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What F-15s were lost? Is this something Russian or Chinese media is saying? Everything I've read says that the US has lost absolutely zero planes so far, just a few unfortunate men on a base in Kuwait that was struck by a missile. But other than that one incident, US missile defense in this conflict has been outstanding.
Sure, I never claimed that there's some great love affair between China and Iran. It was always just a partnership of convenience. Nonetheless, it was a real partnership, and I'm not how China is going to deal with the loss of this oil supply, on top of the loss of Venezuela. I suppose they'll just become even more dependant on Russia, just as Russia is dependant on the money they get from selling oil and gas to China. But if that link is broken, both nations fall apart.
Why do you discount fossil fuels and agriculture? Both of those fields are actually quite technologically advanced in the US. We're not some 3rd world nation doing subsistance agriculture or relying on foreign companies to drill oil for us. Those are some of the most crucial and high-tech fields in the economy! Meanwhile, the areas which China exports to us are in manufacturing, which is something we are actively trying to increase. Many Americans would consider it a great boon to have more manufacturing jobs and less imports from China. But if the US stops exporting food and oil to China, I don't see how China replaces those.
No I don't glibly dismiss it at all, I simply recognize the reality that the US now has far more relative power in nuclear weapons than it had at any time in the Cold War, when the USSR generally had more warheads. It's not about fighting China directly, it's about gaining operational freedom to act in other areas, as I wrote here . If China wants to invade Taiwan, they must be terrified that it would end up in a nuclear war with the US. The US can freely act against other countries with no such worry about China.
America has many planners, who can plan a great deal of actions. That's how we fight Venezuela, and Iran, and aid Ukraine, and perhaps take down Cuba, and who knows what else, all simultaneously. Because we are a world power with global concerns. That is rather different from the state of China, which has to spend 50 years worrying about how it can take over some small offshore island because it represents a huge political threat to the legitimacy of their government. But sure, we can also plan for how to win a war against China, that's a fun hypothetical for our military planners to consider :). Starving them of oil seems like a good first step.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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Bias statement: I greately enjoy Pax Americana, I write this from the perspective of a frustrated and worried citizen who sees their mantle of "global superpower" slipping and is sad that the response to that is to shoot ourselves in the foot over and over again.
It's crazy you just skipped over that point lol
This is a great first step, and given they are the leader in ev's and power installation, it looks like they might be thinking about this too!
A few more things to consider, just riffing off the top of my head, happy to expand on any of them
Dominant position in heavy REE refining, yes, everyone else can stand up this capcaity, no, no one has to the same extent despite saying they want to for 20 years
One shipyard can build more ships than all US military shipyard combined
Military doctrine literally explicitly built around countering US forces
USA keeps shooting all its interceptors, of which it builds a far too small amount, to defend Israel (greatest ally btw)
If you dont want to read this , here is an AI-slop summary:
US + allies (Japan + Philippines + farther bases; excluding SK/Taiwan) — change last 10 years: Japan added only 2 HAS (and IAS grew from <60 to 100), the Philippines stayed at 0 HAS (IAS roughly doubled from a low base), and the “farther” US operating areas remained 0 US HAS; overall, in the within-1,000-nmcut (excluding SK), the US added +2 HAS total.
US + allies — current (per the paper): Japan has 36 military airfields with 140 HAS (most Cold War-era); the Philippines has 0 HAS across 13 bases; and the farther US/partner areas listed are almost entirely unhardened with 0 US HAS.
China — change last 10 years: PRC HAS rose from 370 entering the 2010s to “over 800” (i.e., +430-ish HAS, more than doubling); non-hardened IAS grew from just under ~1,100 to >2,300, reaching >3,100 total shelters nationwide.
China — current in-theater (per the paper): 134 PRC air bases within 1,000 nm of the Taiwan Strait with 650+ HAS and almost 2,000 IAS.
