12 ms·

China marching into Taiwan would be a losing move. Never mind the civil unrest, the entire world would bail out of China. Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singa

China marching into Taiwan would be a losing move. Never mind the civil unrest, the entire world would bail out of China. Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand + India would be even more alerted than they are right now with HK situation. The narrative in these countries is quickly evolving. CCP is over playing their hand by engaging in asymetrical trade.

magicsmoke 6y ago
China won't march into Taiwan until they can win a naval war with the US to keep the US from retaliating. And if China can do that, they won't have to march into Taiwan. 2050 Indo-pacific naval war is my prediction.
- neilpanchal 6y ago
  Just broadcast the entire battle on the world stage and we shall watch the show. No human deaths, no civilian casualties, the whole battlefield would be completely remote controlled, streaming in a 128K VR extravaganza. I think the future of war sounds fun.
  - threatofrain 6y ago
    No way the future will only be robot vs robot in some sterile symbolic chess game. The endgame is robots getting past robots to kill people.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Indeed. A proxy robot war is just a very expensive game. And if you can settle your differences this way, you may as well do that in Quake 3 Arena for cheaper. And if you can settle your differences with Q3A, you may as well do that over the negotiating table. All of these depend on mutual cooperation; both parties agreeing to respect the outcome of the game. Real war starts when one party is unhappy about the outcome and unilaterally decides to no longer cooperate.
      - magicsmoke 6y ago
        Also when the two parties misjudge their relative military strength. If both parties were in relative agreement about what the outcome of their war would be they wouldn't have to fight one in order to negotiate changes to the status quo. That's why espionage can be a stabilizing force and the US and USSR had treaties during the latter parts of the cold war allowing each side to fly spy planes into the others territory to count missile sites.
        jbay808 6y ago
        Well, you have to make sure those spies also report that neither side would decisively win. The US and USSR must both have already been confident enough in their own strength to openly allow the other side to see it.
- chmod775 6y ago
  A naval war in 2050? I suspect that in 2050 mach 20 missiles are going to be the norm, not the exception, and point defense is essentially... pointless against those. It's already inadequate against today's (~mach 5) supersonic missiles. And china has literally tens of thousands with thousands of kilometers range stationed along their coast. A navy that pokes its head out is not going to last long. China's missile superiority in the (western pacific) region has long been a thorn in the US side, but there's little that can be done given that their territory is there, and the US can at best station some in allied territories nearby or put it on ships, which are easy targets. So you pretty much have to keep your ships hidden at all times, but being hidden they are going to be pretty much useless except as missile platforms.
  - riffraff 6y ago
    what about submarines? It seems likely one of the first moves the US could do is disrupt china's economy by simply blocking their sea routes.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      The question is, who would that harm more? March 2020 has shown us that disrupting sea routes between two continents hurts everyone.
      - solstice 6y ago
        Right now you are right. But I suspect that a lot of governments are furiously at work right now to figure out to turn back globalization a bit to lower their dependence on products being manufactured far away. So I think that the equation will change to some degree and that in turn lower interdependence of countries and therefore possibly the threshold for conflicts...
      - magicsmoke 6y ago
        Certainly not the US. One of the US's greatest geopolitical advantages is that it actually does have all the natural resources it needs in the America's. That's why calls for isolationist policies can be so enticing, because unlike for most countries dependent on oil or metals from international trade, there's no physical barrier to the US taking the option of turtling up. China would suffocate on its lack of oil as it tries to sip what it can through the straws it has to Russian oil fields on the other end of Eurasia if it ever had international oil shipping barred from it.