It used to be that the US government had pride in its own professionalism. The US is now acting like the countries it loves to destabilize.
Of course, if they get fired and there's nothing else for them to do, there will be uprisings.
There is almost zero causality in the U.S. government’s hiring and firing right now. Particularly relating to current conduct.
To the extent anyone has received job protection, it’s by getting politically fired and then seeking court protection.
So no, this is base cowardice and a lack of patriotism. Not rational action.
So in each workplace most were already marginalized or learned to hide these traits for their benefit. There are way more people in the ‘flight’ than the ‘fight’ camp.
The first firings were all people who knew a guy who knew a guy who wronged Trump. With that kind of retaliatory example, do you not think openly trying to course-correct would result in being fired?
Russia has no military advantage against ours, so there is no reason to placate them due to a threat of war (nukes excluded here, unless Russia has rapidly outpaced us). The only thing that's left is the relationship between the leaders themselves.
If Trump were truly interested in isolationism, he'd instead have simply pulled support for Ukraine and not offered to be a part of negotiations, but many more things were offered for no obvious gain to us.
Recent battle experience is kind of an advantage.
Russia is running a full-scale war against US and NATO weaponry in Ukraine for three years, studying it and refining its tactics.
What was the last battle for USA? Houthis in Yemen? Few airstrikes and limited engagements.
It is very naive to believe Putin doesn’t want to cripple the US economy or that war is not a real threat. The US is critically dependent on semiconductors, and TSMC is much closer to Russia than to America. Think it through.
At best you can suggest it would be too allocated to counter insurgency but combined arms battles is the heart of American doctrine and its shown its value in Ukraine not its weakness.
I think there are real questions about US military composition, particularly its navy, but battle experience is not a problem.
The US military has been engaged in conflicts for decades, but most of them involved fighting non-state actors or weaker conventional forces, not a high-intensity war against an advanced military.
The US military is far a cut above everything else, in terms of tactical readiness, sheer firepower and especially effective size.
We outspend any other nation - China included of which we spend an estimated 2.5 times more than - and we have been in that lead position for decades, not just years.
While yes, US forces haven’t squared off against conventional militaries of any note in some time, the US military has at least been engaged in real conflict. To my recollection the Chinese military have undertaken no significant military campaigns in the last 20+ years and lack the air & sea power to functionally match anything the US military can throw at it by comparison.
Which leaves ground forces, which is both vulnerable to air power and is effectively the numbers game the Chinese can win outright in a protracted war that escalated to that level, and cyber warfare, which the Chinese have proven to be quite adept at but the US military has been aware and developing counter measures against that for a long time as well
This talking conventionally of course.
China being a nuclear power means it would be unlikely to escalate past a certain point if anyone is acting rationally. There’s no reason you want to give another nuclear power a reason to use those weapons, and certainly the US nuclear arsenal is not one anyone wants to see fired either.
So in all likelihood this continues as a Cold War
Nonetheless, I feel the need to point out that it's budget is a terrible indicator for that.
I'm not even american and have heard just how massively overcharged everything is that's sold to the US military.
It's entirely possible that i.e. China, that can produce their military equipment could actually be way better equipped then it's budget implies. I don't think that Chinas military has caught up to the US yet, but the military spending feels like a bad comparison considering how differently they're financed.
To which I want to add, that even though the DoD modes have its own (and worth addressing) budget process issues they’re at least largely getting what they are paying for in most circumstances as well as continuing to fund R&D at a fairly robust clip.
In the area of defense R&D in particular that large gap in budgetary spending will matter a lot more than building any “well known” military equipment as the next generation will come online faster than other nations can keep up without ramping their own spending
Well, Russia is a nuclear power, and not everyone is acting rationally. Russia got part of it's own territory occupied now, and some important oil and gas facilities are literally being bombed, not talking about regular cities and homes.
Russian nuclear doctrine is: Russia could launch nuclear weapons in response to an attack on its territory by a non-nuclear-armed state.
Their warheads are still at bay, why is that? I don't believe they will ever fly, because no-one is stupid enough to make the first move, and the war can go on neglecting them.
Prior to invading Ukraine one might have thought so, but the experience there shows the challenge in thinking that.
Meanwhile the last time the US military deployed to a traditional battlefield the opponent army lasted a matter of months.
Lord willing we’ll never know about these hypotheticals.
You may be surprised how the public can be united against a human enemy. The success of the Right during COVID was turning the outrage away from the invisible virus and onto the humans forcing them to wear a mask.
The famous example is the F4 Phantom getting beat in dogfights against the Mig 21 in Vietnam. It was mostly solved by changing the tactics and to improvements to later model aircraft.
Obviously dogfights aren't realistic in the modern age but that is just one of many variables which might lead to an unexpected deficit. Robustness, reliability, repairability, availablity of parts, ability to operate out of unimproved airfields, using poor qualify fuels etc.
Western military tactics are still working well against Russian commanders, but they being simply larger population wise, can if they’re willing, win a war of attrition simply because the Ukraine doesn’t have the bodies or internal resources to fight forever. It’s the same strategy general Grant used to decisively win the US civil war
Putin really waited out the US election. For reasons I can’t seem to grok Trump wants to ally with the world’s dictators. He’s proven himself a reliable ally to Putin at this point.
