From the size of their navy, to the inroads the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been making from the Western Hemisphere and Pacific Island nations that used to be seen as USA’s backyard, the PRC made it abundantly clear that its goal to replace the USA and its allies as the lead force in the global order.
The PRC’s military moves against Taiwan are not a matter of if but when. That date draws ever closer and the US and allies are no closer to being able to fend of the challenge than they were 5 years ago.
If Taiwan falls—or is blockaded—the resulting economic hit will make the Great Depression and Great Recession look like minor stock market corrections.
Losing Taiwan would be a hit yes but losing the trade with China would be a hit to us and them and is prob a situation that is holding them back, at least for now.
Keep beating the drum Sal. We need NSA to think us out of this mess. I hope the are ready with COAs to brief him day one.
Taiwan should be made to potentially be of little use to China if they attack, if Taiwan is agreeable. We should consider helping them move the best and brightest out and important industries out. Call it diversification.
What can you expect from a nation that would put Biden, Blinken and Sullivan in charge of its security? I am glad that Trump won, but Kamala was not that far behind. Again, it says to me that we are not a serious nation.
Popular Vote was 75 vs 77 Million. Damned close. Electoral College was 226 vs 312, some breathing room. Knowing how disjointed Kamala's campaign was vs a solid Trump campaign, we should still be concerned. 93 Electoral College votes were from the key Seven Swing states, and all thought to be in play until they were not.
Partisanship, as Washington and Hamilton warned us, will be the death of the Republic. We are never going to fix our Navy's problems through the lens of partisanship; because the partisans are only 30% of the nation.
Historically, Republicans and Democrats saw the need for a strong national defense. Today, many Democrats still think the nation is worth protecting.
Instead of the "all you folks who voted for Biden are communist traitors," as Pete is suggesting above, we should be looking at ways to bring everybody on board. Here's one example. If you are an isolationist, one who wants America First, you need a strong Navy. On the other hand, if you are a globalist, a lover of free trade and open borders, you need a strong Navy.
We can make the case for a strong Navy, a vigorous shipbuilding program to bring us up to the magic 600, without a word of denigration of the folks who don't voter for our particular party. The fact of the matter is that until an overwhelming majority of the nation wants a strong U.S. Navy, we will continue to drift and rust. It is hard to bring folks on your side when you hate them, and are quick to rub that fact in their faces.
You are making up stuff now, "Instead of the "all you folks who voted for Biden are communist traitors," as Pete is suggesting above,..." Pete never suggested any such thing. All Pete did was accurately criticize Biden and some of his choices for key roles in the Biden anti-American Crime Family Administration. Biden and his Team have done more damage to America than any other President. It is still a pig, no matter how much lipstick you use.
The case for needing a strong Navy has been made many times, especially in the past four years. We need a strong President, a strong Congress, and an honest, professional Navy to achieve a strong Navy. Now we have a strong President. Time will tell if we can reform a broken Navy and if we have a Congress strong enough to pay for and properly oversee the development of a strong Military. A 600-ship Navy is not magic; it is a pipe dream and not worthy of being the goal as it is not achievable in the foreseeable future.
Is the "overwhelming majority" you speak of responsible for the many Navy warships that are rust-buckets, for Fat Leonard, LCS, Zumwalt, BonHomme Richard, Constellation Frigate, Ford CVN, McCain & Fitzgerald collisions, Red Hill fuel fiasco, active and enthusiastic implementation of the Woke culture, ...? No, it is not. It is a broken Navy that is responsible for all of those failures.
The Navy bears primary responsibility for the condition of our Navy. We had the time and the money to make a strong Navy, but the Navy Leadership wasted both.
There’s no “Biden crime family,” and you just lost the 30% we need. “You friggin' people. You have no idea how to defend the nation. All you did was weaken a country today, Snyder. That's all you did.”
No Tom, I spoke the truth. I have faith that there are patriots among the millions of Democrats who will support the efforts that Trump will be making to restore the greatness of America. Will I offend the Far Left Democrat Cult? Yes, I will. No apologies. Apparently, I offended you.
