We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
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I know I keep droning on about drones, but this really is a paradigm shift happening in real-time.
TL’DR… 100km from the FEBA is now a persistent danger zone due to the omnipresent threat of drones. Some were sceptical in an post earlier when drones were credited with 70% of battlefield casualties. Well, the number claimed now, based on video confirmation, is 90%.
About twenty years ago, I voluntarily deployed to Iraq twice as a civilian. Getting in and out of the country was challenging but once you were on the base, it was relatively safe since I wasn’t the one on patrols. In Baghdad, you had to deal with mortars (handfuls a day) being lobbed into the US base there, but their accuracy was minimum. I remember a large cafeteria (“DFAC” — dining facility in military jargon), huge gym, and all sorts of niceties out there that would make impossibly tempting targets. The work was 16 hour/days every day, but it would not be unfair to call it “safe” since I was not leaving the base. If the US did the same thing today, the casualties due to budget-smart bombs would be astronomical.
The fact that the USG could watch what is happening in Ukraine and — AFAIK — blithely walk into Iran is beyond infuriating to me (for the record, yes Iran is terrible, but was this the right time and right means? I have doubts).
Some Twitter wag mention that the US is not ready for 24/7 streamed drone footage of US soldiers getting hit. I agree, and I am not looking forward to what comes next.
As for casualty figures – I do not know which side is losing more men (or how many men each side is losing), but Mr Putin is responsible for the casualties on BOTH sides – there was no good reason to invade Ukraine in 2022.
He may, possibly, achieve “victory” – but it is utterly pointless, indeed it is ashes in the mouth for the Russian people who gain nothing from such a “victory”.
Russia and Ukraine both face demographic collapse – and Mr Putin sent lots of men, who could have been husbands and fathers, to their deaths – and he did so out of personal vanity, no strategic reason what-so-ever.
Russians, as the late Mr Navalny warned, also face replacement – Mr Putin is, increasingly, relying on the forces of Islam. Muslims in Russia (who are increasing) and Muslims from the Central Asian Republics.
To Putin fanboys and fangirls in the West – Mr Putin’s regime pushes the same “Diversity and Inclusion” message regarding Islam as the establishment of Western nations (such as the United Kingdom) do – the idea that he is some sort of saviour or alternative is farcical.
I’m only an observer to the tactics/strategy/logistics game community, not a member, so what I’m saying might be incorrect. But that’s never stopped me before, so…
In most of these games, when the most experienced and successful players compete, the teams that can make lots of cheap-but-weak units end up being more successful than the teams that can make few powerful-but-expensive units. I have some guesses as to why, but they’re not very educated guesses.
I’d noticed that the US’s military build seemed to be more on the side of powerful-but-expensive instead of cheap-but-weak. The cynical explanation is that it’s due to upselling by military contractors, and that’s probably a part of it. The reason that I think is more likely is because, in real life, these ‘units’ are groups of soldiers, and part of why the cheap-but-weak strategy works is because the c-b-w units are expendable. The units usually involve varying vehicles and equipment, but so far they’ve all required humans to be in danger when the unit is attacked.
I gather that drone technology hasn’t made it practical for the soldiers controlling them to be safe in a bunker, or somesuch, so this effect doesn’t explain drone warfare at large scale. I think it might be related to the effectiveness of drones on the scale of individual battles, though.
Incidentally, is there anyone here who’s into strategy games, and thus can tell me if my understanding of the metagame holds?
I have wasted too much time on strategy games to admit to, but the classic answer is “it depends” is never wrong. The US military can put 250- to 5000-lb of high explosive anywhere in the world it wants. That’s a great skill, but it doesn’t address the grand strategy here.