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  No country wants to start WWIII. I don't think the PRC is in a position to finish off the ROC, and I don't think it would be in their interests, either. But equally I don't think that the US want to intervene directly should the PRC take over Taiwan. This would be madness. The problem is thus to imagine how the US would manage to politically 'sell' their inaction. But at the same time, would the PRC dare to take the bet that the US wouldn't intervene? Taiwan is not much different from Crimea on many aspects, but it is different in one key aspect: It's been given much more international prominence, mostly because it is a pawn to annoy the PRC. But the downside is that it makes non-intervention (which is the reasonable course of action, like in Crimea) more difficult to sell. Then, should the PRC invade (which is unlikely) while I'm sure that the Taiwanese would put up a good fight they would lose anyway. There would be plenty of grand speeches and maybe sanctions, but the reality is that everyone would just be looking for the right time to recognise the situation and move on (that's what happened with the existence of the PRC itself, and I'm sure is what will happen with Crimea).
  - throw51319 6y ago
    Yeah but isn't it the definition of a slippery slope?
    - mytailorisrich 6y ago
      Not really. Taiwan really is an internal Chinese issue and Crimea is essentially 'repairing' the issue of a Russian territory (with majority Russian population) that was split from Russia relatively recently. Everyone knows that and thus no-one is going to start a direct war over these territories. But even if you were contemplating a direct war the issue would be that direct wars against Russia or China are not realistic because they are nuclear powers and, in any case, too big to invade. Any direct war would certainly require a major aggression from these countries against the US themselves, which they obviously won't do in the same way as the US won't directly attack them. It's all boils down to relative strengths and outcome of a war. There are wars that are never worth starting.
      - 6y ago
- barrkel 6y ago
  China can almost certainly win a naval war with the US already; or rather, negate the US's naval force projection tool of choice, the aircraft carrier, with anti-ship ballistic missiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-26 - range of 2500 miles
  - HideousKojima 6y ago
    Every Carrier Battle Group has two ships in it that are essentially devoted to just protecting the carrier whether from missiles or other threats. We've yet to see how effective systems like Aegis are against anti-ship missiles (though I'm sure the DoD has done plenty of tests) but it's far from clear that anti-ship missiles obsolete carriers. And given that China is starting their own carrier fleets I'm guessing they don't think things are so clear cut either. The Exocet was made way back in the early 70's yet carriers and surface fleets in general still aren't obsolete.
    - barrkel 6y ago
      https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/china-likely-tested-missiles-can-kill-aircraft-carriers-south-china-sea-65881 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/china-likely-tested-m... https://globalnews.ca/news/4810853/china-railgun-warship-weapon/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4810853/china-railgun-warship-wea... https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/3/22/incoming-can-aircraft-carriers-survive-hypersonic-weapons https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/3/22/i... https://news.usni.org/2019/03/05/report-u-s-carriers-need-new-lethal-unmanned-aircraft-new-fighter-to-stay-relevant https://news.usni.org/2019/03/05/report-u-s-carriers-need-ne... https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-apparently-gets-its-ass-handed-to-it-in-war-games-2019-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-apparently-gets-its-a... Of course a lot of this is self-serving stuff designed to drum up more money to spend, but defence against missiles is fundamentally asymmetric. The defender need to get lucky every time, while the attacker only needs to be lucky once or twice. And MIRV is a big multiplier in favour of the attacker. Carriers are great against countries or factions without anti-ship missile capability.
    - jbay808 6y ago
tathougies 6y ago
> Never mind the civil unrest, the entire world would bail out of China. That is not clear.. at all. Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand -- the non-US western allies -- have all known exactly what China's end goal is and have down jack diddly squat to put pressure on them. The only thing preventing China from taking out Taiwan is the United States. Europe and the rest of the world is too cowardly to even do anything, which is really unfortunate.
- cm2187 6y ago
  You are being downvoted but what happened with Crimea proves your point.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    True, although Crimea was pretty much testcase-scale - not many people live there, and its economic value is pretty low. Taiwan is much much more populous, and has a much higher economic value.
    - avhception 6y ago
      Crimea has strategic value for the military though, the port of Sevastopol houses the Russian Black Sea fleet.
  - pmachinery 6y ago
    What did the US do to prevent Russia "taking out" Crimea that the cowardly rest of the world didn't?
    - cm2187 6y ago
