DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
Tell me about it.
User ID: 745
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
16hr ago
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The evidence is mainly lack of any reason to think to the contrary and Trump's bizarre whataboutist reaction to the question.
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I find that likely, though a little surprising (I doubted the intentionality just yesterday, but it being a double tap and the new actions on Tehran…). Tomahawks are very good and precise missiles (CEP like 10 meters) and the US has demonstrated immense competence in target selection.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
18hr ago
This stuff reminds me painfully of Russian justifications for continuing our own, original Special Military Operation (funny how nobody bothers to declare wars anymore, by the way). «Yeah maybe it was a bad call but now that we're there, gotta finish what we started, else Ukrainians will just rearm, get NATO nukes, and then… anyway, shut up traitor». This is all born out of a belief in impunity, which at least in the Russian case was clearly delusional. Anyway if it's treason to "defang the war effort", then certainly it's a legitimate big boy war for the nation's vital interests, why not declare it as such?
But at that point you have overt politicking putting American, Israeli, Middle Eastern lives (and maybe everyone else?) at risk because you want to slightly increase the chance you can spend two years repeatedly impeaching Trump.
I think that's kind of treasonous? Maybe not the executing kind, but definitely the "holy shit what are you doing kind."
Well, what are you doing? What are you, even?
YOU are bombing a civilian population, unleashing toxic rain on them, destroying their desalination facilities, generally committing war crimes and crimes against humanity while your "president" gloats with all the wit of a stunted 8 year old sadist. It seems that even the attack on that girls' school was deliberate, and it's likely you double-tapped, and your "president" is lying about it. By the way, IRGC children went to that school, so maybe it's just routine Amalek beheading. Israel is brutalizing civilians, in Iran and in Lebanon and in the West Bank, because it's a brutish expansionist Middle Eastern theocracy populated by savage people with a Mongol tier unreconstructed bronze age religion built around breeding, conquest and ethnic narcissism, and is not some wholesome chungus bulwark of the Western Civilization; for all the eloquent vile snark our resident UMC Jews can use to shut down this obvious conclusion based on their own words (thank G-d we have AI translate now) and actions. Your own state religion, expressed by Trump, Hegseth, Graham and other profound thinkers, amounts to sadism and serving Israel in terrorizing its enemies and furthering the subjugation of the entire Middle East. From the external point of view, you're moral equals to the regime of Ayatollah at best. Given that even I agree culling IRGC upper ranks was morally justified, it's a very legitimate question if a nation like yours deserves to exist. Accordingly, many American nationals who are not spiritual Middle Easterners and have some sort of affinity for Western civilization would prefer it to be some other kind of nation. It's a debate about the fate of your nation and your people, not "treason", to oppose this bullshit and try to obstruct it.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
19hr ago
Oil supply is elastic. Gulf Arabs are not operating at 100% capacity, nor are many other providers. It very likely will be on the order of $40B.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1d ago
I am saying that it will be easy, yes. $40B is not a lot for China, a price hike is priced in.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
1d ago
Do you still intend to justify this with speculative number of killed protestors when your country is burning Tehran wholesale?
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2d ago
Earlier, he indicated that he was "confident" that Israel had bombed a girls' elementary school in Iran. Recent news reports are suggesting that if it was probably the United States.
Man, who cares? Neither the US nor Israel would just bomb one specific girls' school for kicks, it makes no sense. They are acting in a coalition. The news here is that the school got bombed and not by Iran.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2d ago
I'm sorry, but it seems a bit of an unjustified update. Taiwan timeline likely didn't change a bit.
interceptor stocks will take years to recover even under optimistic scenarios
Right, the war with Iran has already wasted years' worth of production of interceptors, and you've even got a $1.1B radar and it seems multiple of those vaunted THAAD systems destroyed. This looks extemely bad for any future conflict with China but not because you'll take time to replenish this stuff. I've given to understand that Americans have a certain logarithmic sense for prowess of different adversary nations: Venezuela and Cuba are like "5-6", Iran and Russia are "7", China is maybe "8". In reality the differences are measured in the orders of magnitude. If Iran can exhaust these interceptors in a week, a massive Chinese strike would probably take hours to burn through Guam, Okinawa, and whatever is on Taiwan. They're making 31 million cars a year, just for example; mobilized, they can make not thousands but tens of millions of flying mopeds if they want. Interceptor-based defense is just inadequate against a superior industrial power; it barely works against an inferior one.
