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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   9323 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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Surely blockading an island is much easier thanks to these drones, rather than the other way around? Chinese can swarm any ship going towards the island with the said drones. Cherry on top is that vast majority of the quad drones used in Ukraine by both sides is made in China.

I get what you mean, but the Chinese navy is purpose built to blockade the island anyway, and innovation that is making this easier isn't really helping them much. Instead, it moves the power balance towards parity in favor of Taiwan, who now will have a much easier time attacking ships than they had before. At the same time, it is of course also moving the power balance from a US carrier group towards China - for the same reason. And sure, I have no doubts that China's drone capabilities will be (or most likely, already are) top of the line. The thing with drones is just that offense is vastly easier than defense.

I also think that marine drones (as in: relatively large drones that are swimming and/or diving) will have a bigger impact on the Taiwan situation that quadrotors will have.

That is correct. The unvoiced assumption of my post was that Taiwan is not self-sufficient and cannot survive without open shipping lanes and so any technology that makes it easy to sink ships is very bad news for it

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