the inevitable sanctions from a Taiwan invasion.
They are heavily investing in Sub-Saharan Africa because, based on IMF data, it will be the only region in the next few decades experiencing significant population growth. This region is their own 'China.' With increasing automation and a cheap workforce, demographics are not a significant problem. They just poured 53 billion USD into the real estate crisis. To receive sanctions for a Taiwan invasion, first, you need to invade it, and it's not in the short-term interests of either China or Taiwan.
> Don't worry about the shipbuilding. China doesn't have carriers. They don't have a navy that can leave shore more than a hundred miles or so.
Don't worry? If they destroy a US ship, it will take 5-10 years to rebuild it, whereas they will rebuild theirs in a year. This is also mentioned in reports.
Your entire comment is wishful thinking. China is not collapsing, and the data confirms that. [2][3]
1. https://x.com/Ignis_Rex/status/1791035870210085350
2. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/china-still-ris...
2) China's rattling on Taiwan is very similar to the demographic motivations of Russia's invasion of Ukraine: both are suffering huge demographic collapses soon, so this is the last generation that the country can use for an offensive war. Yes, it is utterly stupid to take a demographic problem of a shrinking younger generations and KILL THOSE PEOPLE IN A WAR to exacerbate the problem, but strongmen just concern themselves with keeping their positions, not how the nation as a whole thrives.
3) Sub Saharan Africa? Like, that is 5,000 to 6,000 miles away? And an area that will become increasingly utterly uninhabitable due to global warming. The Belt and Road is a complete failure, again, because the infrastructure was poor and the payoff isn't there. The countries are just going to walk away from China, and instead of paying them back or restructuring (China won't restructure), they'll join a Western bloc against the Chinese.
Belt and road, for the reasons described about the complete inability to defend multi-thousand-mile infrastructure lines like pipelines and rail, is an impossibility to work in Asia. Even if the political and security challenges are solved (which requires a nice intercooperation and low-war world, which we are NOT headed for right now), it isn't even remotely economically viable.
4) Ultimately war games are meant to be lost. Because that drives the exigent threats to American hegemony that drive the near-trillion-dollar defense and intelligence budgets politically. Yes you don't want to underestimate the enemy, but look at what is going on with the Russian army under decades of totalitarian corruption and incompetence. China is headed down that path, but doesn't want to stop at a neo-western society like Russia has, they want full on North Korean dear leader control.
5) The fact of the matter is that China imports its oil through the Malaysian Staits/Straits of Malacca. Go look at the map. No matter how much shipbuilding China has, no matter how many cruise missiles, they won't get oil through there if the West decides to impose sanctions.
6) Finally, there's India. India of course hates China as well, and India is modernizing its military under Modi and it alone would jump at the chance to choke China in the Indian Ocean.
China is not collapsing overnight. It is not economic armageddon, these things are always slow slides. I mean, in theory it could because mass starvation at the hands of the communist party is in China's 20th century history, and it is actively occurring in North Korea.
The point is that the old world political economic order, and by order I mean stability and structure, not the illuminati evil control council "order", is over. Russia invading Ukraine, COVID disrupting supply chains, and China becoming aggressive and authoritarian ended that. That era, a solid 75 years between bipolar Cold War stability and unipolar post-Cold War is OVER.
Every five years that go by in China will decrease their military effectiveness by a substantial degree, because of authoritarian degradation in chain of command and corruption, because of demographic reductions and disruption.
2. I don't buy this argument, they only keep their positions because of the economy growth currently in China.
3. The claim that BRI is a failure and that Sub-Saharan Africa will become uninhabitable and thus, unimportant, overlooks the long-term investments and geopolitical influence China is garnering through these initiatives. The BRI has indeed faced challenges, but it has also led to significant infrastructure developments in participating countries. These nations may face debt issues, yet many continue to engage with the initiative because of the substantial economic benefits and the lack of alternative funding sources for infrastructure.
4. You haven't addressed the Congressional reports, which show that a US vs. China military conflict, including a blockade, does not have an obvious winner.
5. The vulnerability of China's oil imports through the Strait of Malacca is a well recognized strategic concern, often referred to as the "Malacca Dilemma". China has been actively working to mitigate this risk through various strategies, including the development of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), building pipelines through Myanmar, and increasing domestic energy production and diversification of energy sources. While a blockade of the Straits of Malacca would be significant, it is not an insurmountable obstacle given these mitigating measures.
6. While India might oppose certain Chinese actions, an outright confrontation is not a foregone conclusion given the potential economic and political costs. They do not want to escalate, which you can see based on agreement to use only sticks in border clashes.
> The point is that the old world political economic order, and by order I mean stability and structure, not the illuminati evil control council "order", is over. Russia invading Ukraine, COVID disrupting supply chains, and China becoming aggressive and authoritarian ended that. That era, a solid 75 years between bipolar Cold War stability and unipolar post-Cold War is OVER.
Fully agree.
> Every five years that go by in China will decrease their military effectiveness by a substantial degree, because of authoritarian degradation in chain of command and corruption, because of demographic reductions and disruption.
I'm not as optimistic as you are.
I don't remember the actual numbers, but Japan is heavily increasing its defense budget. This is significant because historically, unlike China/India, if Japan invests in its military, it produces a good military. Japan + India with funded modern militaries is a very legitimate counter to China. In particular India is a sleeping tiger that should be far more influential and productive.
India we won't give our top weapons. Japan we very likely will.
Energy diversity helps in many respects, China can mitigate domestic needs with EVs, solar, and wind, and I guess coal if they want to burn money.
But war and food need petroleum. Pipelines and rail are extremely vulnerable, a single raid can shut them down for weeks or months, they have fixed, limited capacity. If we were talking a 50 million population country, sure. But it's a goddamn billion+ frikking people, and not enough productive land to feed them.
India is a billion plus people, so if it wants to militarize, corruption and internecine ethnic relations be damned, they'll probably have one capabable of worrying China.
Everyone is arming up. NATO nations are reconstructing their military industrial complex in anticipation of Russia beating Ukraine.
I guess fundamentally I see China as a nation that is critically dependent on open maritime trade, and that world is basically over, partially of their own creation. The "Dear Leader" phenomenon is particularly troubling, particularly because Xi sets the stage in 10-15 years for a bloody succession and equally or more autocratic leader that assumes the strings of control.
Most "Dear Leader" countries start from a point of stagnation and then limp along under the repression. China is different, it went through a massive economic expansion due to free trade and relative free will, but now it will sharply regress. If it wasn't so dangerous, it would be fascinating to see what happens.
The Naval War College prof points out that historically continental powers overextend, and then collapse when their central government fails. China has done this something like 5 or 10 times in its long history. Both Russia and China seem to be in the overextension phase. She contrasts to maritime powers like the UK and US that don't need buffer states, and thrive with world trade, while the buffer state syndrome of continental empires inevitably leads to an autocratic paranoid country or corruption/decay.
Anyway, what do I know.
They have 3 carriers and are rapidly building more. They have naval bases as far as Africa.
A lot more misinformation in your comment but it would take too long to correct it all.
Lenin
> Is it just because it would be impossible to have an industrial base in a world where Asia exists and can produce everything that could be built in the US for 1/5 the cost?
It's not impossible, had the US kept capital control and tariffs there would have been no way for Asia to catch-up at all. But the free trade ideology and greed led the US where it is now.
This is especially egregious, because the few folks that have enough ethics to not do that, get driven into bankruptcy, by the ones that do.
The general consumer market basically wants cheap. If they can get stuff that does what they want, for less, then they go that way. They aren't particular, as to the source.
The market for High Quality is actually pretty small. People that make good stuff, don't get rich. People that make lots of cheap crap, get very rich.
The only way to reverse this, would be to invoke protectionism (or have a war, which will do that, anyway). That isn't very popular, with this crowd.
Because we know that protectionism with people like those you explained at the top
> If you can get an extra lambo in your garage, by firing all your factory employees, and move your manufacturing to China, well...what do you think will happen?
does not guarantee better products/outcomes. Those who would use basically slave labor offshore for profits, will also do other nasty things for profits at home as well. Not a fan of dichotomy like these.
I want cheap Chinese electric cars here in the US.
Not sure I support that broad a statement.
Here in NY, we have had many instances of dangerous building fires, caused by cheap Chinese scooters, which are a favorite transportation mode for folks without means.
A number of these fires caused many families to lose their homes and meager possessions, because one tenant was charging crap batteries.
I kinda hate this "Chinese = crap" narrative, it's naive, it misses the forest for the trees.
Just because they are the biggest manufacturer in the world they also produce lots of crap, it's just statistically more probable that you gonna find lots of crap that's Chinese, but generalizing this over entire industries and all kind of products is just...naive.
It kinda reminds me of that documentary where a Chinese billionaire buys a plant in Ohio to make car glass and American workers looked like crap compared to their Chinese counterparts when it came to the craft, even though they did produce glass before already before the Chinese ownership.
It's the kind of narrative that people pushed on Russian army after their failures in Ukraine claiming huge incompetence and their incoming demise. Or when people were sure their economy was gonna collapse because this and that.
Just saying stuff doesn't make it true.
The longer we keep with those biases the more naive and vulnerable we'll keep being.
There's a huge amout of corruption, and almost no regulation.
It's a matter of demand, not capabilities.
He has told me that he does need to hire a lot of folks to ride herd on production; more than in other places, though (he has had many places that run his production).
If he does that, he finds they do an excellent job.
Nonsense. It has been shown for much longer and many more times that people have a capacity to act on the long-term. It might involve various social thought mechanisms like religion, moralism, and politics that prevent so-called progress, but evolution often favors societies who act on the long-term. This is a especially true in moments of sudden catastrophe. A classic example is Catholicism in the face of the plague.
