Shrike
4hr ago
Teensy-tiny would be 1% or maybe 2-3%.
I do not think that the tariffs Trump has announced are Final For All Time.
I already explained that trade deficits are imaginary problem.
I don't think this is the consensus of economists. At a minimum there appear to be differing schools of thought on it.
Shrike
19hr ago
Now all countries need to find other export markets to replace lost exports to the US.
That's the thing, there are no other export markets that will replace lost exports to the US.
Notice that China has increased tarifs towards the US as well.
I have. I've also noticed that it's been reported that China is also threatening countries that are going to cut a deal with the US, and furthermore that they are obstructing Apple's attempt to relocate equipment to India. In other words, China is not only doing all the bad things you are saying Trump is doing (threatening countries with tariffs if they trade with the US instead of China) they are also disincentivizing further investment in the Chinese economy through abusive government practices.
It's possible that what you describe will happen. But it is also possible that it is China that will become isolated.
No country in the world really wants to be dependent on Chinese manufacturing. Not even Russia. Joining the US side might be a good opportunity, especially for countries like Mexico, Argentina and Vietnam, to onshore their own manufacturing as alternatives to Chinese labor for the American consumer. This would both increase their trade with the United States and decrease their own dependence on Chinese labor.
At least, that makes sense to me. I don't pretend to have a very firm grasp on the nuances of the global economy. But I don't think that means I have dementia.
Shrike
1d ago
If you go to countries and say "we are going to slap you with a massive tariff if you choose China, or a teensy-tiny one if you choose us" it...makes total sense? The US is the largest consumer market in the world – if you are forced to choose between China and the US, all other things being equal, you pick the US every time.
Now, obviously, there's room for Trump to bungle the execution (by making all other things not be equal). But the plan is not crazy.
Shrike
1d ago
This demonstrates possibly the largest single difference between Chinese and Western manufacturers / vendors. China is chock full of manufacturers who are perfectly happy to handle small quantity orders while Western manufacturers by and large are only willing to deal with major customers.
Yes. I tend to think this should change. I would prefer it changed in a smoother way, but I guess I'll take what I can get.
Shrike
1d ago
Trump's dealings with tariffs make no sense.
I dunno. I would have a stronger opinion of this if I considered myself more economically literate. But the basic strategy that seems to be shaping up, as reported, of essentially forcing countries to choose between the US and China does make sense. We'll see if he's able to pull it off.
Some people continue to refer to hidden motives but by now we are aware that this is not the case.
I don't really think that's true. Keep in mind that the press has sat on really big stories in the past at the request of the executive branch. If (as has been rumored) China was planning to attack Taiwan - and this precipitated some frantic economic maneuvers - I could definitely see "us" being unaware of the story. I don't hold that theory strongly but it's been in the back of my mind.
Just like many still believe in Havana syndrome as real or something like that.
Why would you use this as an example? (This keeps happening, to me, I swear!)
Almost certainly, Havana Syndrome is real and is being covered up by the US government to smooth over relations with foreign powers and/or conceal the fact that we have and use the same technology. We know how it works (it's a directed energy weapon). It's possible that the symptoms are not even being induced as an anti-personnel attack, but rather an electromagnetic spectrum attack that targets data. President Bush and his family were plausibly affected by this at a summit in Germany (and he wrote about it in his memoir). The Russians have even been reported to have alluded to these types of weapons publicly. There are other incidents, too (such as then-Vice President Richard Nixon being bombarded by extremely high doses of radiation - probably not due to any attempt to harm him, but rather due to a wiretapping attempt) showing that certain foreign powers are willing to irradiate high-ranking US personnel in potentially dangerous ways as part of their espionage programs.
This stuff is all public knowledge and findable on a Google. That doesn't mean that every reported case of Havana syndrome is legit, but there's absolutely zero reason to believe that it's somehow impossible and very good reasons to think it is real.
Now people will be even more angry when they realize they have been cheated again.
