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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   25097 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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The people who will stop Chinese hypersonic missiles will be, and I am only slightly being hyperbolic, are trans furry military members in some bunker in Nevada piloting drones or other military gear, not some guy who signed up for reasonable reasons like access to college or career training or the darker reasons.

We already saw this in Ukraine - lots of hype over the true non-woke military, and it's regularly getting shredded by missiles that are largely being guided by a they/them army.

The actual thing that'll probably stop Chinese hypersonic missiles is a combination of they probably don't really exist in the way that anti-woke people hype them up online in the obsessive way they tend too, a corrupt Chinese procurement process that makes the US process look clean and normal, and the fact we've probably got stuff we're working on that we don't have to hype up the way the Chinese do to look strong.

The people who will stop Chinese hypersonic missiles do not exist in America and are unlikely to for the near future.

Good thing Chinese hypersonic missiles can't hit targets, then.

re trans furry military members in some bunker in Nevada piloting drones or other military gear,

This is untrue. Military does not produce or design weapons. Yes, furries can operate weapon system, but they won't have them because the US military and industry contracting system is broken.

The 'war' with China is already lost, if we go by statements of a former foreign minister of Singapore, who says both militaries understand US cannot win a conventional war, which is why the Chinese are now building a more robust nuclear force that'd deter the US from escalating in case of a conventional war.

and it's regularly getting shredded by missiles that are largely being guided by a they/them army.

Which is why Ukraine army is advancing, their offensive has succeeded and Russians do not have fire or aerial superiority over the front line. Because 'they/them' army has destroyed their ability to make things go boom. Yes, very true.

Of course a land war over Taiwan is unwinnable for the US. Taiwan is directly next to China’s 1.4 billion people and 2m soldiers, with easy resupply and colossal domestic manufacturing capacity next door. The US is thousands of miles away, has a vastly longer supply chain even to nearby bases in Japan and South Korea, has much less casualty tolerance, and is honest that the main strategic value of Taiwan is chip factories that thoroughly destroying would defeat the point of the defense, preventing any easy repulsion of an attack once large numbers of Chinese forces had landed.

But this doesn’t mean the US is weak, any more than a weak man beating a strong one on home territory while his opponent is only allowed to use his pinky finger serves as a good way to judge their respective actual fighting capacity.

As for Ukraine, Western intelligence predicted a full and successful invasion and Ukrainian surrender in a matter of days, which is why everyone was pulled out and all embassies closed. Two years later Russia has suffered 300,000 casualties, many of its best units have been destroyed by death and injury, and not a single American soldier has died for it. The only price has been a tiny fraction of GDP that’s less dear than many individual federal programs which accomplish much less.

Of course a land war over Taiwan is unwinnable for the US.

I meant that the naval war is unwinnable.

main strategic value of Taiwan is chip factories that thoroughly destroying would defeat the point of the defense,

Seeing as China is catching up, destruction of these chip factories would probably hurt the US and the 'free world' more than losing access to their products would hurt China.

But this doesn’t mean the US is weak,

It's not ? Why then can't it even keep it's ships manned? Why is the Navy shrinking ? Why can't it supply Ukraine with enough artillery shells, anti-air missiles, drone defences ? Is that strength ?

Two years later Russia has suffered 300,000 casualties, many of its best units have been destroyed by death and injury, and not a single American soldier has died for it.

It's estimated that they lost 50-70k. IIRc direct count of deaths online and in FB got to 35k. They weren't very good, and unless their army structure is completely dysfunctional, this war is going to strenghten, not weaken their army and air forces. They figured out what works, they got practice in, they saw which commanders are competent and which aren't.

not a single American soldier has died for it.

You believe that ? Russian MOD says it's killed 300+ Americans. Special forces are reputed to be in there, odds are, some got killed.

The only price has been a tiny fraction of GDP

Let me name some other consequences:

  • deindustrialization of US 'allies'. IIRC, a significant fraction (20%) of EU chemical industry went titsup, as in, ceased production.

  • loss of prestige because US kept loudly talking about defeating Putler for 1.5 years, shipped what fifty billion in hardware to Ukraine. It's likely going to end up with Ukraine losing a lot, possibly even sea access. Russians are in no mood to negotiate, Ukraine has no one to send to the front, and arms shipments are down.