Yes, one can argue that this doctrine is getting obsolete if DEW-based defense advances, but similar logic applies to whatever comes next, and what's happening now isn't a case of getting caught by surprise – like a third of your naval power is in the theater, amid long-established bases, with local cooperation; and you've been watching the war in Ukraine for over 4 years, these are the same damn Shaheds (maybe with a few modifications) Russians had been using early on, from the OG Shahed maker. Where are Palmer Luckey's Roadrunners or Anvils knocking them out for cheaps? All these AI-driven turrets? Lasers, EW systems? The anti-ballistic front is less embarrassing but still economically sad. In light of all this, it's unclear to me why China would ever care about the "opportunity" presented by the US exhausting interceptors elsewhere.
Trump demonstrated quite clearly that the US military is far more capable and combat-ready than observers had assumed
This is a strange take too. Which observers believed that the US can't enjoy air superiority against Iran? Some doompillers who watched one too many recruitment ad with LGBT representation?
What actually matters is, for instance, whether they can detect and effectively engage your stealth aircraft. And this war is not teaching us much because Iranians don't have any modern Chinese assets or equivalents. I've been trying to find confirmations of hits of anything of that sort, because the entire internet is overflowing with claims how American-Israeli Power has proven inefficacy of Chinese temu radars/missiles. So far I've only learned that CENTCOM has taken out an HQ-2 SAM with something like a JDAM. It might be Sayyid 2, though. In any case both are close derivatives of the Soviet 75 Dvina, and 75 here is not for the year of commissioning, it actually dates back to 1957. It's probably the most widely deployed SAM in history, you've had trouble with it in Vietnam, and have learned a thing or two since then. There are some claims by pro-PRC third worldists and hawks alike that «China Arms Iran with 700km Anti-Stealth Radar Capable of Tracking F-35 and B-2 — YLC-8B» , and consequently now gloating that those radars have been destroyed. It's not impossible, after all having a long-range radar unit by itself doesn't imply you can react effectively, but I just hope that Americans and Israelis show photos of the wreckage. Same story with alleged Chinese missiles and everything else.
In Venezuela, it's not clear if any air defense systems were even operational, or stuck in half-disassembled mode. Looking up this stuff one is struck by the vast overrepresentation of American and Indian content, indeed Americans and Indians are becoming culturally indistinguishable.
The fear is that Trump’s transactional bearing and embrace of a “might is right” doctrine—both in his own actions and his ambivalence regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—could be interpreted as a green light by Xi.
This is just … I don't know how to describe it, some mix of naive idealism and narcissism. Is Xi a dictator or nah? Why would he need a "greenlight" in the form of example of belligerence from his main pacing threat? Where would he cash it in? Nobody important in, say, Europe will claim that whacking Iran is morally or legally equivalent to conquering Taiwan, so it changes nothing and is only good for domestic rhetoric about Western hypocrisy. I guess Americans are so powerful that they can afford to be solipsistic, and so might overrate the value of domestic moral rhetoric in the general case. But even on that front, China is quite unified in believing that reunification, including by violent means, is justified. United States is no standard or paragon. It's not making invasion more likely.
and I'm guessing China feels a bit of that pain.
I think they've been quite sure they'll lose access to oil imports in the case of the full-scale war with the US, and will have to fight for it.
Basically I believe Americans strongly overrate how much their antics in random powerless Evil Nations affect Chinese plans one way or another way. They're just not informative.
If you think I'm a Chinese shill, here's a Chinese hawk with impeccable credentials: Tanner Greer.
The idea that the Iran operation was mostly about China, that it fundamentally changes Chinese perceptions of American strength, or that it has already altered the balance of power between China and America in any real way, is bizarre to me.
