No_one
Underemployed Slav. Likes playing Factorio.
User ID: 1042
How hard can it be to conscript these migrants? The US conscripted blacks in ww2, despite an extensive segregation regime and discrimination..
In WW2, US largely used blacks in non-combat roles. The few combat units that existed were a very mixed bag. Also performed quite badly, at least the infantry division in Italy. US also suffered low overall casualties. In Vietnam, US casualties overall were miniscule (by European war standards) and yet there was quite a lot of popular discontent around the draft.
But if they go in on the Baltics and NATO gives up then NATO is a complete joke, they're dispensed to the cuck chair of history.
And? That's the predictable outcome. What else can you say about current EU leadership except that they're stupid cucks?
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They let themselves be signed up for the American plan of showing Russia who is who in Ukraine. That plane was based on the assumptions Russians have the same level of agency as pudding.
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Well, now it's years later and Ukraine still isn't getting enough weapons, European governments are ever more distrusted by the population, half of Germany's welfare goes to foreigners. In short, these people are cucks and their countries rightfully belong in the 'cuck chair of history' until the regimes are overthrown and unfucked. Welfare state over, migrants gone, retirees half starving. Who has the will to do that? Nobody. (but I'm a pessimist)
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Despite knowing since at least 2020 that there'd be war, the same governments haven't done anything to secure popular support such as getting rid of the migrants. Iran and Pakistan can do mass deportations, but France or Germany can't. Trust in government in Germany is at an all time post-1950 low.
And let's remember that this is still Europe, these are the people who conquered almost all of the world.
No, they aren't. They are the retarded liberal grandchildren of people who weren't even sure conquering the world was a good idea.
The US may well lose in Asia but at that point it's a new world order and all bets are off, NATO may well disintegrate or we see full WW3 or something else.
There won't be a 'full WW3' because even as bad as US getting kicked out of East Asia could be-and I suspect it'll happen gently, in a 'face-saving' way - a total nuclear exchange is way, way worse. Worst case if it loses hegemon status, Americans are losing at 1-2 decades of very shitty politics and economics.
No_one
15hr ago
It's a profoundly uninteresting, predictable and depressing semitic squabble that doesn't involve continuous high-intensity ground combat between armies. In short, it's not actually a war.
No_one
16hr ago
Lasers suffer from range issues in air to a great degree. Close to the ground power delivered falls with square of distance. So keeping the sky clear from 20 kilometers is really, really difficult even if you can track the target flawlessly and it'd be extremely costly even now. Not realistic.
I've heard both sides are reporting some success with some adapted laser welding units against FPVs, which aren't exactly sturdy and at 200m it might work. These units are now cheap ~$5000, but require a power supply.
No_one
16hr ago
Translated article from Marianne on Macron's troop proposal: https://archive.is/u1j76#selection-3005.0-3323.65
By refusing to rule out sending troops to Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron has triggered an uproar across Europe and earned a rebuke from the United States. Several French officers, speaking to Marianne on condition of anonymity, say they were “knocked sideways.” “Let’s not kid ourselves: against the Russians we’re a cheer-leading squad!” scoffs a senior officer, convinced that dispatching French troops to the Ukrainian front would simply be “unreasonable.” At the Élysée, the stance is unapologetic: “The President wanted to send a strong signal,” says an adviser, describing the wording as “carefully measured and calibrated.”
At the Ministry for the Armed Forces, those close to Sébastien Lecornu defend the president’s wording: “The state of Ukrainian forces is deeply worrying. The president’s remarks are meant to jolt everyone and show we’re at a turning point.” How did we get here? Several classified defence reports, seen by Marianne, speak of a “critical situation.” Here are the three key findings—far removed from official talking-points.
Finding 1: A Ukrainian military victory is now impossible.
For months European chancelleries clung to the hope that Kyiv’s 2023 spring counter-offensive, backed by Western kit, would push the Russian army all the way back to Moscow. After-action reviews written this autumn are damning. “It gradually bogged down in mud and blood and achieved no strategic gains,” states one confidential defence report on the “failure of the Ukrainian offensive.”