  • revelation that the 'mighty' US war machine is hollow, unprepared for wars against anyone but mud hut dwellers. E.g. US can't even source blackpowder domestically, because the single factory blew up 2 years ago. How things would work out in an actual big war, with sabotage groups using drones to blow up critical industries would be even more interesting. I strongly doubt US internal security would be on par with e.g. China's, or even as good as in WW2. US doesn't really have solid reserves of anti-air missiles, artillery shells. It doesn't have production capacity for same. Satellites it relies on heavily would probably all get shot down within a week. Is there a stockpile of ready-to-launch replacements? No. You had funny stories such as Raytheon searching for retirees from Stinger manufacture to restart the mfg process, because somehow the 'free world' with its vast GDP doesn't have a live MANPADS production ability to supply a fairly sedate war with ~200k frontline troops.

  • wasn't there also marked decline in the willingness of foreign countries to hold USD ?

For years the idea that Western governments could actually lock a billion Westerners used to protesting for "muh rights" at every opportunity up for a year with almost zero major dissent also seemed absurd, until it happened and was 'always possible' of course.

The reality is that Western state capacity, in particular American state capacity, hasn't been tested since WW2 and the current sclerotic, inefficient functioning of the government, including defense, is a malaise both enabled and tolerated by American hegemony and prosperity. To paraphrase the apocryphal Churchill quote, Americans do the right thing only after exhausting every other option. The war in Ukraine is not important enough to create the fear of god that drives Americans to exert their state capacity in a meaningful way, it simply isn't a good indicator of what the country is capable of.

By casualties I meant KIA and WIA. KIA I think 70-120k is a common estimate for KIA.

year with almost zero major dissent also seemed absurd,

Zero dissent? Up to a year ? It was some months, and it created a vast amount of radicalised people and extreme unwillingness to repeat it. To the point that if quarantine was now actually needed because of yet another lab leak of this time interestingly lethal disease, it'd probably not happen.

it simply isn't a good indicator of what the country is capable of.

US had an entire industrial base and was entirely self sufficient in basically everything. Ball bearings, steel production, building materials, electronics chemicals, etc. Anything you can name, around 1950s US was making it, usually in world class quality. That's not true anymore.

That industrial base was hollowed out and largely outsourced since 1980. US industry now largely depends on imports from rival powers. So, in the event of a crisis involving said hostile powers, you'd be half a decade away from merely being self-sufficient.

And let's not even go into something such as level of trust in state institutions, the government, political polarization and so on. Incomparably worse now, especially since the USG seems to regard it's core sustaining population-whites with deep suspicion and paranoia.

Yes, Ukraine war isn't a big enough crisis, but a big enough crisis might just result in a collapse of yet another WW2 victor.

To the point that if quarantine was now actually needed because of yet another lab leak of this time interestingly lethal disease, it'd probably not happen.

Can confirm. Sample size of one. Next "vaccine" they come up with for as of yet unnamed global pandemic they are gonna have to shove it up their own behinds. And if they make it mandatory they're are going to literally get home grown terrorism, not that fake glow in the dark shit FBI tricking special needs students to do a terrorism.

Next "vaccine" they come up with for as of yet unnamed global pandemic they are gonna have to shove it up their own behinds.

They'll shove it up ours. With the enthusiastic support of a majority, egged on by CNN.

And if they make it mandatory they're are going to literally get home grown terrorism, not that fake glow in the dark shit FBI tricking special needs students to do a terrorism.

The only kinds of home-grown terrorism which can exist in the US are glowie and leftist. There may be sporadic violence which is called terrorism, but the right simply cannot organize violence without being infiltrated by the Feds.

Zero dissent? Up to a year ? It was some months, and it created a vast amount of radicalised people and extreme unwillingness to repeat it.

More than a year in some places. And as far as I can tell the Overton window on the subject runs from "Of course it was worth it" to "We should have gone full China".

As for Ukraine, Western intelligence predicted a full and successful invasion and Ukrainian surrender in a matter of days, which is why everyone was pulled out and all embassies closed. Two years later Russia has suffered 300,000 casualties, many of its best units have been destroyed by death and injury, and not a single American soldier has died for it.

Western intelligence agencies predicted this because they, like Russian intelligence agencies, expected Ukraine not to fight, not because Russia was unstoppable- it was known at the time that the army Russia had on the borders wasn’t big enough to take on a Ukraine which fought, and it shocked everyone when Ukraine fought.

