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Notes -
A tweet I just saw:
Can any of you confirm or deny any of these claims?
My gas bill went up 2.5x times in '23. US LNG is, at the very least, 3x more expensive intrinsically compared to piped gas. It's quite likely following the war, Nord Stream is going to be repaired (currently 3/4 pipes are broken) and put back into order.
Gas prices have already devastated German industry, we could just shutter everything and keep buying US energy, but I don't think that's likely. Not everyone's like me and considering leaving this place.
That's what you heard. What the Chinese meant is that they're not Khorne enthusiasts, they don't consider shedding blood the point of war and want to see US bow out of the contest over who gets to call the shots in East Asia peacefully.
Their plan is, build up the army and the army's navy to the point US is going to be facing insurmountable odds - overwhelmed with masses of precision weapons. According to simulations, US is almost always losing the war anyway because it has no good missile defense, not enough interceptors and all local bases are in range of Chinese missiles.
In addition, likely China can blockade Japan and Korea from, at least tankers, without ever leaving home. If Iran can make a few 100 ballistic missiles, Chinese can make thousands and thousands of accurate ones. US is making ~150 ABM interceptors a year. No contest.
So a protracted war would hurt everyone, not just Chinese, and ever more so, as China's moving to using more EVs and building up their domestic grid.
I expect by 2030 that the US stockpile of hypersonics will compare or exceed China's and the calculus will change considerably. The US machine moves more slowly but once it gains momentum it tends to get there.
We can't even produce enough shells for ukraine. It's explosive in a metal container, how hard could it be? And on the other end of the scale we can't produce enough ships, and also some of the ones we do produce are garbage, and we don't have enough sailors to properly man said ships. I don't see much reason to be more optimistic about the shiny new thing.
It could be worse. Here's what things are like in the Indian Navy.
But yeah, the idea that the US is capable of outproducing China is comical.
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