I wonder what the living, eligible voter popular vote really was. The vote counts at midnight (Pacific Time) on election day were most likely 99% right. Everything two days later and on is fraud.
Agree. The midnight count was probably reasonably accurate. Everything past a day or so was likely bogus. Still astonishing that almost of America wanted Kamala as President- or voted against Trump but they still preferred Kamala over Trump.
I am overjoyed at the positive change in the atmosphere regarding Trump. This was incredible, "Former and future first lady Melania Trump has inked an eye-popping $40 million deal with Amazon to license a documentary on her life — with cameos from her husband, Donald, and son, Barron." TDS is not dead, but it may be mortally ill.
Making every part of our infrastructure available on-line for the sake of convenience is the stupidest move this country ever made. In a long line of stupid moves, that's saying something. Customer interfaces being on-line is one thing. It's quite another to have control of your utilities connected to the internet. I don't care how good your VPN and firewall are, if it's connected to the internet in any way, it's hackable. Expect it to not be available when you need it.
Heck, whoever - cough, cough - hacked the Iranian centrifuges definitively showed that even air-gapped systems are hackable.
And have been for several/many years. The issue was certainly known when I was in the business (Homeland Security) in the mid 1990s. Nobody did very much, because the systems were largely locally and privately owned and maintained . I suspect that is still the case.
Same here when I worked for a few Security Consulting firms in the 1990's and 2000's We had a few Wizards that did White Hat testing, including against some Fortune 100 companies- I do not remember any that were not successfully hacked. Many did not even change the factory default codes on their routers, etc. Some utilities ensured their SCADA systems were not connected to the internet- I've heard that is often not the case now.
And it's not just online hacking we need to worry about. There are folks who make a good living doing physical penetration testing, and they are very successful gaining physical access to computers and networks. Some places even supply publicly available computers connected to their networks. I have seen videos on YOUTUBE created by children that show you how to create a keystroke logger.
And who can forget the lunatic security procedures implemented by the Clinton administration, including at Los Alamos.
I have been tempted a number of times to do some unofficial pen testing myself, but I am too old and decrepit to do the time when I am caught.
A minor quibble with your comment of, “China’s leaders developed a strategy to become a world power whereas our leaders let our companies, institutions, and infrastructure crumble…”
More to the point our leaders became complicit in the corruption and proliferation of lies..
I don't think it's hypocritical to want them to not succeed in their quest for hegemony, any more than it's hypocritical for them to want to. Although I'm not suffering indignation at all; now that they are near or in fact a Great Power, they are just doing great power stuff.
The only morons unclear on what China wants are in the Biden administration. Very early on in Bidens reign of mediocrity and stupidity, Anthony Blinken got pantsed by the CCP at meetings in Anchorage - March, 2021.
And then Blinken tried to run around with his ass in the air. That may have been the zenith of the US influence abroad during the last four years: It's only gotten worse since then
Le Grande Armeè was once the scourge of Europe but alas, that ended in 1815. They tried to reassert their dominance in 1870-71 against Prussia with disastrous results.
I tried reading David Sanger’s New Cold Wars, but had to put it down and walk away halfway through. Its only sourced by Biden and Obama national security types trying to clean up their images and whitewash their mistakes on China and Russia.
Oh we shouldn't be too hasty here as there is plenty of blame to go around. If we held a "best of" awards contest, it would last quite some time and the cast of characters would stretch back in time. This is an epic failure...
It is shocking to see how far the degradation of US cyber defenses seems to have gone. But this is still a two-way street. Can't the same be done against the PRC and the CCP? In fact, isn't it already being done secretly? I'd like to think the US is fighting back...
I think our national security types have been more focused on imaginary insurrectionists, white nationalists, and "Russian collusion" for the past 9 years, but I hope some of them are doing good work.
1. I agree with the threat described by the Commander.
2. China has a huge economy and we are their largest customer. If the stuff stops flowing to us over the ocean and if we interdict stuff flowing east and west from China, their government has a problem. I know they have stocked up on food and they can get oil from the 'stans. What happens when all their export warehouses get full? Do they send everyone home? Pay their people with borrowed money? In which currency? Who buys the bonds? We will have our own issues but that doesn't mean that we can't help to make their problems bigger. And what about Russia and Iran in all of this?
