This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Two things:
The email clearly says that the US already has the technology, and that China only recently attained it. So no risk of the US knocking down a drone and stealing the tech.
The entire point of the "show of force" in this case would be a demonstration that China has this novel propulsion system and can successfully deploy it over the US. "Why drop nukes on Japan, it would so much cheaper to just drop conventional bombs?"
No.
Unlike a strategy game, technology is not universally shared across a country the moment any part of the country gets access to it. If [insert technology here] is a highly-sensitive, advanced, and secret technology, it means that technology is not being used in the commercial sector. If it was being used commercially, it (a) wouldn't be a secret, and (b) wouldn't a monopoly possession for long. Everyone would be aware of it and stealing it immediately and incorporating it itself, unless you start inventing unobtanium requirements to allow a monopolgy.
If the drones are a state secret- regardless of whether they are an American state secret as well or not- then any risk of anyone in the US knocking down the drone is a risk of the American corporate sector stealing the tech, regardless of whether some other US government lab had something similar already.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's a bad demonstration concept for such a point. For a demonstration to work, it needs to be clearly identified as a demonstration as opposed to something more banal and normal, and it needs to be clearly attributed to someone in particular.
The drone swarms were not a self-evident demonstration of technological capability because unknown drone incursions can be done by literally anyone with the budget for commercial off the shelf drones. There is no technological need for 'gravity drive' drones. Somone may have been yesteryear years old when they learned that governments have a hard time tracking such things, but it's been discussed for over a decade at this point. This wasn't even the first media cycle about unknown drones over locations.
Nor are the drone swarms self-evidently Chinese in origin. Precisely because the drones are in the technological capacity of any commercial UAS producer, the drones would need to signal a characteristic / capacity that only the intended signaller could do. Otherwise, anyone could claim credit, or mis-attribute. While unique technology could be a signal, there is no evidence that a unique technology was used, because everything that has been verified is well within conventional COTS capabilities. In fact, more immediate suspects- not yet disproven either- include Russia, due to the far more proximal and relevant deterrence issue of the Ukrainian arms issues of the time.
If the Chinese wanted to send an unambiguous, exclusive signal that they had a unique capability able to reach the US, they could literally just upload a video of it on TikTok.
Instead, the attribution of the Chinese plan hinges on... the credibility of a hostile and possibly mentally unwell dude.
Your first (threat of non-gov entities getting the tech) is a good one, though imo not conclusive. Perhaps they made the bet that no one would shoot one down? Perhaps something about the tech makes them particularly hard to shoot down (this would align with the email's bit about "fly one over the white house").
Re your second: No, China could simply send a private communication to the US saying "FYI the thing that's about to happen over NJ is us", do something with the drones that would require the spooky tech (e.g. depending on what the tech actually is it could be to fly one into controlled airspace without being detected, to do otherwise impossible maneuvers, etc) and voila, effective show of force. You have to remember that we are not the intended audience, the US government is. This played out over and over during the cold war, there is lots of precedent for it.
You emphatically do not know this. We know there were classified congressional briefings about the drones, so there is clearly information about these drones that is not public. It seems pretty obvious that if there were evidence of a classified technology being used, the government would prefer to keep that from the public.
You are right that the only evidence that we have that the drones were chinese is this one potentially mentally unwell guy. My point is simply that that theory does seem to fit all of the available facts and is possible.
This is inventing justifications to rationalize continuing to assume the conclusion that there is a novel tech-based reasoning, as opposed for considering alternative hypothesis that don't require the assumption in the first place.
Simply as a matter of risk-management, there is no reason to have secret test flights within the continental US in risk of other actors the first place.
Again, this is a bad signaling scheme. If the US government rather than the US public were the intended audience, the demonstration would have been in places for special US government attention rather than US population attention.
Note, also, that you are interjecting new theories that the originator didn't claim to support the originator's theory. The dude who killed himself did not claim China sent a private communication, and he happened to (somehow) be privy to it. Instead, we are evolving the conspiracy theory where the guy not only had knowledge of secret technology, but also had access to secret lines of communication between the American and Chinese governments, while his means of knowing either weren't important enough for his suicide note.
Again- Drones intruding in places they are not supposed to be is not new, novel, nor does it require exceptional technology. A super-secret-high-tech drone that acts within the spectrum of commercial-off-the-shelf drones is indistinguishable to a government from the typical variances (benign and malign) of commercial-off-the-shelf drones. What made last quarter's drone reports notable wasn't the mechanics of them happening, but the unusual amount of media attention about them from three different media news cycles, none of which were from the same impetus (or which claimed novel technologies).
If the goal is to have a secret-awareness with only the US government of a new super-capable Chinese UAV, however, there is much simpler- and safer- locations to do so. Namely, Guam in the Pacific (a critical US strategic site for any US-China conflict), or any US carrier group in the Pacific. Not only would these have far greater signalling potential of military penetration capabilities, but they'd have the benefits of securing Chinese technology capabilities/limits by hiding from the Americans what the Chinese 'equivalent' can/cannot do.
Instead, what happened returns to the point that there is no clear public signal, despite having allegedly been done in public places for signaling purposes, revealing no obvious new technological capability despite significant public demonstrations, with no clear attribution beyond the requisite assumption of one of various potential actors.
This is reversing the burden of proof to assume secret evidence to assume a conclusion.
'The drone is made of classified technology' is just one of many basis for a classified briefing. Other reasons include not knowing the technology of the drones and wanting to keep that limitation secret, knowing the technology of the drones but the means of knowing being secret, whether drones and/or purpetrators have been identified/caught being secret regardless of technology secrecy, the briefings revealing the secret capabilities or vulnerabilities of air defense capabilities in north america best kept secret lest copy-cat terrorists want to emulate, etc. etc. etc. The evidence of classified information is not proof of evidence of the conspiracy of the hour- if the contents of classified briefingers were so easily determinable, there would be no use.
Until evidence is provided, there is no evidence. If you simply want to quibble over the semantic need for 'that we know of,' sure, but the premise remains the same: until you have evidence that a unique technology was used, you do not have evidence that a unique technology was used.
Similarly- and by extension- in the absence of evidence by the departed that the claimed unique technology exists, he has not provided evidence to back his claim. A claim is not evidence any more than an accusation is proof.
The potentially mentally unwell guy provided no facts not explained by commercial off the shelf technology and his own probable mental state that made suicide on new years eve seem like a compelling message strategy.
On the other hand, there is no available facts indicating gravitic drives, novel technologies, or sudden changes in Chinese threat campaigns to start flying top-secret world-super-power-only technologies over some American metropolitan areas in a country with over a million lawful drones and who knows how many more unregistered drones.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link