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Not only am I ignoring your warning, I am recommending for your own health- mental as well as possibly physical- to get some rest.
You are doom posting. Go sleep it off.
FYI:
Went to bed Monday morning around 4AM. Got up about 3:30 PM. Posted the top-level at 9:10 PM. Went to bed Tuesday morning at 3AM. Got up around 1:30 PM. Posting this at 2:45 PM. I do not retract my concerns.
I'm a night owl, not insane from lack of sleep.
And yet, Taiwan remains unblockaded, the nukes are not flying, and the satellites are not falling. Instead, in the last 48 hours, the Chinese ships returned, nuclear sabers were not rattled, and one of the most impressive technical feats of a decade has foreshadowed an even greater resilience of the space economy.
Yesterday was not the start of a war. There was no particular reason to believe that yesterday was the start of a war. That the many various reasons why not were beyond to are what demonstrated a lack of basis for your judgement and justification for fears, much as your lack of perception in 2017 led you to be 'nervous' and believe yourself 'at risk' during a propaganda cycle. The world does not function as you think it does, and the way you think it does is a result of fear mongering you decided to try and spread to others.
You are not charged with insanity. You are charged with a lack of sound judgement.
You seem to have been correct about this incident.
Is there some reason I should go with the hypothesis "Dean knows what the CPC is up to better than I do" rather than the hypothesis "Dean is a Rock Cultist who was right this time"? I'm open to persuasion of the former, but there are lots of Rock Cultists, including many smug Rock Cultists.
My model of the PLA drills around Taiwan is that one of them is not going to be a drill, and the rest are both practice runs and decoys to make people think the real one is another drill and thus gain tactical advantage. To guess which ones might be real, I look at various indications regarding their chances of success and consider whether enough of them point in the direction of "this is the best shot they'll get for a while". March/April/October is one sign, since those are the best months for amphibious operations (though they do have other options). Unusual/temporary weakness in US leadership is another. Unusual/temporary weakness in Western militaries is another. Mood in Taiwan is another, as I certainly accept that the PRC would rather take Taiwan peacefully, though this one's basically stuck in the "on" position at this point since it's now been years since the crash of unificationist sentiment to lizardman following the Hong Kong fiasco (i.e. they have had time to plan and prepare to follow "non-peaceful means" now that the "possibilities for a peaceful re-unification [are] completely exhausted"; quotes are from the PRC's Anti-Secession Law).
The 2024 US election cycle was predictable as a shitshow since 2021, so I predicted well in advance that October 2024 would be a solid time to invade. Biden going senile (and not seeking re-election) and the West re-arming due to Ukraine also create the potential of a temporary vulnerability. So I considered it plausible that this might be the real one; this is the best chance they have for a while (until 2027 or so, unless something goes very wrong in the USA, but even if it does that won't be predictable so to be as good a shot it'd have to be very bad). I knew that they might not do it, and I made that quite clear.
Vague mockery is not going to convince me. You have to be able to spot and explain a problem in the above argument if you are going to convince me that we didn't just get lucky.
Sure. Let's start with 'pattern recognition.'
This is not the first time China has conducted a military exercise simulating a blockade of Taiwan. In all exercises simulating a blockade to date, Taiwan has not, in fact, been blockaded. Therefore, there is no causal relationship justifying a claim that a Chinese military exercise simulating a blockade of Taiwan is evidence of imminent blockade of Taiwan, as there must be other distinguishing features for the former to lead to the later. This takes even more meaning when there is a separate pattern of China conducting threatening exercises, but no attack or blockade, in protest to some Taiwan official statement or another. Again, distinguishing factors needs to be observed to justify claims of deviating from historical patterns of behavior.
We could go further with the advanced concept of backwards reasoning. If China were making a deliberate decision to initiated a military blockade of Taiwan, then what would we expect to see China do in the context of a deliberate leadup to war that would not be seen in the historical pattern of exercises-that-were-not-starts-of-war. This might include, for example, a pre-event propaganda campaign providing initial narrative buildup or international legitimization for the immeninent actions, particularly propaganda emphasizing the historical nature of rectifying the century of humiliation. It might include the mobilization of the Chinese navy, which is to say the social media reflections of the recall of shore leaves, the noticeable trends of all the Chinese naval groups readjusting their movements to start adopting both reinforcement of a blockade and preparing to intercept any efforts by regional naval actors to block it. It might include things like minimizing sanction exposure risk by a sharp withdrawal of PRC state-controlled economic funds from western financial institutions, demands made of the Taiwanese, and threats against external intrusion.
We would expect, in other words, to see actual effort correspond to the sort of actions that would be taken to launch a blockade, and not just the adjacent fleet sailing around for a day not actually stopping anyone going to Taiwan.
We can go further if you'd like, but it'd be punching more than a little down. As an alternative, I propose we let you memory hole this oops of a catastrophizing and then slightly more embarrassing attempt to reserve the right that you told me so.
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Based off of Dean's posting history and areas of knowledge he does have potentially relevant domain specific knowledge.
Other indicators (financial markets, lack of U.S. ramp up, etc.) indicate no reason to be worried as of yet.
Good news: China is a more competent adversary and isn't going to light the world (and themselves) on fire. Well bad news but good news here.
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