Disclaimer: I am a recipient of freebie prescription drugs courtesy of Tricare and Medicare, earned through a contractual agreement. I also double-dip from the Treasury. Without prescription drugs, I'd have likely passed several ago. With them, I may see another 10-15 years. So China quits selling us drugs. So what? We rapidly build factories to make our own. Like shipbuilding, say it takes 10 years. The "awful" benefit would be the die off of the costly sickly people. With that, wouldn't Social Security, Medicare, and pension funds get a reprieve, the cost of medical insurance go down? After all, we needy, tax dollar black holes would be gone. Might even improve the gene pool, though the fecundity of us Boomers isn't a real issue. If we are too old or too sickly to take up arms against China in a war they start, then let us be the "Butter" component of the Guns or Butter debate and allow us to melt away to free up more "Gun" money to arm the fit. I'm game.
"So long as the world remained at peace, the only danger lay in the deliberate creation of obstacles to Japan's enterprise in the export markets. During the 1930's a number of countries tried to weaken her competition by raising tariffs or imposing quota restrictions on her imports. These obstacles no doubt worsened Japan's terms of trade, but during this decade they certainly did not arrest the expansion of her exports, for while the import trade increased in volume between 1929 and 1937 by only about one-third, the volume of exports grew by about three-quarters. This was a remarkable expansion in a period in which international trade in general was stagnant, and it explains why Japanese competition was so greatly feared by foreign producers."
I would love to believe that China is a nation wholly dependent upon foreign exports and imports, who will collapse like a paper dragon at the slightest disruption. I suspect our elites in State believe that to be true. It's also not worth their time to grok the history of east Asia. It might go against what they are so convinced is true. History holds no lessons - only the future matters.
Some of us think that China's naval buildup is because they are utterly dependent on trade and see the obvious decline of the USN. China depends of trade to feed their people. Without a functioning US Navy the the system of world trade could fall apart.
If I were the premier of China, and had access to the INSERVs our navy won't let American's read, I'd order a blue water navy; stat!
I attribute most of America's security weaknesses to lack of intellectual rigor and a low level of competence. Companies hire the cheapest workers they can find, and will outsource whenever possible. Management is packed with weak-minded hacks and DEI hires with zero "situational awareness" for security threats. We also have Chinese foreign nationals working on our critical systems.
We know a lot of the who, what, why and how questions / answers with a reasonable level of fidelity. What we don't know is the WHEN. I'm becoming more convinced every day, it will be sooner rather than later. Perhaps A LOT SOONER than our "great minds" at DoD and in the "intelligence community" currently assess.
They are trying to get more fab lines built and functioning outside of Taiwan. Taiwan and the PRC are not the least of worries. They are up there with a number of other problems.
The problem with Russia is not the Neocons. It is Putin and his imperial ambitions. His war in Ukraine is a war of imperial expansion.
Robert Kagan just wrote an article for the Atlantic in which he repeats the same old tired arguments for intervening in other countries. The guy learned nothing from Vietnam and Afghanistan
This is a chronicle of insanity. We are so very screwed. Everything online, and letting the Peoples Republic of China in to telecoms has been a massive breach of security.
This is like allowing Germans in for high energy physics, mechanical engineering, and petroleum plant operations in 1936.
DC is not serious. We continue to drink from a bitter cup, because not doing so would cost so much. Are we buying the time to rearm as in the late 1930s? Push off war to built strength, and obtain better defenses for the home. I hope so, but they have good engineers as well.
And this doesn’t even begin to account for the economic abyss we have elected to place our Nation in…I suspect very quickly many will realize exponents are a b!tch and math doesn’t lie….essentially on a spreadsheet!
To paraphrase Hemingway, Slowly at first and then All at once!
"To paraphrase Hemingway, Slowly at first and then All at once!" I think Hemingway was describing bankruptcy, as you implied, Jonathon. But I also think it applies to the serial buggery inflicted on this nation by apparatchiks with more attentiveness to their own welfare and bottom line than our nation's. It is an apt, but crass quote that seems to fit. To cite another man with supposed expertise in the matter, "(men) who know(s) the price of everything and the value of nothing".
