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> America is the world power least worried about physical geography and locations if and when the shooting starts. 2 oceans as moats, plenty of oil and natural

by ardy42 6y ago

> America is the world power least worried about physical geography and locations if and when the shooting starts. 2 oceans as moats, plenty of oil and natural resources on its home turf, and all potential flashpoints on the other side of the world. Can you grow semiconductors on corn plants? Big moats don't help with embargoes, and if your economy is based on international trade (like the globalization crowd has championed), an embargo would be crippling. Around WWII, they used to call America the "workshop of the world," but China has that title now. Also, you seem to be forgetting that long range, intercontinental missiles and bombers exist now, when they didn't during WWII.

strictnein 6y ago
> Can you grow semiconductors on corn plants? Intel has 4 fabs in the US Global Foundries has 3
magicsmoke 6y ago
Apparently when war starts iPhones will be more important than oil, steel, jets, and ships. Or does China build those for the US military as well? Also, ICBMs fly both ways. But while nobody decides to press the "End Game" button, the US with its self sufficient continent can weather more punches than any other country in any conceivable conventional war scenario.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  We all saw the manufacturing chaos that ensued when shipping of components and products from overseas was drastically curtailed at the start of the COVID-19 epidemic. While military suppliers are supposedly required to secure their supply chains against such disruptions, it would be surprising if they hadn't screwed big parts of it up after being so long in peacetime.
- nemothekid 6y ago
  >Apparently when war starts iPhones will be more important than oil, steel, jets, and ships You are focusing too much on the war aspect instead of what happens at home. What happens to companies like Apple and nVidia when for whatever reason they can no longer manufacture in China. Apple luckily has a rainy day fund to fund itself until heat death of the universe, but other companies may not be so lucky. I’m sure it would take decades at this point to develop the talent, infrastructure and scale in manufacturing that China currently has
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Apparently when war starts iPhones will be more important than oil, steel, jets, and ships. Or does China build those for the US military as well? Sure, the US military has maintained low-volume domestic manufacturing capability in those areas to meet peacetime military demand. However, you mentioned WWII. Did the US fight that with just its preexisting military-allocated production capacity? It did not. You had jukebox companies drafted into making rifles and car companies into building tanks and airplanes. Electronics are key to most modern military equipment, and guess who has the spare manufacturing capacity in that area now? > Also, ICBMs fly both ways. But while nobody decides to press the "End Game" button, the US with its self sufficient continent can weather more punches than any other country in any conceivable conventional war scenario. Attacks with long-range conventional missiles are also a distinct possibility. You also used that word "self-sufficient" again. The issue here is contemporary Western politico-economic dogma has abandoned the idea of self-sufficiency in favor of interdependence and free trade. China, has not done that, and appears to have deliberate industrial policy with the goal of modernized self-sufficiency. IIRC, its main imports are raw materials, which it may still be able to obtain through trade (e.g. Russian oil and gas) or military capture in a hot war.
  - onepointsixC 6y ago
    China is neither food nor energy secure and Russia cannot provide sufficient quantities of either. PLARF would be focused on not continental US, but US forward positions which would allow for US assets to easily strike Mainland China. Fact is that the US could starve out China from a distance if needed. Furthermore for all the Chinese efforts for self sufficiency, it lacks that in high tech manufacturing.
Symmetry 6y ago
Leading node semiconductors come from Taiwan and South Korea. In the event of WWIII nobody is going to be getting those until the fighting stops. Of the accessible fabs the US has better domestic silicon manufacturing capacity than China. Also China's economy is just as reliant on importing cheap raw materials as the US is on importing cheap manufactured goods. Hypothetical non-nuclear WWIII is terrible for everybody but the US, with the ability to control oceans that aren't within a few thousand miles of the Chinese mainland, is probably in a better position than China is to recover economically.
- javajosh 6y ago
  Americans in 1941 were much different than they are now. My sense is that Americans then were more practical, more humble (while still being feisty), and they had a better handle on physical and social reality. We could do so much so quickly then. But now, during late-stage capitalism, information systems dominate physical systems, and that's a great way to lose a war. When everyone wants their cut, wants their say, is willing to fight dirty, with tooth and nail in the legal system to get their way, it slows everything down to a crawl, and makes everything more expensive. Want to preview Americans in wartime? Look at any and every city infrastructure project currently deadlocked and billions over-budget. That's us. And while our broken justice system grinds through the paperwork, the courthouse gets bombed by the barbarians who were never slowed down by paperwork. This is less an argument against civilization, and more like a wake-up call: America has multiple interlocked badly broken systems that all need massive reform. Forget about justice, I think its necessary for our civilization to survive. It is urgent that we reform our judicial system (where any involvement IS the punishment), our medical system (where getting sick is a prelude to bankrupcy), our social safety net (where getting fired without a personal support net means homelessness), consumer rights (where deregulation and arbitration clauses leave individual consumers to fight alone against huge well-funded interests), the tax system (which is too large and complex for anyone to use properly), and education (where students must take enormous debt to get educated, and so much of that debt funds administrative overhead). Personally, I don't even think these things should be about your location on a politcal scale - right or left, these are table stakes for a 21st century democracy. The lack of on-shore manufacturing, particularly for big infrastructure projects, e.g. things like roads, the electrical grid, tall buildings, and factories, is merely a symptom, I think, of all the rest. Yeah, the consumer market is strong, but for the everyday Joe, it is painful to deal with all these broken systems on a day-to-day basis.
georgeecollins 6y ago
The US actually depends on trade much less than most nations. Any economic embargo would be bad, but in general much worse for almost any other nation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_trade-to-GDP_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_trade-to-... Also, surprisingly, more people in the US work in manufacturing today than in 1939. And obviously the $ value of that manufacturing is much higher due to increased productivity. https://thelevelfield.com/dashboard/us-manufacturing-employment-1939-2019/ https://thelevelfield.com/dashboard/us-manufacturing-employm... Any conflict would be terrible and should be avoided, but its not like the US became very vulnerable recently.
- javajosh 6y ago
  It seems like our inability to get basic civilian infrastructure work done in a reasonable time-frame and cost bodes ill for any wartime effort.
- baybal2 6y ago
  USA's manufacturing statistics is weird. There are a lot of "manufacturing" companies with billions in revenue without a single factory in USA. First, it is funny accounting, second, it is LOWER productivity of most companies, not higher, which is counter-weighted in statistics by few supergiant companies like Boeing, third, it is slow shift to lower value goods, and processes in smaller companies, and sky higher ones in big ones.