Of course a land war over Taiwan is unwinnable for the US.

Which is why it's a damn good thing Taiwan is an island. Deny China the strait, and everything changes.

I meant a war with boots-on-the-ground, probably the wrong term.

Do Americans have it in them to setup a durable blockade that can escalate to a nuclear war for long enough to make it meaningful? Do they have it in them to completely wreck their (and the world's) economy and to scramble to get local industrial capacity back online?

Every time I read about a sustained conflict between modern great powers, the first two moves sound reasonable and after that it's basically reading like the end of the world as we know it, even in the scenarios that are explicitly not nuclear.

Do Americans have it in them to setup a durable blockade

If neither side fully escalates it is a matter of who is willing to escalate further. If both sides are willing to escalate, but stop short of nuclear weapons, there is no existent navel force, or combination of navel forces, which can sustain a Taiwanese blockade in the face of Chinese opposition.

Do Americans have it in them to setup a durable blockade that can escalate to a nuclear war for long enough to make it meaningful?

If China's asking, the answer is "fuck around and find out". A "blockade" is not the limit of what the US can do, anyway -- the US could also sink every Chinese ship capable of taking troops to Taiwan.

Do they have it in them to completely wreck their (and the world's) economy and to scramble to get local industrial capacity back online?

Not doing so is not a choice. The alternative to defending Taiwan by force is not just letting China take over and then business as usual. It's the usual dumbass sanctions regime that hurts the US just as much as a Chinese embargo would, without actually helping anyone.

Every time I read about a sustained conflict between modern great powers, the first two moves sound reasonable and after that it's basically reading like the end of the world as we know it, even in the scenarios that are explicitly not nuclear.

Yes, a sustained conflict between modern great powers is not a reasonable thing. Why would you expect it to be?

Why would you expect it to be?

I suppose all previous ones were also completely unreasonable. Fuck.

Russia is putting all its abilities into winning, the US considers the Ukraine war an afterthought. And yet, despite being an afterthought they/them are able to check the entire might of the great "masculine" Russian bear.

No, the military and government and people of Ukraine did that. It was the fact that none of those 3 crumpled that stopped Ukraine being overrun in weeks like Russia expected, not that the U.S. had sent them some Javelins/small-arms/intelligence. The more substantial supply of equipment came later, and has made it more difficult for Russia to grind down Ukraine with the sheer size difference, but even then it is nonsense to pretend that donating some spare equipment (without even dramatically ramping up production) means Ukrainian performance can be attributed to the U.S. military. If you want to see how "afterthought" support from the U.S. military does when it is backing a people without a sense of patriotism for their country and a military that isn't already competent, look at post-withdrawal Afghanistan.

This is pure ideology trying to analyze pure ideology.

Join me in the real world, where Russia has successfully attained its stated military goals at decent but significant costs and NATO has made it difficult for them but not difficult enough that they failed or destroyed their economy.

Russia is poised to successfully prevent a NATO Ukraine with any significant fighting power at the price of becoming a junior partner to China. And traded a limited amount of manpower for a now booming arms industry.

Nobody but NATO's proxy is fighting with all they got, sexual minorities are so insignificant in their population as to have no influence except as fodder for online flamewars and regular plain old white men of all ages are catching shrapnel in the mud the same way they have for centuries.

So at the end Ukraine has lost, Russia has won a meager victory that, at best - and at extraordinary cost - gets them back to the level of influence over (half) of Ukraine that they had in the halcyon days of...2013 (truly an extraordinary, Catherine-the-Great esque imperial victory), and the US bled one of its two main geopolitical opponents at negligible cost for several years. What's the problem?

Ironically, pro-Russian activists appear to value hypothetical Ukrainian lives more than Ukrainians. From what I can tell, they wanted to fight, and now they are. They may suffer for it, but it was not forced upon them by the Americans, who did after all expect them to surrender.

Military action is not judged in the absolute but relative to the available alternatives. Orderly retreat is a success.

Russia is certainly not doing great, but they've successfully avoided having a knife to their throat. Which was their stated goal. And it didn't cost them total war.

I think they're correctly allocating their ressources. The biggest risk was that the Western economic sanctions would actually have some bite, and they did not.

Ironically, pro-Russian activists appear to value hypothetical Ukrainian lives more than Ukrainians.