      I am not saying it is obvious that the US would confront China militarily if it was to invade Taiwan. But Europe did let a friendly country at its immediate border get invaded and didn’t even stop buying the main resource the invader relies on (oil and gas). Let alone have any military involvement.
roncomie 6y ago
Xi jing ping fears CCP is at its end so anything could happen https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=de2bc41f8324e6955ef65e0c9&id=e6539b92c8 https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=de2bc41f8324e6955ef65e0... “Beijing has accused the French of using their nursing homes as death camps, has blamed Italy for being the source of the coronavirus (at the very peak of Italian deaths), has charged the US Army with bringing the virus to China in the first place, has thrown a “fact sheet” of truly disbelievable disinformation at the fact-oriented Germans...“ “ Xi is attempting to use a global anti-Chinese backlash to enflame anti-foreigner nationalist activity within China” “ Btw, if you are a manufacturer or investor and you still have personnel in China, now would be a glorious time to get them out”
tanilama 6y ago
China is of no interests to Taiwan in normal times. The hostile rhetoric towards Taiwan is a CCP relic, it is Mao's legacy to close off civil war, not anything else. It is like Abortion to GOP, which is all about identity, other than actual purpose of pursuing such ideal. If occupying Taiwan is worthy of losing global trade and business and tens of millions of Chinese' livelihood, CCP would already act on it. The only reason it hasn't done anything is because it doesn't want/care to. It is probably true that both China/Taiwan to stay in the status quo, with ever so often mainly symbolic bickering.
- fermienrico 6y ago
  Symbolic bickering? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/world/asia/taiwan-arms-sales.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/world/asia/taiwan-arms-sa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_arms_sales_to_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_arms_sales_to_Taiwa... I don't know, I guess the entire field of diplomacy and international relations can be characterized as "symbolic bickering" - as opposed to "non-symbolic bickering" - which would involve dropping bombs over the other party's territory.
  - tanilama 6y ago
    I don't think those arms sales are even remotely relevant. Under what timeline a regime won't need to arm itself? Even China and Russia are armed near the border, or China/North Korea.
renw0rp 6y ago
You can't be seriously that naive. Were you born yesterday?
bobthepanda 6y ago
It's also worth pointing out that Taiwan is so densely populated and small that it would be hard to invade Taiwan without simultaneously destroying everything of value. It's a fools' errand.
- holdenc 6y ago
  It does not require an invasion unfortunately. It only requires a naval blockade, which would effectively starve the island until they concede to defeat.
  - davidf18 6y ago
    No blockade can happen because the US Navy would intercede and supplies can come from other countries such as nearby Philippines. Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Nickel_Grass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Nickel_Grass
  - zymhan 6y ago
    Taiwan Airlift anyone?
McTossOut 6y ago
All trade is asymmetrical, just their trade is a little more asymmetrical.
blackhaz 6y ago
Who will give a shit, really? Russia is marching into all neighboring countries since what, 60s? and nobody raises a voice. Hell, I think they could march into Czech republic and EU would still be debating if they should continue buying Russian gas. Rapid geopolitical shifts between the West and China are unlikely, IMHO.
101404 6y ago
China is 1.4 billion people. That's more people than the western world combined. Once China has "acquired" the technology, it doesn't need an export market anymore for economies of scale. China's internal market is more than large enough for that. Just a detail to keep in mind.
- solstice 6y ago
  That's a bit too simple. People in inland provinces such as gansu or guizhou have much -much- lower purchasing power. I encourage you to have a look at a map of China with GDP numbers and then compare them to the US, Germany or Japan...
  - 101404 6y ago
    No need to look, I lived there long enough and have been to every province. Despite the still existing poverty is the internal market large enough already for many products. However, China is not quite there yet when it comes to technology (hence the many Chinese students in Western universities), but they are well on the way.
woofie11 6y ago
I think the key question is what happens to Taiwan in a US<->China war: 1) Does the US have a base-of-operations off of China's coast? If it independent? Is it Chinese? 2) who gets Taiwan's manufacturing and technology? Does it supply the US military or the Chinese military? War is mostly about supply chains and manufacturing capacity. It's how the US won WWII. These are big questions. They're not necessarily urgent, but they are big.