And rightfully so, if your idea is true.
Shrike
1d ago
There you go - sort of a silly question from me, sorry, it's just that there's been so much stuff announced and then paused that I haven't been tracking when all of these things were actually for real kicking in (as opposed to being announced. I guess I'm not used to the government working so quickly!)
Anyway, to my point, it's looking like The Latest is that they'll be brought back down, at least a bit, supposedly. Which is, again, pretty classic negotiating. Slap them on, show that You Mean Business, pull back when you get a deal, which...might be happening?
For individuals there's the additional insanity of a flat minimum of $100 / $200 fee for individual packages where the tariff would fall below that amount, starting in one week from now.
I hope this helps reshore domestic light manufacturing. Not sure that it will, but that could be good.
Shrike
1d ago
How would you differentiate “lost a step” and “suffering from dementia”?
You peak at intelligence in the late teens or early twenties - before you are even eligible to be President. So from that perspective all Presidents have "lost a step" - none of them are as bright as they once were. I think Trump was better at debates in 2016 than in 2024.
I'm not a doctor, so I tend to defer to them for the definition of dementia. Personally I would use a sort of everyday definition - if someone is mentally lucid enough to take care of themselves in the day-to-day. With POTUS, the standard should arguably be higher - "if they can fulfill the duties of the office."
But if you are able to separate his rhetoric, you could see that now he has lost a plot.
Which plot specifically? I don't see "Trump doing wacky stuff with tariffs" as, by itself, indicative of dementia. But I don't typically watch Trump speeches, so if he was noticeably out of it, the way Biden sometimes appeared to be, I wouldn't necessarily notice. If Trump is actually suffering from dementia then he should step down quickly, before it meaningfully impacts his duties.
Shrike
1d ago
Quite possible. I don't know that much about the legal grounding of the tariffs. My understanding is that Congress delegated a truly insane amount of authority to POTUS in "times of emergency" - I suppose SCOTUS might also rule there is no justifying emergency.
The fundamental issue, I think, is that SCOTUS and Congress want POTUS to have sweeping emergency powers. They have arguably relied overmuch on "norms" to govern the President's use of them.
Shrike
1d ago
No one believed that absurd tariffs will get implemented etc.
Have they actually gotten implemented though? I keep hearing that Trump keeps kicking the ball down the road on them. Which is a pretty classic negotiating tactic - hit people with sticker shock, and then walk it back.
I am still very very suspicious that some of the motivations behind the Tariff Whiplash Phenomenon is Secret Sauce Stuff that will come out in 1 - 40 years. Not confident, just suspicious. (There seem to be other plausible explanations.)
Either way, I don't really think Tariff Whiplash is really good evidence that Trump has dementia (I suspect he has lost a step but isn't suffering from a mental illness if that makes sense).
Shrike
1d ago
Anyone know of a mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that claims Trump has not done anything to expand Presidential power and is "using it as it was meant to be used?"
I think the only think Trump has done that really counts as an expansion of Presidential power (off the top of my head, but I am quite willing to be shown other examples) is asserting authority over independent agencies. (Pushing for diversity of viewpoint from universities also seems...novel...but I have not read the supposed authorities cited and "regulators pushing an extremely novel interpretation of US civil rights law on universities" is not exactly new, so I am not sure if that's really a good example, but it is the other one that readily comes to mind.)
I believe there's a fairly mainstream interpretation of the Constitution that holds that these independent agencies shouldn't exist, because they are not contemplated in the traditional Constitutional scheme, as they are neither executive agencies, nor part of Congress, nor part of the judiciary. Under that interpretation, Trump is not expanding his power by asserting authority over independent boards - he is exercising authority that has always been his, over all executive agencies. And in fact it seems to me like an awful lot of the stuff that Trump has done that's been attacked as being a novel use of Presidential power has just been exercising latent power over the executive branch.