It's sad, but indeed nobody actually seems to care about Ukrainians lives. Not even Ukrainians.

I won't pretend I do. I hate this senseless waste, but ultimately the fate of some far away people is not my problem.

What's the problem?

From America's point of view? I think this whole endeavor was a long term blunder. Antagonizing Russia, which was never really a threat, as should be all too evident now, does not serve long term American interests. It just pushes them and China closer together, when the opposite is desirable and would likely have been achievable were the State department not made up of moralist morons and cold war relics.

If there is a large scale China-US conflict, the full extent of the mistake of further aligning China with a country that has large amounts of natural ressources, loads of nuclear weapons and engineers that know how to make aircraft engines will be felt pretty hard.

Don't get me wrong, this whole affair is still a great coup for the US, but it has nothing to do with undermining Russia and everything to do with kneecapping Europe.

Still, spending 75B to make sure your allies never get uppity just seems petty. And that's yet more people that won't come to your help in any significance if there is a big war. Hell, they're already declining to help put down a handful of Iran backed irregulars.

Antagonizing Russia, which was never really a threat, as should be all too evident now

And there lies russia’s error. On the strength of their stalingrad cred, all the old american cold war warriors bought the myth of the unbeatable red army, russia could have stolen pots indefinitely. Their assumed strength was way higher than their actual strength, so they never should have let it come to a showdown. They’re never getting the baltic russians now that everybody knows they could never in a million years get past the bug and the vistula.

I was never fooled – gdp is destiny – but the suckers at the table, americans who never updated their fulda gap division calculations, and german pacifists, would have let putin bluff them indefinitely.

Russia is certainly not doing great, but they've successfully avoided having a knife to their throat. Which was their stated goal. And it didn't cost them total war.

They traded the distant possibility that a future Ukrainian state might join NATO for the certainty that Sweden and Finland did, I suppose.

I don’t think we’re likely to see the Russians allying with the US in a US-China conflict. They’ve had their differences but unless it seemed overwhelmingly likely the Chinese would completely wipeout US global hegemony forever (unlikely I’d say) Russia would have nothing to gain by helping the US.

Russia would have nothing to gain by helping the US

Not having a large military alliance against you and access to the western economic sphere is not "nothing".

Making enemies of them is a choice. Hell you could have satellited them the same way you did the rest of Europe after the wall fell. You just decided not to.

Hell you could have satellited them the same way you did the rest of Europe after the wall fell. You just decided not to.

If they decided to, how would they accomplish it?

More comments

Ironically, pro-Russian activists appear to value hypothetical Ukrainian lives more than Ukrainians. From what I can tell, they wanted to fight, and now they are.

If you're referring to the Ukrainian people valuing their lives less, that seems to be contradicted by the ban on fighting-age men leaving the country, and forced conscription.

If you're referring to the Ukrainian government, that seems to be contradicted by the reports on them wanting to negotiate with the Russians and being pushed to war by the West.

I do not know of any polls about how many Ukrainians believe people born with a "non-binary gender identity" exist, or that people should avoid "misgendering" them, but I doubt it is a significant number. I do not even know if anyone has invented "non-binary pronouns" in Ukrainian, I assume a few Ukrainians on Tumblr have done so but I do not know of them successfully convincing major Ukrainian institutions that their adoption is a civil rights issue. Searching finds an article about a soldier who identifies as "non-binary" and says that "some even used my she pronoun", with no mention of "non-binary pronouns" as a concept. Ukrainians are of course not using singular they as a pronoun to indicate "non-binary" people, since less than 30% speak even "some English".

By comparison, in a 2023 poll 44% of Ukrainians supported common-law same-sex marriage and 30% believed same-sex couples should be allowed to adopt children. I do not think it is useful to base your understanding of major world events on bizarre gotchas against conservatives from /r/politicalhumor.

I think it’s the US army that provides the intel that’s being referred to as the they/them army.

Right, I saw that part of the sentence but skipped past that part of the argument, I should have explicitly said why I was talking about the military of Ukraine. I think it is deeply silly to attribute Ukrainian military performance to the politics of the U.S. army because of U.S. intelligence passing them some information. Also, even if we were talking about the U.S. military, soldiers are more right-wing than the general public and belief in "non-binary gender identity" is far from consensus in the U.S. even outside the right.

