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Comment by nclin_ | Hacker News Reader

With China's manufacturing capacities, self-reliance, and access to resources, the US's only way of winning a confrontation is a nuclear first-strike.

Before the attack on Iran, China arrayed 6000 fishing ships in formation in the south china sea, demonstrating impressive militia command and control. Their weapon systems are modular and containerized and designed to militarize their civilian manufacturing on demand.

If the US attacks china without crippling it and forcing a surrender immediately, they have no chance of winning a protracted conflict.

It is frankly weird that Americans don't understand this. It's not how much you spend on military, it's how much you CAN spend on military, when you have to. Autonomous weapons also close the training and experience divide very quickly (especially in a conflict with mutual losses where trained specialists can't be easily replaced).

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I have heard so many of these thunderous, self-assured statements. Russia can not loose, the caliphate of allah can not be defeated, the third reich will last a thousand years, the empire of japan will prevail. The USSR is superior, produces more of everything and better- the landscapes beyond the iron curtain are blooming. History books are filled to the brim with them.

And then the the bells tongue hits the bell- and reality comes crawling back, while the same empty statements ring on and on, ever more hollow. Words are cheap and posters are easy. But reality to make itself heard.

If the underlying problem, that caused the century of humiliation has not been fixed, it can happen again. China needs the world more, than the world needs china. If manufacturing can not be exported, it goes elsewhere in a hurry. Vietnam, India, Brazil, the world is filled with countries, that will happily shoulder what china does now.

The british empire comes to mind. Could it win a war against germany? Yes and yes. Was it a phyric victory, that ultimately rang in the end of the old empires. Also yes. War can be a game that has only loosers, the only winning move is not to play.

You're right more self assured than I actually think, but that's my prediction.

I agree, China is not looking to fight and would only fight a defensive war. With how the US attacked Iran first (during negotiations!) + have led escalation patterns (Israel hit Iranian oil infrastructure before the LNG terminal in Qatar was hit), China will be watching very closely.

The US have already cut off Chinese oil from Venezuela, and are now disrupting the flow from Iran. This is legible as a strategy to deprive China of resources.

I have built this tool* over the last few weeks which collates, maps and timelines reports, the pattern of American and Israeli escalation is very clear (also look at the Israeli domestic expansion into the west bank while this is all going on!).

* https://conflictintelligence.ai/ running cheap on deepseek at the moment as a proof of concept but the extraction and synthesis is performing well :)

What gave you the impression that China is incapable of nuclear retaliation?

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