by ardy42 6y ago

strictnein 6y ago

> Can you grow semiconductors on corn plants? Intel has 4 fabs in the US Global Foundries has 3

magicsmoke 6y ago

Apparently when war starts iPhones will be more important than oil, steel, jets, and ships. Or does China build those for the US military as well? Also, ICBMs fly both ways. But while nobody decides to press the "End Game" button, the US with its self sufficient continent can weather more punches than any other country in any conceivable conventional war scenario.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago
We all saw the manufacturing chaos that ensued when shipping of components and products from overseas was drastically curtailed at the start of the COVID-19 epidemic. While military suppliers are supposedly required to secure their supply chains against such disruptions, it would be surprising if they hadn't screwed big parts of it up after being so long in peacetime.
nemothekid 6y ago
>Apparently when war starts iPhones will be more important than oil, steel, jets, and ships You are focusing too much on the war aspect instead of what happens at home. What happens to companies like Apple and nVidia when for whatever reason they can no longer manufacture in China. Apple luckily has a rainy day fund to fund itself until heat death of the universe, but other companies may not be so lucky. I’m sure it would take decades at this point to develop the talent, infrastructure and scale in manufacturing that China currently has
ardy42 6y ago
> Apparently when war starts iPhones will be more important than oil, steel, jets, and ships. Or does China build those for the US military as well? Sure, the US military has maintained low-volume domestic manufacturing capability in those areas to meet peacetime military demand. However, you mentioned WWII. Did the US fight that with just its preexisting military-allocated production capacity? It did not. You had jukebox companies drafted into making rifles and car companies into building tanks and airplanes. Electronics are key to most modern military equipment, and guess who has the spare manufacturing capacity in that area now? > Also, ICBMs fly both ways. But while nobody decides to press the "End Game" button, the US with its self sufficient continent can weather more punches than any other country in any conceivable conventional war scenario. Attacks with long-range conventional missiles are also a distinct possibility. You also used that word "self-sufficient" again. The issue here is contemporary Western politico-economic dogma has abandoned the idea of self-sufficiency in favor of interdependence and free trade. China, has not done that, and appears to have deliberate industrial policy with the goal of modernized self-sufficiency. IIRC, its main imports are raw materials, which it may still be able to obtain through trade (e.g. Russian oil and gas) or military capture in a hot war.
- onepointsixC 6y ago
  China is neither food nor energy secure and Russia cannot provide sufficient quantities of either. PLARF would be focused on not continental US, but US forward positions which would allow for US assets to easily strike Mainland China. Fact is that the US could starve out China from a distance if needed. Furthermore for all the Chinese efforts for self sufficiency, it lacks that in high tech manufacturing.