The planning—drawn up in Kyiv and Western headquarters—proved “disastrous.” “Planners assumed that once the first Russian defensive belts were breached the whole front would collapse … These crucial preliminary phases ignored the enemy’s moral strength on the defensive: that is, the Russian soldier’s determination to cling to the ground,” the report notes, calling Western planning a “bankruptcy.” Another lesson is the poor training of Ukrainian soldiers and NCOs: “Newly formed brigades existed mostly on paper” and training never lasted more than three weeks. Lacking cadres and a critical mass of veterans, these “Year-Two soldiers” were thrown against a Russian fortification line that turned out to be impregnable. With no air support, a mish-mash of Western kit inferior to old Soviet gear (“obsolete, easy to maintain, usable in degraded mode,” says the report), Ukrainian troops had no chance of breaking through.
Add to that “Russia’s overwhelming dominance in electronic warfare, crippling Ukrainian drone use and command systems.” Today, “the Russian army is the tactical and technical benchmark for conceiving and executing defensive operations,” the report concludes. Not only does Moscow have the heavy engineer kit to build defensive works—“almost completely absent on the Ukrainian side, and impossible for the West to supply quickly”—but the 1,200-km front, known as the Surovikin Line, is mined on a colossal scale (7,000 km of mines). Another observation: “The Russians have also managed their reserve force to ensure operational endurance.” According to the document, Moscow reinforces units before they are exhausted, mixes recruits with seasoned troops, gives regular rear-area rest periods—and “has always maintained a coherent force pool to handle the unexpected.” Far from the Western cliché of a Russian army mindlessly feeding men into the meat-grinder… “To date, the Ukrainian general staff lacks a critical mass of ground forces capable of combined-arms manoeuvre at corps level able to challenge their Russian counterparts and break the defensive line,” the classified report concludes, warning that “the gravest analytical and judgement error would be to keep looking for exclusively military solutions to end the fighting.” A French senior officer sums up: “Looking at the forces on the ground, it’s clear Ukraine cannot win this war militarily.”
Finding 2: Kyiv has been forced onto the defensive.
The conflict entered a critical phase in December. According to our military sources in Paris, the Ukrainian army has been compelled to go on the defensive. “The combat motivation of Ukrainian soldiers is deeply affected,” notes a 2024 outlook report. “Zelensky needs 35,000 men a month; he is not recruiting half that, while Putin can draw on 30,000 volunteers each month,” says an officer just back from Kyiv. The balance of materiel is just as lopsided: the failed 2023 offensive “tactically destroyed” half of Kyiv’s 12 combat brigades. Western aid has never been lower. It is therefore clear no Ukrainian offensive can be mounted this year. “The West can ship 3-D printers to make drones or loitering munitions, but it can’t print soldiers,” the report notes. “Given the situation, the idea has been floated to reinforce the Ukrainian army not with fighters but with support troops in the rear, freeing Ukrainian soldiers for the front,” admits a senior officer, confirming a “quiet build-up” of Western troops in civilian clothes. Even if two American rail-cars—likely used by the CIA—are attached to the daily train from Poland to Kyiv, the West only half-admits the presence of special forces in Ukraine. “Besides the Americans, who let the New York Times visit a CIA camp, there are plenty of Brits,” says a military source, who does not deny the presence of French special forces— notably combat swimmers on training missions…
Finding 3: The risk of a Russian breakthrough is real.