When it comes to overthrowing the Iranian regime, it’s not a question of how many ballistic missiles, drones, or air defenses they have. It is a question of how many AK-47’s the Basij has (let alone the regulars) and how many men are willing to gun down revolutionaries. The Iranian stockpile of AK-47’s + militia dwarfs the US ability to blow them up economically. Take a medium town of 50,000 people. Suppose you only have 0.1% of those as active militia willing to enforce the regime’s dictates (50 people). Suppose they are smart and break up into ten 5-man teams. Suppose they are dispersed across as many apartment blocks. Get ten bombs, exquisite (read: impractical) intelligence, and a willingness to assume ‘collateral damage’ (read: very impractical) — problem solved. Now repeat that for every town for country of 90+ million people. Air power cannot work here — only ground forces and lots of them which is a really bad idea.
The US can destroy any massed force of opposing military units (asterisk here for the PRC). The US military, however, have proven singularly unable (or unwilling) to put down a dispersed force that costs 1/10,000th the cost to field as it is to explode. The US’s own history is replete with examples in this regard if anyone in the administration would pick up a history book.
Flyover and others, or take Ward Clark’s advice over at RedState and airdrop millions of cheap (stamped), single shot pistols with 10 rounds of ammo. Like the US did in France in WWII (FP-45 Liberator, .45 ACP). The Iranian men, the good ones, use these to take out an IRGC guy…and his weapons. Now the good Iranian has an AK. Multiply that 5 million times!
@GregWA Flyover and others, or take Ward Clark’s advice over at RedState and airdrop millions of cheap (stamped), single shot pistols with 10 rounds of ammo. Like the US did in France in WWII (FP-45 Liberator, .45 ACP). The Iranian men, the good ones, use these to take out an IRGC guy…and his weapons. Now the good Iranian has an AK. Multiply that 5 million times!
Right this is the same as the drone strategy. The average man in the Iranian street isn’t necessarily as good with a gun as a trained guard member, but if the guard guy is outnumbered fifty to one and the guy in the street is protecting his life, liberty and family it is not good for the guard.
I mean it is about empowering people — give them the means to revolt against the regime. Air drop a lotta small arms and ammo. Do that rather than “destroying a civilization”. There are two possible outcomes — chaos and warring factions, or an overthrow and the emergence of a better more friendly government. Neither keeps the old regime in place. Either is good for the rest of the world.
FWIW, I also think it is the solution in Taiwan. Give every household an AK-47 and ten boxes of ammo and require them to go to the range once a month. That with all the other stuff Taiwan Defense Forces have make a Chinese invasion very, very challenging. Of course this isn’t the Chinese way, but still. FWIW, I’d ask again, why are US tax payers paying to defend Taiwan? Why are American lives at risk to defend this island five thousand miles from our shores? I think part of the reason is to defend TSMC, but that is all the more reason for getting our domestic expertise in chip manufacture back on domestic soil.
Problem is, we dropped them into the hands of the Kurds, who were promising to use them to help the Iranian uprising, and to transport the bulk of them into Iran.
It’s been said many times, mostly about business investment, that the Government is lousy at picking winners. Maybe it’s not just investment choices on Wall Street that the Government is bad at…maybe it’s the Kurds, the Shah and the Sheiks (House of Saud!), and on and on. I hope that one day the US Government is so small that whatever bad choices it makes just don’t matter. Won’t happen in my lifetime or in the lifetime of the carbon-14 in me!
Is it even possible for this world to function reasonably well with only small governments, meaning among other things, that each small sovereign entity (town, city, state) can protect itself from outside aggressors? What if there were 1000s of nations, not hundreds? What if every state on the planet (States in the US, Provinces in Canada, similar sub-national governing entities elsewhere) were sovereign?
There would be several thousand nations, not several hundred. No one too big…although California would probably be the biggest (gasp!) which is why we’d break that up into two blue nations (LA, SF) and the rest of CA as one nicely red nation. Texas becomes five. So, even the 50 US States would be somewhat sub-divided.
Anyway, for all of you students of history, law, politics, governance in short, would that world be better than this one?
I’d ask again, why are US tax payers paying to defend Taiwan?