We know what metrics the Chinese judge their competition with the US by. We know the military measures they care about and we know the non-military elements of national power that they think are most important.
Very honestly: the upcoming war powers resolutions vote on Iran will likely matter more to Chinese perceptions of American capacity (if the admin fails to get the vote) than the actual military attacks on Iran. Not hard to predict the sort of analysis the Xie Tao types will write up.
To fundamentally change Chinese perceptions (or for that matter, realities, as IMHO the Chinese are largely looking at the right metrics) the Iran operation would have to change one’s answer to any of the following questions:
- Militarily: Does this operation mean that US carrier and amphibious ready groups can operate more safely within range of Chinese missiles?
- Militarily: Does this operation suggest that American, Japanese, and Taiwanese airbases, command centers, fuel depots, etc will be more resilient to the thousands of missiles pointed at them?
- Militarily: Does this operation demonstrate previously unknown capabilities of the two platforms American war plans turn around: stealth bombers (and/or their accessories—AWAC and refueling planes) or submarines?
- Militarily: does this operation demonstrate previously unknown space or cyber capabilities, and does it say anything meaningful about how America might fare once a war of attrition begins in space?
- Militarily: Does this operation give the Chinese reasons to think that nuclear brinksmanship might deter American and Japanese intervention? Does it suggest the Americans and Japanese are more willing to risk a war with a nuclear power than previously imagined?
- Militarily: Does this operation suggest that Americans, Japanese, or Taiwanese are less casualty averse than previously imagined? Does this operation signal anything important about the willingness of the American, Japanese, and Taiwanese public to sustain a bloody war over time?
- Politically: Does the Iran operation signal that Donald Trump and his administration believes that Taiwan is worth a war?
- Politically: Does the Iran operation show that the American people and American political parties can be easily rallied behind a protracted war effort?
- Politically: Does the Iran operation signal special commitment to South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, or Japan, or in any material way make it easier for those governments to take more forceful national security measures against the Chinese?
- Politically: Does the Iran operation make it easier for the United States to coordinate sanctions packages in moments of crisis, export restrictions, and so forth with foreign powers (eg Europe)?
- Politically: Does the Iran operation make it more difficult for China to pursue diplomatic agreements with anyone on the long run—the gulf states, Europe, Russia, India, etc?
- Politically: Does the Iran operation improve US-India relations in a way that might divert Chinese military investment away from Pacific theater?
- Politically: Does the Iran operation change any of societal weaknesses that the Chinese believe they have identified in American society, and which they think will doom its ability to sustain itself in long term geopolitical competition? (I could make these separate questions but here is the list: immigration and multiculturalism, right wing populism, political polarization, uncontrolled social media, the financialization of our politics and economy, racism, and general cultural decline).
- Economically: Does this operation damage the exports-driven economic growth that is currently sustaining the Chinese economy?
- Economically: Does this operation damage in any meaningful way China’s drive to create the greatest and most technologically advanced scientific ecosystem? Does it derail China’s drive to become the world’s leading scientific power?
- Economically: Does this operation restrict Chinese access to cutting edge technology, research, or science?
- Economically: Does this operation turn back American de industrialization? Does it make America, Japan, and Taiwan more capable of the mass production of military arms?
- Economically: Does this operation supercharge America’s own technological innovation (eg does it help us get faster to advance AGI)?
- Ideological security: Does this operation damage in any significant way the vast machinery China has built to influence political outcomes in foreign nations?
- ideological security: does this operation damage in any way or suggest deficiencies in China’s counterintelligence apparatus?
- ideological security: does this operation make liberalism or democracy nor any non communist system of rule more appealing to the Chinese people or to Chinese elites? Does it undermine the ideological coherence of the regime?
- ideological security: does this operation reduce Xi Jinping’s control of the military or allow opponents to him to coordinate more successfully than before?
