Miscellaneous News

[JJD1803]

I don't think Venezuela has the capabilities to grind out in the jungles. Even if they did then it will likely end up not being a long issue. They are effectively isolated from any material aid or support due to their poor latin American relations and geographical position.

I agree. The only thing Maduro could do is arm his chavista militias and colectivos gangs to the teeth that any post Chavista Venezuela will never have stability but be in civil war. After me the deluge type strategy. I really don’t have faith in Venezuela. They have equipment and firepower to bog the US down. But do they have the will? With the amount of corruption and the economic destruction it may collapse like Syria. And I doubt there will be a significant ground operations. 10k troops probably to seize the oil port cities and airports. It’s likely heavy air strikes to destroy the military infrastructure and do decapitation strikes against senior leaders. They are hoping for an Assad like collapse.

One thing I’ll say is that a Venezuela in chaos will make the instability in South America and the Caribbean even worse. Venezuela is heavily armed and lots of weapons are going to fall to hands of armed groups,cartels and gangs in Ecuador,Colombia,Brazil,Trinidad,etc. It is ironic that MAGA don’t want migrants and drug cartels but yet collapsing Venezuela will make that even worse.

 

[Overbom]

I agree. The only thing Maduro could do is wage arm his chavista militias and colectivos gangs to the teeth that any post Chavista Venezuela will never have stability but be in civil war. After me the deluge type strategy. I really don’t have faith in Venezuela. They have equipment and firepower to bog the US down. But do they have the will? With the amount of corruption and the economic destruction it may collapse like Syria. And I doubt there will be a significant ground operations. 10k troops probably to seize the oil port cities and airports. It’s likely heavy air strikes to destroy the military infrastructure and do decapitation strikes against senior leaders. They are hoping for an Assad like collapse.

One thing I’ll say is that a Venezuela in chaos will make the instability in South America and the Caribbean even worse. Venezuela is heavily armed and lots of weapons are going to fall to hands of armed groups,cartels and gangs in Ecuador,Colombia,Brazil,Trinidad,etc. It is ironic that MAGA don’t want migrants and drug cartels but yet collapsing Venezuela will make that even worse.

Era of small FPV drones means that guerilla and resistance forces have gotten a huge power boost. Dont even need to train skilled drone operators, just let loose AI drone swarms supplied by your friendly AliExpress distributor

I am sure there would be nothing better than cheap Chinese drones getting smuggler to Venezuelan resistance in the jungle and then Venezuela doing hit and run attacks with hundreds of them in a single raid.

If China decided to help Venezuela, and locals have the heart and courage to resist, then Venezuela would become a huge graveyard for US

 

[JJD1803]

Some analysts believe that it‘s Rubio who‘s behind interventionist policies of the current administration. Apparently his line of thought has won over the MAGA isolationist rhetoric.

Strategic sequencing. They know they can’t beat China head on. So they will attack their allies and economic partners as a way to weaken it and isolate. Venezuela today,soon Israel will strike Iran again,and Trump will support Ukraine against Russia. Don’t be surprised if they allow Turkey to create chaos in Central Asia like they did to Syria.

 

[burritocannon]

If China decided to help Venezuela, and locals have the heart and courage to resist

so simple, right? but in this scenario, china has to do logistics halfway around the world supporting jungle ukraine. this logistics train can be interdicted at will by the us because chinese global power projection is still not ready.

blowing up the 'ocean drugs' is a show of force intended for the chinese to show that there is absolutely nothing that prevents americans from dictating terms in international waters.
america has no trade deals for china, but its navy is still something that can contend against the rare earths play.

 

[RedMetalSeadramon]

Some analysts believe that it‘s Rubio who‘s behind interventionist policies of the current administration. Apparently his line of thought has won over the MAGA isolationist rhetoric.

Imo, Rubio is LatAm, Iran, China, Russia in that order. So Russia is definitely going to get their reapproach first.

Its always known Rubio the neo-gusano will try to start something in LatAm. They never got over the fact Branden wouldn't save Bolsonaro via coup. Hence the current scramble to save Milei, and current gunboat activity on Venezuela.

 

[magmunta]

Strategic sequencing. They know they can’t beat China head on. So they will attack their allies and economic partners as a way to weaken it and isolate. Venezuela today,soon Israel will strike Iran again,and Trump will support Ukraine against Russia. Don’t be surprised if they allow Turkey to create chaos in Central Asia like they did to Syria.

And that's great from the USA point of view. I think the USA should have done that quite a while ago because now it's hard to take china and Russia down. After all, the world dominated by the USA is better than the world dominated by china. Investing and outsourcing in China through 90s and 00s has backfired astronomically. I know some users didn't like reading this comment but that's likely how American Intel agencies think now. Helping china and Russia in 00s was a total market failure; for a short term gains, sacrificing long term sustainability is a type of market failure that even Adam Smith advised against in his epic works.