Because if Taiwan goes, Hawaii is next.
Nuh-uh. Japan, Philippines, Indonesia. Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia. Myanmar/Burma is already in China’s pocket. After Taiwan is overrun and absorbed, the goal isn’t conquest, but rather total hegemonic domination over the Western Pacific and East Asia.
The Kurds may collectively be the most corrupt, deceitful ethnic group in the Middle East. I mean, they are off the charts in this regard. They are quite adept at promoting themselves, however.
Aren’t drones just the current evolution in mankind’s continuing wars? There was the unbeatable sword, until someone invented the shield. The impregnable castle, until someone developed the cannon. The impassable trench, barbed wire, and machine gun nest, until the Brits developed the tank. Then came anti-tank weapons.
Any new offensive weapon starts off as a total game-changer, and then someone develops a counter-measure and we are back to age-old warfare, only with new tools. Someone somewhere is working today on the “Return To Sender” electronic interference which will cause any drone to turn around and head back to its point of origin. And then someone else will start working on a way to defeat that electronic interference.
In the absence of Return To Sender, the obvious way to deal with drones today is to destroy the industrial capacity of the enemy to manufacture drones, by using long-range heavy missiles & bombs against enemy facilities — which is what Russia has been doing in the Ukraine and the US is doing in Iran.
Yes bobby b – not only do both sides use drones (indeed the Russian military uses rather more drones than the Ukrainian military does), but various types of shotgun are effective against some types of drones.
@IrishOtter49 Nuh-uh. Japan, Philippines, Indonesia. Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia.
So the US taxpayer is responsible for the defense of every country in the world? Why can’t the tax payers of these countries defend themselves?
Like I said there is an argument I understand for the US taxpayer to defend not Taiwan but TSMC. But all the more reason to manage that utterly critical supply chain risk by onshoring it (which, FWIW, is happening.)
It is also worth pointing out that the vaunted PRC military has effectively never been tested in battle. Of course there is an argument to make that this shows how smart they are, given that the US military pisses away resources on every tin pot little conflagration around the world.
Don’t talk to me about taxes. I just filed my US federal and state taxes and it did NOT make me happy.
Nuh-uh. Japan, Philippines, Indonesia. Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia. Myanmar/Burma is already in China’s pocket. After Taiwan is overrun and absorbed, the goal isn’t conquest, but rather total hegemonic domination over the Western Pacific and East Asia.
I submit that this hegemony is best achieved by taking Pearl Harbor first (after Taiwan). After that, there should be no need to actually invade Japan etc. Not least, because the US could no longer provide support.
Fraser Orr:
FWIW, I’d ask again, why are US tax payers paying to defend Taiwan? Why are American lives at risk to defend this island five thousand miles from our shores? I think part of the reason is to defend TSMC, but that is all the more reason for getting our domestic expertise in chip manufacture back on domestic soil.
—————-
Congratulations on answering your own question.
And please take a moment to appreciate The Donald Administration’s prescience in prioritizing restoration of domestic chip manufacture – another of those “disastrous” “impetuous” tariff deals that the experts and chattering classes sneered at.
@Ben David Congratulations on answering your own question. And please take a moment to appreciate The Donald Administration’s prescience in prioritizing restoration of domestic chip manufacture – another of those “disastrous” “impetuous” tariff deals that the experts and chattering classes sneered at.
I think it is clear we defend Taiwan for reasons besides TSMC, we’ve been doing it for fifty years when the Taiwanese could barely make potato chips nevermind silicon chips. Nonetheless, as I said it does offer some short term justification, but also a huge impetus to eliminate that supply chain risk.