magicsmoke 6y ago

China won't march into Taiwan until they can win a naval war with the US to keep the US from retaliating. And if China can do that, they won't have to march into Taiwan. 2050 Indo-pacific naval war is my prediction.

neilpanchal 6y ago
Just broadcast the entire battle on the world stage and we shall watch the show. No human deaths, no civilian casualties, the whole battlefield would be completely remote controlled, streaming in a 128K VR extravaganza. I think the future of war sounds fun.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  No way the future will only be robot vs robot in some sterile symbolic chess game. The endgame is robots getting past robots to kill people.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Indeed. A proxy robot war is just a very expensive game. And if you can settle your differences this way, you may as well do that in Quake 3 Arena for cheaper. And if you can settle your differences with Q3A, you may as well do that over the negotiating table. All of these depend on mutual cooperation; both parties agreeing to respect the outcome of the game. Real war starts when one party is unhappy about the outcome and unilaterally decides to no longer cooperate.
    - magicsmoke 6y ago
      Also when the two parties misjudge their relative military strength. If both parties were in relative agreement about what the outcome of their war would be they wouldn't have to fight one in order to negotiate changes to the status quo. That's why espionage can be a stabilizing force and the US and USSR had treaties during the latter parts of the cold war allowing each side to fly spy planes into the others territory to count missile sites.
      - jbay808 6y ago
        Well, you have to make sure those spies also report that neither side would decisively win. The US and USSR must both have already been confident enough in their own strength to openly allow the other side to see it.
chmod775 6y ago
A naval war in 2050? I suspect that in 2050 mach 20 missiles are going to be the norm, not the exception, and point defense is essentially... pointless against those. It's already inadequate against today's (~mach 5) supersonic missiles. And china has literally tens of thousands with thousands of kilometers range stationed along their coast. A navy that pokes its head out is not going to last long. China's missile superiority in the (western pacific) region has long been a thorn in the US side, but there's little that can be done given that their territory is there, and the US can at best station some in allied territories nearby or put it on ships, which are easy targets. So you pretty much have to keep your ships hidden at all times, but being hidden they are going to be pretty much useless except as missile platforms.
- riffraff 6y ago
  what about submarines? It seems likely one of the first moves the US could do is disrupt china's economy by simply blocking their sea routes.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    The question is, who would that harm more? March 2020 has shown us that disrupting sea routes between two continents hurts everyone.
    - solstice 6y ago
      Right now you are right. But I suspect that a lot of governments are furiously at work right now to figure out to turn back globalization a bit to lower their dependence on products being manufactured far away. So I think that the equation will change to some degree and that in turn lower interdependence of countries and therefore possibly the threshold for conflicts...
    - magicsmoke 6y ago
      Certainly not the US. One of the US's greatest geopolitical advantages is that it actually does have all the natural resources it needs in the America's. That's why calls for isolationist policies can be so enticing, because unlike for most countries dependent on oil or metals from international trade, there's no physical barrier to the US taking the option of turtling up. China would suffocate on its lack of oil as it tries to sip what it can through the straws it has to Russian oil fields on the other end of Eurasia if it ever had international oil shipping barred from it.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