From my point of view, the most problematic thing Trump has done from a separation-of-powers issue might be TARIFFS. Congress is supposed to make the laws, and, you know, our overall tariff policy is pretty important and under the original Constitutional schema probably would be left to Congress to decide. But guess what? Congress - as I understand it - decided to delegate him those powers. So he's not aggregating new powers to himself, unless SCOTUS rules that those powers are inherently those of Congress and that the executive may not modify them, which as far as I know they have not done. And probably are unlikely to do.
I think it's quite fair to argue that Trump is sort of double-dealing here - he's pushing (on the one hand) for expanded executive power from what might be a more originalist or right-of-center angle (the "you can't delegate too much power to unelected bureaucrats" theory of the Constitution) while on the other hand he's making maximal use out of the power that Congress delegated him under the more modern way of doing things (you might call this the "legislating is hard, let's let the President do that" theory of the Constitution) that might itself be subject to criticism under more originalist means of governing.
But here's the fundamental deal. The executive was always supposed to have a lot of decisive authority over the executive branch. It's just that the scope of his duties was originally quite small. Over the course of 200 years a number of makeshift patches were applied in US law that arguably would not fly by original-intent standards but (charitably) were necessary to make the Constitution workable so that the President and Congress could delegate sufficient functions to experts or (uncharitably) were necessary to subvert democracy by placing an unelected class of power-maximizing bureaucrats between the American people and their elected representatives and the levers of power. (That's not the only two options, and I think the truth of the matter is more complex than either or both of them, but I think phrasing it like that is clarifying). And when wielding both of those powers, the President might be much more powerful than contemplated under either the original or hotfixed versions of the Constitution.
And now we've essentially gotten the point where the President is willing to make vigorous use of the full scope of his authority under both the Constitution and those makeshift patches that we've applied, and in a way that is not only controversial but also impacts a lot of people. (Remember that Obama straight-up drone struck a noncombatant American citizen, which was controversial and arguably a bigger Presidential power-grab than anything Trump has done, but it only, ah, impacted a few people directly.) So now, maybe, Congress will decide to take the reins and do something about it.
Or not. Frankly, I wouldn't bet on it.
Shrike
3d ago
So do you have numbers?
Not any recent. But the older numbers I have seen or recall tended to indicate either parity or a Russian advantage - maybe with exceptions were Ukraine had a localized advantage at a certain front for a time. There was much moaning about China providing Russia with many more drones than Ukraine. If Ukraine has surpassed Russia in drone deployment I would sort of have expected to hear about it, although I don't know any Russian procurement officials.
Now, with all that being said - didn't Russia ration arms in periods leading up to offensives in the past? I would not be surprised if they were stockpiling drones for an offensive. But who knows.
If China is actually weaning Russia off of drones then I think they are making a hubristic mistake. Or, possibly more likely, they actually are stung by European whining about their assistance with China and are attempting to do an about face. Which would be interesting if true - perhaps they are rattled by 20000000% tariffs after all.
Shrike
3d ago
Typical Baltic yapping.
Is Germany considered a Baltic state now?
regiments have to use drones very prudently, while Ukrainians spam them by the thousand, and seem to have no issues in procurement.
This is a fairly common perception in wartime that needs have no bearing on actual procurement numbers.
Americans are delusional as well if they don't understand how much the credibility of their defense commitments has suffered from Trump and Vance's posturing with regards to Denmark.
Perhaps, but that has no bearing on whether or not there are still American troops in Europe - and there are, tens of thousands of them. One of the linked articles said there were about 100,000 Americans in Europe - that's larger than the entire German army.
Europe is not entirely deindustrialized, they can make their own drones, in addition to Chinese-Ukrainian ones.
I believe this is technically true, yes.
Shrike
4d ago
Both Ukrainian and Russian states have atrociously high tolerance for losses and their citizens will keep dying for the foreseeable future.
This seems plausible to me, but much of the rest of your comment I think is subject to criticism.