And although I am generally a fan of Trump, despite him losing his mind and abandoning his promised agenda this year, it is worth pointing out that the CHIPS act that was a big impetus for the onshoring of chip manufacture was passed under the Biden administration. Not that I am fan of these sorts of big government interference in the market, but I’d rather that than spend gazillions of dollars defending a fortress a hundred miles off the coast of China. Like I have said before, I think there are some “best of two bad choices” where the government spends tax payer money on programs to secure the infrastructure for national defense including a ready access to high grade silicon. But this can be done by simply telling suppliers that military contracts need chips made in America from multiple sources, and that is both a perfectly legitimate military consideration and a strong stimulus to onshoring manufacturing.
Fraser Orr: I would chalk up our purported defense of Taiwan by saying, loyalty to a small area that has fought the good anti-communist fight for decades.
It’s related, in my mind, to our support for Israel. It’s a recognition that there ARE good guys and bad guys in the world (consonant with our professed national principles) and so even if it makes less sense than it should, we shouldn’t easily walk away.
Problem is, I see little hope of success in a fight for Taiwan. But I’ve gotten myself into unwinnable fights in the past for little more (or less) than principle
@bobby b It’s a recognition that there ARE good guys and bad guys in the world
That is definitely true, and where that comes in the equation? We sell weapons to the good guys we do not sell weapons to the bad guys.
Problem is, I see little hope of success in a fight for Taiwan.
FWIW, I’m not sure I agree. I think it is far from a certainty that PRC could take Taiwan. They could certainly kill a lot of people, but Taiwan is a fortress (and if we followed my suggestion of giving an M-16 and ten boxes of ammo to each household, it would be even more so.) And also, as I mentioned, remember the modern PRC military has never been actually tested in battle, so who knows how successful they would be? But I could be wrong. As I have said, I’m no military expert.
It is worth noting that Colonel Douglas MacGregor, and other Putin apologists, also support betraying Taiwan (as if the American betrayal of the late 1940s – first ordering Chang to stop the Manchurian offensive, which was succeeding, and then, later, cutting off arms supplies at a key point in the war with the Communists, was not enough) – and support the Islamic Republic of Iran regime.
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FEBA = Forward Edge of the Battle Area. I know because I had to look it up.
About twenty years ago, I voluntarily deployed to Iraq twice as a civilian. Getting in and out of the country was challenging but once you were on the base, it was relatively safe since I wasn’t the one on patrols. In Baghdad, you had to deal with mortars (handfuls a day) being lobbed into the US base there, but their accuracy was minimum. I remember a large cafeteria (“DFAC” — dining facility in military jargon), huge gym, and all sorts of niceties out there that would make impossibly tempting targets. The work was 16 hour/days every day, but it would not be unfair to call it “safe” since I was not leaving the base. If the US did the same thing today, the casualties due to budget-smart bombs would be astronomical.
The fact that the USG could watch what is happening in Ukraine and — AFAIK — blithely walk into Iran is beyond infuriating to me (for the record, yes Iran is terrible, but was this the right time and right means? I have doubts).
Some Twitter wag mention that the US is not ready for 24/7 streamed drone footage of US soldiers getting hit. I agree, and I am not looking forward to what comes next.
Both sides use lots of drones.
As for casualty figures – I do not know which side is losing more men (or how many men each side is losing), but Mr Putin is responsible for the casualties on BOTH sides – there was no good reason to invade Ukraine in 2022.
He may, possibly, achieve “victory” – but it is utterly pointless, indeed it is ashes in the mouth for the Russian people who gain nothing from such a “victory”.
Russia and Ukraine both face demographic collapse – and Mr Putin sent lots of men, who could have been husbands and fathers, to their deaths – and he did so out of personal vanity, no strategic reason what-so-ever.
Russians, as the late Mr Navalny warned, also face replacement – Mr Putin is, increasingly, relying on the forces of Islam. Muslims in Russia (who are increasing) and Muslims from the Central Asian Republics.
To Putin fanboys and fangirls in the West – Mr Putin’s regime pushes the same “Diversity and Inclusion” message regarding Islam as the establishment of Western nations (such as the United Kingdom) do – the idea that he is some sort of saviour or alternative is farcical.
