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No, that's a rather preposterous idea. What exactly would China gain from this that would be worth the possible blowback? The CCP's #1 priority is stability to
by jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
No, that's a rather preposterous idea. What exactly would China gain from this that would be worth the possible blowback?
The CCP's #1 priority is stability to enable continued economic development. That's why they advance their more adversarial goals via sustained incremental efforts. They view democracies as vulnerable as they so often change leadership, whereas they can sustain very long term goals.
Life tends to be more banal than James Bond. The simple explanation here is that something went wrong and sparked a fire during maintenance work, likely welding, and because the ship was in dock with a bazillion service lines running through the hatches, the fire was able to spread to find fuel trivially. Based on a comment I read from one of the DC folks fighting the fire, they don't know the origin, but they do know it got into the fuel lines, which caused a minor explosion. The odds are pretty high they're just gonna have to let the fuel burn off.
- modwest 6y agoWhen I was deployed aboard Naval vessels in 2000 a hole was blown in the side of a ship in our group, the USS Cole. My real life includes attacks on US naval vessels that kill people and destroy equipment.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoOf course I know about the Cole. But this was not a bomb. There's a pretty clear difference in frequency of ships bombed in port vs ones that simply catch fire. The whole point of terrorism is to create a public spectacle and take credit for it. And of course, now we've shifted the goal posts yet again from "It was China!" to "It was terrorist!" with none of this changes in belief motivated by new information or evidence.