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Someone else addressed per capita self sufficiency below. But operationally, this strategy is likely only if US has ability and appetite to enforce blockade fro

Someone else addressed per capita self sufficiency below. But operationally, this strategy is likely only if US has ability and appetite to enforce blockade from other producers. And likely only viable short term before PRC finishes conventional deterrence. As we can see with UKR, most of the world ignored sanctions on food and energy, including west. Keep in mind PRC is buying a lot of ag products from US because of Phase One trade deal. Medium long term, they'd rather decouple and build up other producers. Another Q one should ask is how vunerable US is to comparable counter action. Because US agriculture is highly industrialized and automated whereas PRC ag is in the process of automation and still reliant on labour. Sufficient cyber attack on US ag infra during harvest season and US is forced to ration. What happens to automated John Deere tractors when they have no GPS to harvest. Same with familiar threats of embargoing PRC oil because US is self sufficient on the metric that there's enough fossil fuel resources in the ground. US is only as self sufficient as how much it's 130 refineries can produce. If US interdicts PRC energy, don't be surprised if PRC takes down comparable levels of production state side.

CamperBob2 4y ago
Abandoning trade with China will hurt us, certainly. But unless the Xi regime is overtly suicidal, that's all that will happen, and we'll eventually get over it. As for cyberattacks from China, those can only do so much, and in any case they can be mitigated by cutting the fiber. OTOH, shooting down GPS sats will lead to war. They know better than that. I hope.
- dirtyid 4y ago
  > will lead to war This is in event of an war. Legally, so is blockading PRC, including food and energy imports which is not an unfamiliar discussion in US policy circles. As for cyber, US DoD / Biden also explicitly communicated to both PRC and RU that cyberwarfare on critical infra = actions comparable to war. I don't know if cutting fibre is a joke, there's millions of PRC diasphora, unless US disconnects from internet globally, that's assuming PRC agents aren't state side already. So the real question is, does the US know better than to intervene when PRC attempts armed reunification with TW, which seems increasingly likely while bills are being drawn in congress to boost TW into major non-Nato ally? Because if US does, there's no telling how things will escalate, especially when modern connectivity and increasing PRC missile capabilities means CONUS is no longer safe. Incidentally, I think both sides knows this, on paper but frequently, better judgement gets overriden by domestic politics.
- credit_guy 4y ago
  > shooting down GPS sats It's unlikely China or Russia, or anyone, has the capability to shoot down GPS sats. A number of countries, the US included, have demonstrated capability to shoot down satellites, low orbit satellites. GPS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit, which is a whole different species of animal. Shooting down an LEO satellite can be done with an SM-3 missile which has a mass of 1.5 tons. That's significantly lower than the mass of a rocket needed to put the satellite in orbit, and that's possible because SM-3 is not designed to reach orbital speeds, only orbital heights. Its primary mission is anti-ballistic missile defense and ballistic missiles can reach thousands of kilometers altitude, but not tens of thousands. In theory one can design a missile that can reach GSO heights without reaching GSO speeds, but that requires a dedicated project, which would be extremely expensive, and very difficult to keep under wraps. All missile launches are pre-declared to minimize the risk of a nuclear war. You can find a list of all orbital and suborbital launches on wikipedia (e.g. [1]). If anyone tried to test a missile that can reach GSO heights, they couldn't keep it a secret. One can then try to shoot down GSO satellites with full size rockets, like Falcon Heavy. But there are 31 GPS satellites out there, and 30 Galileo. I doubt either Russia or China (or even America) have 60 full size rockets available to do a blitzkrieg strike against the GPS satellites. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_launches_in_January%E2%80%93June_2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_launches_i...
  - LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
    GPS isn't geosynchronous. And not that high. Three relevant graphics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System
  - webmobdev 4y ago
    I remember reading somewhere that some country is working on laser weapons to knock out satellites. That makes more sense than using a missile as all you want is to disable a satellite, not necessarily destroy it and add to the space junk ...

CamperBob2 4y ago

Abandoning trade with China will hurt us, certainly. But unless the Xi regime is overtly suicidal, that's all that will happen, and we'll eventually get over it. As for cyberattacks from China, those can only do so much, and in any case they can be mitigated by cutting the fiber. OTOH, shooting down GPS sats will lead to war. They know better than that. I hope.

dirtyid 4y ago
> will lead to war This is in event of an war. Legally, so is blockading PRC, including food and energy imports which is not an unfamiliar discussion in US policy circles. As for cyber, US DoD / Biden also explicitly communicated to both PRC and RU that cyberwarfare on critical infra = actions comparable to war. I don't know if cutting fibre is a joke, there's millions of PRC diasphora, unless US disconnects from internet globally, that's assuming PRC agents aren't state side already. So the real question is, does the US know better than to intervene when PRC attempts armed reunification with TW, which seems increasingly likely while bills are being drawn in congress to boost TW into major non-Nato ally? Because if US does, there's no telling how things will escalate, especially when modern connectivity and increasing PRC missile capabilities means CONUS is no longer safe. Incidentally, I think both sides knows this, on paper but frequently, better judgement gets overriden by domestic politics.
credit_guy 4y ago
> shooting down GPS sats It's unlikely China or Russia, or anyone, has the capability to shoot down GPS sats. A number of countries, the US included, have demonstrated capability to shoot down satellites, low orbit satellites. GPS satellites are in geosynchronous orbit, which is a whole different species of animal. Shooting down an LEO satellite can be done with an SM-3 missile which has a mass of 1.5 tons. That's significantly lower than the mass of a rocket needed to put the satellite in orbit, and that's possible because SM-3 is not designed to reach orbital speeds, only orbital heights. Its primary mission is anti-ballistic missile defense and ballistic missiles can reach thousands of kilometers altitude, but not tens of thousands. In theory one can design a missile that can reach GSO heights without reaching GSO speeds, but that requires a dedicated project, which would be extremely expensive, and very difficult to keep under wraps. All missile launches are pre-declared to minimize the risk of a nuclear war. You can find a list of all orbital and suborbital launches on wikipedia (e.g. [1]). If anyone tried to test a missile that can reach GSO heights, they couldn't keep it a secret. One can then try to shoot down GSO satellites with full size rockets, like Falcon Heavy. But there are 31 GPS satellites out there, and 30 Galileo. I doubt either Russia or China (or even America) have 60 full size rockets available to do a blitzkrieg strike against the GPS satellites. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_launches_in_January%E2%80%93June_2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight_launches_i...
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  GPS isn't geosynchronous. And not that high. Three relevant graphics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System
- webmobdev 4y ago
  I remember reading somewhere that some country is working on laser weapons to knock out satellites. That makes more sense than using a missile as all you want is to disable a satellite, not necessarily destroy it and add to the space junk ...