To the extent talking about "the they/them army beating Russia!" is a real argument at all, it is a response to those who have said it weakens the U.S. army when it adopts policies such as lowering standards to let in more women and pandering to divisive left-wing political groups who are not particularly patriotic/nationalistic or likely to join the military. Those criticisms have essentially no relevance to the U.S. keeping a spy drone over international waters and passing some of its data to Ukraine. Meanwhile the actual Ukrainian army is not particularly left-wing, owes much of its success to the Ukrainian people being more patriotic/nationalistic than Russia expected, and by the way a surprisingly successful force in pushing that sense of anti-Russian patriotism was a militia of literal neo-Nazis who were subsequently successfully integrated into the mainstream army and political system. (Meanwhile the U.S. military brags about campaigns to root out supposed "right-wing extremism".)

Meanwhile the actual Ukrainian army is not particularly left-wing, owes much of its success to the Ukrainian people being more patriotic/nationalistic than Russia expected, and by the way a surprisingly successful force in pushing that sense of anti-Russian patriotism was a militia of literal neo-Nazis who were subsequently successfully integrated into the mainstream army and political system.

I agree. The Ukraine government is oddly successful at sending men to their death. You'd expect from all these street press gang videos that at least a few low-level officers would get shot by desperate soldiers, but they must be really good at compartimentalizing.

Perhaps the new recruits only get ammunition 5min before going to clear the minefield with their legs, or maybe they really get fired up by the patriotic speech at the camp?

I really wonder what I would do in such a situation, probably not much. It'd only take a couple guys to carry me into a van and after that it's probably game over?

And then there's all these men. Imagine being the guy shoving Ukrainian men into a van to send them to the trench. You didn't manage to escape and you have to keep doing it, and the more you do it, the longer the war lasts, the more likely you are to get sent as well. Then you end up in the minefield and all you can think about is 'if only I killed that commanding officer on day 1, how many men could I have saved?'.

I talked to a guy who was doing business importing sunflower oil from Ukraine, but he ran into personnel issues. He'd hire a Ukrainian man to pick up and deliver across the border but then they'd abandon the truck after crossing.

You'd expect from all these street press gang videos that at least a few low-level officers would get shot by desperate soldiers, but they must be really good at compartimentalizing.

...or that the street press gang videos being spread by pro-Russians as a form of propaganda are really not reflective of the situation at large.

Perhaps the videos were not reflective of the situation up to this point. Perhaps the Ukrainians who did not flee immediately as soon as orders were given by whoever is in charge of the West were really willing to die. Then they got their wishes and we have a lot more videos as impressment becomes more urgent. I suppose this is more recent development, here's an article from a month ago.

At the River Tisa, which acts as the border from southwestern Ukraine to Romania, guard patrols used to focus on catching tobacco smugglers but now collar fleeing draft dodgers. About 6,000 people have been detained trying to leave across that stretch, the border guards told Reuters. One of them, Dyma Cherevychenko, said at least 19 people had drowned trying to flee the country during the conflict.

The more striking act of resistance so far, a couple weeks old. A village councillor in western Ukraine has thrown grenades on to the floor of a council meeting, wounding 26 people, police say.

How did he get those grenades, and why is he the only one doing it?

My prediction for 2024: there will be few male Ukrainians ready to die for the Ukraine government, and the ones that do will be quite old.

It really is a marvel of media bubble. I wonder how many Ukrainians who died on the battlefield ever read a quote from the Americans who 'support' them.

“American support for Ukraine is not charity. It’s an investment in our own direct interests,” the top Senate Republican said. “Degrading Russia’s military power helps to deter our primary strategic adversary, China,” McConnell added.

This is what some of the Americans who in practice support TUD seem to believe:

The US won in Ukraine by the first week of the war. Everything since then is bleeding Russia for free without risking a single American serviceman’s life. The cost is minuscule - food stamps cost vastly more, as do countless other bullshit federal programs - and much of Russia’s most elite fighting capacity has been slaughtered and replaced with 80 IQ Central Asian peasant conscripts using WW1 trench tactics. Sure, Ukraine is destroyed, but they wanted to fight and, to paraphrase the immortal words of Lord Farquad, that’s a price we’re willing to pay.

lots of hype over the true non-woke military, and it's regularly getting shredded by missiles that are largely being guided by a they/them army

  1. The Ukrainian military is by no means woke, there are/were a lot of nationalists, sexists, homophobes in it, as you'd expect from Eastern Europe. They are doing the fighting and dying.
  2. They're losing. National Affairs is starting to admit this. The TLDR of the article is that the US sent a lot of weapons to Ukraine, they failed to take any ground and that Ukraine ought to start negotiating as quickly as they can. If you're being urged to the negotiating table, it follows that you're losing the war since your negotiating position is getting worse as time passes.