This is the latest lesson from the Ukrainian front that gives French observers cold sweats. On 17 February Kyiv had to abandon the city of Avdiivka, north of Donetsk, until then a fortified bastion. “It was both the heart and the symbol of Ukrainian resistance in Russian-speaking Donbas,” notes a report on the “Battle of Avdiivka,” drawing a series of damning lessons. “The Russians changed their modus operandi, compartmentalising the city and, above all, using glide bombs on a large scale for the first time,” the document states. Whereas a 155 mm artillery shell carries 7 kg of explosive, a glide bomb delivers 200–700 kg and can pierce more than 2 m of reinforced concrete—hell for Ukrainian defences, which reportedly lost over 1,000 men a day. Moreover, the Russians now fit small-arms suppressors to foil acoustic detection on the battlefield. “The decision to withdraw Ukrainian forces came as a surprise,” the report notes, highlighting “its suddenness and lack of preparation,” raising fears it was “imposed on, rather than decided by, the Ukrainian command,” hinting at the start of a rout. “The Ukrainian armed forces have just shown tactically that they lack the human and material capacity… to hold a sector of the front under sustained enemy pressure,” the document continues. “The Ukrainian failure at Avdiivka shows that, despite the emergency dispatch of an ‘elite’ brigade—the 3rd Air Assault Azov Brigade—Kyiv is unable to shore up a collapsing sector locally,” the report warns. The art of “Maskovkira” What will the Russians do with this tactical success? Continue the current pattern of “nibbling and slow erosion” along the whole front, or push for a deep breakthrough? “The terrain behind Avdiivka allows it,” the recent document notes, adding that Western sources tend to “underestimate” the Russians, masters of “Maskovkira”—the practice of “appearing weak when you are strong.” According to this analysis, after two years of war Russian forces have demonstrated the ability to “develop operational endurance” enabling them to wage “a long, slow, high-intensity war based on the continuous attrition of the Ukrainian army.” A sobering conclusion for what comes next. Is this new strategic landscape—where the Russian army seems dominant and the Ukrainian army exhausted—what prompted Emmanuel Macron, “dynamically” as he put it, to consider sending troops? A realistic perspective given the current operational situation, described as “critical” by observers on the ground. “But what may look realistic from a strictly tactical standpoint can prove unrealistic from a strategic and diplomatic one,” sighs a French senior officer.
No_one
16hr ago
Pretty sure they're using GLONASS, the Russian version of GPS.
Modern chips use every single satellite out there to calculate position. They probably use something similar, possibly improved to be jamming resistant.
If Russia can quickly make lots of cheap jet drones, so can Europe. Anything Russia can do, Europe can replicate.
Europe can't even supply the simplest, WW1 piece of technology Ukraine needs: artillery ammunition. We are on year 3.5 of an artillery war. Despite having what, 50x the GDP, Ukraine could theoretically get less than half of what Russia makes.
Only if there's a political failure, if the whole edifice just implodes as the Turks nope out, the Serbs and Hungarians decide it's not their war, if Britain and France won't really use nukes to defend Polish or German territory..
The French army allegedly told Macron to go hang after he floated the idea of sending them into Ukraine, just as 'peacekeepers'. You know, not 'on the front' just station them around key strategic areas where they'd be getting shot at with Russian missiles. (I'll include the translated article in a reply)
They'll be hemmed in at sea. They'll still be facing vast reserves of wealth and manpower, a foe with time on his side and talent to spare
Talent? Firstly, Russians would say they don't care about Germany/Poland, and they aren't South-Africa tier idiots who would say "just not yet". And maybe they'd be even correct, what Russians really care about is Americans out and being able to deal with Europe on a country basis. Even if conquest were possible (theoretically) it'd not be worth it - mass mobilization isn't what Russian citizens want, China wouldn't want it either.
As to ...what talent? NATO, the organisation, basically exists as sinecures for officers. European armies are small and have zero experience with modern warfare and not much critical equipment. No vast reserves of artillery. Shortages of air-defense missiles. Drone components would have to come from China, too.
Nick, 30 ans is not willing to let himself be conscripted by the million by governments he know doesn't care about him one iota and sent to the eastern front. Do you think all the young 'citizens' of immigrant origins who don't care about Europe one bit would let themselves be conscripted by the million, without starting to chimp?
