skybert
Skybert
The plane I currently fly, has corrosion issues. Im told it’s because of issues with cheap Chinese aluminum.
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NEWS Is the pivot to China a bunch of bullshit?
- Thread starter ChuckMK23
- Start date
The Brits have agreed to transfer sovereignty of Diego Garcia to Mauritius, then leasing the island back for 99 years and as well as maintaining the bases there. Probably the best case outcome given the current geopolitics of the region.
I hope they keep the awesome flag.
I hope they keep the awesome flag.
Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
A nice idea, but practically impossible.
First, every ASEAN nation thinks that U.S. interest in the region is transitory, and only exists insofar as we decide that it's economically beneficial to us. Because of this, they are not motivated to rock the boat with China, let alone agree to take up arms against it in defense of Taiwan. Hell, we can't even get Taiwanese government to overtly stand up for itself because it wants to sustain peaceful relations with China.
Second, these nations don't have first- or even second-rate navies. The capabilities they bring to the table are extremely limited compared to Japan or South Korea, let alone the UK, France, or Germany. They are not an adequate force multiplier against the PLAN, a military alliance with them would just exist to obligate us into conflict with no real benefit.
Third, even if we could get beyond all the political hurdles, there's the technical challenge of actually integrating them into operations and without a NATO-like operational framework, everyone operates on a different sheet of music.
And to the extent that it is theoretically possible, it's certainly not going to happen within the next 10 years to counter the tripwire brute force invasion date people have in mind.
We stand a better chance of integrating Japan into NATO and getting the UK to pledge support to defend Taiwan than getting ASEAN nations up to speed in the next 10 years.
Our political leadership has challenged the military to be ready to provide flexible options to the President. Because of that, military leadership has been very hawkish about China as "the pacing threat." However, many academics and state officials remain skeptical about a PRC brute force invasion ever happening for a multitude of reasons, a top one being that the Taiwanese government is very unlikely to motivate them to do it. I tend to agree that they'll increase control over Taiwan in a more creative fashion that doesn't require fighting the USN head-on, and their navy build-up will be used as a deterrent to American intervention in a nebulous situation with tenuous public support.
My tinfoil hat theory: I think COVID-19 was part of their annexation plan.
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Apparently, the US today announced tariffs on a few uninhabited islands populated by penguins...and also Diego Garcia. Genius level staff work.
@number9 and @JTS11 and others on this thread. I would encourage you to read Tom Friedman's latest piece. I believe his assessment vis a vis China is spot on.
There are few "American Made" products worth purchasing IMO. Especially from 90 ish IQ UAW auto workers.
I Just Saw the Future. It Was Not in America. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/....4BtI.H7zCHPy-1IZG&smid=nytcore-android-share
There are few "American Made" products worth purchasing IMO. Especially from 90 ish IQ UAW auto workers.
I Just Saw the Future. It Was Not in America. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/02/....4BtI.H7zCHPy-1IZG&smid=nytcore-android-share
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Yup. Cheating definitely helped get them kickstarted, but at some point the very high value placed on STEM and high skill blue collar labor caught up and exceeded that, along with high work ethic.
The vast majority of us in national security have zero idea what things are really like in the PRC. I’m not as down on the American worker as some are, but our culture force feeding us culture wars, the Kardashians, and other brainrot while the Chinese beat their kids to produce in STEM and manufacturing is probably one of, if not the, biggest reason we aren’t as good as we could be.
All he had to do was sit back and shitpost about culture war stuff in the wee hours of morning, and nothing more.
Chinese are beating us because work ethic, they beat their kids to produce in STEM is a load of culture war horseshit. We played the same bullshit line when it came to Japanese auto manufacturing.
If you had no idea what’s going on in the PRC, let me tell you, you know less than nothing after swallowing Tom Friedman’s hook.
We invested in STEM education in the space race. The Chips act also contained K-12 investment in STEM. You think dismantling the DoE will help with this?
If you had no idea what’s going on in the PRC, let me tell you, you know less than nothing after swallowing Tom Friedman’s hook.
We invested in STEM education in the space race. The Chips act also contained K-12 investment in STEM. You think dismantling the DoE will help with this?
The PRC is well ahead in STEM PhD grads as an objective metric. Granted they have way more people than we do, but labor is a resource constraint too. When I was in grad school 10 years ago, my thesis adviser mentioned that their academic papers in STEM subjects with military applications had caught up and was outpacing ours.
Combined with those metrics, in working with industry on our end, I’ve repeatedly heard from engineering managers at multiple companies in different geographic areas how difficult it is to get enough new (and quality) grads into aerospace/defense. Given how shit some companies pay for skilled positions (like mid career EE’s) unless you hop companies, I’m also not surprised, but that’s a different topic. I’ve also seen companies have to invest in their local vocational schools to recruit and train blue collar labor because the labor pool simply didn’t exist in their markets.
Shipbuilding (both military and civilian) struggles to get sufficient skilled labor to build our Fleet. NAVSEA actual in testimony to Congress stated that the manufacturing labor pool has shrunk considerably from the past.
I fully acknowledge those are just a limited number of datapoints. So if you have anything meaningful to refute those datapoints other than whatever that last post was, feel free to add. For the record I don’t agree with killing the CHIPS act or the Dept of Education. But STEM funding for K-12 in an act passed a few years ago has zero bearing on where our STEM labor pool is today.
Generally speaking I'm quite dismissive of Tom Friedman, but I'll give it a read. Thanks for the suggestion!
We also put "reciprocal" tariffs on some countries that have free-trade agreements with us, which is weird because there's nothing to reciprocate.
Interesting analysis on how these tariff numbers came about, along with the shitty staff work, and a fundamental ignorance of basic economics.
So…. It comes down paying wages and putting money into schools, not some dime store cultural analysis about the innate inferiority of the American worker?
We knew how to do it, we clearly still do, but the MBA’s cheaped out on wages and infrastructure and we blame the workers for it.
Those are just the raw numbers though, are the graduates of the same quality and do the papers have the same credibility? From what I've seen in smarter periodicals over the years, the answer to both is no. And seeing some of the developments and products over the years, I think that there is likely some truth to those assessments. While they have made significant leaps in capability in several areas, especially related to military and space-related areas, they severely lack in others.
I think it’s probably more like both yes and no.
Goes back to the blind spot of not being able to get on the ground, travel freely, and see what things are really like.
PhDs/papers is just one metric and probably not even the best one. The MS and BS degrees are the ones you need to do the real legwork to turn theories into tangible designs. And add skilled blue collar labor to actually make things right.
The balance of PhDs matters more in how we advance basic sciences…and honestly it’s easier to just steal shit at that level because academia typically will openly publish the bulk of their work. My thesis advisor had visibility on that because they could see the data on where either Internet searches or other papers citing DITAC hosted papers was coming from. We got our start in stealth from a 1960’s Russian academic paper because it was so theoretical it wasn’t classified. We got lucky that someone in the Intel world who had the thankless job of translating a blandly titled Russian paper recognized they needed to get a smart physicist/engineer to look at the translation. We had the engineering labor resources Russia didn’t to turn it into something usable.
That’s one of the advantages they may have we don’t. Much more likely that a PRC engineer or scientist who got their degree abroad can read our academic papers than their US equivalent can read one of theirs that wasn’t translated. China plays in the English academic world and publishes a lot of their stuff in English. But I’d suspect the stuff that stays Chinese language only is biased towards stuff with defense technical applications.