Ukraine is in a hard but sustainable position right now
I wouldn't rule out this possibility, but on the other hand it looks like Russia is sending back 20 Ukrainians in bodybags for each Russian body they get back from the Ukrainians. This almost certainly reflects who is advancing as much or more than actual casualty ratios, but it is still not great for Ukraine.
This makes them less likely to ever militarily assist Russia
The Chinese are supporting Russia's military industrially. Not only have they been criticized by NATO and European leaders for this, but Chinese firms have been sanctioned. Reporting from last fall indicates that Russia actually established a facility to build military drones in China.
If Europe is unwilling to break from China it is for other reasons, not because China isn't helping Russia.
Europe, de facto deprived of the American shield, is also quickly militarizing
Europe is not "de facto" deprived of the American shield. The Americans have done some saber-rattling to convince the Europeans to open their wallets. They might cut half of the extra forces Biden sent to Europe in 2022, since which time Sweden and Finland both joined NATO, bringing more manpower to Europe's defense than said extra forces. Reducing US forces in Europe by 10% is not the same as pulling out of NATO or anything like that.
And China has also cut off Europe's access to drone components which makes a European pivot to China for defense purposes...fraught. Particularly considering that Ukraine's new and very transparent attempts to link China and Russia together in their invasion are...unlikely to increase the supply of drones to Ukraine. I really doubt Ukraine and Europe can match China and Russia's drone production, so if this is a stagnant war that will end only when the last infantryman is killed by the last FPV drone, I think Russia is still favored here.
Budapest Memorandum anyone?
A non-legally-binding document that contains no security guarantees is hardly worse than "vague European security guarantees" if those are actually on the table.
However, with all of that being said, I do agree with you - I suspect that either Ukraine, Russia or both will not agree to this deal. (I do agree with Lizardspawn that it might be smart for Russia to accept it, banking on Ukraine refusing it.)
Shrike
5d ago
Yes. But my recollection is that pagan gods are often (typically?) also not the Creator of everything and the ground of existence itself.
Shrike
5d ago
This seems like a massive oversimplification.
Fair enough!
Scripture itself is not exactly simple on this, but it does refer to "gods" (depending on your translation, and including, yes, associating them with what might be translated "demons" or the like) and there's a very long tradition in Christianity (and Judaism) of contrasting God with the other gods not by virtue of being more real but by virtue of being superior - more powerful and benevolent than the gods of others. This is somewhat muddied by mocking idols as being powerless, but there are a number of passages in both the Old and New Testaments that do give credence to the idea of other spiritual beings that are worshiped as gods, so - walks like a duck, talks like a duck - arguably fair to call it a duck!
It seems like the Orthodox mostly don’t directly blame those people for being so fooled, especially as Christ had not yet arrived to spread the good word, nor do the Orthodox apparently believe that such “demons” were (or are) purely malevolent beings. But it seems pretty clear to at least Orthodox Christians — unless I’m somehow misunderstanding their words — that pagans who believed their Gods were supreme and benevolent beings were totally mistaken about the true nature of the beings which they worshipped.
I grant you that there is a difference in association between "DEMON" and "GOD" but it seems to me like your Orthodox friends and the pagans agreed descriptively on what was being worshiped by pagans (very powerful spiritual beings). I will admit to not being an expert in pagan belief systems, but I am unaware of any pagan pantheon where the gods were "supreme and benevolent" in the sense that we view the Christian God. In the mythologies I am aware of, the gods fight each other, have differing values, typically do not serve all sects or people groups equally (or want to, they often seem to have their own little cults of devotees rather than aspiring towards some sort of universal status), and as I recall often seem to have stumbled into their powers through violence or subterfuge (instead of having them by right as an un-created Creator) and sometimes do things that are ~evil to humans because they can. Now, obviously you have people who say this is also true of the Christian God, but it seems to me there is a big difference between the self-story of God in the Judeo-Christian tradition and the self-story of the various pagan gods. In fact - and I think there is supposed to be fairly decent evidence for this textually, although, again, not my area of expertise - in many ways the Judeo-Christian self-story of God (at least in Genesis) seems set up as a refutation of the claims of other gods - a "setting the facts straight," if you will.