Anyways you get the idea. The Party leadership sees geopolitical competition between the United States and China as a contest of technological supremacy. The long run weaknesses they see in the United States are political and cultural; in turn, the thing they fear most is ideological subversion of their own regime. Militarily they prepare for a no-holds barred fight over the waters of the west Pacific —the key factors there are the willingness of US, Japan, and Taiwan to be a part of that fight and then our ability to sustain it in the face of great losses in both men and machinery. The Iran stuff is orthogonal to almost all of that.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2d ago
China buys almost all of Iran's oil and needs it very much.
It's been very revealing how many Americans (sincerely) and Israelis (opportunistically) appeal to "China buys almost all of Iran's oil" and seem to believe this also means "Iran's oil is a big fraction of Chinese energy purchases". Well, it's known that Americans can't do fractions (see their per capita kryptonite), but still, I've updated in the direction of even greater disbelief in American capacity to reason quantitatively.
At $80/barrel (probably the sustainable market cost if this situation creates lasting damage to Gulf infra), Iranian volume of oil sales would amount to like $40B annually. China has $1.2T trade surplus. Yes, they've been buying oil at a huge discount, paying something like $4B instead. But this is all such small potatoes.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
4d ago
I don't have much to say except it's disappointing how Americans are bound to precedents. Well, not just them, of course, everyone is hidebound but you'd expect more from a brand new intelligently designed super-innovative superpower. And yet, escalating cycle of the culture of victimhood, Plucky Underdogs and Just Revenge (look at the pathetic whataboutism, "Democrats did X, so how can X' be wrong?), this damn geriatric nonsense about fascism, endless epicycles around Jewish WWII trauma, the whole moral arc of the universe wrapped around that European event three generations ago, much like in Russia.
Trumpism is wrong on its own merits. Trump is a dishonorable Latin American type strongman who does petty advertisement, lashes out childishly, takes bribes, doesn't keep his word and relishes crass bootlicking. His appointees like Hegseth and Lutnick are mere thugs. The Based Conservatives here demonstrate craven allegiance to whatever the Party Linei s this week because they see in Trump not so much a reformer as their champion in getting revenge on Democrats. As for the Democrats' party, enough has been said. Is this the Elite Human Capital that is equipped to lead the global hegemon? It's a deeply diseased Republic and too good a Democracy, and it's stuck in the past even as it innovates new ways to be vulgar and demonstrate spiritually third worldist attitude. Just sad.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
6d ago
While the Judeo-Hapa ruling class had been foretold, I am still not convinced it's any better than Jews and Chinese separately.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
6d ago
China does incomparably more business with Gulf Arabs than with Iran. This is post-hoc rationalization.
In the wake of Epstein files release (btw not as bad as I imagined from all the hype, though pathetic and occasionally very funny), I've noticed the popularization of terms like “goy”, “goycattle”, “goyim” (the “goyim in abundance” line was legitimately comedy gold, as was Masha Drokova's calculation of Jew percentage – she's a very entertaining person herself, and my friends in SF tell me that her parties have the hottest Russian women somehow, it's the norm to go blabber about technical secrets there, "ahaha just kidding"). There are plenty of edits of Gigachad Epstein and super-Diddy, kids are imagining ideal worlds where they have to worship pedophiles. Jews are understandably unnerved about all the Antisemitic Dogwhistles and correctly recognize over-the-top endorsements of ZOG as sarcasm and trolling, but I think it's evolving in the direction ultimately aligned with their interests. It's habituation. Israelis are more openly talking about Amalek as policy justification (and generally moving far to the religious right), Huckabee on Tucker's show has de facto endorsed Greater Israel and so far has kept his post, Kiriakou says AIPAC has all US politicians by the balls, and the public reaction is… what? Incomprehension? Trying to shoo it away like usual? Genuine Evangelical approval? Some baffled chuckling? Chuds going “we told you so”? Patriots power-tripping over the decapitation of Iranian regime and living vicariously through Israeli dominance? That's all shades of low-agency complicity, cuckoldry… Oh, I've forgotten about the insane left that hates Israel because it reminds them of Western civilization, Christianity, capitalism, heterosexual families and their own parents, reinforcing the false “Zionist vs Commie Third Worldist” dichotomy – these guys sure have fallen off. Incidentally, Israeli stocks are ripping, like 66% up over 12 months. The market is betting on Israel achieving its operational goals, even as everything else is going to the dogs.