Also, under ideal conditions- no pesky politicking, no sabotage by the courts, no foreign interference and vast reserves of veterans officers, it still took Germany what, 8 years to return from a small professional force to a large conscript army.
I don't buy that they'd risk a war with NATO unless China suplexes the US in Asia, at which point we all have much bigger concerns.
Not sure they'd want to take the Baltics, but I'd not rule it out either. They really hate them, Balt elites hate them back and are very keen on anti-Russian agitation, militarily it's doable and hey, it's not like the younger population of Baltics wouldn't just emigrate.
US Navy isn't ready to fight a missile-heavy war against China, near Chinese coasts. Aircraft carriers are of little help there. It'd need a lot more missile platforms and a lot more missiles. Both are in short supply.
Flak can shoot them down and acoustic or optical targeting is sufficient.
It flies at 3.500 meters. Flak at 35mm barely gets up there. Horizontal range to engage Gerans at cruise altitude with 35mm is maybe 1 km.
They're planning out routes all across Ukraine. It's much faster than a car. There's no way to realistically counter them from the ground unless you have massive amounts of accurate flak. Germany theoretically has 400 Gepard flak vehicles. Yeah, had they started upgrading them with modern electronics (I think it was 1970s equipment) back in '22, around now Ukraine would be able to create a 'barrier' 500 km long against Gerans. Or maybe 800, if we assume 2 kilometers horizontal range. They didn't - the 400 of so obsolete Gepards are sitting somewhere, waiting to be scrapped.
You can defend point targets if you put multiple flak systems on them. (and nobody tries something funny like having 20 dive at once etc.
By now, most everyone has forgotten about the war. It's still going on now, still killing probably 200-300 men a day, every day. Neither party wants to end it so, it's expected -by war nerds who follow it in detail- to go on until 2027..
Not that much has changed, it's still largely a war of attrition, though most killing is now done by FPV drone and artillery is now less than half of casualties. (at least for Russians it's true. Last I checked, <5% were by small arms).
There's a few new things, but one development itself is noteworthy. Both for what it says about the West, and for the prospects for the West.
Geran-2 (Shahed-136, 'Dorito') is an originally Iranian drone, a very cheap $50k marginal cost two-stroke piston engine powered kamikaze drone(or a particularly shitty cruise missile).
Russians have modified it and are now producing it wholly indigenously, except for the engines that are imported from China.
As you can see in this video, in which an infantry ammunition dump, probably near the front, gets hit by one.
Russia is now producing and using up to 200 a day, with Zelensky saying it might go up to 500 a day. Why is this a big problem? It's been upgraded to fly high, so you can't take them down with machineguns, but need guided munitions of really big flak guns - 35mm, 40mm, 57mm- or use planes. When they flew at a low altitude, Ukraine used to shoot them down with .50 machineguns from trucks.
Now it's diving on targets from 3km, so unless there's a very brave gunner on the spot, a .50 won't help you. There are variants with a datalink that can have a target assigned while they're flying. Here's Ukrainians talking about a drone that has been 'circling the town for 90 minutes'. (endurance is 5 hours).
Despite Russians having telegraphed this move (increased production) since the very start, West doesn't seem to have prepared in the slightest. There's no new cheap missile to take them down, nobody is building cheap pulsejet drones that can catch up & blow them up. Nobody was far-sighted enough to modify a 100 high-performance trainers with gun pods and fire control to allow shooting these down. Even the thoroughly obsolete A-10 Warthogs would serve great as drone interceptors, hundreds of kilometers from the front, finally putting that cannon in use somewhere. Even though right now they depend on GPS systems for accuracy, no one's figured out a way to jam them either. I thought the West was supposed to be innovative? Russia engages in a series of dead simple moves, doesn't even keep it secret, and the West does.. nothing?
Ukraine kept shooting expensive, high-performance missiles like Piorun or Stinger ($300k) at these till it ran out. Total production of Piorun missile is only 1000 a year, Stingers.. are in very limited production. So.. what now?