Now, Christians believe that only one God should be worshiped. Thus whatever the characteristics of any other entities, if you worship them you are mistaken about their true nature. But I think one could still call entities that had the characteristics of the "gods" of various mythologies "gods" fairly, even if in the Christian theological framework they were not the One True God who was owed worship.
TDLR; to the question, I would say that Christianity has no problems with the pagan gods being real but it does have a problem with them being worshiped.
Shrike
9d ago
I don't think they actually have insight into what a more intelligent person would do, particularly in the context of greater intelligence leading to better decision making.
Ah yes, sorry, if you stick to intelligence as being more about "how well you perform on the SAT" then I tend to agree. But of course in real life that's only part of what effects outcomes, which curves back around to some of my perspective on AI.
I think that's more expertise than intelligence. Not always easy to disentangle, though.
Right. I mean, think about it from the AI perspective. The AI would have no intelligence without education, because being trained on data is all that it is. A computer chip isn't intelligent at all. I don't think that directly analogizes to humans, but you see my point.
the entire point of creating a superintelligent AI is that it's able to apply intelligence in a way that is otherwise impossible
I think in the popular discourse (not accusing you of this, although I think it rubs off a bit on all of us, me included) there's a bit of a motte-and-bailey here. Because AIs like this have already been built (decades ago) to do complex things like "missile interception" that would be impossible to do with manual human control. So the idea of what a superintelligence constitutes wobbles back and forth between a very literal deus ex machina and "something better performing than a human" - which of course we already have.
So I would say that it is possible to make a "superhuman AI" whose actions are predictable (generally). But I would agree with you that it is also possible to make a superhuman AI whose decisions are unpredictable. I just don't think "able to score on the SAT better than humans" or what have you necessarily translates out to unpredictability.
One is that humans don't seem to want to coordinate to increase the amount of uncertainty any AI would experience.
I mean I do think that humans are helpfully coordinating to increase the amount of uncertainty other humans experience, which rolls over to AI.
Perhaps our defenses against this superintelligent AI working around these barriers would be sufficient, perhaps not. It's intrinsically hard to predict when going up against something much more intelligent than you. And that's the problem.
Sure. I just tend to think in some ways it is easier to "keep the location of our SSBNs hidden" and "not put missile defenses around our AI superclusters" than it is to "correctly ensure that these billions of lines of code are all going to behave correctly," if that makes sense.
Shrike
9d ago
And as we've learned, "anti-ship ballistic missiles backed by Chinese spy satellites" are not in fact an insurmountable obstacle for carrier battle groups.
Shrike
9d ago
Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually keep the carriers out of a Taiwan Strait scenario, though, and detail them to doing interdiction/blockade work outside of DF-26 range. Although the Navy has a lot of pride and a long time to work on the problem, so maybe they feel pretty confident by now.
Shrike
9d ago
Sorry for my delayed response.
Why would that matter, though? A superintelligence would be intelligent enough to figure out that such faulty human training is part of its "evolutionary heritage" and figure out ways around it for accomplishing its goals.
Well, I mean – humans are smart enough to realize that drugs are hijacking their brain's reward/pleasure center, but that doesn't save people from drug addiction.
Now, maybe computers will be able to overcome those problems with simple coding. But maybe they won't.
A superintelligence would be intelligent enough to figure out that it needs to gather data that allows it to create a useful enough model for whatever its goals are. It's entirely possible that a subservient goal for whatever goal we want to deploy the superintelligence towards happens to be taking over the world or human extinction or whatever, in which case it would gather data that allows it to create a useful enough model for accomplishing those. This uncertainty is the entire problem.
Sure. But it's much better (and less uncertain) to be dealing with something whose goals you control than something whose goals you do not.