Even the New York Times is busting out the high-grade copium: 'Ukraine doesn't need all its territory to beat Putin'. The tone is that of a rear-guard action, trying to salvage credibility for the next phase of this disaster. Full text here: https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/18sb5l0/ua_pov_ukraine_doesnt_need_all_its_territory_to/

a corrupt Chinese procurement process that makes the US process look clean and normal

Whatever issues China has with procurement, they're light-years ahead of the US. China's navy is growing while the US fleet shrinks. They also have 232x times more shipbuilding capacity than the US, per US estimates. I'd be wary before fighting a naval war (as an industrial dwarf) against the world's leading shipbuilder.

we've probably got stuff we're working on that we don't have to hype up

I'll take failures out in the open over a secret, unknown, hypothetical success. If the US fleet is so powerful, why can't US allies get their shipping through Suez? If it's so easy to shoot down these missiles, hypersonic or otherwise, why are Ukrainian cities constantly being bombed? Patriots were provided after all.

Can you imagine how insane the current situation would have seemed in February 2022 in Ukraine? “Oh, Ukraine is losing an ongoing war of attrition in December 2023 while still controlling the vast majority of the country, while Russia has thrown 300,000 lives and unfathomable amounts of its best hardware at the conflict, what?”. The official intelligence assessment on the eve of the war by the West was so dire that they evacuated every major embassy in Kiev (likely after the usual kind of warning from Russia) to avoid any risky diplomatic incidents during the Russian invasion, which they presumed would certainly be successful at capturing Kiev.

The US won in Ukraine by the first week of the war. Everything since then is bleeding Russia for free without risking a single American serviceman’s life. The cost is minuscule - food stamps cost vastly more, as do countless other bullshit federal programs - and much of Russia’s most elite fighting capacity has been slaughtered and replaced with 80 IQ Central Asian peasant conscripts using WW1 trench tactics. Sure, Ukraine is destroyed, but they wanted to fight and, to paraphrase the immortal words of Lord Farquad, that’s a price we’re willing to pay.

The reason the US is reluctant to attack the Houthis on land is that a big goal of US foreign policy under Biden was to support the Saudi peace deal with the Houthis. Biden personally promised that the US would cut support for Saudi Arabia in the Yemen war, essentially pressuring them into peace. It would be an embarrassing move for the Democrats to reverse course now and to fight the Saudis’ war against the Houthis for them. If the neocons had been listened to (Trump listened to them, which is why he vetoed a plan to stop US support for anti-Houthi forces) the Houthis might well no longer be an issue.

  1. A very large proportion of Western munitions has been deployed and expended in Ukraine. Stingers, Javelins, HIMARS, Patriot interceptors, artillery shells. It will take many years to rebuild these reserves, which are needed for deterrence and potential war in Asia.
  2. The Russian military is larger and more capable now than it was at the start of the war, they're much more experienced. They actually increased their military production significantly (and we didn't). This is why the European NATO members are scrambling around like headless chickens, sending a German brigade to Lithuania, trying to rapidly arm themselves.
  3. If the Ukrainians aren't winning, then what we were told about these incredible Russian casualties and materiel losses must have been wrong. If they'd killed 300,000 Russians like you seem to think, there'd be at least a million wounded or dead and Russia wouldn't have an army anymore let alone be capable of offensives. Since the Russians have more materiel it stands to reason that they suffer fewer casualties than Ukraine. Likewise, we see all these videos of Ukrainian men being dragged into vans by draft officers - it seems that their need for manpower is very high.

80 IQ Central Asian peasant conscripts using WW1 trench tactics

Coincidentally, just today I saw a video of Ukrainian soldiers mocking a mentally retarded conscript sent to their trench. https://twitter.com/Alex_Oloyede2/status/1740797508400632195#m

  1. The same media and military 'experts' that assured us that victory was just around the corner in Iraq and Afghanistan (send in another Surge, oohrah!) aren't reliable sources on the War in Ukraine, especially when they say things are going well. Either it's incompetence, since we lost those wars. Or they're just there to lie, prop up support for these wars. The Pentagon says the Russians have lost twice as much as Ukraine or more... So what?

