[HN Gopher] War Starts
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War Starts
Author : limbicsystem
Score : 81 points
Date : 2021-12-05 17:55 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (backstory.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (backstory.substack.com)
| steve76 wrote:
| >China is also alleged to have launched a hypersonic glide
| vehicle from their missile, a technological feat that no other
| country is close to achieving.
|
| Here's a way to achieve. Don't eat your fellow countrymen, as the
| marxists do. They did not eat each other because they were
| starving. They ate each other because they liked it and did not
| like not following orders. Make all the missiles you want. Make
| all the technological advances you want. You still eat each
| other. Even animals have an aversion to that.
| senkora wrote:
| > When Yemen united its mountainous Islamic tribal north with its
| mountainous Islamic tribal south, many observers were adamant
| that the experiment was doomed to fail. The differences between
| the two sides were too great.
|
| Clever.
| [deleted]
| yyyk wrote:
| Funny, but super-reductive.
|
| It's like describing every country fighting in WW2 as a
| 'Christian urban state' - with the exception of the officially
| atheist USSR. Obviously the war was between USSR and everyone
| else. Oh, that's the Red Alert timeline, not the real one.
| tofof wrote:
| Except Japan, and China, and the USSR, and also Ethiopia and
| Libya and Algeria and Egypt and India and the Phillipines
| ......
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, except that as the situation developed, it turned into
| exactly what you describe, a conflict between the USSR and
| everybody else. That tends to suggest that the analysis has
| value.
| zapataband1 wrote:
| Actually it turned into the U.S./established capital powers
| against any inkling of communism and any poor nation that
| USSR decided to aid.
| lazide wrote:
| No love for Japan?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| No. Why? The cultural analysis would tell you that Japan
| is the natural enemy of every European country including
| the USSR. In a conflict between several European
| countries, what does that suggest?
|
| We see them in history attacking every nearby European
| country (in which category I'm including the US) as well
| as their actual enemy, China. Where's the surprise?
| lazide wrote:
| And the Turks!
|
| Since the suggestion it was two sided, when really it was
| more hexagonal.
| lstodd wrote:
| Low intensity conflict. It's always like that.
|
| Someone shoots at someone somewhere else. It just a background
| noise. Why bother? You won't hear your bullet. Even if you could,
| it won't change anything anyway.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| If you're further interested in a look inside Yemen, here's a
| cursory look from a traveler a month ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl8FPYOnJ4M
| pcardoso wrote:
| This channel is amazing, found it the other day and was
| instantly hooked.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| > China is also alleged to have launched a hypersonic glide
| vehicle from their missile, a technological feat that no other
| country is close to achieving.
|
| In a prior career I watched closely as hundreds of bright, some
| brilliant, minds opted for careers in fintech, crypto or webtech
| instead of working for (or continuing to work for) US defense
| companies both small and large. For some this was a moral
| decision, but for most it was about money.
|
| It's almost as if our democracies don't require defending, at
| least not by us. Best to hope someone else will do so. After all,
| those weapons are sometimes misused, the arms industry is also a
| business, and the amount of efficiency & waste is appalling. And,
| our democracies are equally flawed, unequal & manipulated by
| special interests. The democracies run by those we elected, I
| should add. At least, these are the arguments I've heard stated
| time and again.
|
| For something closer to the ideal I might contribute, some would
| say. If things were different I could justify the sacrifice.
|
| If the US and the West loses its competition with China/Russia -
| it will be largely because we focused too heavily on our very
| lementable flaws, and far too little on what the world might look
| like were our remaining positive qualities overshadowed by the
| national interests of countries less virtuous.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| _dain_ wrote:
| Perhaps it's more attractive to work for a defense company when
| your country actually knows how to win a war.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| The US knows how to win battles and knows how to win wars. It
| is willing to go to great lengths and expense for the former,
| but only the expense part for the latter. Something to do
| with election cycles, a fickle public & and lousy
| communications strategies when it comes to expectation
| setting. So, I sorta agree? None of this has anything to do
| with why my 22 year old nephew (most recent example) is going
| to Wall Street instead of DARPA.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Are you talking about the US/nato coalition?
|
| I think the definition of what winning is has been the #1
| issue the past 20 years and that has been demoralizing in
| some ways.
|
| Winning was sold as a bunch of different moving targets,
| often farcically unbelievable like the taliban participating
| in Democracy. So yeah we lost on that one. Never stood a
| chance of winning if that's what winning is.
|
| I don't think there's any question in these lopsided
| conflicts us/nato could have absolutely decimated the other
| side. But that didn't seem to be what winning was pitched as.
|
| To me that's why it feels like we lost.
|
| I'm more confident - though still worried - about an actual
| big conflict against CCP/totalitarian alliance. Our reliance
| on tech scares me the most.
| cipheredStones wrote:
| What exactly is the nexus between "democracy requires
| defending" and "more smart people should be making fancy
| weapons"?
