Miscellaneous News

[supersnoop]

China NOT heading for collapse! We've all been misled:

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I think this guy was nuanced for the most part, but he mentioned he only studied China for 15 years, so there is a lot of recency bias

I also think that the country’s aggressive foreign policy under Xi has caused irreparable damage to its reputation. Skirmishes on the border with India, threats to Taiwan, the backlash against Korean products during the

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, and hostile behavior in the East- and South China Seas have not won the country any friends.

On Backlash... How many times did Chinese citizens protest and set fire to Toyotas (Toyotas owned by regular people!) when Japan was able to patrol Diaoyu Islands with impunity? If the Chinese Coast Guard wasn't strengthened so much in the last 10 years, it might still come up as an issue.

Skirmishes with India, a whole war was fought in the 60's, so this is not new.

Threats to Taiwan.
This is really funny, because we saw history being rewritten portraying Hu Jintao as some "dove". While he was certainly softer towards Taiwan than Xi, he also oversaw the passing of the Anti Secession Law, which made use of force the actual law.

Hostile behavior, again, there have been numerous skirmishes, most notably against Vietnam o many, many years. It is also a very one-sided view, as many of these countries have routinely attacked their 'native' Chinese populations to rouse up nationalist sentiment, even when Chinese military power was relatively weak. Most recently in Indonesia at a large scale in 1998.

The introduction of so-called Communist Party committees in the Chinese subsidiaries of such multinationals has also raised eyebrows.

Has always existed at the joint venture firms since the 80’s which are how most multinationals are engaged.

It wasn’t a terrible article, but these points were glaringly obvious to me.

 

[supersnoop]

Reality is stranger than fiction, back in 1997 when this F-22 sim first came out aint nobody would have believed a quarter of a century later the only real op the F-22 ever did was Operation Balloon Strike...

Almost makes me want to write to the publisher to ask for my money back, I feel defrauded, this game was a grotesque misrepresentation of what the F-22 actually set out to accomplish

$20 bucks in 1997 money is nearly $200 bucks today

View attachment 106841

Around that same time, I played Novalogic’s Comanche “sim”.

Of course the Comanche never even got to intercept a jihadi pickup truck, let alone blowing away Gaskins and Hinds like the game.

Plus I can’t even ask for my money back because Novalogic is dead… good thing it was downloaded by my cousin off some BBS…

 

[jwnz]

She should be careful not to let the balloon fly away. If not, the balloon can really dogfight an F-22 this time.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1622887776046788608

I knew it... that Maverick is one of the ex pilots moonlighting for PLAAF...

 

[clockwork]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1622973816724148227

I think it's quite clear what's happening. The American leadership knows that their MIC-forced confrontation is dangerous and obviously as individuals they don't really want to do it, but they can't exactly just mutiny against the boss who owns them all. So there's this kind of clown show double act going on where they continue to do the whole drive for war with China thing the MIC demands of them behind the scenes but also keep begging China to "talk", and hence all this obsession with crisis communications/escalation management etc. From the perspective of those in the White House it's probably even more obvious where their path leads than to us as outside observers. I'd imagine it's like being a drug dealer: you're not exactly comfortable with it and know you're probably gonna die a violent & early death one day as a result of your work, but the pay is too good and you can't exactly just get out of the game, so you keep doing it and just vent to one of your think tankie friends every now and then.

 

[solarz]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1622973816724148227

I think it's quite clear what's happening. The American leadership knows that their MIC-forced confrontation is dangerous and obviously as individuals they don't really want to do it, but they can't exactly just mutiny against the boss who owns them all. So there's this kind of clown show double act going on where they continue to do the whole drive for war with China thing the MIC demands of them behind the scenes but also keep begging China to "talk", and hence all this obsession with crisis communications/escalation management etc. From the perspective of those in the White House it's probably even more obvious where their path leads than to us as outside observers. I'd imagine it's like being a drug dealer: you're not exactly comfortable with it and know you're probably gonna die a violent & early death one day as a result of your work, but the pay is too good and you can't exactly just get out of the game, so you keep doing it and just vent to one of your think tankie friends every now and then.

Now I certainly believe the American MIC will always try to play up the China or Russia threat, but I don't believe for a second that they actually want direct confrontation with either country.

Courting nuclear war is good for neither profits nor stock prices.