It’s not that popular with the masses either.
Sure, it can be very popular with the people whose specific industries are protected, and there’s many who like it in the abstract - but if you’re the party in power when everything gets more expensive as a consequence of protectionist policies a lot of people are going to be very unhappy with you.
There may be very specific cases where very carefully tailored uses of it are good for certain long-term interests or risk mitigation, but mostly it is waste — and extremely subject to corruption from those invested in inefficient industries.
That's the "spherical cow on a frictionless plane in a vacuum" of economics.
Protectionism is probably a good idea when the competitor is temporarily subsidizing various industries to build a permanent comparative advantage that can then be abused, either by being an effective monopoly, or by shaping your enemies to be logistically unprepared for war.
I do totally agree with dragonwriter that it is vulnerable to corruption
I wonder what would happen to a Chinese CEO who pulled a stunt like that? I hear they send the next of kin the bill.
I do not think they can do this forever.
We didn't. The US manufactures more than ever. It seems like we gave up the advantage because we let China take over the cheap junk market (before them Japan and Taiwan had that - both have moved up quality though); and we use far less people. A typically factory in 1950 with 2000 workers would now have around 200 to produce the same amount.
We don’t have the ability to do the same kind of industrial mobilization we did in ww2.
Because there's a basic heirarchy in capitalism where resource extraction is at the bottom, manufacturing in the middle, and finance at the top, and the higher on that heirarchy your comparative advantage is, the more value you capture out of the global economy.
The US won (or, more accurately, is winning, its not a static state) global capitalism is what happened.
I don’t even think it’s very clear that recent US efforts to onshore manufacturing, both broadly and within green energy specifically, are even helping it. The US is paying close to a million in extra costs for every job it’s on-shoring, although there is the benefit of improving the US negotiating position and military readiness beyond bolstering employment.
There are other aspects.
* Industry/mining/some types of manufacturing are often dirty business and cause pollution, not something you love to be around. Energy consumption is also high.
* They usually come with many hard jobs that people don't exactly love to do if they have alternatives.
This can be countered with automation, but that comes with high cost and limitations that we are only now approaching solutions for (eg flexible humanoid robots with AI-driven controls).
* The big industrialization craze of the 90ies/early 2000s came about as western markets started to saturate and approach low growth rates. The hope was that lifting new countries out of poverty would create economic opportunities.
Among these are: 1. political leaders exploiting the lucrative US market for foreign relation wins. 2. differential labor costs 3. differential regulatory burdens (health and safety, environmental, etc.)
Manufacturers have had all of these pressures applied and they've responded accordingly. Seeking lower labor costs and lower regulatory burdens is not merely simple-minded "greed." When competitors leverage these affordances they gain an advantage in cost, so others must consider following.
I suppose because you want to have more ships to store your nuclear armed planes in more places around the world. Speed.
Honestly (and unfortunately) if anyone actually did destroy a US aircraft carrier, the counter strike would be immediate and an order of magnitude more devastating.
The thing is, not many things in the world cost more than an aircraft carrier. What's you're going to blow up? Also, how, short of strategic nuclear war.
Why? ICBMs are good enough and much cheaper. Also, launching missiles from submarines can be very effective.
Note that Russia's oil does not help China here: the infrastructure in Russia only allows export via European ports, not Asian ports and not over the Russia-China border, though with the construction of a few 5,000-km-long pipelines, I guess that could change in a few years if Russia cares enough.
I believe Russia and China signed agreements for building gas and oil pipes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_gas_pipeline
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/putin-says-oil-pipel...
America loves fighting so much it's had a civil war and fought a few of it's closest allies at various times.
China is a novice at fighting. Whilst they may have lots of ships, having really good people to fight in a complex battlespace is different.
The last war China was involved in was the relatively small Sino-Vietnamese war in 1979. And the last one before that was WW2.
It would be hard to count all the wars the US involved themselves in during that time.
However, with regards to China Americans seem to be mostly worried about Taiwan. Taiwan is a lot closer to the coast of the PRC than it is to the coast of the US. (On the other hand, the people living in Taiwan are even closer to Taiwan than the PRC is. And they would certainly enter the fray, too.)
However, that was before the Sino-Vietnamese war. So the point about their last war being almost half a century ago still stands.
Assaulting a beach head is up there as possible the most difficult thing you can do. In WW2 the Allies got lucky because, Radar, Missiles, and drones didn't exist yet. Taiwan has stacks of weapons, enough to repel and invasion and they also have, jungles, mountains and cities to extend the fighting into.
The flip side of a contested amphib operation is an uncontested one, which is potentially siginifantly easier than land invasion because there's no where for defenders to hide / ambush. Crossing a shallow strait where subs can't hide is probably easier than US plowing through Iraqi desert where defenders can at least pretend to put up defense by entrenching tanks / digging trenches. It's basically untested sailing if PRC destroys TW platforms that can hit back and lock down with air supremacy.
Also folks should look up TW river map, TW island is broken up into a series of bastions cut up by rivers where connections / bridges can be severed and sections attacked piece meal. If PRC's smart, they'll destroy most of TW weapon platforms that can reach out into water, bombard a few km of map squares of landing site to dust, have drones shoot everything that moves 5km out to carve a landing zone that can't be contested by large or small fires. If PRC smarter, they'd just blockade TW until world realize the only country with enough sealift to supply an island of 24m with food and water is PRC.
As for taking urban centres, look at how Israel is doing in Gaza with 20x population density than TW, theoretically urban combat is suppose to be slaughter vs attacker but if you indiscrimantly bomb and starve the population until they can't put up organized high end fight, then it becomes a managable problem. And again if PRC smart and they have to land boots on ground, they'd likely just siege from outside urban centres and small fires range, and wait for factional struggle and find collaborators willing to do boots on ground enforcement in return for controlling food + water.
China is convinced they will get Taiwan back and whether that happens in 20,50 or 100 years, that is good enough.
At least until China builds a self sufficient semiconductor industry, I don't think they are going to attack Taiwan.
As for PRC waiting, I think they can wait, even past 2049, PRC centennial, but they're not going to wait for ever. TW indentity growing, a few more generations and culture completely disentangle (aging pro-ish PRC, KMT cohorts not going to be around forever). At some point, PRC isn't going to see TWneses as "fellow Chinese" occupying TW, a Chinese province. But a foreign culture occupying Chinese land, and that's going to generate all manners of opennings for conflict.
If the rate of economic progress stays close to constant, in a decade it's going to be hard to look at the evil communists across the straight who are much better off living standards wise. Taipei is a bit drab and ugly that hasn't seen any development in the last decade. It looks worse than second tier cities in China. Just my surface level impression is that you fly across the straight and people are dressed nicer and look better off on the subway there.
On the cultural front they're also not doing hot.. the domestic culture is anemic. They don't make movies like they did in the 90s. Nobody cares about Taiwan's cultural output (other than bubble tea). The art scene is honestly.. pathetic here. In large part b/c they can't engage with anything historic other than recent history of the White terror. There is an eww factor with regards to engaging with Chinese history - its seen as the culture of the "other" and so you see it in every day life.. no tea ceremony, no hanfu, no interest in history. There is also no real "Taiwanese culture" that would be alien to a Chinese person (I can only think of Pili?). There is some stuff built on top of Fujianese culture.. but it's got no legs so far.
The elephant in the room is that Taiwanese are also starting to consume more and more Chinese media - which was kinda garbage quality for a long time but has vastly improved in the last 5 years. I think this will take off. You can already see it on Tiktok and stuff.. people use a lot more mainland terms and expressions.
If the Chinese were smart they'd build 10-20 ferries and offer people free trips to Xiamen/Shanghai. Most Taiwanese never travel to China and have little sense for the cultural similarities
If the Chinese manage to ramp up chip production then Taiwanese is really screwed. TSMC is some insane percentage of the GDP. The other insane fraction is of course businesses that work in China like Foxconn.. China already has this place by the balls unfortunately
Not going to happen. So far in all economies, catchup growth has inevitably slowed down as they moved to the global technological frontier.
Taiwan was famously one of the Asian tigers. As you already noticed, her growth has slowed down a lot. PR China has seen enormous growth, but has also slowed down in the last ten years or so, and looks to slow down further.
At the moment, PR China as a whole is a lot poorer per capita than Taiwan. Though you can argue that for our purposes here, Taiwanese people would compare themselves to the coastal provinces of PR China.
(Of course, they would also look at Hong Kong as the obvious comparison for a (semi-) independent entity joining PR China. And just going by raw growth, officially joining China doesn't seem to have accelerated HK growth at all.)
People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized (at least anywhere close to the degree the experts expected). Just over the period of the pandemic I saw personally a huge amount of development and growth in China, while virtually nothing in Taiwan.
I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.).
Similar to Hong Kong, a key economic driver was their function as a bridge between the West and China - but this has become mostly redundant now.
All good things must come to an end. China will stall eventually too, for instance they're getting incredibly bureaucratic now, but they still have some runway.
I'm living in Singapore, which has the interesting distinction of being (mostly) culturally Chinese, but politically independent. Singapore is one of the richest countries on earth (in terms of GDP per capita), and we are working our way up the list of richest cities, too.
> I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls.
Growth slows down a lot as you hit the global productivity frontier. Taiwan isn't quite there, yet, but it's a lot closer that mainland China.
I'm not sure what word you want to be using. Roughly and pragmatically speaking, you can catch up pretty quickly (with the right policies), but your per capita (non-oil) income can't really go (much) beyond the US.
Once you reach American levels of prosperity, you will also find yourself reduced to roughly American levels of growth.