Ukraine wins by not losing; Russia loses by not winning.
Ukraine will win.
I’d very much like that to be true, and I fervently want Ukraine to win, but
are wise words.
I’m only an observer to the tactics/strategy/logistics game community, not a member, so what I’m saying might be incorrect. But that’s never stopped me before, so…
In most of these games, when the most experienced and successful players compete, the teams that can make lots of cheap-but-weak units end up being more successful than the teams that can make few powerful-but-expensive units. I have some guesses as to why, but they’re not very educated guesses.
I’d noticed that the US’s military build seemed to be more on the side of powerful-but-expensive instead of cheap-but-weak. The cynical explanation is that it’s due to upselling by military contractors, and that’s probably a part of it. The reason that I think is more likely is because, in real life, these ‘units’ are groups of soldiers, and part of why the cheap-but-weak strategy works is because the c-b-w units are expendable. The units usually involve varying vehicles and equipment, but so far they’ve all required humans to be in danger when the unit is attacked.
I gather that drone technology hasn’t made it practical for the soldiers controlling them to be safe in a bunker, or somesuch, so this effect doesn’t explain drone warfare at large scale. I think it might be related to the effectiveness of drones on the scale of individual battles, though.
Incidentally, is there anyone here who’s into strategy games, and thus can tell me if my understanding of the metagame holds?
CayleyGraph2015,
I have wasted too much time on strategy games to admit to, but the classic answer is “it depends” is never wrong. The US military can put 250- to 5000-lb of high explosive anywhere in the world it wants. That’s a great skill, but it doesn’t address the grand strategy here.
When it comes to overthrowing the Iranian regime, it’s not a question of how many ballistic missiles, drones, or air defenses they have. It is a question of how many AK-47’s the Basij has (let alone the regulars) and how many men are willing to gun down revolutionaries. The Iranian stockpile of AK-47’s + militia dwarfs the US ability to blow them up economically. Take a medium town of 50,000 people. Suppose you only have 0.1% of those as active militia willing to enforce the regime’s dictates (50 people). Suppose they are smart and break up into ten 5-man teams. Suppose they are dispersed across as many apartment blocks. Get ten bombs, exquisite (read: impractical) intelligence, and a willingness to assume ‘collateral damage’ (read: very impractical) — problem solved. Now repeat that for every town for country of 90+ million people. Air power cannot work here — only ground forces and lots of them which is a really bad idea.
The US can destroy any massed force of opposing military units (asterisk here for the PRC). The US military, however, have proven singularly unable (or unwilling) to put down a dispersed force that costs 1/10,000th the cost to field as it is to explode. The US’s own history is replete with examples in this regard if anyone in the administration would pick up a history book.
Flyover and others, or take Ward Clark’s advice over at RedState and airdrop millions of cheap (stamped), single shot pistols with 10 rounds of ammo. Like the US did in France in WWII (FP-45 Liberator, .45 ACP). The Iranian men, the good ones, use these to take out an IRGC guy…and his weapons. Now the good Iranian has an AK. Multiply that 5 million times!
@GregWA
Flyover and others, or take Ward Clark’s advice over at RedState and airdrop millions of cheap (stamped), single shot pistols with 10 rounds of ammo. Like the US did in France in WWII (FP-45 Liberator, .45 ACP). The Iranian men, the good ones, use these to take out an IRGC guy…and his weapons. Now the good Iranian has an AK. Multiply that 5 million times!
Right this is the same as the drone strategy. The average man in the Iranian street isn’t necessarily as good with a gun as a trained guard member, but if the guard guy is outnumbered fifty to one and the guy in the street is protecting his life, liberty and family it is not good for the guard.
I mean it is about empowering people — give them the means to revolt against the regime. Air drop a lotta small arms and ammo. Do that rather than “destroying a civilization”. There are two possible outcomes — chaos and warring factions, or an overthrow and the emergence of a better more friendly government. Neither keeps the old regime in place. Either is good for the rest of the world.