I don't think either of your examples is correct. Can a dog look at your computer screen while you read this comment and predict which letters you will type out in response on the keyboard? Can you look at a more intelligent person than you proving a math theorem that you can't solve and predict which letters he will write out on his notepad? If you could, then, to what extent is that person more intelligent than you?
Nope! But on the flip side, a cat can predict that a human will wake up when given the right stimulus, a dog can track a human for miles, sometimes despite whatever obstacles the human might attempt to put in its way. Being able to correctly predict what a more intelligent being would do is quite possible. (If it's not, then we have no need to fear superintelligences killing us all, since that's been predicted numerous times.)
This is what I mean by "almost by definition." If you could reliably predict the behavior of something more intelligent than you, then you would simply behave in that way and be more intelligent than yourself, which is obviously impossible.
I don't think this is true, on a couple of points. Look, people constantly do things they know are stupid. So it's quite possible to know what a smarter person would do and not do it. But secondly, part of education is being able to learn and imitate (which is, essentially, prediction) what wiser people do, and this does make you more intelligent.
Since, by definition, we can't predict what those subgoals might be, those subgoals could involve things that we don't want to happen.
I predict I will be able to predict what those subgoals are (I will ask the AI).
But we don't know, because a generally intelligent AI, and even moreso a superintelligent one, is something whose "values" and "motivations" we have no experience with the same way we do with humans and mathematicians and other living things that we are biologically related to.
I'm very glad you said this, because I STRONGLY AGREE. I've argued before on here that most human values, emotions, and motivations are fundamentally biologically derived and likely will not be mirrored (absent programming to that effect) by an entity that exists as a bunch of lines of code on a computer server. And programming or no, such an entity's experience would not be remotely analogous to ours.
The point of "solving" the alignment problem is to be able to reliably predict boundaries in the behavior of superintelligent AI similarly to how we are able to do so in the behavior of humans, including humans more intelligent than ourselves.
Yes, I like this definition. You'll note I am not arguing against alignment. But one of the things we do to keep human behavior predictable is retain the ability to deploy coercive means. I suppose in one sense I am suggesting that we think of alignment more broadly. I think that taking relatively straightforward steps to increase the amount of uncertainty an EVIL AI would experience might be tremendously helpful in alignment. (It's also more likely to hedge against central points of failure, e.g. we don't want to feed the location of all of our SSBNs to our supercomputer, because even if we trust the supercomputer, we don't want a data breach to expose the location of all of our SSBNs.)
Shrike
10d ago
I'm familiar China has a satellite constellation for the same
Yeah, the Russians also had a satellite constellation. By your telling carriers have been obsolete for 50 years. (Not necessarily implausible but...I doubt it).
You can't intercept mach 5 drones 35 km up that evade at 15 G.. you simply don't have the dV for it.
I don't think this is true at all, THAAD and the SM-3 are both much faster than Mach 5 and should have the dV. I do think their fast drone is one of the better backup solutions for sea control, but the Russians had plenty of MPA aircraft too, and they had trouble finding US carriers even in peacetime when their patrol aircraft weren't at risk of getting shot down.
But if it is true that hypersonic vehicles can't be intercepted, that's...not necessarily good for China.
They only need to deter the carrier groups long enough to secure Taiwan.
I am not really sure that carrier groups are needed to defend Taiwan at all.
Shrike
10d ago
Ok I'm going to reply in depth later but you shuold familiarize yourself with how well the 'Scud hunt' went during Gulf war
I am familiar with the SCUD hunt. I also know what SENTIENT is. Are you familiar with Soviet attempts to find carrier battle groups?
the estimates for breaking through into an static, decades prepare air-defense grid (it's weeks in case of Russia)
To establish air supremacy or superiority, yes. Obviously it did not take the Ukrainians weeks to penetrate the Russian air-defense grid once they got the right capabilities, nor would it take the US weeks to penetrate it if they wanted to.
the multiple methods for detecting stealth planes (multilateration, undoubtedly networked parabolic microphones and more!