|
| There are many serious threats to democracy in the US, but
| they're almost all internal: attempts to overturn elections,
| the confluence of increasingly disproportionate rural power
| with increasing urbal-rural polarization, etc. China is
| certainly a threat to democracy in Taiwan, and its commercial
| power sometimes limits free expression in the US, but it's
| difficult to imagine a mechanism by which it would threaten the
| US form of government.
|
| On the other hand, it's not too difficult to imagine a
| mechanism by which increasingly brilliant feats of weapons
| technology inch us closer to a terribly destructive conflict by
| convincing the powers-that-be that they could win without too
| high a cost.
| tomohawk wrote:
| After the CCP took over China, they turned their attention to
| Tibet. Tibet didn't stand a chance, and is now well along the
| ethnic cleansing path. Ask the Dalai Lama what he thinks
| about what's going on there.
|
| The CCP turned their attention to East Turkistan. There's now
| over a million Uighurs in concentration camps. Ethnic
| cleansing is in full swing as they bull doze the past.
|
| People think of these countries as part of China now. That's
| how all the maps are drawn.
|
| They recently crushed Hong Kong.
|
| There is strong evidence that the CCP is committing
| attrocities such as organ harvesting from living dissidents.
| The organ replacement situation is China is amazing for CCP
| members.
|
| Their next target is Taiwan, and dictator for life Xi has
| staked his reputation on conquering it.
|
| What do you think they intend to do with hypersonics or
| quantum supremacy?
|
| They are pouring a lot more money into these things than the
| west is. What do you think will happen when they can break
| our strongest encryption with quantum computers? All that
| invenstment of time by our best and brightest in fintech
| won't matter at that point.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| > What exactly is the nexus between "democracy requires
| defending" and "more smart people should be making fancy
| weapons"?
|
| "Fancy" weapons give you a vote in how war is fought and who
| will win. They give you a seat at the table when war ends.
| They are the stick in Carrot & Stick diplomacy. If smart
| people don't make 'em, you don't get a vote, you don't get a
| seat, you don't have a stick, and you either go along or pack
| your bags for the concentration camp.
| stirfish wrote:
| >If smart people don't make 'em, you don't get a vote, you
| don't get a seat,
|
| I don't understand. If I develop a new kind of missile and
| sell it to the government, I don't get a say in what that
| missile is launched at.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I'd guess you can make some stipulations in the contract.
| Could be wrong tho.
| cipheredStones wrote:
| Alright, just wanted to get from the high-minded "nobody
| wants to defend democracy anymore" to the underlying "if we
| don't get all our best people working for Lockheed Martin,
| the Chinese are going to put us all in concentration
| camps".
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Ask someone in Berkeley if they would be open for developing
| defense capabilities and taking up a job at one of the defense
| contractors. You'll be unfriended, shamed, mocked, ridiculed
| and thrown out of the society. But, ask the same group of
| people what they think about China - "Man, they're really
| impressive." - this is a verbatim quote from a PI at UC
| Berkeley. Something is terribly wrong with these people.
|
| When the will of the people is weak, mangled, broken,
| dismembered, and destroyed by the political affiliation, I have
| no hope for the west to have any spirit to defend, let alone
| assert dominance.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Wars are typically won by the side with more assets, money and
| people. Military equipment is generally not economically
| productive (though it can be necessary for having any economy
| at all); fighter jets don't make people more productive, but
| cargo jets do.
|
| My thought always has been that the best way to defend the
| country is to grow the economy. Of course, if war comes, then
| you need to work on the short-term issues of making fighter
| jets.
|
| Do you think the US would be better off militarily without all
| the technological and economic growth?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Why is the parent and thread collapsed?
| tpmx wrote:
| Meanwhile the russians are actually gearing up to invade Ukraine
| with force as we speak (write), and the worst deterrent the west
| seems willing to use is blocking Russia from the SWIFT
| international banking system, and that's a maybe.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Strange to see war starting to surface the mainstream zeigeist,
| as it's been happening predictably in slow motion as the
| consequence of obvious incentives for about 18 months, and then
| it goes up all at once. From everything I can tell from reading
| about previous ones, war is a kind of triumph of the absurd,
| where meaning is extinguished and all that is left is the
| violence until the attrition establishes some coherence again.
|
| My bets are Russia re-establishes some of its soviet era
| borders between the Black and the Baltic seas, including
| Ukraine, then possibly Latvia or Estonia. Israel is almost out
| of alternatives on Iran, and China will consolidate Hong Kong
| and Taiwan in Xi's lifetime. The only thing standing in any of
| their way is the alliance of Biden, Bojo, Macron, and Trudeau
| getting enough democratic traction for a draft and total war.
| So nothing, basically.
|
| Anyway, remember to act surprised.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents and
| especially not nationalistic ones. That's not what this site is
| for.
|
| (Edit: and we've had to ask you about this numerous times in
| the past. That's not cool.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| helge9210 wrote:
| This means a possibility for me to die in this war (fighting
| against Russians).
|
| Is this how inevitability of the war was felt in Europe hundred
| of years ago?
| neilv wrote:
| This was very readable.
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(page generated 2021-12-05 23:01 UTC)