Symmetry 6y ago

Leading node semiconductors come from Taiwan and South Korea. In the event of WWIII nobody is going to be getting those until the fighting stops. Of the accessible fabs the US has better domestic silicon manufacturing capacity than China. Also China's economy is just as reliant on importing cheap raw materials as the US is on importing cheap manufactured goods. Hypothetical non-nuclear WWIII is terrible for everybody but the US, with the ability to control oceans that aren't within a few thousand miles of the Chinese mainland, is probably in a better position than China is to recover economically.

javajosh 6y ago
Americans in 1941 were much different than they are now. My sense is that Americans then were more practical, more humble (while still being feisty), and they had a better handle on physical and social reality. We could do so much so quickly then. But now, during late-stage capitalism, information systems dominate physical systems, and that's a great way to lose a war. When everyone wants their cut, wants their say, is willing to fight dirty, with tooth and nail in the legal system to get their way, it slows everything down to a crawl, and makes everything more expensive. Want to preview Americans in wartime? Look at any and every city infrastructure project currently deadlocked and billions over-budget. That's us. And while our broken justice system grinds through the paperwork, the courthouse gets bombed by the barbarians who were never slowed down by paperwork. This is less an argument against civilization, and more like a wake-up call: America has multiple interlocked badly broken systems that all need massive reform. Forget about justice, I think its necessary for our civilization to survive. It is urgent that we reform our judicial system (where any involvement IS the punishment), our medical system (where getting sick is a prelude to bankrupcy), our social safety net (where getting fired without a personal support net means homelessness), consumer rights (where deregulation and arbitration clauses leave individual consumers to fight alone against huge well-funded interests), the tax system (which is too large and complex for anyone to use properly), and education (where students must take enormous debt to get educated, and so much of that debt funds administrative overhead). Personally, I don't even think these things should be about your location on a politcal scale - right or left, these are table stakes for a 21st century democracy. The lack of on-shore manufacturing, particularly for big infrastructure projects, e.g. things like roads, the electrical grid, tall buildings, and factories, is merely a symptom, I think, of all the rest. Yeah, the consumer market is strong, but for the everyday Joe, it is painful to deal with all these broken systems on a day-to-day basis.

georgeecollins 6y ago

The US actually depends on trade much less than most nations. Any economic embargo would be bad, but in general much worse for almost any other nation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_trade-to-GDP_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_trade-to-... Also, surprisingly, more people in the US work in manufacturing today than in 1939. And obviously the $ value of that manufacturing is much higher due to increased productivity. https://thelevelfield.com/dashboard/us-manufacturing-employment-1939-2019/ https://thelevelfield.com/dashboard/us-manufacturing-employm... Any conflict would be terrible and should be avoided, but its not like the US became very vulnerable recently.

javajosh 6y ago
It seems like our inability to get basic civilian infrastructure work done in a reasonable time-frame and cost bodes ill for any wartime effort.
baybal2 6y ago
USA's manufacturing statistics is weird. There are a lot of "manufacturing" companies with billions in revenue without a single factory in USA. First, it is funny accounting, second, it is LOWER productivity of most companies, not higher, which is counter-weighted in statistics by few supergiant companies like Boeing, third, it is slow shift to lower value goods, and processes in smaller companies, and sky higher ones in big ones.