FWIW, I also think it is the solution in Taiwan. Give every household an AK-47 and ten boxes of ammo and require them to go to the range once a month. That with all the other stuff Taiwan Defense Forces have make a Chinese invasion very, very challenging. Of course this isn’t the Chinese way, but still. FWIW, I’d ask again, why are US tax payers paying to defend Taiwan? Why are American lives at risk to defend this island five thousand miles from our shores? I think part of the reason is to defend TSMC, but that is all the more reason for getting our domestic expertise in chip manufacture back on domestic soil.
Because if Taiwan goes, Hawaii is next.
Sounds like we DID airdrop a ton of small arms.
Problem is, we dropped them into the hands of the Kurds, who were promising to use them to help the Iranian uprising, and to transport the bulk of them into Iran.
No one has heard from the Kurds since.
It’s been said many times, mostly about business investment, that the Government is lousy at picking winners. Maybe it’s not just investment choices on Wall Street that the Government is bad at…maybe it’s the Kurds, the Shah and the Sheiks (House of Saud!), and on and on. I hope that one day the US Government is so small that whatever bad choices it makes just don’t matter. Won’t happen in my lifetime or in the lifetime of the carbon-14 in me!
Is it even possible for this world to function reasonably well with only small governments, meaning among other things, that each small sovereign entity (town, city, state) can protect itself from outside aggressors? What if there were 1000s of nations, not hundreds? What if every state on the planet (States in the US, Provinces in Canada, similar sub-national governing entities elsewhere) were sovereign?
There would be several thousand nations, not several hundred. No one too big…although California would probably be the biggest (gasp!) which is why we’d break that up into two blue nations (LA, SF) and the rest of CA as one nicely red nation. Texas becomes five. So, even the 50 US States would be somewhat sub-divided.
Anyway, for all of you students of history, law, politics, governance in short, would that world be better than this one?
I’d ask again, why are US tax payers paying to defend Taiwan?
Because if Taiwan goes, Hawaii is next.
Nuh-uh. Japan, Philippines, Indonesia. Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia. Myanmar/Burma is already in China’s pocket. After Taiwan is overrun and absorbed, the goal isn’t conquest, but rather total hegemonic domination over the Western Pacific and East Asia.
But it starts with Taiwan.
bobby b:
The Kurds may collectively be the most corrupt, deceitful ethnic group in the Middle East. I mean, they are off the charts in this regard. They are quite adept at promoting themselves, however.
I speak from experience.
Aren’t drones just the current evolution in mankind’s continuing wars? There was the unbeatable sword, until someone invented the shield. The impregnable castle, until someone developed the cannon. The impassable trench, barbed wire, and machine gun nest, until the Brits developed the tank. Then came anti-tank weapons.
Any new offensive weapon starts off as a total game-changer, and then someone develops a counter-measure and we are back to age-old warfare, only with new tools. Someone somewhere is working today on the “Return To Sender” electronic interference which will cause any drone to turn around and head back to its point of origin. And then someone else will start working on a way to defeat that electronic interference.
In the absence of Return To Sender, the obvious way to deal with drones today is to destroy the industrial capacity of the enemy to manufacture drones, by using long-range heavy missiles & bombs against enemy facilities — which is what Russia has been doing in the Ukraine and the US is doing in Iran.
World Champion Shotgun Shooter vs FPV Drones – Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mORdXxZ2uKU
It’s the hot new shotgunning-club competition. Pricy, because even the cheap drones cost a lot more than clay pigeons.
Yes bobby b – not only do both sides use drones (indeed the Russian military uses rather more drones than the Ukrainian military does), but various types of shotgun are effective against some types of drones.
@IrishOtter49
Nuh-uh. Japan, Philippines, Indonesia. Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia.
So the US taxpayer is responsible for the defense of every country in the world? Why can’t the tax payers of these countries defend themselves?