That's not zero growth, just very slow growth compared to the preceding years of breakneck catchup growth.
Have a look at eg Japan between WW2 and ~1990, and then from ~1990 to now. Naive extrapolation in the 1980s gave us some lovely cyberpunk, but reality looked different.
You are right that Taiwan at about 33k USD per capita is still quite a while away from the US's roughly 76k USD per capita. And I suspect with the right policies, they could catch up more. Just look to Singapore for what's possible. But even our almost mythical city state has slowed down a lot compared to the halcyon days.
> People keep predicting the slowing of growth in China, but it's not materialized [...]
Just going by official PRC figures, growth has slowed a lot. And that's still compatible with your observation that observed PRC growth was higher than in Taiwan.
> I'm just skeptical that once you reach Taiwan's level of development it's some inevitability that growth stalls. There are serious structural problems here in Taiwan that have made it stall (bureaucratic, extreme protectionist trade policy with huge tariffs on imports, little entrepreneurial spirit, anemic art scene, weak work ethic, an extremely non-confrontational culture, etc.).
Yes, I am glad that Singapore has so far stayed clear of most of these issues. But I'm afraid that eventually, democracy will do us in. Where by 'democracy' I mean giving in to what voters say they want. Protectionism in various disguises is popular with ordinary folks the world over. And so are various measures to weaken work ethics, or to limit migration ('those foreigners are taking our jobs' is a cliched complaint for a reason).
Our Gahmen is far from perfect, but I feel like the strongest policy disagreements I have with them is where against their better judgement they gave in to popular demands.
I just hope that the decline in governance will be gradual enough, that it won't matter for me.
(For comparison, cities like New York or London had pretty poor governance for probably close to a century now (depending on how you look at it) and they are still going strong, even if not as strong as they could have gone.)
For instance on paper the US is very wealthy, but I think this is mostly due to the strength of the currency. An "average" electrical engineer in Taiwan can expect to earn 30K USD a year. That's how much someone without a highschool diploma can make in the USA working in fastfood. I doubt this really functions are a metric of the engineer's productivity. (the US is also not as some natural limit by any stretch of the imagination - it's got absolutely colossal societal issues)
Looking from the outside Singapore seems to have a lot of other challenges. Just due to being a small city state for starters - not to mention the social/cultural factors. I'm not really sure it represents some kind of natural limit. The big Chinese cities are also pooling talent from the vast provinces. While in a city state you're mostly stuck with the talent that's born there
There is also this curious factor that life in Chinese cities is in a sense subsidized by the rural poor. So the middle class quality of life is sustained b/c there are people that are willing to work really hard for very little money. Taking a taxi in Shanghai is infinitely cheaper than taking one in Singapore - b/c there is some guy/girl from the countryside willing to do it for cheap (you have a limited version of that with the Malay and Malaysian Chinese underclass in Singapore). At some point growth will slow as the rural poor become wealthier and life in the cities becomes a bit more expensive
I'm not too familiar with life in Singapore - I've only visited a few times - but it seems to have similar problems to Taiwan with a anemic cultural sphere (growing up people all try to be engineers) and lack of innovation. The only company I know from Singapore is Shoppee - which is basically a low-rent Taobao reseller (without all the innovations of Taobao). Would be curious to hear your thoughts.
I didn't really work intensively professionally in China, but I got the sense there is a lot of experimentation, people just trying stuff out, people starting businesses - at the same time there was a deep appreciation and interest in cultural "things" which was also subsidized extensively by the state. I do wonder how far it can go in a censored environment, but it seems to be flourishing for the moment. I'm sure things will slow down - but I don't feel it's going to slam the breaks and stay at Taiwanese levels of development
And yeah you're right, if it's not the poor getting wealthier then populist measures, regulations and bureaucracy does everyone in eventually :)
Mainland China definitely seems to value engineers than other Asian countries. They pay better even than Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan in many technical fields, which is why I had so many work mates from those countries when I was working at Microsoft in Beijing.
Yes, but empirically the US sits close to the global technological frontier.
> The big Chinese cities are also pooling talent from the vast provinces. While in a city state you're mostly stuck with the talent that's born there
Why would that be? People can move to Singapore, just as much as they can move to any other city. The only thing keeping them out are immigration rules that Singapore herself sets. In fact, Singapore has lots and lots of immigrants. I am one of them.
> For instance on paper the US is very wealthy, but I think this is mostly due to the strength of the currency. An "average" electrical engineer in Taiwan can expect to earn 30K USD a year. That's how much someone without a highschool diploma can make in the USA working in fastfood.
Well, and the currency is strong because there's a lot of demand for it.
> (you have a limited version of that with the Malay and Malaysian Chinese underclass in Singapore).
Not really. If you want to point at an underclass here, looking at our foreign domestic workers (ie maids) and the migrant construction labourers would be much more apt. These days, if you have a Singaporean passport, you only really have yourself to blame.
(People with a Malaysian passport also still have it somewhere easier getting a visa to work in Singapore.)
> Would be curious to hear your thoughts.
I think Singaporeans like to complain, and they don't appreciate their own achievements. Did you know that Sound Blaster / Creative Labs is from Singapore?
The Chinese mainland is an enormous market. Market size is a big factor that helps with growth. That's (part of) how the UK industrialised in the first place, and it's also part of why the US got as rich as they are. (Nowadays the UK isn't exactly a big country, but at the time they represented one of the bigger unified markets. Eg across the channel France, even though it was politically united, was plagued by internal tariffs.)
Do you mind elaborating? I was under the impression that the Taiwanese work very long and hard hours.
That might be a sensible strategy. But: sabre rattling now is exactly the wrong way to go about weakening Taiwan's ties with her allies.
Alas, as we've seen with Russia's attack on Ukraine, something being a bad idea and unlikely to succeed is not enough to declare it impossible.
I don't think you can extrapolate fighting in Kosovo, Afghanistan, or Iraq to fighting China. If a war were to break out, both sides would be learning a lot of lessons very quickly.
I don’t think China has a chance until they’ve at least had a practice run with a real conflict somewhere.
A US-China war would most likely be fought in the South China Sea. Most of China's supply train would be moving through China, whereas most of the US's supply train would be moving half way around the world through open ocean. It's not clear why the lack of Chinese experience fighting overseas wars or the US's experience moving materiel through uncontested ocean against non-peer adversaries would apply here.
Remember, the last time the US fought a war without uncontested sea routes and naval superiority was WWII.
But not at wining. Last war US won was WW2.
Newertheless, US discovered that wars are good for making money.
They had their own civil war that went from the early 1900s right up until 1965 which was sporadically interrupted by the Japanese.
The Chinese did nothing but fight for two thirds of the twentieth century
I am not that sure anymore. US armaments industry got a bad case of Wall Street in the 1990s and there aren't many factories left. Even though the US is indirectly involved in a big land war with Russia, plus has a lot of purchase orders from other countries, the industry is spinning up at snail's pace. Smaller countries in Europe will wait 10 or more years for their F-35s.
One of the serious diseases of the developed world is bureaucracy. The US has way less of it than, say, Germany (which is almost a fatal case), and maybe it could get rid of it in times of need.
Maybe. But Starship development is still being delayed by licensing, even though said licensing didn't stop the only really serious problem until today (the destruction of the concrete launch pad in Boca Chica).
This should be interpreted as emphasizing the strength of the US Navy though, since it would take years and years for China to possibly match the tonnage of the US Navy even if the US didn’t build anything.
More seriously, why are we not prepared? Didn't we spend enough to keep our defense industry competitive?
If a conflict with China comes to pass, it won't be on US or China soil. It'll be a proxy conflict somewhere else.
All the major conflicts since ww2 have been in proxy locations. Korea (US/China), Vietnam (US/Soviet Union), and so on.
"Occupying" a country is fruitless (see pretty much everyone in Afghanistan) and unpopular.
So I don't see Chinese bombers over Seattle or US bombers over Shanghai. In that sort if conflict both sides lose.
Taiwan is the obvious proxy in play. The South China Sea is the other. Both would give China significant geographical advantage. Taiwan is just important enough (making PCs) that the US may intervene. But will the US land troops in Taiwan to fight street battles? Probably not (imo).
Will Chinese troops parachute into LA or US troops parachute into Tibet? Not a chance.
With all this in mind, statistics and behaviors from ww1 and ww2 are somewhat irrelevant.
If there is a US China conflict though, it's more likely to be economic. Supply chains disrupted. Chips in short supply. In that sense domestic production of non-military items becomes paramount (to keep the population appeased.)
For strategic detterence capability building lots of ICBMs and missiles is good enough and cheap enough.
That would be more than enough to allow Chinese full control over that region of the world and give America a shamefully large black eye.
And lack of preparedness in the previous years before WWI was deliberate, because public was too much against the idea of interfering into European affairs and politicians made every efforts to make it as physically difficult as possible. Zimmermann Telegram changed that.
Exactly, I see it pretty hard to pull the same feat again unless there is a very big alignment with the companies that have installed capacity in the country.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Forces#...
This went on well into the late 1930s. It was recognized as a potential problem by some but the profits were large enough that these were ignored.
I encourage everyone to read the book "Human Smoke." It is a collection of headlines and newspaper excerpts from the period surrounding WW2. It's a fascinating read and wonderfully exposes all the propaganda driven half truths and complete fabrications we've sold ourselves about the conflict ever since it ended.
In Herman Wouk's novel The Winds of War, an admiral, aboard an aircraft carrier near Pearl Harbor in 1940 or -41, groused to his officers that (paraphrasing from memory) "sooner or later the [Japanese] are going to come steaming over the horizon, burning Texaco oil and shooting pieces of old Buicks at us."
