ABigGuy4U
54m ago
They're still ahead
I’m not even sure they’re ahead now. If you compare the US and Chinese Navies as a whole the US Navy looks better, but the US Navy is spread across at least four different oceans and seas, most of the Chinese navy is right there. And maneuverable re-entry vehicles and constant satellite surveillance make giant aircraft carries a lot less practical. Recent war games have indicated that getting carrier groups further west than Hawaii would be extremely risky. And that’s just the large extremely long range ballistic missiles, most of the fight for Taiwan would have to be within 100 miles of the Chinese coast. And that’s not even getting into the string of pretty worrying incidents lately that show a dramatic loss of basic seamanship skills in the US Navy (like accidentally scuttling the John Paul Jones).
Also for some reason it seems like most people picture a Chinese invasion of Taiwan like it’s Omaha beach in 1944 with Higgins boats full of Chinese soldiers getting mowed down on the beach, it wouldn’t be like that at all. It would be 2000 cruise missiles a day for three weeks before there was any kind of landing attempt.
Trying to decapitate the enemy leadership?
Trying to decapitate the enemy leadership has been a thing for almost as long as total war has. There were hundreds of plots to Hitler, and dozens of Nazi plots to assassinate Churchill and Stalin. The only reason none of these worked is that all parties involved were surrounded by fearsome state security apparatuses, and because infiltrating a dozen commandoes into a foreign country to kill VIP under massive security is pretty hard. Later during the nuclear age, assassinating leaders of major powers became untenable along with all the other aspects of total war.
@erwgv3g34 And it’s pretty ironic that Scott mentions Lincoln, given that Lincoln died as the result of a botched and too-late massive decapition strike against the entire Union leadership structure. The plot was supposed to kill President Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, Secretary of State William Seward, and Commanding General of the US Army Ulysses Grant. The plot fell apart near the date of its execution for multiple reasons (partially because the plan came together too late to actually win the war) and only Lincoln and Seward needed up being attacked.
ABigGuy4U
13hr ago
Possibly. Patriot, Arrow and THAAD all have limited interceptor capacity and once those run out lots of targets become sitting ducks. I’ve also seen video footage that show signs that Iran isn’t just yeeting missiles at apartment blocks, there is definitely counter-battery fire in an attempt to take out the missile defense systems. This is the same thing that happened in Ukraine, but it could happen a lot faster here because Iran has spent 20 years stockpiling missiles for this one job.
What I don’t know is how badly Iran is getting diced up right now. They are definitely getting hit but I don’t know what the state of their missile launch capability is. If it’s still in good shape then Israel could end up in a pretty bad situation pretty fast. @coffee_enjoyer might be right about imminent US intervention but it remains to be seen. And of course there’s always nukes.
ABigGuy4U
1d ago
This is a very good post. I would add another couple of points:
-
Actually invading Iran would be very difficult, much harder than Iraq, and would risk turning into America’s Ukraine War.
-
From the Israel perspective, a secular Iranian nationalist government isn’t necessarily going to to be a lot friendlier. There are many Iranian dissidents who think that the Islamic Republic government is cowardly and has been going much too easy on Israel over the last two decades. And that is somewhat true, the Ayatollahs are unpopular and any foreign adventure is risky because of their low support at home. There are very good non-religious, non-ethnic reasons for Iran and Israel to be at each other’s throats. Each stands to be the major regional power in the Middle East and the town isn’t big enough for the two of them. In the long-run, a secular Iranian government with high levels of popular support that is competent and actually has its shit together is probably a lot worse for Israel.
ABigGuy4U
4d ago
Israel’s existing nuclear arsenal are incapable of destroying them.
Israel has probably had hydrogen bombs since the late 1970s.
HAPPENING NOW: ISRAEL LAUNCHES MASSIVE ATTACK AGAINST IRANESE NUCLEAR FACILITIES—AIR RAID SIRENS HEARD ALL ACROSS ISRAEL—MASSIVE AIR ACTIVITY OVER IRAQ-SYRIA BORDER—MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS CONFIRMED IN TEHRAN INCLUDING COLLAPSED BUILDING—IRANIAN FIGHTER JETS SEEN TAKING OFF FROM AIRSTRIPS NEAR TEHRAN—BALLISTIC MISSILE LAUNCHES REPORTED IN IRAN—REPORTS OF EXPLOSIONS AT US BASES IN IRAQ—MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS HEARD NEAR IRAN’S NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY—VIDEO FOOTAGE SHOWING NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY BURNING—UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT THE CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE IRANIAN MILITARY HAS BEEN KILLED IN A TARGETED STRIKE
—Inb4 source
—Inb4 “low effort post ban” Additional facts and my thoughts will be added as the situation develops
ABigGuy4U
5d ago
It’s like quitting drinking. If you’re a terminal alcoholic, quitting will have some major positive effects on your life. If you drink a few beers twice a month, you’re probably not even going to notice. For “The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z” who are cranking it out to hentai 7 times a day, nofap is a revelation, and they will see substantial improvements to their mood and energy levels. For anyone with normal habits it probably isn’t going to be a game changer.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
Because it was an impossibly high bar. Nothing was able to do that, for years. The idea that you’d be able to talk to a computer program and not recognize it seemed like science fiction.