Civilian IT usually places usability higher in the priority matrix than security and relies on “not being a target” for security for the most part. I was aghast coming out of the US Army signal MOSs for what passed for security when I left the service.
I'm becoming convinced that we need to reinstate the draft...of the children of Federal elected officials. Federal judges, too. Maybe state Governors. Make them have skin in the game.
The PRC’s military moves against Taiwan are not a matter of if but when. That date draws ever closer and the US and allies are no closer to being able to fend of the challenge than they were 5 years ago.
If Taiwan falls—or is blockaded—the resulting economic hit will make the Great Depression and Great Recession look like minor stock market corrections.
Losing Taiwan would be a hit yes but losing the trade with China would be a hit to us and them and is prob a situation that is holding them back, at least for now.
Keep beating the drum Sal. We need NSA to think us out of this mess. I hope the are ready with COAs to brief him day one.
Taiwan should be made to potentially be of little use to China if they attack, if Taiwan is agreeable. We should consider helping them move the best and brightest out and important industries out. Call it diversification.
What can you expect from a nation that would put Biden, Blinken and Sullivan in charge of its security? I am glad that Trump won, but Kamala was not that far behind. Again, it says to me that we are not a serious nation.
Popular Vote was 75 vs 77 Million. Damned close. Electoral College was 226 vs 312, some breathing room. Knowing how disjointed Kamala's campaign was vs a solid Trump campaign, we should still be concerned. 93 Electoral College votes were from the key Seven Swing states, and all thought to be in play until they were not.
Partisanship, as Washington and Hamilton warned us, will be the death of the Republic. We are never going to fix our Navy's problems through the lens of partisanship; because the partisans are only 30% of the nation.
Historically, Republicans and Democrats saw the need for a strong national defense. Today, many Democrats still think the nation is worth protecting.
Instead of the "all you folks who voted for Biden are communist traitors," as Pete is suggesting above, we should be looking at ways to bring everybody on board. Here's one example. If you are an isolationist, one who wants America First, you need a strong Navy. On the other hand, if you are a globalist, a lover of free trade and open borders, you need a strong Navy.
We can make the case for a strong Navy, a vigorous shipbuilding program to bring us up to the magic 600, without a word of denigration of the folks who don't voter for our particular party. The fact of the matter is that until an overwhelming majority of the nation wants a strong U.S. Navy, we will continue to drift and rust. It is hard to bring folks on your side when you hate them, and are quick to rub that fact in their faces.
You are making up stuff now, "Instead of the "all you folks who voted for Biden are communist traitors," as Pete is suggesting above,..." Pete never suggested any such thing. All Pete did was accurately criticize Biden and some of his choices for key roles in the Biden anti-American Crime Family Administration. Biden and his Team have done more damage to America than any other President. It is still a pig, no matter how much lipstick you use.
The case for needing a strong Navy has been made many times, especially in the past four years. We need a strong President, a strong Congress, and an honest, professional Navy to achieve a strong Navy. Now we have a strong President. Time will tell if we can reform a broken Navy and if we have a Congress strong enough to pay for and properly oversee the development of a strong Military. A 600-ship Navy is not magic; it is a pipe dream and not worthy of being the goal as it is not achievable in the foreseeable future.
Is the "overwhelming majority" you speak of responsible for the many Navy warships that are rust-buckets, for Fat Leonard, LCS, Zumwalt, BonHomme Richard, Constellation Frigate, Ford CVN, McCain & Fitzgerald collisions, Red Hill fuel fiasco, active and enthusiastic implementation of the Woke culture, ...? No, it is not. It is a broken Navy that is responsible for all of those failures.
The Navy bears primary responsibility for the condition of our Navy. We had the time and the money to make a strong Navy, but the Navy Leadership wasted both.
There’s no “Biden crime family,” and you just lost the 30% we need. “You friggin' people. You have no idea how to defend the nation. All you did was weaken a country today, Snyder. That's all you did.”