Sources:
[1] https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artill...
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-artillery...
The economics and politics actually matter! The public do not want a war, and they do not like forseeing one, they want their own pricing issues dealt with, and they have power at elections. Whereas Russian and Chinese leaders can simply impose whatever level of hardship they need that doesn't provoke full scale open revolt and mass slaughter in their own streets.
I'm not a war analyst also, but nato doctrine is kinda different from Russia'S. During both Bosnia and Serbia bombing campaigns nato inflicted most damage through bombs, not shells. In Ukraine both Ukrainians and Russians had to resort to artillery shells because none of them could fly uncontested
The OP article is about creating the manufacturing capability, which is different from having the capability and not needing it.
The Soviet plan - which both Russia and Ukraine are well trained in - was to use lots of artillery. In backing Ukraine NATO suddenly sees a need for some shells that they wouldn't use if it was them. But the Ukrainian generals know them and so that is what they want. (Note too the nobody has provided Ukraine anywhere near the number of airplanes needed to fight a NATO style war - even if all promised F16s arrive today with full training it isn't enough for a NATO war)
The Soviet/Russian land doctrine is totally based on artillery. It makes sense that that is their priority.
Now, that doesn't mean that American doctrine would work well in a hypothetical war with China. I personally don't think the current doctrine would work well. But those that watch the military sphere know that brass have taken note of that and are implementing changes. That all you can really ask for.
Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years. Sure, hopefully air supremacy would overwhelm your opponent and prevent a static conflict, but no air force has ever established supremacy in a conflict with saturated strategic air defenses. Perhaps the US air forces could, but this capability is untested. Sadam and Yugoslavia were limited to tactical air defenses in relatively small numbers compared with modern day Russia or China.
In short, artillery remains important, which is why US artillery shell production is up an order of magnitude over the last 3 years, and will continue to rise.
It's not disingenuous at all. It's pretty apparent if you even take a cursory look at modern American military doctrine/spending. The plan is always to park a carrier close by (maybe two), conduct an air campaign, then send in the troops. Artillery wars just chew up people which the the American public has not had an appetite for since Vietnam.
>The fact that thr US hasn’t had such a conflict since at least Vietnam (and arguably Korea) not withstanding.
It think that is a caveat as big as the Pacific. Vietnam was literally 60 years ago. You don't think top brass have rethought how wars are fought since then? For context, that's 10 Presidencies since LBJ (36th).
> Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years.
Again, modern American doctrine has focused on the layering of power projection and troop mobility specifically to NOT fight in static positions.
> Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years. Sure, hopefully air supremacy would overwhelm your opponent and prevent a static conflict, but no air force has ever established supremacy in a conflict with saturated strategic air defenses. Perhaps the US air forces could, but this capability is untested. Sadam and Yugoslavia were limited to tactical air defenses in relatively small numbers compared with modern day Russia or China.
Again caveats. Also a war with China will be fought exactly opposite to Ukraine (with missiles not artillery, and with dynamic naval fronts, not trench warfare).
When you switch from land to water tooling your military doctrine to things like air superiority, missiles, island hoping make much more sense to me at least.
It's an open secret in military circles that aircraft carriers are useless against a peer adversary like Russia or China, which both have the ability to sink carriers and shoot down planes easily. Carriers are only good against unsophisticated terrorists.
But it is pointless to talk about a war with Russia, which would very quickly turn into nuclear Armageddon.
[1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-navys-aircraft-car...
> It's an open secret in military circles that aircraft carriers are useless against a peer adversary like Russia or China, which both have the ability to sink carriers and shoot down planes easily.
This is not true. How else do you expect to fight an adversary in their home turf without a platform for air superiority? If anything, aircraft carriers would have more survivability (they move) than our supporting airbases in Korea, Japan, and the Philippines (which will almost immediately be hit with ballistic missiles at the start of a conflict). Carriers have layered missile defense. Our arguably biggest weakness in our navy is our lack of ability to underway replenish vertical launch missile cells (used for both offense and defense at sea), but there is a huge push to solve this at the moment.
I'd also challenge you to show examples of China actually shooting down a fighter jet. There's also the fact that China just doesn't have the military experience. Half of war fighting is experience (rehearsing isn't the same as active conflict), and logistics.
> Carriers are only good against unsophisticated terrorists.
This is laughably untrue.
> But it is pointless to talk about a war with Russia, which would very quickly turn into nuclear Armageddon.
This is Russia's single schtick.
I do appreciate your point of view, but I maintain that in a lengthy land war with a near peer, missile stockpiles would run low and 4th gen fighters would be unable to contest enemy airspace. Of course, the caveat is that the US would very much like to avoid any such conflict via either diplomacy or a decisive first few weeks of combat. And the hope is that 5th gen fighters would evade air defenses. Even so, US doctrine calls for being capable of fighting prolonged land wars on multiple fronts.
God bless. Let's outperform all the adversaries combined in shell, ammunition, carrier, and fighter production. American military dominance must never be called into question even by the possibility of multi-theater war.
You didn't "go to war". A portion of your sovereign territory was invaded, and you did/are attempting to defend it. The fact that the US/NATO are willing to contribute to your defense is just a plus. Ukraine is not a NATO member and has no defense treaties with anyone in Europe.
Technically true, but if you get some amount of promised military support, you're going to try to be more ambitious in your defense/counter-attack, and you're going to reject unfavourable peace terms.
While asking we should also question how fast we can scale up F35 production along with all the various arms the F35 carries.
But maybe I'm not a military genius like those in charge of for profit defense contractors.
Russian has been in a war for the past 2-years.
The US & EU have not.
If NATO could supply the materiel for Ukraine to "singlehandedly" defeat Russia, they would do it in a heartbeat. But they don't have it!
It seems more like politics than anything else.
Countries want to help.
But they don’t want to help too much, where they then get pulled into the war (or have Russia target them).
The author ignores the USSR completely in their article, except for a brief mention in the graphs (where it's #2). 157k planes is impressive, too, considering that many of the factories had to evacuate to Siberia. 22k planes were also additionally leased by the US and the UK.
Germany had already lost the war before Lend-Lease had a significant impact. The offensives of 1941 and 1942 failed before Western aid started arriving in significant quantities. The aid had much more impact on the Soviet offensive, particularly on the logistics side. It can be argued that Lend-Lease won Eastern Europe for the USSR.
As far as I understand, there are two schools of thought on what would have happened without Lend-Lease. In one, the USSR would have won anyway, but the war would have lasted until 1946 or 1947 and it would have been even bloodier and more destructive. In another, the USSR would also have lost, and there would have been an uneasy peace between them and Germany. In both cases, I'd assume the US would not see the Continental Europe worth fighting for.
Is this still true in light of the recent Ukraine events? Russia certainly isn't losing if no one's going to stand up to it.
I feel like I’m playing Civilization again.
are they? for the most part, Americans haven't really noticed apart from family and friends of service members. There's been no rationing of goods, there's been no campaigns to buy war bonds, there's essentially been no burden on the citizens. In fact, we've had multiple tax cuts and gains in the financial markets. The sheep have been well fed.
Unless you watch Fox News, in which case we are "wasting" hundreds of billions on Ukraine while Americans starve!!!! What's that? A bill to feed starving Americans? Why that's socialism, which is communism!
70 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020. It doesn't matter that some of them don't live in the same reality as the rest of us, because they have isolated themselves so aggressively that they will never be snapped out of it, and millions of other people are enabling their insanity for political gain.
Check out Ryan McBeth on youtube for someone with experience refuting and examining Russian disinfo campaigns, and weep in fear as statements that could be trivially debunked with a look at a single wikipedia page, or like, a book of what different weapons systems look like, and realize in horror that the millions of people falling for this shit aren't just "media illiterate", but rather are so deep in the kool-aid that they explicitly trust information MORE if it has been labeled as "fake news".
It's insane. We aren't handling it. The truth is literally a less effective propaganda weapon than people silo'ing themselves so thoroughly that they have CHOSEN to watch Russian propaganda outlets like RT as "news"
If you believe that 70 million Americans live in a different reality and have isolated themselves, well, perhaps it is you who fails to emphasize why one may have different political standing than you?
The reality is, that people have different priorities when voting.
If you want to talk about propaganda weapon, the strongest in the US is the Israeli one. Both candidates take huge amounts of $$$ from Israeli donors. Both candidates simp for Israel.
The S400 is considered superior to the Patriot system. They have hypersonic missiles. And now a battle hardened army. Don't forget, western systems are heavily overpriced. I think we pay 10 times the amount for a shell than Russia does. It will take years, possibly decades, to build up military industrial capacity. Germany has ammunition for 1 day of war. Trick question: With what will they fight on the second day?
Also, dont forget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)
Germany had the best tanks in WW2. But Russia hat many T34. In insane numbers.
I remember the US military vs Iraq with mostly Russian gear was almost embarrassingly one sided.
Not to mention that cutting-edge drone based warfare has quickly become Ukraine's most effective staple.
Sure, some of the tanks and IFVs are older, but overall it's not really fair to say Ukraine is mostly using old weapons or that it's fighting Russia alone. The total financial value of external aid to Ukraine per year has been rivaling Russia's total annual defense budget.
The current generation missiles "PrSMs" have not been given to Ukraine
The M777 howitzers are from 40 years ago
The stinger missiles have been used in the Afghanistan war
Even the F-16 planes are from 30 years ago
And Patriot air defense systems are several decades old
So it is fair to say that Ukraine has been using mostly older weapons
To name a few current generation systems given to Ukraine: IRIS-T AA missile systems, StormShadow / SCALP cruise missiles, AGM-88 HARM missiles, AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, NLAW anti-tank missiles, Martlet missiles, Starstreak AA missiles, Aster AA missiles, Krab artillery systems, CEASAR artillery systems, Excalibur guided artillery, ECV90 IFVs, and on and on the list goes.