In the end, I guess people of Western extraction are accustomed to hereditary transnational elite, and they've ran out of their own aristocracy (and it was kind of dumb and non-meritocratic anyway). Recognizing the natural nobility and greater leadership qualities of Jews and deferring to their choices in international decision-making is in line with the advice of Nietzsche and von Coudenhove-Kalergi, with best practices from Nixon (Kissinger) to Biden (Blinken) to Trump (Kushner) with lots of others in between. And frankly, haven't we all started from this, with LessWrong and Scott gushing over the genius of the Ashkenazim, Eliezer dreaming of the eugenic Dath Ilani like himself, Gwern scheming to clone or embryo-select John von Neumann, others planning to have an army of them save the world from unaligned AGI? Aren't all top AGI projects, aligned or not, led or owned by the Ashkenazim in our timeline – Altman, Amodei, Brin&Page, even Sutskever in Israel (Elon is an outlier like usual, though, but his project seems to be shitty in comparison)? Obviously Jews should make all the important decisions and the dominant American religion amounts to approving their divine right to make all the important decisions and succeed in every endeavor. That slip from Rubio is just acceptance, I think. Yeah Israel steers American foreign policy, because Jews are a natural higher caste in the American society, on account of being smarter and more based; if you oppose Affirmative Action, you have to accept this reality. Whether from the religious, from the biological or from the meritocratic perspective, deference to superiors makes perfect sense. In contrast, resistance is futile, Netanyahu had said it 25 fucking years ago: America is something really easy to steer in the right direction. G-d willing, in a few more years Americans will incorporate the doctrine of exterminating the Amalek into official policymaking.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
6d ago
to create a worldwide network of US aligned states while completely isolating China.
This is Paradox-brain. These "states" are comparably worthless whether aligned or misaligned, just painting them in your colors does little.
Meanwhile, we continue to increase our space tech advantage, and utterly starve them of fossil fuels.
The most important fossil fuel for China is domestic coal. They can make liquid fuel from it too, btw. Hell, they're so far ahead in renewable power generation that they can make methanol from direct CO2 capture. This isn't 1940s Japan.
You're clinging to the idea of dominance that's only fit for dealing with shitholes behind you in economy, industry and scale, you have no theory of victory against a superior opponent. These clever schemes negligibly change your position wrt China.
already have this to a limited degree
Not really. Maybe against drones, but even HELIOS is underpowered for intercepting realistic incoming missiles. You need to get to 1MW level lasers. The US is in the lead in this research, admittedly.
amphibious assaults are fundamentally difficult Why do people say this? Most large scale amphibious assaults throughout history have succeeded, even despite less advantageous logistics. Moreover China is likely to do a blockade and bombardment, as dictated by the common sense. Taiwan has dismantled its nuclear power generation and will run out of energy and begin starving in weeks if a blockade succeeds. And China is not going to do any D-Day LARP, the PLA aspires to have minimum casualties by flooding the battlefield with robots. https://www.news.cn/milpro/20250710/47f7a7b22ae44725884fb04195bd3461/c.html
Finally, geography is also much less of a factor than commonly assumed when you can have barges letting you disembark on virtually the entire coast (ofc there's the obvious objection that barges will be destroyed by brave defenders, I'll let you think through counterpoints). "Taiwan only has 2 suitable beaches" is a hypothesis fit for a shithole without shipbuilding industry, pardon my French.
you're the one in the fantasy dream scenario where the opponent is static but China is constantly improving
No, I'm being realistic. The advantages of Chinese industry are compounding very quickly, they've reached escape velocity of sorts. The US definitely can improve but the gap is likely to get wider over the next decade or two.
you have a habit of taking relatively minor things as data points
it's illustrations.