Well remember even passing the basic casual Turing test used to be extremely difficult. It took at least 65 years between the creation of the test and systems beginning to pass it consistently. And I still remember science articles and science fiction stories from the 90s and 2000s talking about it like it was the holy grail. It’s only in the past few years that it’s started to seem like an inadequate measurement of an AI’s capabilities.
Interestingly your motivated Turing test starts to sound a lot like the Voight-Kampff test from Bladerunner.
ABigGuy4U
8d ago
I don’t see Newsom getting the nomination in any contest that involves an actual primary. Older black Democrats in the south have a lot of pull in the primaries and they don’t like slick sharky Patrick Bateman types. Biden’s goofiness was actually a big advantage for him in those contests.
ABigGuy4U
9d ago
But a big part of why the whole Cagot discrimination thing fell apart is that there really was no way to physically distinguish a Cagot from any other person either at a glance, or by thorough examination. Once families stopped living in the same medieval town of 800 people for generation after generation it became untenable. Even back then it relied on an elaborate system of written records and forced signaling.
ABigGuy4U
10d ago
Stolen bitcoins? I have no doubt that soon Home Depot Presents: The Police® will be hauling away the perpetrators in Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents handcuffs. Assuming someone can pay them to investigate, this isn’t a communist country after all.
ABigGuy4U
10d ago
Also the physical jobs have been getting automated since the invention of the domesticated ox, the wheel, the lever, the steam engine and the assembly line. So what you are left with is the hardened core of physical jobs that are the hardest and least efficient to automate.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
I think people are becoming increasingly aware that the Democratic Party might actually cease to exist as a going concern, and that from here on out all power struggles are going to be inter-factional ones within the Republican Party. So you’re seeing a higher willingness within the party to have these intense gang fights over policy direction. That’s also what’s causing the whole “woke right” squabble.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
They don’t necessarily have to frame anyone though. Just announce a fictitious perpetrator.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
Frankly I suspect European authorities might be straight up lying about the identities of suspects now. I’ve clocked two suspiciously terrorist-like attacks on the last few weeks (a vehicle ram attack in the UK and a mass stabbing in Germany) where the authorities immediately announced that it was committed by a white European. I can’t confirm the Germany one but the on the scene video of the UK attack was ambiguous, the guy looked like he could potentially be English, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he was Syrian or Egyptian either.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
But how much this is confounded by the fact that the economic outlook for working class men in the Rust Belt is currently really bad? In 1975 you would have seen vastly higher amounts of fatal drug overdose rates in America’s ruined cities than out in the countryside. Now the situation is reversed.
ABigGuy4U
12d ago
Clark, who led last year’s expedition to the Afar region of northern Ethiopia, and UC Berkeley colleague Tim D. White, also said that a re-examination of a 300,000-year-old fossil skill found in the same region earlier shows evidence of having been scalped.
–The Yuma Daily Sun
ABigGuy4U
12d ago
China's got a half dozen space startups working on Falcon 9 class vehicles; none are at SpaceX's level yet but like 4 of them have at least reached orbit.
Alright so which one of those half dozen Chinese start-ups will the US government trust to launch its incredibly classified spy satellites?
SpaceX has a hell of a lot of long-term government and military contracts. Blue Origin is about the only other company that might end up being major competition, eventually, but only in the long term. Blue Origin currently has its own major problems and dysfunctions and doesn’t have much actual developed capability yet. SpaceX’s only actual peer competitor, Roscosmos, is now unavailable in the Western market for security reasons, due to being owned by the government of a now-hostile state.
Starship is just the flashy sports car to create brand awareness, and potentially develop future capabilities. It’s not the bread and butter. The cost of the Starship project is quite small compared to the SpaceX bottom line and even if it flames out completely it’s not going to even get close to tanking the whole company.
ABigGuy4U
13d ago
Medvedev was keeping the seat warm because Putin was constitutionally barred from a third consecutive term
Yes, exactly like Trump who I have no doubt would at least try to run for a third term if he wasn’t constitutionally prohibited from doing that.
ABigGuy4U
13d ago
My first thought was the “Putin-Medvedev strategy” but I didn’t want to sidetrack the thread into a 500 reply tangent about the war.
I have never felt any strong enough need to post that I thought it necessary to make an account
Read: “I made an alt so I can drop a pissy comment without repercussions”
The bombardment Iran is getting isn’t even close to what Taiwan would get. It would look more like Iraq or Kosovo, but in a much smaller area.
More options
Context Copy link