A collection of INDOPACOM leaders shitting their pants:
Adm. Samuel Paparo (Commander, USINDOPACOM) — Senate Armed Services posture hearing (Apr 10, 2025): “China is outproducing the United States… the trajectory must change.”
Adm. Samuel Paparo — USINDOPACOM Posture Statement (2025): “the trajectory must change. China is out-producing the United States…”
Adm. Samuel Paparo — testimony coverage on shipbuilding (Apr 2025): China building naval combatants “6 to 1.8” vs the US; “I could go through every force element…”
Adm. Samuel Paparo — Sedona Forum (McCain Institute coverage, May 2025): “every force element… is a bad trajectory.”
Adm. John Aquilino (Commander, USINDOPACOM) — Senate posture statement (Mar 21, 2024): PRC continues “aggressive military buildup”; “the risk… is high and trending in the wrong direction.”
Adm. John Aquilino — same statement (Mar 2024): “On a scale not seen since WWII… [PLA] has added over 400 fighter aircraft… more than 20 major warships…”
Adm. John Aquilino — Senate posture hearing (Mar 10, 2022): described an “extensive buildup of nuclear capability”; when asked if expansion was dramatic: “Extremely, quickly.”
Adm. John Aquilino — interview coverage (Apr 2024): “I’ve watched it increase in scope and scale, it is not slowing down.”
Adm. Phil Davidson (Commander, USINDOPACOM) — Senate testimony coverage (Mar 2021): cited “the… numbers of… ships, aircraft, rockets… they’ve put in the field,” and warned “the threat… [is]… in the next six years.”
Adm. Phil Davidson — later public quote (Sep 2021): “all those trend lines indicate… within the next six years they will have… capability… to forcibly reunify [Taiwan]…”
Yes I did skip over that, because it's a deep rabbit hole of classified information, Communist-bloc boasting, vaporware, and extremely complex speculatiion about how future wars might take place. I'll freely admit that I'm not qualified to even judge the current generation of aircraft, let alone the next generation. But from where I stand, there was a lot of doubt and worry about the performance of the F35 and Ford-class carriers, but both now seem to be working marvelously. They just finished a massive military operation against Iran! China has never done anything comparable, they can only speculate and boast about how they might someday perform. My vague impression is that the J-20 has excellent range and good stealth, but is not as good in avionics and other soft factors as the F35- and there's over 1000 F-35s now compared to just 300 F-20s. Similarly, I know they're working on a next-gen stealth bomber but don't have it ready yet, whereas the US is already scaling up production of its next-gen B21.
For the rest of it... well, I'm not sure what you expect me to say. Obviously they're a large, industrialized country which has been rapidly building up its military lately. Obviously it would be quite difficult to fight such a nation in their own backyard. But they have no means to project force overseas in any way close to what the US can, or even what the USSR could at its peak. All they can really do is defend their own local space and hope to deter us from directly attacking them. That report seems to be about them hardening their airfields, which is a good way for them to survive being bombed, but still not a great sign when your airfields are being bombed. It's far from clear that they even want to attack Taiwan, and there's a vast diversity of opinions on that, but I think most experts agree it would be an extremely difficult invasion for them- but of course US military leaders must take it seriously, and may play up that threat as an excuse to increase their own budgets.
Even if China did take over Taiwan... frankly, so what? It's a small island with no natural resources, far away from anything. It's only strategic asset is their chips factory, and that's rapidly being diversified. Iran is of much more strategic importance, and we just took that without breaking a sweat.
I agree with basically all of this.
Will China ever land troops in LA? no
But will the USA lose the ability to project power inside the first island chain? I'm worried that they might
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The most recent reporting suggest Kuwait shot down three F-15Es in a friendly-fire incident.
See: https://www.twz.com/air/f-15-spins-into-the-ground-while-on-fire-in-middle-east
Aha, the Kuwaitis! Always the Kuwaitis! The number one threat to the US Air Force is... Kuwait?
You'd expect it to be the US Navy that tried to end the F-15's perfect K/D ratio
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