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There are serious efforts to get cutting edge domestic chip production up and running in the US, the EU, Japan, and South Korea. I'm not too optimistic about the US (cost disease, overregulation), but it'll likely happen in at least one of those countries in the next 3-5 years, and it's all the same to US multinationals. China may be willing to wait for this precisely so the US is less motivated to defend Taiwan.
Separately, I think we're rather clearly entering a period of disruption with respect to military tech and tactics. Why fight a 20th century war against the 20th century's most powerful military, if you can wait a bit and, I don't know, sneak a million drones into the skies over Taipei from submersible launch platforms?
I'm not sure it's clear if drones/AI shifts the scales in favor of the larger military or not. Houthi's and Ukraine seem to be using drones to punch above their weight for now while Hamas doesn't seem to have been able to do practically anything against S tier military tech.
Houthis are punching above their weight against mostly India, though, right? Like the USA has a carrier there but it’s mostly playing city worker.
Drones are a force multiplier against big middle income country armies like Russia, Ukraine, India, but aren’t helpful against absolutely top tier forces like Israel or the U.S. would be a reasonable conclusion, it seems.
They're making life far more inconvenient for the USA than they have any right to, and gaining major credibility among global jihadis for themselves and Iran in the process.
Right now drones (military ones that are not super-cheap but cheaper than airplanes... or missiles, not the science-fiction swarms of ultra-cheap quadcopters) give an advantage to the aggressor, since they're expensive to shoot down and cheap to use. I expect we will see development of anti-drone technology which will negate this at some point. And then drone advancement to reinstate it, naturally.
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Sure, but the American navy could turn them into chunky salsa. It’s not doing that for whatever reason, but drones probably aren’t that reason.
The "whatever reason" is all the stuff Israel is experiencing trying to turn Hamas into chunky salsa.
International opprobrium isn't something that can just be written off.
They'd accrue less opprobrium when they're doing it for a clear goal (restore international shipping) rather than without a clearer objective than retaliation. And, I'm sure the countries wouldn't mind lower shipping costs too much.
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Eh, Putin can, and he's in a much worse situation. The US could handle a lot more opprobrium than it gets without much material damage. And did, during the Trump years, just because Trump. It's the USs image of itself (or Biden's image of the US) that's holding us back, that and Biden's (IMO reasonable) desire not to get into a long war in Yemen right after getting out of Afghanistan.
The US really wouldn't suffer much in the way of PR if we got a LOT more aggressive with the Houthis, at least if it was effective. It's not like they're particularly well-loved.
I'd like the "series of massive punitive raids" strategy tried out. I think it could have done the job in Afghanistan, and will work with the Houthis. They fire on shipping, the US kills everyone it can find involved in that operation. All the way to the top. Eventually someone will come to power who doesn't fire on shipping.
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