No Tom, I spoke the truth. I have faith that there are patriots among the millions of Democrats who will support the efforts that Trump will be making to restore the greatness of America. Will I offend the Far Left Democrat Cult? Yes, I will. No apologies. Apparently, I offended you.
I think far left loons would be a fair description of Kamala Walz and the rest of their ilk. She should have done worse than George McGovern.
Again, buying into the bullshit is destructive. Harris was a life-long prosecutor, with the political positions that match.
I wonder what the living, eligible voter popular vote really was. The vote counts at midnight (Pacific Time) on election day were most likely 99% right. Everything two days later and on is fraud.
Agree. The midnight count was probably reasonably accurate. Everything past a day or so was likely bogus. Still astonishing that almost of America wanted Kamala as President- or voted against Trump but they still preferred Kamala over Trump.
I am overjoyed at the positive change in the atmosphere regarding Trump. This was incredible, "Former and future first lady Melania Trump has inked an eye-popping $40 million deal with Amazon to license a documentary on her life — with cameos from her husband, Donald, and son, Barron." TDS is not dead, but it may be mortally ill.
Making every part of our infrastructure available on-line for the sake of convenience is the stupidest move this country ever made. In a long line of stupid moves, that's saying something. Customer interfaces being on-line is one thing. It's quite another to have control of your utilities connected to the internet. I don't care how good your VPN and firewall are, if it's connected to the internet in any way, it's hackable. Expect it to not be available when you need it.
Heck, whoever - cough, cough - hacked the Iranian centrifuges definitively showed that even air-gapped systems are hackable.
agree/ IP addressable SCADA devices are our downfall
And have been for several/many years. The issue was certainly known when I was in the business (Homeland Security) in the mid 1990s. Nobody did very much, because the systems were largely locally and privately owned and maintained . I suspect that is still the case.
Same here when I worked for a few Security Consulting firms in the 1990's and 2000's We had a few Wizards that did White Hat testing, including against some Fortune 100 companies- I do not remember any that were not successfully hacked. Many did not even change the factory default codes on their routers, etc. Some utilities ensured their SCADA systems were not connected to the internet- I've heard that is often not the case now.
Everybody wants to be able to communicate to equipment and show impressive status displays to managers and the C suite wherever they are.
Nothing of the sort should be on internet.
It's the age old battle of convenience vs. security, and convenience always wins.
Convenience = efficiency. Can't have all plants with a PLC//SCADA manned 24/7, thats just stupid and 60/70s thinking.
why not? How else can I login to my plant at 2AM when the alarm goes off?
Well said.
And it's not just online hacking we need to worry about. There are folks who make a good living doing physical penetration testing, and they are very successful gaining physical access to computers and networks. Some places even supply publicly available computers connected to their networks. I have seen videos on YOUTUBE created by children that show you how to create a keystroke logger.
And who can forget the lunatic security procedures implemented by the Clinton administration, including at Los Alamos.
I have been tempted a number of times to do some unofficial pen testing myself, but I am too old and decrepit to do the time when I am caught.
China is doing what any great power has done in the past.
Is what China doing now any worse than what England, France and Japan did when establishing their empires?
Is China a greater bully than the United States? Which great power has invaded more countries and undermined more governments?
Is it China’s fault that we engage in endless wars and don’t protect our borders?
China’s leaders developed a strategy to become a world power whereas our leaders let our companies, institutions, and infrastructure crumble.
We must meet the challenge of China but let us to do without hypocritical indignation.
A minor quibble with your comment of, “China’s leaders developed a strategy to become a world power whereas our leaders let our companies, institutions, and infrastructure crumble…”
More to the point our leaders became complicit in the corruption and proliferation of lies..
💯
I don't think it's hypocritical to want them to not succeed in their quest for hegemony, any more than it's hypocritical for them to want to. Although I'm not suffering indignation at all; now that they are near or in fact a Great Power, they are just doing great power stuff.
The only morons unclear on what China wants are in the Biden administration. Very early on in Bidens reign of mediocrity and stupidity, Anthony Blinken got pantsed by the CCP at meetings in Anchorage - March, 2021.