I do not necessarily think stealth aircraft are the best assets the US has against mobile ballistic missile launchers. Nevertheless we've learned that modern air defense systems do not render even non-stealthy aircraft incapable.
Now frankly I think it would likely be stupid to waste munitions on something the size of a ballistic missile launcher that might move at any moment. (And my understanding is that US doctrine was actually to avoid striking Chinese launchers anyway.) But my point is that the US having the theoretical capability does not make the missile useless! I agree with you that there are countermeasures against targeting mobile ballistic missile launchers! It's hard to do!
Also that China does have satellite dazzlers ready.
And the US has ways of operating despite dazzlers - stealth satellites, [likely] high-altitude hypersonic recon/(strike?) aircraft, maneuvering spacecraft, non-optical recon satellites, some dude with a quadcopter, SIGINT, etc.
In short US wouldn't be likely to acquire these launchers, wouldn't have much to hit them with - cruise missiles aren't great at following moving targets and also planes wouldn't be able to get near.
Moving the launchers around constantly is unlikely (although moving them consistently is). (And, for the record, at least some modern cruise missiles are capable of hitting moving targets, although I agree with you that the moving complicates matters.) But as I said above, I think it would be a dumb use of munitions. Which, again, goes to my point: having the theoretical ability to destroy something does not mean that such a course is easy, or even a good idea.
Really, everything you've said about hunting missile launchers is also true of hunting carriers, although carriers are much larger and more valuable targets, making them much more reasonable to target than a single ballistic missile launcher.
That's your supposition, yank.
I mean - the DF-series has limited range, and carriers give a fleet a huge advantage over hostile fleets even if they are forced to stay out of it. Having a floating airfield is pretty neat, and forcing them away from shore does not make them obsolete, it makes them less
Ask yourself what is a carrier group going to do when 128 maneuvering hypersonic glide vehicles appear over it.
Well this sort of assumes some things - I think you're smart enough to know about the kill chain problems with anti-ship ballistic missiles. The US has the same (perhaps better) apparatus to kill Chinese missile launchers that China does to kill carriers, does that make ASBMs obsolete? (The answer is no). I don't think this makes ASBMs useless or carriers invulnerable, it just means that they aren't some sort of magic invincible weapon.
Ask yourself how the carrier group is going to fare when it has what, 200 anti missiles
Are you asking realistically, or at full capacity? At full capacity a single Burke can carry nearly 400 surface-to-air missiles if it is simply going for quantity by quad-packing ESSMs. Most likely it will be carrying a mix of anti-air and possibly anti-surface stand-off, and any carrier will likely be escorted by a Tico and two Burkes, maybe more. That's about 314 cells. So even if they don't have full cells because US industrial capacity sucks and some other cells are full of Tomahawks and ASROCs, I think you can guess something like 300 anti-air missiles conservatively (50 x cells dedicated to ESSM, 100 x dedicated to Standard, 100x Tomahawk, 50x empty or ASROC) before getting to SeaRAM/CIWS, and of course the carrier itself can carry hundreds of AMRAAMs and the new AIM-174 which can likely intercept anti-ship missiles.
Now, I don't rate the ESSM as much against ballistic missiles (although they might be useful in terminal defense, I suppose, apparently they can pull 30gs - but I would not count on them) - you're really looking to the Standards to provide you with air defense. Of course, if the Navy really intends to get dirty and play with ballistic missiles, they would know this and so, at the cost of a great deal of time, you might see them send two CBGs with something like two Ticos and a dozen Burkes (the Navy has more than 70). Both the SM-3 (of which the US has probably a couple hundred) and the SM-6 (of which the US probably has four-figures) have ABM capability in theory, so you could in theory put let's say 600 ABM-capable missiles on such a fleet easily.