Just checked 3 of your list:
* AIM-120 AMRAAM was fist used in 1991
* AGM-88 HARM 1985
* CAESAR system 2008
All look pretty old.
The M777 also included fairly modern fire control hardware and counter battery radar.
Everything else has been purposely downgraded to ancient specs, like removing armor from the Abrams, and sending ancient F-16s. The stingers we sent Ukraine have been out of production for decades, and the US has not fielded them in mentionable capacity since the early 90s.
The table scraps of the US desert storm military is providing Russia a stalemate in Ukraine vs an army barely trained to use their new equipment, that had several high level traitors in it during the invasion.
Meanwhile, ignore that Russia cannot keep tiny kit-built aircraft out of it's airspace, which has always been a problem for Russia despite supposedly being the Premier anti-air missile system maker since the 50s. One of these kit built cruise missiles killed several important people in a Naval Command post in Crimea, despite immense investment in S400s to protect it.
The Russian Navy has been shown to be not just non-threatening, but jaw droppingly incompetent. I'm sure they blame whoever runs Russian air defense systems, but the flagship of the black sea fleet was sunk by the same intensity of threat as the damn Houthis taking pot shots at tankers. This wasn't a "occasionally the missile gets through" situation either. The Moskva had multiple redundant and cooperating missile defense systems that on paper, and even in foreign military knowledge, would have defeated a couple incoming missiles. Either they weren't turned on, in which case why not, or worse, they are inoperable or ineffective, in which case WHY
There are notable unfortunate outcomes however. The small diameter bomb, as I understand, did not perform well. Russia's GPS jamming is powerful and effective, though this isn't as dire as it seems. In a GPS denied warfighting environment, the US still builds significantly better ordinance guidance systems than Russia. The Krasnopol laser guided artillery shell is pretty good, and gets you the outcome of an Excalibur shell for significantly less money, and is harder to defeat electronically. The Lancet is way more cost-effective and useful than anything the Switchblade company has shat out, and we should be copying it as hard as possible cough Anduril cough. Russia now has a production quantity JDAM style system, which is effective.
Does she? How many people has she lost in the war? She lost nearly a 1000 in the second world war. Per hour. So in 2-3 days she sustained the losses that the US had in Vietnam in a 10 years war.
Although I'll give you Putin doesn't seem bothered by Russian casualties so I guess from that point of view all's good.
Russia's production isn't almighty either. They purchased millions of artillery rounds from North Korea for a reason [3].
And I think a big thing to remember is that NATO has tons of weapons, they just don't have tons of the weapons that are being used in the Ukraine war. The U.S. only fired ~34,000 155MM artillery rounds during the Iraq War (Second Persian Gulf War). [4]
And yet at the time the US had millions of cluster bombs in stockpiles [5]
The Ukraine war definitely seems to be a wakeup call on western munition production rates and how mass artillery is still important to modern warfare but I don't think that means Russia would really stand a chance against NATO.
The real reason the conflict (hopefully) will never happen is nuclear bombs.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/air-defence-systems-rep...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/05/16/world/russia-ukraine...
[3] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/n-korea-sent-russia...
[4] https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2018...
[5] https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/arms/cluster0705/2.h...
This is the Block I ATACMS which stopped production in 1996 and is considered too old to be usable by the US Army itself. Mean while the Patriots have no issues taking out multiple "hypersonic" missiles, which are mostly just marketing bullshit.
It was Russia that won the war. https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU?t=205
And regarding the Ukraine war. Russia's industrial might is underestimated. And while it can not match that of the West, as a word of caution: China has more industrial capacity than the EU and US combined.
Wars have the nasty habit of taking unexpected turns...
Indeed, after the slaughter of WW2 you would expect Russians to be wary of starting wars by invading their neighbours.
By the 1970s, the WWII mythology (of which a lot was entirely made up) had formed the core of the identity of "Soviet people" and an excuse for everything. The narrative of "Soviet people as the victors of the WWII" acted as a God-given right to stomp over other nations, because after all, only a fascist would resist the glorious Soviet people. The way we see Zelenskyy, a Jewish comedian, branded as a Nazi, and the war against Ukraine propagandized as a "holy war against Nazism like our grandfathers fought", is an echo of that. Doesn't make any sense unless you are familiar with the warped Soviet WWII mythology.
Aggressive militarism is common in post-war generations that grew up with the simplistic brainwashing. There was very little militarism in the generation that actually saw the war, because the Eastern front was morally an ambiguous place. One of my older relatives fought in the battle of Velikiye Luki. He always suspected that his unit had been placed on purpose into a very poor position to wipe them out with German hands for earlier insubordination. The unit got hit hard, he got wounded and was taken prisoner by Germans. Weeks or months later Soviets overran German positions and he was reunited.
As a punishment for being taken prisoner, he was moved to a penal battalion, because not fighting until your death was officially declared treason. Penal battalion was a lighter punishment. Those who had panicked were executed. Penal battalions were "dumb meat" used to dig or dismantle fortifications under enemy fire, and attack in first waves to identify machine gun nests and minefields. If they didn't attack with enough enthusiasm, then the barrier troops placed behind them would open fire. (This practice lives on, as can be seen in Ukraine.) By some miracle, he survived it all. Most didn't. You can imagine how keen he was to put on his uniform, parade around on the V-E day celebrations and listen to speeches how "the Soviet people fought united like one man against Nazi invaders".
But those who were born much later have no issues acting like this: https://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-129051800/stock-photo-or...
And not only do they cosplay in wartime uniforms, but they also the adopt the language of propagandized version of history that they've only witnessed from movies, and go around yelling how Russia is fighting Nazis again and "we won't stop before Berlin".
In a way, that's even understandable. Pre-USSR history is beyond living memory, and USSR put a lot of effort into creating a cultural disconnect with pre-1917 Russia. Older history offers no strong identity, it's just too far away to be relevant, it's hard for modern urban population to identify with either the imperial nobility or with peasantry. Modern Russia offers no identity either beyond "superyacht for me and poverty for thee". So what's left? Only the militaristic propagandized USSR victory narrative that so many cling to, otherwise they'd have no identity at all, because that's the only meaningful thing in the past century of Russian history.
The scar it left on the population at large was "They attacked us, and we suffered a lot, but then we really showed them."
The war has gone bad for the West now. The EU has very little equipment left. Russia loses more tanks in a month than many big EU countries have. Germany had ammunition for two days of war. After giving a lot to Ukraine, they have ammunition for one day of war left.
https://www.thearticle.com/defeat-of-the-west-emmanuel-todd-...
Graham's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv on May 26 “and the Russians are dying ...the best money we've ever spent.”
Before you downvote you may look up who Emmanuel Todd is. When he was a 25y old PhD student in 1976 he predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is not a person to be taken lightly.
Weird how that fluid always seems to spill outward, and never inward, innit?
Which is more than just Russia
Ukraine, Belarus, etc are significant contributors and bore some of the heavy causalities
Another part of the reason why invading Ukraine was dumb, Russia forgot what Ukraine was capable of. Attributing all of its success to itself but discounting its partners.
China may be cooking the books to make their GDP/industrial output look a little bit better to hit party goals every year, but the ubiquitiy of Chinese goods in low to mid value added manufacturing is indisputable.
Russian industrial production was usually shit, and consumer goods made in USSR were nigh useless. Buying a Russian car etc. was folly, and the usual flow of goods went in the other direction: East German, Czechoslovak, Hungarian industrial and consumer products went to the east, while cheap raw materials flowed from the USSR to Central Europe.
Chinese industrial production started shit as well, but they have been improving by leaps, much like the Japanese once did. (Odd to think that both Made in Germany and Made in Japan were once intended as warnings, not endorsements.) This is what the Russians never achieved.
Aside from vodka and caviar, finding a Russian product in a standard European supermarket was a detective task. I am sitting now in a fully furnished house and I am almost certain that nothing here is made in Russia. While plenty of things are made in China.
"From October 1, 1941, to May 31, 1945, the United States delivered to the Soviet Union 427,284 trucks, 13,303 combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the aviation fuel including nearly 90 percent of high-octane fuel used,[36] 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc.), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
Good luck flying those planes without fuel.
American production is spread throughout the country. China's is pretty much located in the east. Peace time production capabilities <> war time production. There is a reason the United States is developing Rapid Dragon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system) ). In a large scale war, the USA's ENTIRE logistics fleet can be turned into stand off attack aircraft which will overwhelm any local defenses and remove 'peace time' production from the board. I wonder why the USA chose to name the system after an old Chinese siege weapon?
Tousands of planes and tanks were sent as well as raw materials to keep their factories pumping.
This after they were initially on Hitler’s side.
Y'all, it's true historically that the US has oversold its personnel contributions to the European theater, but overcorrecting with this weird nonsense about the USSR single-handedly winning WWII is just beyond bizarre.
The USSR did the most in that war but they were not in fact capable of winning by themselves.
Germany got pretty close to Moscow. A little different of a tactical situation would have been a big deal in that theatre of the war.
That does not mean anything. A car's engine contains only 10% of the parts in that car.
But, it is good that all of the allies decided to band together and get it down a little bit faster. Every moment that Europe spent occupied was just another mountain of human suffering. Plus, getting that theater done before nukes really became available probably saved some historical German cities.