As total Russian cruise/ballistic missile production of all types is only 20 a day (contrast with the 80 a year Tomahawk production), an additional 200 strikes with 90 kg of HE to a range of 1000 km matter quite a lot. Between informers, long-range recon drones and so on, this could make front-line logistics situation of Ukraine even worse and even complicate frontline drone supply, as with 200 a day, drone workshops that get snitched on can get bombed. And while a 90 kilogram bomb is pretty bad, it's not going to take down an entire block of buildings like the half-ton cruise missiles, so even workshops in apartments blocks could end up on the target list.
The prospects are ..bad . We know from WW2 that jet engines can be cheaper to produce than piston engines. In the eventuality that Chinese develop a copy of a cheap drone jet engine (2 kN should push it to ~600 kph), one that currently sells for $70k, or make something like this at a lower cost, Russians could end up having a huge stocks of fairly cheap and capable cruise missiles. Unless Europeans wake up and develop an affordable counter- that'd be enough to deter European response to a Baltic occupations, as the drones themselves would exhaust stocks of European air-air missiles in a week and the air war would be unwinnable as dismantling Russian air defences would take far longer than it'd take for Russia to blow up all military objects within 800 km of the border.
No_one
1d ago
Why then has Russia not made significant territorial gains in so long? I don't understand why the Ukrainians haven't collapsed already if it's so lopsided against them, even when they have a defender's advantage tactically.
It's not to their advantage to take land that's going to require serious policing for a decade and will be full of terrorists / freedom fighters. Taking those big cities they need to take (Dnipro, Kharkiv) requires completely non-functional enemy armed forces. What better way to make the armed forces non-functional than to destroy them utterly ? If they go slowly, nationalistic, actually brave Ukrainians will feed themselves to the grinder till there's no one left. A sudden collapse caused by a major offensive would result in far more troublesome people later.
Also, more importantly, right now, numerically the forces are at about parity. If Russia wanted a big arrow offensive, it'd have to mobilize a lot of additional people, empty the rest of Russia of reserve formations. This isn't politically optimal. Russians mostly don't care about the war that much, and though there are enough volunteers, if they wanted another half a million troops, there'd be a shortage of equipment too.
Your allegation is that ISW is making it up? How does all this square with identifiable vehicle losses?
'identifiable vehicle losses' can be gamed if your criteria are loose enough. ISW are not serious people.
What is "deteriorating fast" here?
At the very least, air defense situation. They're not even pretending they're shooting down all the Gerans like they used to. Since there's not enough good enough point defenses, everything vaguely army related is blowing up all over Ukraine.
Funny, that's how I feel about an establishment that employs Trita Parsi at all, let alone as management.
The guy who wrote it served as a combat arms officer for a few decades. It wasn't written by Parsi.
How many more months need to go on before you think the CSIS analysis is more correct than "Responsible Statecraft's" about the present state of affairs?
Go read their older reports. These people are not total idiots - they carefully avoid making predictions. Here's a '23 report from them. https://www.csis.org/analysis/ukrainian-innovation-war-attrition
It's slop. Says 'Ukraine keeps fighting because it innovates' (more ISR through drones) but Russians did all the same things. 'Human wave attacks'. I don't think there was even one, and non-journalist westerners who were actually there there call bullshit on that too.. Mind you, same volunteer here directly contradicts CSIS because he says he believes Russians have better ISR and use their drones more. (but yawn, what does he know? He's just a dumb military animal)
Quoting that 'report'
Information Operations: Ukraine has utilized UASs for information operations, such as showing successful strikes and placing them—overtly or covertly—on social media platforms such as Twitter, Telegram, and TikTok.
Oh yeah, that's something what Russians only figured out in 2025.(facepalm)
No_one
2d ago
And one technique is simply having the Europeans give their existing hardware to the Ukrainians ASAP. Gotta prime the defense industrial complex pump.
The entire European inventory of air defence would sustain Ukraine for.. a few months. Maybe a year if they were purposefully ignoring all the Geran drones and staying off the front lines, exclusively defending the rear.
