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I wonder what makes people believe that the US currently enjoys any kind of a meaningful "military advantage" over e.g. China? After failing to defeat the Talib

by ein0p 2y ago

I wonder what makes people believe that the US currently enjoys any kind of a meaningful "military advantage" over e.g. China? After failing to defeat the Taliban and running from the Houthis especially. This seems like a very dangerous belief to have. China has 4x the population and outproduces us 10:1 in widgets (2:1 in dollars). Considering just e.g. steel, China produces about 1 billion metric tons of it per year. We produce 80 million tons. Concrete? 2.4B tons vs 96M tons. 70+% of the world's electronics. Their shipbuilding industry is 230x more productive (not a typo). Etc, etc. The short term profits US businesses have been enjoying over the past 25 years came at a staggering long term cost. The sanctions won't even slow down the Chinese MIC, and in the long run they will cause them to develop their own high end silicon sector (obviating the need for our own worldwide). They're already at 7nm, at a low yield. That is more than sufficient for their MIC, including the AI chips used there, currently and in the foreseeable future.

parsimo2010 2y ago
a) just because the government has policies that doesn’t mean they are 100% effective b) export controls aren’t expected to completely prevent a country from gaining access to a technology, just make it take longer and require more resources to achieve You may also be misunderstanding how much money China will spend to develop their semiconductor industry. Sure, they will eventually catch up to the West, but the money they spend along the way won’t be spent on fighter jet, missiles, and ships. It’s still preferable (from the US perspective) to having no export controls and China being able to import semiconductor designs, manufacturing hardware, and AI models trained using US resources. At least this way China is a few months behind and will have to spend a few billion Yuan to achieve it.
airstrike 2y ago
Everyone also thought Russia had a strong military yet look how that worked out
- ein0p 2y ago
  NATO is currently losing a conventional proxy war against it, that's how. Which only reinforces my point: there's zero reason to believe that either proxy or direct confrontation with China can be "won".
  - airstrike 2y ago
    NATO is not fighting that war. You're delusional. They are supporting Ukraine without crossing the threshold of actually fighting the war, as bullshit as it sounds.
    - ein0p 2y ago
      $250B and depleted arsenals say otherwise. It's a proxy war. It's been a proxy war by design all along: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB10000/RB10014/RAND_RB10014.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/R...
      - airstrike 2y ago
        Spending has nothing to do with military reality. Russia is a paper tiger. If the US really supported Ukraine in this war without worrying about crossing some imaginary Rubicon, the war would have been over a long time ago—except Russia might be tempted to use their nukes, so we can't do that. The way to win against Russia is not via sanctions but rather via destabilizing the regime through guerrilla propaganda. The Russians, the Chinese, and the Soviets before them have always known this. The West is just too slow to catch on.
        jrussino 2y ago
        > The way to win against Russia is not via sanctions but rather via destabilizing the regime through guerrilla propaganda. The Russians, the Chinese, and the Soviets before them have always known this. The West is just too slow to catch on. This is a totally uninformed vibes-based opinion, but I can't help but feel like the sort of "guerilla propaganda" you're talking about must be a major factor in the current fracturing of cultural and political discourse in the US.

by ein0p 2y ago

parsimo2010 2y ago

a) just because the government has policies that doesn’t mean they are 100% effective b) export controls aren’t expected to completely prevent a country from gaining access to a technology, just make it take longer and require more resources to achieve You may also be misunderstanding how much money China will spend to develop their semiconductor industry. Sure, they will eventually catch up to the West, but the money they spend along the way won’t be spent on fighter jet, missiles, and ships. It’s still preferable (from the US perspective) to having no export controls and China being able to import semiconductor designs, manufacturing hardware, and AI models trained using US resources. At least this way China is a few months behind and will have to spend a few billion Yuan to achieve it.

airstrike 2y ago

Everyone also thought Russia had a strong military yet look how that worked out

ein0p 2y ago
NATO is currently losing a conventional proxy war against it, that's how. Which only reinforces my point: there's zero reason to believe that either proxy or direct confrontation with China can be "won".
- airstrike 2y ago
  NATO is not fighting that war. You're delusional. They are supporting Ukraine without crossing the threshold of actually fighting the war, as bullshit as it sounds.
  - ein0p 2y ago
    $250B and depleted arsenals say otherwise. It's a proxy war. It's been a proxy war by design all along: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/RB10000/RB10014/RAND_RB10014.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_briefs/R...
    - airstrike 2y ago
      Spending has nothing to do with military reality. Russia is a paper tiger. If the US really supported Ukraine in this war without worrying about crossing some imaginary Rubicon, the war would have been over a long time ago—except Russia might be tempted to use their nukes, so we can't do that. The way to win against Russia is not via sanctions but rather via destabilizing the regime through guerrilla propaganda. The Russians, the Chinese, and the Soviets before them have always known this. The West is just too slow to catch on.
      - jrussino 2y ago
        > The way to win against Russia is not via sanctions but rather via destabilizing the regime through guerrilla propaganda. The Russians, the Chinese, and the Soviets before them have always known this. The West is just too slow to catch on. This is a totally uninformed vibes-based opinion, but I can't help but feel like the sort of "guerilla propaganda" you're talking about must be a major factor in the current fracturing of cultural and political discourse in the US.