There are the obvious parallels where the US has great advanced technology, China can sure make things in mass quantities; also they have plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists and can figure out anything. Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty; now we are in a serious period of retrenchment though, with certain (ahem) groups wanting to restrict the books in the library if they are idealogically unacceptable and also anti-science and anti-education etc going along with that. China is not the place you want to go to if you are going to introduce heterodoxical ideas.
There are also all the echos of the '20s and '30s in our current times in the US and the world, groups of countries pushing different ideas and coming together in blocks. We have instant communication, nukes make everything even more serious than that time. The new ascendant anti-democratic countries want their shot at power and riches too.
This has always been much more important than dead capital.
Does anyone know if anyone has stared the infrastructure to produce these things en masse in the US? If so, how can someone with heavy construction experience, CAD skills, and embedded experience become a part of that?
We also don't know what form drones will take as the technology matures. Quadcopters are common right now because they require exactly zero aerodynamic knowledge to build or fly. Any tween with an AliExpress+YouTube account could design, build, and fly all of the systems we've seen to date. As the systems become more automated in the face of EWAR, lasers, shotguns, whatever, expect a reversion to high speed fixed wing systems that trade a little bit of CDF knowledge for order-of-magnitude performance improvement in basically all realms (payload, range, endurance, speed, survivability etc).
It's a lot like the switch from battleships to aircraft carriers in the early 20th century. When a single squadron of cloth and wooden biplanes became capable of sinking a 50,000 ton armored warship that took 5 years to build, the writing was on the wall, and the countries who didn't adapt lost.
There is a reason we are developing Rapid Dragon (named after a Chinese siege weapon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system) . It quickly converts our 1500+ supply chain heavy aircraft fleet into stand-off attack platforms.
I guarantee the ones fielded in the next ~5 years will start to look like the new high speed bullet quads but with a blended wing between the rotors so they're not wasting energy plowing diagonally through the air. You may see configurations that can tail stand or enter a hover briefly and some that fly entirely conventionally, but the current paradigm of quads hovering near targets is going to be short lived as defenses ratchet up.
As I said, the chips are going to be the issue. If you can deploy a $200 Wish dot com wifi/gps jammer and take down every drone within 500m, again, quantity doesn't do anything. They'll be moving toward relying on spread spectrum and variations of basic image recognition up through spicier algorithms for localization and targeting.
Drop a load over an area with the faces of targets preprogrammed into them and let them flit about looking for cell phone signal sources and if the face that's near the signal is a match explode on their neck.
Imagine releasing that over an airbase. These things can either attack immediately or just fall down to the area around and lie in wait recharging with their panel.
What's the counter to that?
They can. Ukraine and Russia both have started using repeater drones for over-the-horizon capabilities with quadcopters. They can also be mesh linked, and combined with carrier drones to give you arbitrary standoff range for FPV attacks: https://x.com/wilendhornets/status/1772345701772513445
>If you can deploy a $200 Wish dot com wifi/gps jammer and take down every drone within 500m, again, quantity doesn't do anything.
But you can't. If you could, we wouldn't be seeing hundreds of these videos per week. The inverse square law applies no matter how advanced the jamming technology gets. You can protect fixed installations with huge high powered EW arrays, but the individual soldier on the battlefield is completely defenseless. The best they can hope for is a small bubble of protection from whoever in your unit is carrying the 30lbs of jamming gear and batteries, or the limited capabilities of a vehicle mounted system (that can easily be destroyed with artillery or ATGM).
https://x.com/eeldenden/status/1610689686271397922
The decision is in Putin's hands and if he plays stupid games, he will win all the stupid prizes.
What are you smoking? Germany is the one that attacked the USSR. I can hardly see how they'll remain anything but allies after that. Actually Germany didn't just attack, they prepared and executed the largest invasion in human history.
> I think China will do a switcheroo on Russia
China is not going to do a switcheroo on Russia. If it wanted to, it'd wait until Russia is exhausted/broken and invade/recover the lands it used to historically belong to them (+resources that come along). Instead, they want Russia to remain as an annoyance to the West.
China is never aligning with the West. They won after WWII and the West tried to break into them in two wars (Korean and Vietnamese) to no avail. They'll fight till the end.
Those Russian lands don't 'belong' to China any more than China 'belongs' to Mongolia or the Jin dynasty 'belonged' to... well itself and just got appropriated as people then like people today and look at borders imagining things were always like that when they werent remotely the same.
The Soviet Union helped Germany evade restrictions imposed on them after WWI. Specifically, they helped Germans develop mechanised forces, air forces, and gas warfare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_tank_school
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipetsk_fighter-pilot_school
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomka_gas_test_site
Then they signed this pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... dividing Poland (Soviet forced attacked Poland on 17 Sep 1939).
The Soviets switched sides when Germans attacked them. Then the Germans lost, got divided, then were allowed to re-unite and ... ran straight to Moscow to sign deals that undermined security of Eastern Europe.
Make no mistake, Russia and Germany fight and then can't wait to fall into each other's arms.
> China is not going to do a switcheroo on Russia. If it wanted to, it'd wait until Russia is exhausted/broken and invade/recover the lands it used to historically belong to them (+resources that come along). Instead, they want Russia to remain as an annoyance to the West.
They just told Putin to pound sand when he asked them to finance his Siberian gas pipeline during his recent visit to Bejing. They know Russia is weak.
I'm guessing the system is named after an old Chinese siege weapon system to give China a message.
https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-t...
US fighting standoff war also throws allies / partners in region with security guarantee to the dogs. PRC going to start hitting US military infra in JP/SKR/PH to drag US into fighting in 1IC.
- LRIP: low-rate of initial production, the early phase of weapons development where kinks are being ironed out before mass-production begins
- C-130, C-17: large, US-made cargo aircraft that we have a lot of
- 1IC: first island chain -- Kuril islands, Japan, Taiwan, Phillippines, and Borneo
- 2IC: second island chain -- Guam, Marianas, Bonin islands. 1IC and 2IC are also references to US defense policy in the pacific, namely to contain the USSR (and later, China) by projecting force westward in the pacific, using islands as stopovers for logistics, etc.
- MIC: military industrial complex
- J-20 fighters: a fighter jet, Chengdu J-20, China's counterpart to the F-22
- PL-17 missiles: China-developed long range air-to-air missiles that are capable of hitting/taking down large cargo aircraft like C-130s
- AWACS: airborne warning and control system, a type of radar system capable of detecting (and defend against) incoming missiles. these systems are large and mounted on purpose built aircraft, so I think the "system" part refers to having enough of such aircraft mixed in with your fleet to reliably detect incoming missiles over a large area
- AGM-158B: US-made, a type of long-range air-launched cruise missile that is being adapted for the rapid dragon
- zerg rush to 100 B21 fleet: refers to the US push to develop a long range strategic bomber, the B-21
They were also only 20% as capable as Chinese drones.
Read this and get terrified
https://www.ft.com/content/dd2e936e-5934-49f1-8aa6-29dea9a41...
US Military contractors have a very different conception of "cost effectiveness" than most of us.
Anyone outside of Ukraine designing drones right now should simply stop what they are doing and watch and listen and learn from the innovators on the ground there. All of those pie in the sky ideas will probably be completely useless in the face of reality.
Something about evaluating production quantity by weight always puts a smile on my face
... As long as you don't do something stupid with it, like using it to evaluate people.
When it comes to material goods that dramatically vary in size (ships, planes, bombs), tonnage is usually a good first metric.
On top of a poor personnel culture, Boeing cares more about splitting it's supply chain up around the world (in order to get contracts from different countries) than making airplanes. The scary part of a bad culture is you could fake it with past airplanes, but newer aircraft with lighter composite parts/less parts (which then make each part's integrity more important) there's less wiggle room. Plus with composite, you can't just do a final QA on things and ensure they are good. You have to QA each layer layup, glues, etc. An xray at the end can't really give you the whole picture. I remember friends talking about how a certain (not Boeing) company was experimenting moving composite layup to China and what a cluster that was going to be. They would find razor blades embedded inside and all kinds of FOB crap on the final xrays, and this was on the pre-production showcase pieces.
The general vibe was if you made a shitty product and it got your fellow countrymen killed, someone would track you down and make you pay for it though.
Imagine measuring computer hardware output by weight.
The key and important factor of computer hardware has little to do with weight.
Whereas, weight is an important factor for aircrafts. A plane produced today will have similar capabilities as a plane produced 30 years ago of the same weight.
That is absolutely not the case for computer hardware.
Hell, compare the F111 vs the F22 on every available metric.
Just like flops/gram has dramatically improved over time for computers.
> the phrase "war is the health of the state" that laments the success of governments in arrogating authority and resources during conflicts.
The problem the US might have in full war mobilization today would be due to cronyism. Remember all of the exceptions to Covid lockdowns for "essential" employees? Some of that is of course necessary but I suspect it would be very widespread if it happened today. This would stoke resentment from people/companies not so privileged.
Everyone points to NASA in the 60s as a perfect example of gov production but like all newly formed bureaucracies they are largely the sum of the people they recently absorbed into it. NASA mined all the universities and nerds from private industry who brought their work patterns, leadership, and attitudes to the organization.
But as these orgs age it’s the classic Iron Rule story of managers taking over and accountants ruining things etc etc.
Maybe we need to move away from monolithic mega gov orgs and create new ones to solve new problems each generation instead of being catch alls that do nothing well and never face any risk of being replaced. There needs to be ways to breed new life and kill off the natural development of bad management and crippling rulemaking.
corpos are functionally immortal and it's the cancerous mass, not the germ line that survives.
Any of that could be a misunderstanding or an urban legend though.
Wow. Unbelievable
[0] https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-hist...
* https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/622200
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakwood_Cemetery_(Montgomery,_...