As I understand it, the Ford hasn't launched the F-35 because it hasn't gotten the necessary upgrades and it will at some point when the Navy does a refit on the ship
I really don't share popular skepticism with regard to F-35, but this isn't just about planes. Ford EMALS is just an older, less reliable system, Ma Weiming's MVDC architecture is superior from first principles, it builds on common civilian Chinese advantages in electrical engineering that are expressed in their grid and battery dominance. This is also why they can put EMALS on 076, on some trucks, on trucks stacked on a container ship, basically play with it like LEGO. This again is illustrative of the disparity in industrial capacity and diversity and prospects for military procurement in the years to come.
will likely be capable of shooting down whatever 6th generation aircraft the Chinese push out
this is dubious because the core feature and design principle of J-36 is overpowered electric generation and radars (again building on their civilian advantages) so at the very least they can be expected to notice your Rhinos first. I won't engage in spiderman vs batman analysis, none of this will be about 1 on 1 dogfights of course.
Yeah, because the Chinese are operating from a technological inferior position and are converging on the position of the United States
Maaaaaybe you can say this in aggregate, but there are many domains where you're behind and the gap is growing because they are still improving faster.
They're likely decades behind in some very important areas, such as submarine quieting
I mean, how hard can it be? Americans did it. Broke-ass Communist Russians with inferior metrology did it. I've known people who did similar things for the Soviet Union, they're not some John von Neumann geniuses shooting lightning out the arse, just normal engineers; there's not much to all this Cold War magic by modern standards, it's likely less g-loaded than CATL battery process engineering or TikTok recommender algos. China is crushingly dominant in materials science now, they author like 50% of top papers. We'll see soon if Type 09V reaches Virginia levels of quieting, probably it comes close, reducing the gap by 20+ years.
via industrial espionage
you overestimate the role and misunderstand the nature of industrial espionage, that's a popular cope. Eg recently there's been a big brouhaha about them stealing ASML IP and building a EUV prototype. The leader of the project is Lin Nan, head of light source technology between 2015 and 2021, "Light source competence owner for metrology in ASML research". They have been advancing Western research until recently, and can do as well at home.
Do let me know when that shows up in the polling data.
For one thing, prediction markets say it's almost certain that KMT wins the next elections, and everyone knows they're pro-cooperation with the Mainland; their representative insists on Chinese identity, is friendly towards Xi and opposes Taiwanese independence. Abuse from Trump and Lutnick is not very good alliance-building, Beijing barely needed to do a thing. Here's one perspective. There are such polls to drive the point home but I am not sure about it.
Things can change fast.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
6d ago
What F-15s were lost?
Idk about the serial numbers, but three? Well, in fairness, Kuwaiti defense forces seem to be at fault, so it's no great slight on the American hyperpower, and if anything goes to show the power of your air defense.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/02/middleeast/us-kuwait-aircraft-crash-iran-intl-hnk
China is going to deal with the loss of this oil supply
Why do you presume they will lose any oil supply? Why do you think you get to just tell countries to stop exporting to China? They're broke and need some income. You're an oil exporter. Oil is a global commodity, more oil on the market mechanistically reduces prices. Trump has already said he won't stop Venezuelan exports to China. This is just more capeshit to rationalize actions compelled half by unilateral Israeli decision and half by procrastination as part of your competition with China.
Why do you discount fossil fuels and agriculture?
Because I'm generous and as I've explained massive commodity sectors depress a nation's ECI. It is fair that on the physical level there's plenty of complexity in fracking (the Chinese think it's one of three impressive American industries) but the volume of exports dilutes your technological value-add.
which is something we are actively trying to increase
Yes but it's hopeless for basic reasons of economic development and the tremendous success of American system. Every American with half a functioning brain is already gainfully employed, and very few of those are in manufacturing, and the rest are more or less ballast. You can increase the output somewhat but if you think you get to "catch up" to China or whatever, it's pure hubris. Like, when exactly are you going to build Shenzhen and staff it with whom? Do you even realize how far ahead they are in industrial automation, in integration of all ecosystems? That it's stopped to be about "cheap labor" maybe a decade ago? That your lofty plans of solving these issues with robots all depend on Chinese suppliers?