The West is not bleeding Russia for 'free'. It's expensive in terms of munitions, wealth and prestige. Europe is suffering considerable energy costs (in the trillions) as a result of their sanctions program, part of the economic war against Russia. Much of our media went around saying 'oh Ukraine must win to preserve the rules-based order and deter Xi in Taiwan', yet Ukraine is losing. This sets an unhelpful precedent for Xi in China - if there are setbacks at the start of the war, just double down and power on through to ultimate victory.

Once Ukraine is beaten, we'll face a powerful, angry Russia in Europe, closely aligned with China. China is the real winner, they get cheaper gas, a useful ally and a weaker West distracted from Asia.

The much vaunted gas crisis never materialized; European gas prices largely returned to pre-2019 levels in 2023; I said 300,000 casualties, including WIA - KIA is likely in the 70-120k bracket; I don’t think fever dreams of Ed Krassenstein Twitter types mean that the Pentagon “expected” Ukraine to win (if anything quite the opposite).

The Russian military is larger and more capable now than it was at the start of the war, they're much more experienced. They actually increased their military production significantly (and we didn't). This is why the European NATO members are scrambling around like headless chickens, sending a German brigade to Lithuania, trying to rapidly arm themselves.

This means exactly the opposite of what you think it does. If even an interminably corrupt, poor, kleptocratic, bureaucratic shithole like Russia can get its act together this much in a crisis, it means the US and other Western could likely jump to serious war footing much faster than naysayers predict. They merely do not yet care, because bleeding Russia in Ukraine for as long as possible is so minor in terms of both blood and treasure for the United States.

Can you imagine how insane the current situation would have seemed in February 2022 in Ukraine?

No? It seems like this is exactly what you'd expect through mere triangulation of extreme takes being made at the time.

The US won in Ukraine by the first week of the war. Everything since then is bleeding Russia for free without risking a single American serviceman’s life.

Man, Ukrainians must love reading stuff like this...

Sure, Ukraine is destroyed, but they wanted to fight

Didn't they want to negotiate, and got pressured out of it by the UK?

No? It seems like this is exactly what you'd expect through mere triangulation of extreme takes being made at the time.

People disagreed about whether the invasion would happen and how ambitious Russian objectives would be, there was some disagreement about whether there would be much guerilla/resistance fighting, but I don't recall anyone here suggesting Ukraine would largely successfully repel a full-scale invasion in a matter of weeks.

I remember prediction of the entire Russian economy collapsing within weeks, part of the disagreement over whether Russian will invade stemming from the prediction that Ukrainians will be able to defend itself, and I definitely do not recall the pro-Ukraine side predicting an immediate collapse of the defense (that was the pro-Russia side).

The people who will stop Chinese hypersonic missiles will be the nerds who design and the blue collars who build the high tech military gear. Especially with something as fast as hypersonics, a trans furry, or well any other human, would just be too slow to really matter. If we want successful products from nerds/builders, we probably ought let them be meritocratic in their own domains rather than force them to include a bunch of trans furries or other diversity hires.

There might be some trans furries designing and building the gear, though they'll be working for contractors rather than military members (I knew one trans person when I was in that field. No furries as far as I know, but they tended to keep it (that is, their tail) in their pants back then).

I gather that trans/furries/trans furries are greatly overrepresented among the relevant nerds.

Myths are powerful things. Anyone can just tell a story, and whether it's believed tells you more about the culture that believes the myth than it does about the subject of the story.

Steve Hsu estimated Chinese engineering pipeline produces 10-15x more graduates per year than the US one.

Chinese government as of late has tried to lower investment into IT bullshit and promote investment into industry and actual tangible technologies, not just apps.

Graduate quality depends. Per capita that's only 2-3x more than the US, on a quality adjusted per capita basis it's probably roughly the same. And once you add in the US's allies (including India, they'll definitely choose US over China) the total "quality" available to the US probably equals that available to China, and if you include the fact that the US poaches the best Chinese while the reverse doesn't happen the US (and its allies) come out ahead compared to China.

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