And then Blinken tried to run around with his ass in the air. That may have been the zenith of the US influence abroad during the last four years: It's only gotten worse since then
Why are the biden boys leaking this after the election to the WSJ? Certainly not because they want to help the Trumpers?
They are attempting to clean up their image as they job hunt and move into academia and beltway think tanks.
Blinken was raised in France, what do you expect?
Le Grande Armeè was once the scourge of Europe but alas, that ended in 1815. They tried to reassert their dominance in 1870-71 against Prussia with disastrous results.
I tried reading David Sanger’s New Cold Wars, but had to put it down and walk away halfway through. Its only sourced by Biden and Obama national security types trying to clean up their images and whitewash their mistakes on China and Russia.
Oh we shouldn't be too hasty here as there is plenty of blame to go around. If we held a "best of" awards contest, it would last quite some time and the cast of characters would stretch back in time. This is an epic failure...
The Hundred-Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury
Little busy reading Provoked by Scott Horton (690 pages with a few thousand of footnote references).
It is shocking to see how far the degradation of US cyber defenses seems to have gone. But this is still a two-way street. Can't the same be done against the PRC and the CCP? In fact, isn't it already being done secretly? I'd like to think the US is fighting back...
I think our national security types have been more focused on imaginary insurrectionists, white nationalists, and "Russian collusion" for the past 9 years, but I hope some of them are doing good work.
Amén to that mate! And building a big "ministry of truth" surely!
well can you read Chinese? Even if US can get into the networks, whats the use when you can't read anything?
1. I agree with the threat described by the Commander.
2. China has a huge economy and we are their largest customer. If the stuff stops flowing to us over the ocean and if we interdict stuff flowing east and west from China, their government has a problem. I know they have stocked up on food and they can get oil from the 'stans. What happens when all their export warehouses get full? Do they send everyone home? Pay their people with borrowed money? In which currency? Who buys the bonds? We will have our own issues but that doesn't mean that we can't help to make their problems bigger. And what about Russia and Iran in all of this?
they first squeeze us with prescription drugs
Cancer drugs, insulin, and similar critical life drugs.
and a bunch of heart meds, statins for example
Disclaimer: I am a recipient of freebie prescription drugs courtesy of Tricare and Medicare, earned through a contractual agreement. I also double-dip from the Treasury. Without prescription drugs, I'd have likely passed several ago. With them, I may see another 10-15 years. So China quits selling us drugs. So what? We rapidly build factories to make our own. Like shipbuilding, say it takes 10 years. The "awful" benefit would be the die off of the costly sickly people. With that, wouldn't Social Security, Medicare, and pension funds get a reprieve, the cost of medical insurance go down? After all, we needy, tax dollar black holes would be gone. Might even improve the gene pool, though the fecundity of us Boomers isn't a real issue. If we are too old or too sickly to take up arms against China in a war they start, then let us be the "Butter" component of the Guns or Butter debate and allow us to melt away to free up more "Gun" money to arm the fit. I'm game.
Not a fun "upvote" but you're not wrong, if it ever comes to that
straight up eugenics haha. I guess if thats what you want, but there goes your "human rights and values" argument.
Re #2 Maybe they collapse or maybe not. Let's take a look at Japan in the run up to Pearl Harbor.
https://books.google.com/books?id=pgqG1GdAqdIC&pg=RA1-PA10#v=onepage&q&f=false
"So long as the world remained at peace, the only danger lay in the deliberate creation of obstacles to Japan's enterprise in the export markets. During the 1930's a number of countries tried to weaken her competition by raising tariffs or imposing quota restrictions on her imports. These obstacles no doubt worsened Japan's terms of trade, but during this decade they certainly did not arrest the expansion of her exports, for while the import trade increased in volume between 1929 and 1937 by only about one-third, the volume of exports grew by about three-quarters. This was a remarkable expansion in a period in which international trade in general was stagnant, and it explains why Japanese competition was so greatly feared by foreign producers."