 

[luosifen]

More bad news:

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World 07:07, 08-Feb-2023

25 killed in bus-car collision in northern Pakistan

CGTN



At least 25 people were killed and several others injured when a passenger bus collided with a car in Pakistan's northern Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) region, government officials and police said on Tuesday.
The accident occurred after the over-speeding bus, with at least 45 passengers onboard, collided with a car near the Shatial check post in the Kohistan district of the region, information minister of the GB province Fatehullah Khan told media.
The passenger bus and the car fell into the ravine after the accident.

 

[BoraTas]

Did this whole balloon thing end up being an elaborate salame slicing operation by the prc?

I don't know if it was intentional or not but it served as a perfect litmus test for rationality and functionality of the USA on so many levels. I am sure the results didn't go unnoticed in relevant circles throughout the world. Government officials evaluate things in a different way than Reddit posters.

 

[clockwork]

Now I certainly believe the American MIC will always try to play up the China or Russia threat, but I don't believe for a second that they actually want direct confrontation with either country.

Courting nuclear war is good for neither profits nor stock prices.

The MIC may not want the actual war, but that doesn't matter. I've said this before: they don't get to run a freight train right to the precipice and stop it before it continues off the cliff. We're already seeing chants of "traitor" over not shooting down a Chinese balloon instantly, what do you think rabid Americans are gonna do in an actual crisis where blood's been shed? It's funny, for as much projection as they like to do about the "regime survival" motivation in Chinese/Russian government decision-making, it'll literally be a matter of life and death for every last one of the politicians at that point; they'll have no alternatives. A million Secret Service wouldn't be able to save them from that mob.

 

[TK3600]

I kinda admit that the weaponizing the balloon for modern warfare looks very tempting. Using a balloon does offer a very unique opportunity to put HGVs at very high altitudes with extremely minimal costs. The balloon does not even need to maneuver to the target, it can be floating hundreds, or thousands of kilometers away from the target. Upon release, the HGVs can glide themselves onto the target. So no need for ballistic missiles or jets to put them at very high altitudes in the first place.

The balloon can also carry radars, sensors, and EW suites at very high altitudes. So there are some other potential uses there too.

Nevertheless, the biggest drawback for using balloons is it's very slow speed and limited steering ability. So I also see potential for the balloon to be used as a cheap decoy and terror weapon against American forces. Especially when they are aware that there is a variant that can drop HGVs onto them. Let them burn fuel and missiles onto balloons instead of more valuable assets.

I think you guys are not thinking in the right way. The whole point of balloon is cheap and expendable. If you are using a high end weapon like HGV you may as well pair with a high end platform to maximize the performance.

We should rethink about balloon as a survillence platform. Yes satellite can do it better but it is not the point. Don't fixate on the capability, focus on the political nature of it combined with its cheap cost. Hell, you can even skip the sensor directly and just put one once every 20 balloon to keep them guessing.

Think this way, you WANT it to be shot down unlike satellite. It is cheap enough that whatever you use to kill it it will cost more. What about rational choice of ignoring it because its job is redundant with satellite? American cannot politically ignore it, it is already proven.

Most importantly it offers a harmless(militarily) way to provoke American regime. Having a Chinese balloon let opposition mock the party in charge, so in actuality the party in charge hate it more than something as big as dedollarization. Not handling the balloon can cost an election. Dedollarize? Next guy's problem. It is a perfect counterplay to the Taiwan visits of threatening American political prestige so they think twice. All the same time it has zero escalatory risk militarily and gain you leverage for negotiation.

So here is a new line of thought: aggressively contain American provocation through abusing its political system; how to make American leaders fear you without military escalation.

Bonus point: make American paranoid enough to design weaponry to target balloons. It may make this tactic obsolete but the tactic would have paid itself 100 fold.

 

[MwRYum]

The MIC may not want the actual war, but that doesn't matter. I've said this before: they don't get to run a freight train right to the precipice and stop it before it continues off the cliff. We're already seeing chants of "traitor" over not shooting down a Chinese balloon instantly, what do you think rabid Americans are gonna do in an actual crisis where blood's been shed? It's funny, for as much projection as they like to do about the "regime survival" motivation in Chinese/Russian government decision-making, it'll literally be a matter of life and death for every last one of the politicians at that point; they'll have no alternatives. A million Secret Service wouldn't be able to save them from that mob.

Which explains why the victory laps still going on so hard...