Had Trump lost the election I imagine we would see Russia seriously considering or even starting its withdrawal from the conflict.
Back to the military bit again: there is no way the war in the Ukraine is showing anything other than how vulnerable and poorly aged the equipment of the Russian military is and how their tactics have not improved much if any since the 1980s
there's a medium sized chunk the American Right, which has now won, who unrelated to Russia or China or whatever actually want the US to become sci-fi dystopia of authoritarian christo-white-nationalism.
The US is destabilising itself with the help of Russia.
I don't have to pick up a sign to try and defend my country, it's Russia's fault.
I don't have to fight against my president to preserve democracy, it's Russia's fault.
It used to be that voters actually cared about professionalism, principles, and critical thinking.
Campaigning on really any of those doesn't work these days, its not surprising that our government has those same shortcomings.
Ironically, it's destabilising itself on its own.
Or in jail. We’re not at the coup stakes of life and death, but we’re also like two months into this Presidency. (For what it’s worth, Trump isn’t currently being coup-ish. That’s been left to the pretender.)
It seems like they're spending 30% of effort on the areas that are likely to foment a counter-coup and 70% of their time attacking groups they have personal beefs with.
But of course they're not just focusing on the powerless, they're also annoying the powerful enough that I don't see how it ends well for them.
It's not like he's stopping aid to Ukraine while ruminating on dropping sanctions on our second largest enemy state and repeating word-for-word Kremlin talking points after having a prior relationship with their criminal enterprises for his real estate and an intelligence community espouse the use of foreign power to influence his election outcomes. That would be nuts.
It's not like he attempted to overthrow the government when he lost an election 4 years ago, then pardoned the violent criminals who were incarcerated for that act. Or outright saying he will ignore judicial rulings from unfavored judges while making executive orders that change explicitly language in the constitution, with an EO making it illegal for his executive branch employees to oppose his interpretation of law and installing Aparachniks in each agency to report those in non-compliance. That's a loony idea.
It's not like he's destroying all trade partnerships with allies and internal infrastructure/manufacturing investments simultaneously. That would be silly.
Reaching the altitude of space is much, much, easier than reaching orbital velocity.
This meant that during the Global War on Terror, people had legitimate questions about if Al Qaida could damage the ISS. The answer then was "no", but amateurs reached the Kármán line in 2004, students in 2019, and the current altitude record holder is 143 km.
I suspect that it is well within the capacity of random drug cartels in the US, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Haiti and Jamaica to destroy a Starship during launch, if they so desired.
A functioning US government is a reason not to do that. Nobody in any of those countries will want to risk Musk asking Trump for a favour in the form of a USSOCOM operation.
Destroy the US federal government, and there may well not be an USSOCOM left afterwards. And so far, DOGE has shown zero regard for the value of who they cut, e.g. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/03/02/doge-nucl...
There are two problems: You have to have enough greater acceleration that you can catch it, and you have to have good enough targeting (and maneuverability) to actually hit it. Those are highly non-trivial problems.
Aiming is one of the easier things: huge target, multi-gigwatt heat signiature.
You’re describing boost-stage missile intercept. It’s incredibly hard.
For an extremely well advertised launch into a predetermined flight path of something which isn't even trying to hide its signature and where you can watch the livestream of the countdown?
Perhaps I'm still underestimating the challenge, but I think boost stage vs Starship is a much less of a challenge than boost stage vs. an actual weapon.
But yeah, given your background, if you say I'm wrong, I know to defer to you on this.
And one day they'll get into an accident, run into the wrong person, or die of old age and then what? Their legacy will be AI generated gold statues and maybe their name on a building.
If they ctually used that wealth to advance the human race (on the ground, not a hypothetical but infeasible future on another planet) that'd be another matter. A percentage of Musk's theoretical wealth can solve every American's financial trouble, give them an education, and make the US great again. But that means giving some of it away and they may need it for... What, anyway? What does Musk use his money for besides buying companies and spawning babies against their will?
At least MBS (an autocrat whose wealth and country are one) spends his money on stupidly large building and opulence like The Line and whatnot, which will either make the UAE the center of world wealth and prosperity, or which will be interesting to archeologists in 2000-4000 years.
But that's the problem of the 'capitalist west' (i'm not sure what is better or what would work); everyone is out for short term gain. Most people care about themselves and some of their close family/friends, but in the end, they couldn't give a flying f if the entire planet implodes when they die. We should be planning on a 2000 year timeline as humanity but instead we plan on 4-8 years instead. So far (but that might be reading the wrong propaganda), China seems to have a plan beyond 4 years and beyond Xi's life and not be in such a neckbreaking hurry of breaking everything over a few years more or less.
I’m not talking primarily about agent Krasnov allegation from a top Kazakh ex-spook (though that is an actual possibility), but about the well known Russian influence operations by financing what used to be extremists (both far-right and far-left) across the West.
The phrase "good enough for government work" has never been a positive in my lifetime.
But I'm sure the Dulles brothers were proudful...