Like I said there is an argument I understand for the US taxpayer to defend not Taiwan but TSMC. But all the more reason to manage that utterly critical supply chain risk by onshoring it (which, FWIW, is happening.)
It is also worth pointing out that the vaunted PRC military has effectively never been tested in battle. Of course there is an argument to make that this shows how smart they are, given that the US military pisses away resources on every tin pot little conflagration around the world.
Don’t talk to me about taxes. I just filed my US federal and state taxes and it did NOT make me happy.
I submit that this hegemony is best achieved by taking Pearl Harbor first (after Taiwan). After that, there should be no need to actually invade Japan etc. Not least, because the US could no longer provide support.
Fraser Orr:
FWIW, I’d ask again, why are US tax payers paying to defend Taiwan? Why are American lives at risk to defend this island five thousand miles from our shores? I think part of the reason is to defend TSMC, but that is all the more reason for getting our domestic expertise in chip manufacture back on domestic soil.
—————-
Congratulations on answering your own question.
And please take a moment to appreciate The Donald Administration’s prescience in prioritizing restoration of domestic chip manufacture – another of those “disastrous” “impetuous” tariff deals that the experts and chattering classes sneered at.
@Ben David
Congratulations on answering your own question. And please take a moment to appreciate The Donald Administration’s prescience in prioritizing restoration of domestic chip manufacture – another of those “disastrous” “impetuous” tariff deals that the experts and chattering classes sneered at.
I think it is clear we defend Taiwan for reasons besides TSMC, we’ve been doing it for fifty years when the Taiwanese could barely make potato chips nevermind silicon chips. Nonetheless, as I said it does offer some short term justification, but also a huge impetus to eliminate that supply chain risk.
And although I am generally a fan of Trump, despite him losing his mind and abandoning his promised agenda this year, it is worth pointing out that the CHIPS act that was a big impetus for the onshoring of chip manufacture was passed under the Biden administration. Not that I am fan of these sorts of big government interference in the market, but I’d rather that than spend gazillions of dollars defending a fortress a hundred miles off the coast of China. Like I have said before, I think there are some “best of two bad choices” where the government spends tax payer money on programs to secure the infrastructure for national defense including a ready access to high grade silicon. But this can be done by simply telling suppliers that military contracts need chips made in America from multiple sources, and that is both a perfectly legitimate military consideration and a strong stimulus to onshoring manufacturing.
Fraser Orr: I would chalk up our purported defense of Taiwan by saying, loyalty to a small area that has fought the good anti-communist fight for decades.
It’s related, in my mind, to our support for Israel. It’s a recognition that there ARE good guys and bad guys in the world (consonant with our professed national principles) and so even if it makes less sense than it should, we shouldn’t easily walk away.
Problem is, I see little hope of success in a fight for Taiwan. But I’ve gotten myself into unwinnable fights in the past for little more (or less) than principle
@bobby b
It’s a recognition that there ARE good guys and bad guys in the world
That is definitely true, and where that comes in the equation? We sell weapons to the good guys we do not sell weapons to the bad guys.
Problem is, I see little hope of success in a fight for Taiwan.
FWIW, I’m not sure I agree. I think it is far from a certainty that PRC could take Taiwan. They could certainly kill a lot of people, but Taiwan is a fortress (and if we followed my suggestion of giving an M-16 and ten boxes of ammo to each household, it would be even more so.) And also, as I mentioned, remember the modern PRC military has never been actually tested in battle, so who knows how successful they would be? But I could be wrong. As I have said, I’m no military expert.
It is worth noting that Colonel Douglas MacGregor, and other Putin apologists, also support betraying Taiwan (as if the American betrayal of the late 1940s – first ordering Chang to stop the Manchurian offensive, which was succeeding, and then, later, cutting off arms supplies at a key point in the war with the Communists, was not enough) – and support the Islamic Republic of Iran regime.
At least they are consistent.