I would love to believe that China is a nation wholly dependent upon foreign exports and imports, who will collapse like a paper dragon at the slightest disruption. I suspect our elites in State believe that to be true. It's also not worth their time to grok the history of east Asia. It might go against what they are so convinced is true. History holds no lessons - only the future matters.
Some of us think that China's naval buildup is because they are utterly dependent on trade and see the obvious decline of the USN. China depends of trade to feed their people. Without a functioning US Navy the the system of world trade could fall apart.
If I were the premier of China, and had access to the INSERVs our navy won't let American's read, I'd order a blue water navy; stat!
You have to assume he does have access
If they are transmitted via computer, I’m sure he does.
I attribute most of America's security weaknesses to lack of intellectual rigor and a low level of competence. Companies hire the cheapest workers they can find, and will outsource whenever possible. Management is packed with weak-minded hacks and DEI hires with zero "situational awareness" for security threats. We also have Chinese foreign nationals working on our critical systems.
Like Pete said earlier, "...we are not a serious nation."
Spot on.
We know a lot of the who, what, why and how questions / answers with a reasonable level of fidelity. What we don't know is the WHEN. I'm becoming more convinced every day, it will be sooner rather than later. Perhaps A LOT SOONER than our "great minds" at DoD and in the "intelligence community" currently assess.
US and EU business seems to be moving semi-conductor business away from Taiwan.
The neocons are going Mackinder on Russia.
The neocons just went through 23 odd years and $2 trillion bucks fighting al Qaeda. al Nusra/ISIS retreads who have western suits now run Syria.
Taiwan and PRC naval expansion is least of US worries.
Aside from the shipyard lobby who is listening?
They are trying to get more fab lines built and functioning outside of Taiwan. Taiwan and the PRC are not the least of worries. They are up there with a number of other problems.
The problem with Russia is not the Neocons. It is Putin and his imperial ambitions. His war in Ukraine is a war of imperial expansion.
A neocon is someone who learns nothing and forgets nothing.
Robert Kagan just wrote an article for the Atlantic in which he repeats the same old tired arguments for intervening in other countries. The guy learned nothing from Vietnam and Afghanistan
My god.
This is a chronicle of insanity. We are so very screwed. Everything online, and letting the Peoples Republic of China in to telecoms has been a massive breach of security.
This is like allowing Germans in for high energy physics, mechanical engineering, and petroleum plant operations in 1936.
DC is not serious. We continue to drink from a bitter cup, because not doing so would cost so much. Are we buying the time to rearm as in the late 1930s? Push off war to built strength, and obtain better defenses for the home. I hope so, but they have good engineers as well.
And this doesn’t even begin to account for the economic abyss we have elected to place our Nation in…I suspect very quickly many will realize exponents are a b!tch and math doesn’t lie….essentially on a spreadsheet!
To paraphrase Hemingway, Slowly at first and then All at once!
"To paraphrase Hemingway, Slowly at first and then All at once!" I think Hemingway was describing bankruptcy, as you implied, Jonathon. But I also think it applies to the serial buggery inflicted on this nation by apparatchiks with more attentiveness to their own welfare and bottom line than our nation's. It is an apt, but crass quote that seems to fit. To cite another man with supposed expertise in the matter, "(men) who know(s) the price of everything and the value of nothing".
Sadly I think the buggery is in parallel as well as serial.
You let the Chy-lons into each and every recess of your networks, don't be surprised when they just "turn off a switch."
https://i.gifer.com/PYlm.gif
So say we all.
Civilian IT usually places usability higher in the priority matrix than security and relies on “not being a target” for security for the most part. I was aghast coming out of the US Army signal MOSs for what passed for security when I left the service.
Security costs money and is inconvenient.
Pathetic politicians and bureaucrats...civilian and flag
Another blessing brought to you by the Immigration Act of 1965.
I'm becoming convinced that we need to reinstate the draft...of the children of Federal elected officials. Federal judges, too. Maybe state Governors. Make them have skin in the game.
Those who wrangle a 4-F classification (~80%) can become organ and blood donors for military WIA's and DAV's. You have to plug all the loophole.
what about personal freedoms? Conscription is not very free lol.