No country wants to start WWIII. I don't think the PRC is in a position to finish off the ROC, and I don't think it would be in their interests, either. But equally I don't think that the US want to intervene directly should the PRC take over Taiwan. This would be madness. The problem is thus to imagine how the US would manage to politically 'sell' their inaction. But at the same time, would the PRC dare to take the bet that the US wouldn't intervene? Taiwan is not much different from Crimea on many aspects, but it is different in one key aspect: It's been given much more international prominence, mostly because it is a pawn to annoy the PRC. But the downside is that it makes non-intervention (which is the reasonable course of action, like in Crimea) more difficult to sell. Then, should the PRC invade (which is unlikely) while I'm sure that the Taiwanese would put up a good fight they would lose anyway. There would be plenty of grand speeches and maybe sanctions, but the reality is that everyone would just be looking for the right time to recognise the situation and move on (that's what happened with the existence of the PRC itself, and I'm sure is what will happen with Crimea).
- throw51319 6y ago
  Yeah but isn't it the definition of a slippery slope?
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Not really. Taiwan really is an internal Chinese issue and Crimea is essentially 'repairing' the issue of a Russian territory (with majority Russian population) that was split from Russia relatively recently. Everyone knows that and thus no-one is going to start a direct war over these territories. But even if you were contemplating a direct war the issue would be that direct wars against Russia or China are not realistic because they are nuclear powers and, in any case, too big to invade. Any direct war would certainly require a major aggression from these countries against the US themselves, which they obviously won't do in the same way as the US won't directly attack them. It's all boils down to relative strengths and outcome of a war. There are wars that are never worth starting.
    - 6y ago
barrkel 6y ago
China can almost certainly win a naval war with the US already; or rather, negate the US's naval force projection tool of choice, the aircraft carrier, with anti-ship ballistic missiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-26 - range of 2500 miles
- HideousKojima 6y ago
  Every Carrier Battle Group has two ships in it that are essentially devoted to just protecting the carrier whether from missiles or other threats. We've yet to see how effective systems like Aegis are against anti-ship missiles (though I'm sure the DoD has done plenty of tests) but it's far from clear that anti-ship missiles obsolete carriers. And given that China is starting their own carrier fleets I'm guessing they don't think things are so clear cut either. The Exocet was made way back in the early 70's yet carriers and surface fleets in general still aren't obsolete.
  - barrkel 6y ago
    https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/china-likely-tested-missiles-can-kill-aircraft-carriers-south-china-sea-65881 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/china-likely-tested-m... https://globalnews.ca/news/4810853/china-railgun-warship-weapon/ https://globalnews.ca/news/4810853/china-railgun-warship-wea... https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/3/22/incoming-can-aircraft-carriers-survive-hypersonic-weapons https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/3/22/i... https://news.usni.org/2019/03/05/report-u-s-carriers-need-new-lethal-unmanned-aircraft-new-fighter-to-stay-relevant https://news.usni.org/2019/03/05/report-u-s-carriers-need-ne... https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-apparently-gets-its-ass-handed-to-it-in-war-games-2019-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-apparently-gets-its-a... Of course a lot of this is self-serving stuff designed to drum up more money to spend, but defence against missiles is fundamentally asymmetric. The defender need to get lucky every time, while the attacker only needs to be lucky once or twice. And MIRV is a big multiplier in favour of the attacker. Carriers are great against countries or factions without anti-ship missile capability.
  - jbay808 6y ago