If you are not losing a few people in training, you are not pushing things hard enough.
The T-38 jet trainer, first flight in 1959, still in use: 1,189 built, 210 crashes and ejections.
A few days of classroom instruction, 40-100 flight hours of practical training (Less in the Axis, due to oil shortages, less in the USSR at the start of the war, due to the all-hands-on-deck state of emergency), and then it's off to war with you.
Axis pilots would fly until they were killed, seriously injured, or captured. Anglosphere bomber pilots would fly ~30 combat missions, and if they survived, would be rotated out to work as instructors.
The average combat survival rate for bomber pilots was ~10 missions, but due to the infrequency of flights, most Anglo bomber crews survived the war, without ever hitting their rotation limit. Meanwhile, in the Pacific theater, the more missions bomber crews flew, the bigger the rotation limits grew (Because survival rates improved, the generals in charge figured that it would be reasonable to ask crews to fly more missions.) The air crews were, understandably, not very pleased about this.
Fighter pilots had much higher quotas, before they could rotate out.
Sounds like a Catch-22.
We enjoy one of the highest cancer rates in the world. All those factories used to dump their waste into our aquifers.
One major influence is that American industrialists were busy expanding global markets and happily supplied their technology and manufacturing processes to the two major buyers, Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, in the 1930s, with Ford being one of the major actors, perhaps more active in Germany:
In Germany:
> "Ford and the Führer: A History of Ford Motor Company's Involvement in Nazi Germany" by Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B. White: This work delves into Ford's business activities in Germany, documenting the introduction of assembly-line manufacturing and the company's interactions with the Nazi regime."
> "The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich" by Max Wallace: This book explores the relationship between American industrialists like Henry Ford and the Nazi regime, including detailed accounts of Ford's manufacturing contributions."
In Soviet Union:
> "Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ): Built with the technical assistance of Ford, the Gorky Automobile Plant began producing vehicles using American-style assembly lines. Ford provided machinery, blueprints, and training to Soviet engineers and workers. Soviet engineers and technicians received training in Ford’s American factories, learning about assembly line production and modern manufacturing techniques."
I don't know if there's a particular moral to this story, other than that in search of short-term profit major American industrialists were happy to get in bed with any and all buyers.
And that has changed since then..?
The US was pursuing a largely isolationist foreign policy, and was not investing in armaments.
The USSR had, between 1917, and 1939:
* Spent six years fighting an incredibly brutal and bloody civil war.
* Was attacked by Poland in ~1920.
* Spent another decade putting down various secession movements, mostly in central Asia.
* Had multiple minor conflicts with China and Japan.
* Was heavily involved in the Spanish Civil War.
* Also needed a strong, standing army to put down any further internal resistance.
* Could smell which way the wind was blowing, and was ready to capitalize on German's ambitions in Europe, by taking its chunk of Poland (And later invading Finland).
Given all that, it was functioning on a war economy pretty much from ~1917 to 1941. (At which point it transitioned to a total war economy.)
This was all in the context of a strong central push for mass industrialization. Steel production alone increased ~5x between 1930 and 1940. Up until the Nazis took power, the USSR worked very closely on both industrialization, and military armament with Weimar Germany. Krupp was building factories in the Don, and future Luftwaffe pilots were being trained in Lipetsk.
Some people in the US were. FDR was not.
That's a fun way of saying that the USSR started a war of conquest against Poland.
Both of those states fought with the goal of expanding their borders to a pre-partition status - the USSR aimed to reclaim territories lost in Brest-Litovsk, Poland to something resembling the pre-partition commonwealth. Poland won the war, and made significant territorial gains, in exchange for recognition of Soviet Ukraine... And then 1939 happened.
This is actually gets a bit closer to a fair reading of the basic cause of the war. But it also glaringly contradicts what you just said previously ("Poland attacked the USSR in 1920, and that's it"¹). If you knew this was a gross (and misleading) oversimplification -- then why did you open with it? And in what year did the USSR come into being, again?
Anyway, we're far removed from the topic of the original thread. If the two of you want to hash this out amongst yourselves, perhaps one of you can start a new top-level post on the topic, and see if you can get people to join you there.
¹ In the sense of «Вкусно – и точка»
What I should have said (and couldn't find a way to put in a sentence) was that at some point in the Polish/Soviet war, Poland was fighting a successful offensive in the USSR, won the war, and made territorial gains.
I suppose I should have said, well, that.
Anyway -- much better, thanks for clarifying.
Now China is the country with the largest industrial output.
It's not like those old machines were primitive, and there have been major breakthroughs in mass-manufacturing.
the capabilities of planes from ww2 and today are almost not worth comparing
The F-35 is on back-order to the mid 2030s. Even superpowers can't make more than tens of planes every year.
It's just that the modern world is relatively peaceful, that's why they don't need more.
(the logical end point of that thought process is some kind of Space Battleship Yamato scenario where the designers produce an "invincible" design, but only one of it. Hopefully real planners can be dissuaded from that nonsense, although the Axis were prone to this way of thinking)
The armistice was a pause for the peace treaty to be negotiated and signed.
Now, if you think the Treaty of Versailles was intended as just a pause for new soldiers to grow up...I don't think that's particularly accurate for most signatories. Had it been, appeasement wouldn't have been tried.
What the actual _hell_ happened to this idea?
It could, though, and it could do a lot of good. But it doesn't.
See also: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-tibet-xinjiang-border-indi...
In China the entities connected to the CCP are excepted from a lot of laws that slow down processes or make them more expensive.
In the US is that way less the case.
In 1943 the expected average life expectancy of a B-17 (crew and aircraft) was only to survive 11 missions! My Aunt's father was in one that was shotdown, he survived being a POW and came home after the war.
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-week-da....
Day-to-day, sure.
In a national mobilization (even without additional action of Congress) when the President’s emergency powers in law are deployed to enable production? Things change radically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium...
The biggest exception seems to be Vietnam, with a very large reserve of bauxite (and obviously quite geographically close to China).
Also, general consensus seems to be that economic codependence has failed, with Russia invading Ukraine, humans rights abuses and authoritarianism in China, and China poised to attack Taiwan.
If the only supplies of bauxite were across an ocean or a whole continent it would be much easier to deny them supplies of bauxite in a conflict.
Even if they could conquer the territory with it, they'd need to transport it back or move manufacturing to it.
230x ship building advantage, more dry tonnage per year than entire 5 year US ship building program in WW2... US advangage over JP in WW2 aws charitably 20:1. That's just in one "mature" industry, PRC isn't just better in US, it's magnitude better than US ever was relative to peers. Another example is their revelation of _one_ gigafactory for 1k cruise missile components a day. JP is buying 400 tomahawks over next few years for 1.5B. PRC indicating they can do that in one shift. US has 4000 stockpiled, replacing at ~100 per year. Some of the production figures are very lopsidded. Meanwhile they're addding about as industrial robots/automation than RoW, and industry is going to get increasingly cheap renewable inputs. The advantages are snowballing.
US still ahead in aviation due to committing to mature tech, but PRC knocking out their 5th J20 already 100+ per year. SpaceX is next as PRC pursues their mega constellation. I think people are prematurely jerking to SpaceX payload lead, they have a short term competitive advantage in doing high capacity launches on "small/medium scale", read: American scale with ~40 resusable rocket fleet. It the economics justified it, no reason PRC wouldn't have 400 falcon 9s. The TLDR is once indigenize tech matures, PRC can pursue incredible economies of scale, and build up enough production capacity to exceed aggregate production of others in 5-10 years.
I'm sure it can be done eventually by China though, they are just as smart as anyone else. Can they organize their scientific and engineering forces as well? Knowing it can be done is a huge help.
In 1943, the US built more than half as many Fleet carriers as Japan fielded over the entire war (15 vs 28), while also producing an absurd number of escort carriers. In the last year of the war, the US built about as many F6F (Hellcat) fighters as Japan built A6M (Zeros) in the previous 5 years (the F6F is generally considered far superior to the A6M; the F4F is the older contemporary of the A6M).
- Lack of infrastructure investment
- Civic infighting
- Political divisions, distractions, and corruption
- Social regression
- Gender disparity in undergraduate education
- Declining standards of living
My favorite example of how good friends the US has is that the primary objective for Norway in Afghanistan was quote:
"The first and most important objective throughout was the Alliance dimension:
to support the US and safeguard NATO’s continued relevance."
You have good friends if their primary war objective is to support you.
I think that these days, a lot of Europeans are being reminded that the US is a friend. So long as US politics can avoid undermining NATO the US won't be short on friends.
The same applies to other countries. Those who subscribe to the democratic principles, rule of law, and individual freedoms will typically align themselves with US interests, at least where it is beneficial to them.
The US needs to adjust with more competitive foreign economic policies because tariffs aren't it. All of those trillions wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq for diesel power plants to nowhere could've been sprinkled around the Global South to advance economic development resulting in greater wealth elsewhere able to afford American goods and services, source raw materials, and develop manufacturing relationship in various countries in, say, Africa... like China is doing.
Not just America, the world needs younger politicians who don't want to send the whole world to hell when they die. We really have a shitty geriatric crew right now--Putin, Xi, Modi, Biden, Trump.
The people are hurting but the establishment isn't listening, and so conspiracy theorists, cranks, racist nationalists lite, and brash jerks are seen as ways to lash out against a system that doesn't appear to be helping them.
There are a holistic set of overlapping problems:
- Failure of the mainstream left to empathize properly with both working people and small business owners while pushing back against unreasonable demands of the very rich
- Failure to mentor young leaders in 4 domains: academia, industry, political parties, and community orgs
There are no quick or easy solutions, but require sustained, organized, and collaborative efforts to nudge the needle over years. This is quite difficult when a large fraction of the demographic voting for absurd leaders either don't have free time to volunteer, are unable to prioritize civic participation for whatever reason(s), or don't see the value in it.
