China just turned off us supplies of minerals critical for defense and cleantech | Hacker News Reader

China just turned off us supplies of minerals critical for defense and cleantech

cleantechnica.com

65 pointssemanticist27 comments

This is actually a good thing (not that anyone responsible had the faintest idea what would happen). When they invade Taiwan we’ll have this sort of thing going on so we’ll need to know where our military supply chain bonks.

Cool well I hope the US doesn't piss off all their other trading partners so they can find affordable alternatives ah oops

Just trust the "art of the deal".

The money will flow in any second now.

We already know where the bottlenecks are[0] -- it's in production of anti-ship missiles and then ships.

The lead-time in producing missiles is measured in months and years and war games predict that the supply of most of them will be depleted in an initial engagement with China over Taiwan that sees Japan/Taiwan/US win but lose many ships.

After it's anybody's guess but China has 260x the naval production capacity of America so they'll be able to come back faster than the US can.

[0] https://www.csis.org/analysis/first-battle-next-war-wargamin...

Does it account for commandeering spacex and corresponding space armament? Naval projection vs orbital projection seems like a good thing to measure.

As I understand it SpaceX has launched 500 rockets and many of these rockets were reusable so the number of rockets that they've manufactured over the 25 years that they've been in business is far less than 500.

If you take a look at page 8 of this pdf[0] you'll see that the wargames predict that hundreds of missiles will be used in the first few weeks of an engagement between China and the US over Taiwan. Page 10 will curdle your blood as you'll see that they anticipate to lose dozens of ships including two(!) aircraft carriers. Page 11 shows hundreds of losses of various aircraft.

SpaceX will not save those lives and they will not be able to replace the equipment in time for a second engagement with China.

Take a look at a previous comment that I wrote about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42391816

[0] https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites...

I read your comment and the pdf and I guess my question is answered. “No, we did not consider asymmetric and possibly massively impactful scenarios like control of low earth orbit munitions deployed on a massive scale.”

I interpreted your question as asking if the US could use SpaceX's rocket manufacturing capacity to produce ICBMs that could be used to hit Chinese ships.

Now that I see that this was not what you're suggesting I don't think that two years is a sufficient time frame to build, test, and deploy the kinds of weapons that you're suggesting.

It seems like America is sleep walking into a horrible conflict with China and this combined with all of the soft power that America is losing in the past few months doesn't bode well for the outcome of this conflict.

That’s where I’d start looking for advantage.

It’s not particularly asymmetric. China has ICBMS and is upwind from the US. It’s hard to imagine non-civilization-ending conflicts where dropping space rocks on China comes into play.

Imagine harder.

Can you describe in greater detail what you're imagining?

It's mostly just "Golden Dome," Trump's plan to give Musk a global constellation of (potentially nuclear-armed) "anti-ballistic missile" weaponized satellites. I'm sure there's other facets of orbital warfare fantasies involved (X-37B's capabilities for instance) but Golden Dome is Musk's attempt to "disrupt" global defense by implementing the SDI plans of the 80s and 90s (aka SpaceX).

Admittedly, it's a dangerous plan for all of humanity. I've considered it Musk's win-condition for this whole insane, destructive wager he's made with his reputation, businesses, and wealth on the table.

I think it's why the neonazi regime aren't afraid of plunging the world into economic catastrophe and setting the conditions for WW3. They believe their plan can't fail. Regrettably, it seems like we'll get to find out.

There's almost no chance that this gets built, tested, and deployed in the time frame required to avert the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the US military.

Basically this.

Not for free and not in the span of a post, no. I’d love to do it over 6 months for 5 million dollars with a team of 6

"I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain."

Not at all. I believe the US government has already studied this, published the outcome, and probably knows anything I or most teams of experts could. I think it’s in a drawer somewhere labeled, “For use in case of war with China under US dictator” but if we need to pretend it’s new information I’m offering my services.

The question isn't whether or not the US has the technical means sitting somewhere in a drawer to do this, the question is whether or not they have the industrial capacity and political will to do this in the time frame needed to avert losing dozens of ships and hundreds of aircraft as well as the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers.

The answer to that question unfortunately appears to be 'no.'

If we've gamed out who's going to win and we know it is US, why would we keep that information a secret?

If there were a plan sitting in a drawer somewhere that showed the US colonizing mainland China at the cost of half a million US military personnel I'd be sure that plan accidentally leaked.

Or a fake version of it that cost 5 million and took six months

I don't understand how this comment relates to the thread, can you elaborate?

no guarantees that china would limit those when at war, same as russia and ukraine kept trading oil.

theres no guarantees that the US would get involved with china invading taiwan, either. again, look at ukraine. sales and donations of old materiel only

How do they know some entrepreneur won't buy a boatload of them, export them from China to France or Indonesia or wherever, then re-export them to the US?

Especially if said entrepreneur is working with (or an outright front for) US intelligence, so they're sophisticated enough at this game to run an Airtag detector over the cargo when they transfer it from the ship the Chinese know about to the one they don't.

That is how Russia sells lots of its oil, how the US got titanium supplies for the SR-71 from Soviet Union and will most definitely happen. But it is also very inefficient and will drive up costs.

I wonder i this will push US to be bolder/aggressive wrt Greenland.

How old is too old to learn a completely new and very different language?

The US president is 78 and learned to speak russian propaganda fluently.

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