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If we're talking about burying ledes, it seems the real story here is that the US doesn't appear to know how to make cheap, high quality container cranes. That

by roenxi 3y ago

If we're talking about burying ledes, it seems the real story here is that the US doesn't appear to know how to make cheap, high quality container cranes. That seems vaguely like it should be a security concern in itself; if the US isn't cost-competitive enough to build cranes for US ports, what exactly is going to happen in a war? If the US is seriously worried about fighting China then they're at a real disadvantage because China has all this heavy industry they can repurpose to a war effort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZPMC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZPMC says the same Chinese group are going to be building a new Bay Bridge in San Francisco. And they (ZPMC) don't even have bridge building experience! I'm going with a US v. USSR style defeated-before-the-fight-starts scenario here favouring China.

amluto 3y ago
> US doesn't appear to know how to make cheap, high quality container cranes The US doesn’t know how to make cheap, high quality hardware as far as I can tell. Basically every time I’ve recently looked for a piece of somewhat specialized hardware, especially if it’s at least a bit electronic, it’s from China or Taiwan. The cheap sketchy hardware comes from China. The slightly more expensive apparently nice stuff comes from China or Taiwan (but is oddly hard to buy — apparently these companies have not mastered distribution?). The really nice expensive stuff has substantially less informative spec sheets, comes from US-based companies, and is actually a nice package wrapped around almost-stock gear from China or Taiwan. Even brand new innovative things “from the US” outsource to ODMs in China or Taiwan. For some reason the US doesn’t seem to have nice contract manufactures or ODM shops and also seems to lack the expertise needed to cost-effectively design or manufacture power electronics.
Too 3y ago
Since when did not being cost-competitive become a concern for the US military?
- roenxi 3y ago
  At the highest of levels, if two parties are at war the one with the most resources wins. That is obviously a gross oversimplification as millennia of tactics demonstrate, but for the sake of argument just hold the thought for a moment. If the US supply chain isn't cost effective, then it'll have to commit multiple times the resources of the adversary to win. If the US supply chain becomes inefficient enough, at some point the US becomes unable to win. The US doesn't have multiple times the resources of China when it comes to overall manufacturing, so under that oversimplified model the US just loses any direct war - and apparently their military budgets are similarly sized right now [0], so if China is much more efficient at manufacturing (more than about 2x) they might have an edge even at present spending without being on war footing. Ok, so now we snap back to reality where there are other factors than just manufacturing efficiency and the US military is presumably in better shape than China's. But you can hopefully see now how without overwhelming manufacturing the US needs to maintain big strategic, organisational and technological advantages over the Chinese military to compete with them. They can't outresource someone with similar resources (for which we have GDP and manufacturing output as proxies) and much more efficient processes. [0] https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/ https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/

by roenxi 3y ago

amluto 3y ago

> US doesn't appear to know how to make cheap, high quality container cranes The US doesn’t know how to make cheap, high quality hardware as far as I can tell. Basically every time I’ve recently looked for a piece of somewhat specialized hardware, especially if it’s at least a bit electronic, it’s from China or Taiwan. The cheap sketchy hardware comes from China. The slightly more expensive apparently nice stuff comes from China or Taiwan (but is oddly hard to buy — apparently these companies have not mastered distribution?). The really nice expensive stuff has substantially less informative spec sheets, comes from US-based companies, and is actually a nice package wrapped around almost-stock gear from China or Taiwan. Even brand new innovative things “from the US” outsource to ODMs in China or Taiwan. For some reason the US doesn’t seem to have nice contract manufactures or ODM shops and also seems to lack the expertise needed to cost-effectively design or manufacture power electronics.

Too 3y ago

Since when did not being cost-competitive become a concern for the US military?

roenxi 3y ago
At the highest of levels, if two parties are at war the one with the most resources wins. That is obviously a gross oversimplification as millennia of tactics demonstrate, but for the sake of argument just hold the thought for a moment. If the US supply chain isn't cost effective, then it'll have to commit multiple times the resources of the adversary to win. If the US supply chain becomes inefficient enough, at some point the US becomes unable to win. The US doesn't have multiple times the resources of China when it comes to overall manufacturing, so under that oversimplified model the US just loses any direct war - and apparently their military budgets are similarly sized right now [0], so if China is much more efficient at manufacturing (more than about 2x) they might have an edge even at present spending without being on war footing. Ok, so now we snap back to reality where there are other factors than just manufacturing efficiency and the US military is presumably in better shape than China's. But you can hopefully see now how without overwhelming manufacturing the US needs to maintain big strategic, organisational and technological advantages over the Chinese military to compete with them. They can't outresource someone with similar resources (for which we have GDP and manufacturing output as proxies) and much more efficient processes. [0] https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/ https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/