- Inability of the intellectual and political elites to define and enforce basic rules and norms for a coherent society. Diversity is great, but it ought to be paired with engagement with the country's history, culture. We have citizenry who are increasingly more detached from the society they live in and more connected to groups that transcend borders.
- Rise of religion. We should be done with that thing by now, but its back and growing in strength, undermining democratic institutions. We are making concessions to religion on the grounds of religious freedom.
Again I hope nothing happens. I am quite fond of China, the Chinese people, and historical Chinese culture. The USA made special carveouts to help China industrialize. The USA risked nuclear war with Russia in order to get them to back down against China in 1969. We don't want to be adversaries with China and have demonstrably shown so with fairly large policy choices.
I don't think it's clear that a war would necessarily escalate to attacking industrial targets because there is a kind of MAD at play.
From America's point of view, the problem with escalating the war to industrial targets (which I am sure US military planners realize) is that the US has an Achilles' heel in it's reliance on petrol. Almost all US petrol comes from only 130 domestic plants. If those are disabled, most US supply chains will crumble, including food. No need to disable all the factories when there's no way to transport stuff and workers aren't fed. That weakness might be enough to deter the US from striking Chinese industry.
EVs might be one of the bigger bulwarks the US could pursue toward greater national security.
The economics clearly justify mass production of widebody aircraft, yet China is unable to produce their own.
And you expect China to mass produce Falcon 9 rockets? How about they start with a simple airplane first.
But economics also don't CLEARLY justify domestic wide body when they can focus on electrified HSR without fossil inputs, AND PRC pop density / geographic concentration limits future of civilian air due to air corridor congestion.
I expect PRC to mass produce domestic F9 if the economics clearly justify it. LM5 already estimated at F9 $3000 per kg, so hard to say how much mass producing PRC F9 tier reusable can drive down cost + add capability. If it's there's clear significant demand for more than sustaining mega contestallations past 2035s, I'd expect them to spam F9 for domestic use, before civil wide body that's going to take longer due politics of international aviation.
China's manufacturing is mainly in the east, while the USAs is spread throughout the country. China's manufacturing is centered around coastal, river, and railway access. The USA has a distributed highway system for wartime variability/survivability.
China is dependant on oil imports. The USA in a net oil exporter.
For reference 3 week Iraqi air campaign had favourable land basing, 5 carriers, doing uncontested runs. Napkin math extrapolate to PRC size and you're looking at 5 years if US can sustain unsustainable tempo and PRC barely shoots back. Double that if US has to operate at standoff range where most of sorties goes to tanking/defensive air. The scale of PRC is massive.
PRC MIC industry is in the EAST far inland, specifically to account for US standoff range, i.e. rapid dragon with even JASSER would have to launch over mainland soil to hit. Can do even more extended AGM156Bs with 1900km range, but still has to be launched within PRC A2D2 1IC bubble, and they weight 5x more, i.e. can only fit lol10 in C17... all of a sudden you have a vunerable platform + missiles worth 400-500m trying to drop ordinances in area PL17 is designed to defeat. This is without mentioning PRC likely has / at least demonstrated to have capability to move MIC underground, see third front.
PRC has enough domestic oil production 4+ million barrels to run military AND industry with transport rationing.
But really what you're missing is if US starts hitting mainland targets, PRC will hit CONUS targets - they're pursuing conventional global strike. Their rocketforce platforms are increasingly dual use for reason. Reality is US is a net oil exporter in the same way Saudi is - i.e. it doesn't matter having resource autarky because extractive infra can be hit by Houthi drones. Era Fortress America is ending/over. PRC hitting 300 refineries and LNG plants cripples US homefront as much as much US trying to blockade PRC energy. And if we get to that point, then it's a matter of who has more distributed energy infra (i.e. renewables), and capital stock, excess construction capacity to survive the attrition game.
China is massive, but their 'strength' of mass production (what is being discussed here, converting a countries capabilities to war time production, and being claimed as uncounterable by the USA) is concentrated in the coastal areas and associated river shipping lanes. USA industry is spread throughout the country.
Again you completely ignore what I said. It wouldn't be 5 carriers of F-18s over five years, it would be our current fleet plus an additional 1500 stand off attack bombers, allowing those F-18s to focus solely on softening air defense sites, etc. China's installed robots have zero to do with any of this. They don't have automated factories 'spawning' units.
China's oil production just hit a record lows even with them putting their 'limitless resources' into it. China's western oil fields and offshore oil fields (like their billion dollar oil platform) would be scrap.
China's current MIC industry doesn't matter, it's converting domestic production to a war footing that is being discussed here. The claim is conversion of their current civilian capacity would overwhelm the USA. Again, China's civil capacity is concentrated in the coastal areas and associated waterways which make it not valuable as a war production capacity, while the USA is spread throughout the country. You don't need to take out every factory, just enough associated infra. But keep moving goal posts, change the subject to try and get a gotcha.
Edit: I have to add I hope none of this happens. I love China. My dad was a communist hippie and our house was filled all kinds of books on China from historical to modern Chinese thinking. My ex was an acupuncturist so we often talked about ancient Chinese thoughts as well. While I understand it's completely different now, 2010's Shanghai was one of my favorite cities. I'm also old enough to have been friends with a lot of students stranded in the USA after the Tiananmen Square massacre so my heart breaks for the Chinese people and I understand that their government is not them and does not care about their interests.
US MiC distribution doesn't matter since stand off range of ICBM global strike basically = other side of world, i.e. existing PLARF icbms can already be conventionally tipped can hit any large infra target in US. That's PLA strategy for CONUS attacks, instead of 100m of munitions on 400m (cargo plane) or (13b carrier) delivery platform which needs vunerable/expensive logistics to operate, they're going for more expensive munitions, because they never committed to expensive force projection platforms, which US has to fulfill global commitments.
VS. US strategy for mainland attacks which is hoping very expensive, legacy, sunk cost platforms like carriers can deliver some standoff sorties, against PLA systems destruction warfare specifically designed to cripple logistics system that sustains them. This doubly true for jerry rigged transport bomb trucks, i.e. rapid dragon - there isn't enough airstrips in/around theatre, tanking to make it work at scale. PRC has host of supersonic drones and long range AA that can spam 1IC and take out lumbering rapid dragon cargo planes before they even have chance to deliver, which is going to be within 1IC, where US carrier defensive air won't have persistent coverage. Hence it's not seriously discussed in strategy writings, because anyone can look at the logistics behind it and realize it's not viable. Not like rushing new capability like B21s to do runs from CONUS/AU, recognizing what PRC recognizes as it builds out launchers and 1000s of tunnels, the only supply chain you can depend on is homeland supply chain.
The post has one interesting resource that can become a bottleneck: people, what if there is a mod where you need to find and employ aliens to run your production line? Maybe some of the aliens will choose to work in factories instead of attacking you..
Some people do honestly believe that because god is on 'our' side, the us and constitution were divinely motivated and everything in it was coming from god somehow. All the horrible justifications are still being made today about that stuff.
Great Britain historically had a fraction of the population of France and other European powers, but consistently out-produced the rest in ships and projecting naval power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_pro...
> The USA is a net exporter of oil (that greases the entire machine). China is an oil importer (not good when you country is being sieged during war).
This seems to be their largest risk (if you are playing defense). They seem to be going crazy on solar though.
Solar is not going to fuel missiles, ships, and attack aircraft. It's not going to grease the machines in the factories.
Is the assumption correct?
I haven't been able to find a study on America's plan for local naval production capacity given such a conflict, which is kind of stunning to me. Perhaps there are classified studies.
This conflict (assuming it lasts multiple years) would play out across the Pacific, possibly offering replays of old Pacific battles from WW2. Large numbers of naval assets and expeditionary forces squaring off across millions of square miles of blue-water ocean. Lots of naval tonnage attrition.
America is either guarding it's planned production capabilities close to the chest, or they anticipate winning such a conflict quickly without the tonnage attrition I just referenced.
Or my searching skills are weak.
And then there's just the cluster fuck that is the US defense industry. Who could make aircraft for the US in mass numbers anymore? Boeing can't even figure out if they installed a few bolts, NG can't do basic maintenance without wrecking a plane, LM will get you your aircraft for 5x the initial estimate and a decade late.
The US has the capacity, in the event of conflict, to nullify most if not all of the out-of-region advantage China has in resource extraction, unless China’s build up pre-conflict is sufficient to nullify the global force projection capacities provided by the US Navy and the US Air Force to which China currently has no equivalent or counter beyond its region.
(The US usually presents these capacities as being oriented to protecting free resource flow in peacetime, but they can be directed at the opposite purpose equally well.)
If they decide to start a hot war (say by invading Taiwan) today, then it'd be catastrophic for them. Most of those partnerships would dry up (by being a good excuse to end a bad deal for the partner nations or by force from the US and other nations).
The interesting thing was about how India had also advanced in those 10 years from now.
What do drones mean to you? It sounds like you think it means “quadrocopter” when it is also used to describe RQ-4 Global Hawks and similar aircraft.
That is why I am asking. Because it definietly sounds like you think the discussion is about quadrocopters and not say China building many WZ-7 Soaring Dragons.
Is it possible that when the others said that china will build many drones they meant the second kind and not some toy copters? Because that would make their comments make sense.
The point I'm trying to make here is that the will to do this still exists in the US today and I have no doubt that if we as a country decided to enter a world war like WWII we would very quickly ramp. We certainly still have the culture and the resources to do it were we to discover the will.