 

[Chevalier]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1981768895041077415

you have to humiliate bullies to defeat them psychologically. The reason why they feel they have the ability to bully you is because they believe they are your superior. When you humiliate them and make them suffer, you are not only reversing the power imbalance, you are helping to train them become more upright human beings. It is either that or knocking them out completely to brain damage.

The thing about the entire rare earths is that you have to keep the new rules and only offer a “grace period” in return for something tangible like say zero tariffs and restrictions on Chinese goods, including Chinese cars. This is the same bs tactic they tried to use against China like offering a “grace period” of no tariffs in exchange for real rare earths.

 

[siegecrossbow]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1981768895041077415

you have to humiliate bullies to defeat them psychologically. The reason why they feel they have the ability to bully you is because they believe they are your superior. When you humiliate them and make them suffer, you are not only reversing the power imbalance, you are helping to train them become more upright human beings. It is either that or knocking them out completely to brain damage.

The thing about the entire rare earths is that you have to keep the new rules and only offer a “grace period” in return for something tangible like say zero tariffs and restrictions on Chinese goods, including Chinese cars. This is the same bs tactic they tried to use against China like offering a “grace period” of no tariffs in exchange for real rare earths.

12 days of Christmas this year is gonna be completely nuts!

 

[plawolf]

American reactors generate more GDP per Watt... Checkmate commies

View attachment 163177

Average American: Finally! A metric where we are solidly ahead of those pesky Chinese! USA! USA!

 

[gelgoog]

I’m not saying I agree but the bet is not entirely ridiculous. More importantly, software and finance are the only major industries the US commands this level of dominance in. There is no other threat that would even be credible.

Agreed. China will have to push its own financial and software ecosystems.

Chinese supply chain dominance is real physical things, it require real energy, real production, real capital. Japan and South Korea has their niches and are spokes in the global supply chain, but only China has the entire supply chain and China is the hub to which South Korea and Japan attaches.

You are sort of correct but the Korean and Japanese supply chains, well at least the Korean one, are still fairly robust.

American "dominance" in software is an artificial choice to use American software, software that China has but people has chosen not to use.

It is more complicated than that. It is hard to get users to move to different software. There are substancial barriers in doing so.

For the US and its allies to develop rare earth processing, they need to physical construct things, build things, find the energy to power them, find the people to do them, teach people to do them. For people to switch to Chinese software, people simply need to run an installer. The two are a dozen orders of magnitude apart in difficulty.

What about porting your work over and learning the new interface? Possibly getting clients and suppliers to also move? Not so easy.

This is the exact same situation as Americans who think they can ban China from using USD: the reality is it's the ability to interface with real, physical things in China that gives American software, and US dollar its value, without that access, American software become useless, as does the USD. The ability to use iOS becomes meaningless if there are no iPhones.

Software is also important. As the Tao of Programming puts it: "without the wind the grass does not move".

Software is just info, it can be copied, in age of LLM code is now commodity

This can work short term but having the source code grants the capability to tailor the software for your own purposes which is also important. Copying software is just a crutch.

America thinks it has a software moat... its in for rude awakening

For sure. And China should press on this. I think preferably with open source and open standards.

Every US software is available as a cracked or pirated version as we speak. Even kernel-based anti-cheat systems are bypassed. The same can't be said about Chinese rare earths, there no quick/cheap substitute. In the game of chicken, it's really who blinks first, and guess who can endure longer?

If the US bans China from using its software, China should just waive copyright protection on it. Make laws where unsupported and unavailable software has zero protection. In fact I think this should apply to patents as well. And China should consider revising the copyright and patent laws both in China and globally.

Also, if it was as simple as ending software exports, then US would have done ended all software exports to Russia a long time ago. The fact they didn't tells you everything you need to know about software export controls.

You are wrong. Both the US and Europe did ban sales of software and services to Russia. Russian businesses have been busy ripping SAP installations out. The airlines had to switch from a Swiss to their own ticket booking system. Linus Torvalds kicked Russian Linux kernel developers out of mainline kernel development. The Russian crypto extensions to RISC-V were also kicked out of the standard process.

The Russian government answered to this by cutting certain taxes. Software companies are exempt from corporate tax and software programmers have access to low interest rate loans on housing.

You do not understand what open source means.

Yeah but forks might be necessary.

what exactly is venezuela? do venezuelans have a clear cultural history and identity as the vietnamese do? or have their natives already been broken by the spanish conquests, the remainders filled with mystery meat mestizos?

Try reading about Simon Bolivar.
The problem for them is lack of foreign support I think.

i do not predict the us getting significantly bogged down in venezuela.

Me neither. Venezuela's population is 88% urban and nearly all the cities are near the coast. Anyone thinking they are 1960s Vietnam or 2000s Afghanistan should consider this.