There's maybe 200 modern self-propelled guns left to give. What should they give ? Tanks? Storm Shadows aren't coming. There's the 500 Taurus missiles, which are air launched (so can't salvo), I'm not even sure how many launch platforms Ukraine has and which Russia can likely pick off using their few AWACS planes. And in addition, they don't range far enough either, just about capable of hitting Moscow.
in that Ukraine has been taking on Russia quite successfully for years now
Ukrainians have suffered drastically higher casualties than Russians (because they have less artillery(src, Syrski) and fewer drones(src: Sukharevsky interview in Economist)) for the last two years at least, have lost strategic initiative and are now falling back at an ever increasing pace? Putin, ever the reptile, cares more to end the way predictably and with maximum loss of life for Ukrainian fighting men, as that's going to make the occupation of everything east of the Dniepr less of a problem.
You seem to take ISW and Ukrainian numbers (we kill 1500 Russians a day) at face value. It's not like that. The article you posted is typical. Ukraine's mediazona count got only to 120k, not 250k. Maybe it goes up to 180k if you count in the prisoners.
Meanwhile, the growth in cemeteries in Ukraine indicates war deaths of well north of 500k. Data on amputees, until they stopped publishing it likewise - north of 300k dead, easily.
Even though looking at satellite photos of cemeteries is quite simple, no one seems motivated to perform this calculation when it comes to Ukraine. They did so for Russia, but strangely, they neglected top apply the same methodology for Ukraine. Why? I mean, if they were sure Ukrainian government was telling the truth, or even just bending it by 2x, so ~100k dead, that's less than 0.3% of Ukrainian population. In short, there shouldn't be that many new graves.
You should read this article by retired US officer, not some 'international relations' pukes. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-battlefield/
No_one
2d ago
Enough exposure to porn removes the drive to seek and most importantly to put up with actual women. That's why Japan is the way it is. (30% virginity rate at 30 etc)
Without porn, men can go to incredible lengths to get a woman. Go watch some silent-gen men talk about how they met their wife. "Oh I had to invite her to a dance six times over two months before she finally said yes." etc
No_one
2d ago
I don't think you get it. LLMs actually think, after a fashion, and in a way that's easily more deep than that of all but say, 15% of people. Pornography is ultimately unsatisfying, but with memory, these systems could offer a simulacrum of understanding that anyone who doesn't understand what is really behind it could find satisfying.
No_one
3d ago
And we should arm Ukraine and Israel to the teeth to unleash on Russian and Iran.
Arm with what? The only thing US has plenty of are mothballed Abrams and Bradley vehicles. There isn't even enough ammo for Abrams tanks. Right now, you can't even give Ukrainians air defenses to keep their skies clear of drones. You can't even supply them with artillery shells, or enough newly built military hardware - because it doesn't exist. Even though it was obvious in fall of '23 that Ukraine will get nowhere with what it has, little has been done.
US forgot to develop an industry capable of either innovating and mass producing useful weapons.
'Arming Ukraine' to take on Russia is basically a dream. Maybe if you gave them all Tomahawks (2000, yearly procurement.. 60?) you have, and enough launchers (which you don't have, there's like one prototype ground battery) they could blow up a Kremlin tower and 5% of Russian industry. Russia is now making in two months as many drones as NATO makes guided anti-air missiles in a year. Of all types. (from Patriots through AIM-120/AIM-9 down to humble Pioruns. )
Any normal military industrial complex would have developed something, say, a cheap rocket-takeoff pulsejet drone, easily capable of outrunning a Geran and blowing it up with a decent range. Nah - best Ukrainians do is battery powered interceptor drones (I'm not even sure such can keep up with it it much so very limited range, batteries truly suck)
Yeah, sure, there's APKWS and Ukraine has F-16, but somehow, those drones are not getting intercepted even though they could easily be bc Russian SAM doesn't cover areas >100 km beyond the front. The Gerans are still raining on Lviv etc and there are no videos of F-16s taking them down even though theoretically, an F-16 could take down 28, so 10 planes could, in ideal conditions, take down an entire wave of Geran drones.