tathougies 6y ago

> Never mind the civil unrest, the entire world would bail out of China. That is not clear.. at all. Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand -- the non-US western allies -- have all known exactly what China's end goal is and have down jack diddly squat to put pressure on them. The only thing preventing China from taking out Taiwan is the United States. Europe and the rest of the world is too cowardly to even do anything, which is really unfortunate.

cm2187 6y ago
You are being downvoted but what happened with Crimea proves your point.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  True, although Crimea was pretty much testcase-scale - not many people live there, and its economic value is pretty low. Taiwan is much much more populous, and has a much higher economic value.
  - avhception 6y ago
    Crimea has strategic value for the military though, the port of Sevastopol houses the Russian Black Sea fleet.
- pmachinery 6y ago
  What did the US do to prevent Russia "taking out" Crimea that the cowardly rest of the world didn't?
  - cm2187 6y ago
    I am not saying it is obvious that the US would confront China militarily if it was to invade Taiwan. But Europe did let a friendly country at its immediate border get invaded and didn’t even stop buying the main resource the invader relies on (oil and gas). Let alone have any military involvement.

roncomie 6y ago

Xi jing ping fears CCP is at its end so anything could happen https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=de2bc41f8324e6955ef65e0c9&id=e6539b92c8 https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=de2bc41f8324e6955ef65e0... “Beijing has accused the French of using their nursing homes as death camps, has blamed Italy for being the source of the coronavirus (at the very peak of Italian deaths), has charged the US Army with bringing the virus to China in the first place, has thrown a “fact sheet” of truly disbelievable disinformation at the fact-oriented Germans...“ “ Xi is attempting to use a global anti-Chinese backlash to enflame anti-foreigner nationalist activity within China” “ Btw, if you are a manufacturer or investor and you still have personnel in China, now would be a glorious time to get them out”

tanilama 6y ago

China is of no interests to Taiwan in normal times. The hostile rhetoric towards Taiwan is a CCP relic, it is Mao's legacy to close off civil war, not anything else. It is like Abortion to GOP, which is all about identity, other than actual purpose of pursuing such ideal. If occupying Taiwan is worthy of losing global trade and business and tens of millions of Chinese' livelihood, CCP would already act on it. The only reason it hasn't done anything is because it doesn't want/care to. It is probably true that both China/Taiwan to stay in the status quo, with ever so often mainly symbolic bickering.

fermienrico 6y ago
Symbolic bickering? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/world/asia/taiwan-arms-sales.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/world/asia/taiwan-arms-sa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_arms_sales_to_Taiwan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_arms_sales_to_Taiwa... I don't know, I guess the entire field of diplomacy and international relations can be characterized as "symbolic bickering" - as opposed to "non-symbolic bickering" - which would involve dropping bombs over the other party's territory.
- tanilama 6y ago
  I don't think those arms sales are even remotely relevant. Under what timeline a regime won't need to arm itself? Even China and Russia are armed near the border, or China/North Korea.

renw0rp 6y ago

You can't be seriously that naive. Were you born yesterday?

bobthepanda 6y ago

It's also worth pointing out that Taiwan is so densely populated and small that it would be hard to invade Taiwan without simultaneously destroying everything of value. It's a fools' errand.

holdenc 6y ago
It does not require an invasion unfortunately. It only requires a naval blockade, which would effectively starve the island until they concede to defeat.
- davidf18 6y ago
  No blockade can happen because the US Navy would intercede and supplies can come from other countries such as nearby Philippines. Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Blockade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Nickel_Grass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Nickel_Grass
- zymhan 6y ago
  Taiwan Airlift anyone?

McTossOut 6y ago

All trade is asymmetrical, just their trade is a little more asymmetrical.

blackhaz 6y ago

Who will give a shit, really? Russia is marching into all neighboring countries since what, 60s? and nobody raises a voice. Hell, I think they could march into Czech republic and EU would still be debating if they should continue buying Russian gas. Rapid geopolitical shifts between the West and China are unlikely, IMHO.

101404 6y ago

China is 1.4 billion people. That's more people than the western world combined. Once China has "acquired" the technology, it doesn't need an export market anymore for economies of scale. China's internal market is more than large enough for that. Just a detail to keep in mind.

solstice 6y ago
That's a bit too simple. People in inland provinces such as gansu or guizhou have much -much- lower purchasing power. I encourage you to have a look at a map of China with GDP numbers and then compare them to the US, Germany or Japan...
- 101404 6y ago
  No need to look, I lived there long enough and have been to every province. Despite the still existing poverty is the internal market large enough already for many products. However, China is not quite there yet when it comes to technology (hence the many Chinese students in Western universities), but they are well on the way.

woofie11 6y ago

I think the key question is what happens to Taiwan in a US<->China war: 1) Does the US have a base-of-operations off of China's coast? If it independent? Is it Chinese? 2) who gets Taiwan's manufacturing and technology? Does it supply the US military or the Chinese military? War is mostly about supply chains and manufacturing capacity. It's how the US won WWII. These are big questions. They're not necessarily urgent, but they are big.