But if the US stops exporting food and oil to China, I don't see how China replaces those.
With South American imports. You mainly export pig feed (soybeans), and cattle feed (alfalfa), not human food. In the worst case, if you compel South Americans to also stop exports, they'll probably have to eat less beef and pork, as they had historically and as the Greatest Democracy India does today. Look at the calorie consumption in China over the years, they have developed a lot of slack.
American oil is irrelevant and replaceable, you're power-tripping. They depend more on the Gulf. So next comes the usual fantasy about closing the Malacca strait I guess. Of course this is an act of war which locals (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore) will likely resist so as to not become a battlefield, and the Chinese have and will have more than enough reserves and domestic production to operate their rapidly growing navy. Did you know that China is the world's sixth largest oil producer? That in terms of total primary energy production (domestic production yes), they're global number 1 and 40% higher than the US? And that they are very quickly making inland logistics oil-independent? They'll survive even if they stop getting any oil. I swear, almost everything about conflict with China is some rehashing of the 20th century arc with Japan plus something about Soviets.
But if that link is broken, both nations fall apart.
Again, for some reason you assume that your dependencies (eg the rare earths threat, that forced Trump to halt the BIS Affiliate Rule last November) are easily fixable, despite decades of forewarning, literally 30 years of Chinese openly saying that they'll weaponize it one day. I guess it's nice to have such faith in your people, and dismiss previous ineptitude as enemy action or just carelessness. Not sure how warranted it is, though.
If China wants to invade Taiwan, they must be terrified that it would end up in a nuclear war with the US.
Ok, let's say this is the new strategy. How fast do you think China could make another 2, 3, 5 thousand warheads if they wanted to? Do you really want to go back to a nuclear arms race? Who is currently building over half of all new nuclear reactors in the world, entire fleets of nuclear submarines, a nuclear aircraft carrier? In economy, they dwarf the Soviet Union colossally, and their defense spending is a fraction of yours, around 2% GD. They could outrace you by a very solid margin.
Nuclear bluff has limits, your threats have to be credible. Psychologically, they're not terrified because they assume you're not retarded enough to sacrifice New York for Taipei, no matter the imbalance. That you might sacrifice New York just to take out Beijing and Shanghai is a bit of an alien thought to them. Perhaps they're wrong, but that's the reality of their decisionmaking.
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
6d ago
the US will plausibly be able spam so many antiship missiles from every corner of the first island chain that it will be the Chinese who are having interceptor shortfalls
Within a decade it's more likely that both sides have directed energy interception, which introduces its own problems. You're still living in this popular dream scenario where the opponent is static but the US is constantly improving. (Hence also all the embarrassing stuff about "not letting China win in robotics/industry" when they're like a century ahead.) It's not just a matter of buildup, they're not just an assembly floor, you're improving slower than them technologically.
Taiwanese might be more interested or, rather, less opposed to unification because the US is rapidly depleting their Silicon Shield in preparation for vacating the island, also coercing them into undesirable investment plans and imposing unfair tariffs.
One of them is just preventing rival economic/geopolitical entities from forming
Too late, too much main character syndrome.
Enough of this nonsense, please. Ukrainians don't bomb their own schools, Russians don't bomb their own pipelines, neither do Iranians or Israelis strike themselves, false flag is the standard excuse. I'll give you that local Arabs may have been involved but I don't see why they'd escalate in this specific manner (inviting symmetrical retaliation that's way way worse for them because they demand more on desalinated water, it can get literally existential). And on the other hand, the US-Israeli axis is clearly enjoying the carnage, have you listened to Hegseth recently? Why should I give him any benefit of the doubt? This guy is a fanatic, a drunkard and a low IQ butcher, he belongs in an asylum. Presumably the chain of command is similar.
Children's school or training grounds for IRGC Khameneijugend? But yes, maybe they thought it's something else. Probably they decided to err on the side of caution (ie not allowing IRGC adjacent facilities to survive).
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