Honestly, if you squint your eyes a little, once Russians win in Ukraine, them taking over the Baltics becomes a possibility. No, I don't believe F-35s would be able to waltz through their air defences on day 1 at will and range 500 km inland to take out all missile / drone launchers.
All of this is to say that, even with the faults of "the way liberal democracy functions in practice," we still have it pretty good in the US.
Unsustainable budget deficits, endlessly accumulating debt, a very serious political situation, where one party is huffing glue and the other is full of not very competent people now ? It doesn't look good.
No_one
3d ago
To get on the same page, you're okay with the way liberal democracy functions in practice- the sock-puppeting of civil society, the media manipulation of public opinion in the interest of stability ?
No_one
3d ago
But you're also getting ideologically self-selected people.
Ideology is the mind killer, almost always. Every single one I know of causes people to have huge blindspots.
People who think everyone is essentially the same and any differences between nations are down to institutions cannot be effective. I guess that explains the Afghanistan projects state dept ran.
I also doubt there are very smart committed liberal hegemonists. I've yet to see a single one. Feel free to provide an example though.
No_one
3d ago
a) The people who were fired at state weren't FSOT?
b) even if you say it doubles compensation, it's still nothing compared to what very capable people can get in law, trading, finance, tech..
You don't want 90th percentile, you want 99.9th percentile people for your important diplomatic roles.
No_one
4d ago
If you have a selective exam but don't get enough applicants because e.g. the wages are not that attractive anymore, or the institution has a bad smell, you're not going to get as good a selection.
e.g.
96-140k. 140K after six years isn't going to get you top talent these days.
No_one
4d ago
Bureaucrats used to be a lot better in the 40s, accumulation of bloat and it all went to the shitter after Carter on purpose lost that lawsuit over competence exams.
No_one
4d ago
In case anyone is unclear on what the 'managerial state' is, here's a handy explainer:
The managerial state is the system in which technical–bureaucratic elites, rather than elected politicians or private owners, exercise effective control over economy and society. James Burnham argued that the separation of ownership from control in large corporations produced a new “managerial class” whose power rests not on property but on its command of administrative expertise; the state becomes the ultimate lever, so that “the institutions which comprise the state will … be the ‘property’ of the managers” . Critics such as Samuel Francis add that this regime replaces law with administrative decree, federalism with executive autocracy, and limited government with an unlimited apparatus that pursues open-ended social goals in the name of abstract ideals like equality or positive rights .
World War II was the catalytic moment for America’s managerial turn. Wartime mobilization created vast federal agencies that coordinated production, prices, and labor; the organizational techniques forged in battle were carried into the post-war civilian economy as Washington converted military supply chains to consumer manufacturing, subsidized higher education for millions of veterans (GI Bill), and normalized Keynesian macro-management . The Cold War then locked this arrangement in place: a permanent defense–industrial complex, rising federal share of GDP, and an alphabet soup of regulators (EPA, OSHA, EEOC) extended managerial oversight into labor relations, environmental quality, and social equity, while the new social-science “policy expert” displaced the traditional politician as the central figure in legislation and adjudication .
By the 1970s the managerial state had become bipartisan and self-sustaining. Regardless of which party won elections, power continued to migrate toward executive agencies, independent central banks, and transnational regulatory networks; large corporations operated as quasi-public utilities under federal charter, and citizens were recast as clients whose behavior is continuously shaped by tax incentives, administrative rules, and court orders . The cumulative effect has been a shift from constitutional self-government to what critics call “soft totalitarianism”: an ostensibly apolitical technocracy that expands its jurisdiction by discovering ever-new social problems requiring expert management, while insulating its own authority from democratic reversal .
Do you truly believe classical liberalism is at all viable in a society that's not heavy on small businesses, small companies and independent farmers ?
