09V/09VI (095/096) Nuclear Submarine Thread
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
- Start date
"US naval researchers" I'm going to guess the USNI report by Carlson
While it's always possible that FT is misrepresenting the report, did not claim that the 096 was developed with Russian support. At most, it argues the 096 could or would likely have a Russian lineage based on historical help with older models. True or not, FT is making a significantly bigger claim here.
That means FT is making bogus claims that isn't actually grounded on what the USNI report actually said.
Won't be surprised, though.
Also, speaking of "unnamed US sources" - They did mention the same thing about the H-20 "being worse than/not as good as the B-21" before.
So, yea...
Considering the quality of outlets like FT in terms of competency of PLA watching and interpreting PLA oriented reports, and considering the time course of the CMSI article, I would be highly surprised if they are not thinking about that Carlson article in terms of "US naval researchers".
Let's be honest here -- how many mainstream news media writers even know what 096 as a name is in their own right, and how many of them would have well regarded self selected contacts that would have credible and privileged information about Chinese nuclear submarine development?
They're ultimately not misrepresenting the report -- they think they're conveying its contents competently. They're just bad at their jobs and they actually are not competent.
The fact they cite "US naval researchers" for that idea basically means we have no reason to suspect anything other than the USNWC CMSI article considering half of that article was essentially talking about the supposed dependency of Chinese dependency of russian technology and cooperation for development of existing and potential future nuclear submarines.
I feel a lot like they developed an habit of asking random people in the US government for opinions. They can serve them as "anonymous person from US intelligence" anyway.
Someone doesn't have relevant knowledge just because he is in an institution. DoD, DIA, CIA, etc produce gajillion documents about gajillion different topics. Unless a person is in a team focusing on China, he/she wouldn't know anything beyond a random person from the street. Similarly, even if he is in a China related team, his team might not be about a military topic or cover topics related to submarines. In these cases, unless the said person had used his clearance to learn about Chinese submarines by his own choice, he wouldn't know. Of course, that assumes he has a good enough clearance in the first place.
So, articles that involve anonymous officials are in "opinion discarded" territory for me. Not only it is so easy to lie that way, I need a reason for why I should listen to some govt official about the Chinese military. What is he/she exactly doing in the government besides giving anonymous interviews?
If indeed the FT article was using the Carlson paper as its source, then they are being intellectually dishonest. The Carlson paper cites a 2010 agreement that gave China access to Russian nuclear reactors. The FT article further cites Putin acknowledging in 2019 that Russia was assisting China in building a missile defense early warning system.
Those two agreements were made long before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. And yet the FT article and the U.S. claim Russia helped China develop submarine and missile technologies in exchange for China providing material support for Russia's war in Ukraine.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Forget the silliness of the Russians giving away submarine technology 12 years before the war even began. The fact is Russia expected the Ukraine war to be over in a matter of months, if not weeks. They never anticipated the war would drag on for so long that they'd eventually need assistance from China.
Those two agreements were made long before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. And yet the FT article and the U.S. claim Russia helped China develop submarine and missile technologies in exchange for China providing material support for Russia's war in Ukraine.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Forget the silliness of the Russians giving away submarine technology 12 years before the war even began. The fact is Russia expected the Ukraine war to be over in a matter of months, if not weeks. They never anticipated the war would drag on for so long that they'd eventually need assistance from China.
In this case they're not even citing "anonymous officials" they're just saying "US naval researchers".
There's really no reason to think they aren't just referring to the USNWC article, unless they indicate otherwise.
Intellectual dishonesty is giving them too much credit.
Dishonesty suggests a degree of intent or deliberate malice.
Instead, general incompetence is probably more accurate. Do we really think the writer applied much intellectual rigor in this case here?
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The thing is the overall idea of Russia and China cooperating on nuclear submarines isn't an outrageous idea and I wouldn't be surprised if it was happening to one degree or another (for example China employing russian or ex soviet engineers on contract as part of overall industry advancement).
But being so specific in its claim and curing "US naval researchers" and the time course of a recent high profile article that is adjacent to that theme means it's pretty obvious they're just poorly repeating an already questionable article for the purposes of fitting a specific theme for this piece they've written.