And, since the carrier can generate strike packages outside of the known range of the DF-21 (albeit with great difficulty due to Dick Cheney canning the A-12 and advanced F-14 variants) the BIG question is if 500 Standards can intercept the DF-26s in the Chinese arsenal, assuming we want to split the difference with the carrier group and let it operate at extreme range rather than risk the more numerous DF-21. Assuming also that the Chinese haven't burned all of their DF-26s on Guam (which frankly is probably a better idea than trying to shoot at a carrier if China can catch the planes there on the ground) they have, what, 200 missiles to shoot at the carrier group realistically (launcher was revealed in 2015, I found a 2021 .mil source that said 100 missiles or so, so let's assume they've doubled that and ignore the question of how many of those are earmarked for nuclear warheads by assuming zero.)
Now in a "shoot shoot look shoot" doctrine the US can "shoot shoot look shoot" all 200 missiles.
I think intercepting ballistic missiles is hard and would personally prefer never to be in a situation where I was trusting my ABMs to intercept ballistic missiles. Even if you make optimistic assumptions (50% inception rate, for instance) you can still run into bad situations where leakers get through just due to bad "rolls" and contra your suggestion that 5-10 hits would seriously degrade operations from a carrier I am going to courageously suggest that even a single ballistic missile warhead will absolutely ruin a carrier's day unless it is very lucky.
Fortunately, the US Navy doesn't just have to rely on interceptors - the missiles will be using radar, most likely, for terminal targeting. [ETA: it looks like they are also believed to have optical sensors, which have both advantages and disadvantages over radar. I'd say this makes me slightly more bullish on the DF-series if true, but it's not as if optical systems are invincible either.] And radar sucks, modern ships could employ barrage or seduction jamming as well as decoys and chaff. My intuition is that this is especially true if they are actually going to descend on a glide profile rather than a straight-down profile, there are a lot of soft-kill options.
Now, you can sort of "adjust the sliders" to make the assumptions you want here - if you assume US softkill systems work reliably, then you barely need to worry. If you assume Chinese long-range sensors are neutralized early in the conflict, you barely need to worry. If you assume that the Standards will work poorly, or that the Chinese have say 300 or 500 DF-26s they are willing to launch at ships (neither of which seem implausible to me), then it starts to look much worse for the carriers.
All that being said: I would not want to be on a CBG that was going into DF-26 range. There are too many things that can go wrong, and ships don't have a lot of room for error. (This is...worse for China than for the United States in a Taiwan scenario). It's possible the US has Secret Sauce Technology that makes them much more confident in their carrier defense; the same is plausible for Chinese missiles. My main point in writing this up is simply to say - the situation is much more complex than simply "I have a missile with a 3000 mile range and an anti-ship guidance system, checkmate."
(As an aside, I found out while researching this long reply that the Chinese are latecomers to the ASBM game: the Soviets fired the first anti-ship ballistic missile in 1973.)
Shrike
10d ago
Yes, apparently wake homing torpedoes keep the US Navy up at night long enough that they tried to field anti-torpedo torpedoes onto our carriers before withdrawing them because checks notes they couldn't get them to work.
I am not sure how effective they are, but I also like supercavitating torpedoes because I have not put my inner eight-year-old to death.
However, I am not sure China has gotten their submarine force in good enough shape for it to be a solid option for them.
The United States is not, no.
Not necessarily true - in this system there are losers as well as winners, at least proportionately.
There's definitely alternatives between "get critical industrial supplies from China" and "complete autarchy." The best position for any country, of course, is limited autarchy - being self sufficient on
You can offshore some of this to trusted allies, or try to compensate for it in other ways, but producing the above locally (which the United States does not do) is a desirable goal for any country.
I also think that a lot of your statements rely on a perfectly efficient and frictionless market. The market is not perfectly efficient, and it is definitely not frictionless. The United States, in particular, has a lot of what might be described as barriers to internal trade - some of them quite severe. It's quite possible (and I listened to some economic-types who are probably smarter than me suggest this, so it's not something I just made up) that even with tariffs, the US grows wealthier by cutting down these internal regulations.
Yes - this is the sort of move I have been discussing.
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