Look how it ended up the first time - it stopped being viable due to increased scale of businesses. In the US it started getting replaced by the managerial state in late 1930s and this was mostly finished by 1980s.
No_one
5d ago
If it was Maxwell and the lynchpin of so many online conspiracy theories, why can’t the powers that be (which surely have access to Reddit or - at worst - Ghislaine’s recovery email) just log in as her and post something?
Why'd they care?
kind of thing any third world teen on a gig work site would have done for $3 an hour and which, in the most sensitive cases, would have been done by 22 year old junior intelligence analysts on their first job.
Maybe she had an intern do that stuff, but used the account herself too for more important stuff, like influencing stuff as a powermod, no ?
No_one
5d ago
Why'd you assume 'competent groups' ?
Competence is rare. It's going to be even rarer when you have to have clandestine groups doing insane things. You need to have loyal, competent people willing to do crazy things that could get them killed or imprisoned for life.
Maybe attacking him with a Russian/Iranian drone
Where would they get an Iranian drone? And Russian drones, right now, are stuff anyone can 3d print and assemble from parts from China.
No_one
5d ago
The memes continue to deliver.
I don't think it's going to contaminate the dataset so thoroughly, but seeing as 2-3 million relatively tech savvy Americans loathe liberals and probably 50,000 of them have a twisted sense of humor, the odds of Stancil getting visited by a Teslabot when these start selling is .. very, very high.
No_one
5d ago
Dasein has a an interesting take regarding the UAP theater
And one more thought. There has been more rigorous, well-funded scientific investigation of xenobiology than of secret societies, conspiracies and psyops. This asymmetry is interesting. We have learned an awful lot about life and why it'd be hard for life to emerge outside Earth, and nothing in favor of such life. We have seen quite credible examples of conspiracies, and nothing to suggest that better-ran ones are impossible. However, the former remains viable, while interest in the latter has positively plummeted among the educated classes in the last 100+ years. «What if intelligent life beyond Earth, like silicon-based or something, dude, and flying saucers, imagine how it could work» is a respectable enough train of thought: why not indeed, and what's the harm anyway, it's deserving of patronage of eccentric billionaires, academic grants and place in peer-reviewed journals. «What if a well-organized cabal of malicious people manipulates public opinion without legible authority» is a sinful evil idea a libel this idea killed millions shut up stop it or we will erase you from polite society. (Like many taboos (e.g not threatening to throw another party's candidate into jail), it's being violated nowadays, to an extent; the ayy guys say the government lies. The government is not the Cabal, of course; it is known that the government keeps some things secret. But I suppose this does blur the line). Most importantly, though, we do not have a serious theory of conspiracy.
(snip, see the rest at the link)
That said. If there's a single parsimonious theory of a motive for this psyop that I can seriously propose… It's not my «overcapacity» thesis but rather the opposite. I mean the discrediting of the authority of the USG and army and American intelligence apparatus, through this very Bayesian logic, as @Hoffmeister25 demonstrates. The USG is the supreme secular power of the world, – and it's being reduced to some provincial slapstick comedy, instead of carrying itself with the dignity of the sovereign. It does not command respect, mostly just grudging support, on account of the vileness of its competitors. Give this 10 more years. 10 more years of AI shit torrent, 10 more years of long Covid and demented gerontocrats, 10 more years of Trump and Biden dog-faced-pony-soldier show and lurid, Jerry Springer tier gibberish in Congress. If at some point, say, CIA manages to report something truly ludicrous for Americans, physically plausible but shocking – who knows, maybe Mossad quietly installing backdoors into Deepmind and Anthropic AGI superclusters? – it will just be met with shrugs and condescending scowls. Whoever runs this, wants the legitimate authority of the US to end up in the position of the boy who cried wolf, and then collapse without popular support.
Just an idle thought.
Ukraine has ..about 40 Gepard systems, I think. Maybe in total 60 high performance point defense systems. Definitely not enough to cover all targets of military importance around the country.
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