[ExI] commies vs marxists was: RE: chinese fires, was:RE: book review

Tue Dec 6 22:44:42 UTC 2022

The Pentagon, unfortunately, does not share your optimism.   Best case
scenario is likely that we destroy all of the chip plants:

Pentagon, Chinese analysts agree US can’t win in Taiwan Strait
US mulls ‘scorched earth’ strategy for Taiwan instead of defense
By DAVID P. GOLDMAN
DECEMBER 6, 2022

China’s satellite coverage in the Western Pacific has doubled since 2018,
the Pentagon reported last week in its annual assessment of the Chinese
military. That gives China the ability to detect American surface ships
with an array of sensors that can guide its 2,000 land-based missiles to
moving targets, including US aircraft carriers.

The Defense Department’s November 29 report “Military and Security
Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” reflects a grimly
realistic rethinking of China’s military capacity in its home theater.

China hawk Elbridge Colby, a prominent advocate of a Western Pacific
military buildup to deny China access to its adjacent seas, tweeted on
November 6, “Senior flag officers are saying we’re on a trajectory to get
crushed in a war with China, which would likely be the most important war
since WWII, God forbid.”

The strategic takeaway is that the United States cannot win a firefight
close to China’s coast, and can’t defend Taiwan whether it wants to or not.
That view in the Joe Biden administration’s Department of Defense (DOD)
persuaded the president to discuss “guardrails” against military
confrontation in his November summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi
Jinping.

Republican hawks appear to have come to the same conclusion. The United
States will enact a scorched-earth policy in Taiwan, destroying its
semiconductor industry, if the PRC seizes the island, former Trump national
security adviser Robert O’Brien told a conference at the Richard Nixon
Foundation on November 10, reports army-technology.com.

“If China takes Taiwan and takes those factories intact – which I don’t
think we would ever allow – they have a monopoly over chips the way OPEC
has a monopoly, or even more than the way OPEC has a monopoly over oil,”
O’Brien said.

A much-read paper by two Army War College professors published this year
proposes that “the United States and Taiwan should lay plans for a targeted
scorched-earth strategy that would render Taiwan not just unattractive if
ever seized by force, but positively costly to maintain.”

“This could be done most effectively by threatening to destroy facilities
belonging to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the most
important chipmaker in the world and China’s most important supplier.”

O’Brien evidently agrees with the Pentagon’s assessment that the US can’t
win a war in the Taiwan Strait, proposing – apropos of the Vietnam War’s
most celebrated sound bite – to destroy the island in order to save it.

Anti-ship missiles are the 21st-century equivalent of the torpedo and dive
bombers that banished the battleship from military budgets after the 1941
sinking of the Bismarck by the British and the sinking of the Repulse and
the Prince of Wales by the Japanese. Surface ships, including aircraft
carriers, can’t defend against modern missiles that can downlink guidance
data from reconnaissance satellites.

https://asiatimes.com/2022/12/pentagon-chinese-analysts-agree-us-cant-win-in-taiwan-strait/

On Mon, Dec 5, 2022 at 3:41 PM Will Steinberg via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> An optimistic scenario is that China will lose the war with Taiwan.  Also,
> a realistic one.  They're going to get annihilated when they try.
>
> Alao: for the love of God please stop imbibing news from whatever echo
> chamber you're in or just go to /pol/ so you can at least get it
> undigested.  It is at least interesting to see how things trickle down to
> the mainstream, I suppose. Stick to engineering.
>
> On a related note, didn't we make another list for politics as to
> facilitate this one to discuss science and transhumanism instead of vapid
> mass media punditripe?  This is as bad as John K Clark's Trump derangement,
> albeit presented with an avuncular "aw shucks" façade.   But just as toxic
> and just as irritating to listen to.  I'm also not a fan of a list admin
> displaying political bias.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 5, 2022, 12:58 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
>> Of *sjatkins via extropy-chat
>>
>>
>>
>> >…China can't be doing Zero Covid because of health concerns.  Anyone
>> with elementary knowledge of virology knows that most viruses so widespread
>> become endemic in a population that largely but not perfectly has herd
>> immunity …-samantha
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I get the feeling China is doing Zero Covid policy because the Dear
>> Leader is hoping to dissuade the masses from lopping off his Dear Head.
>>
>>
>>
>> That being said, I am thinking about the Dear Leader’s options if the
>> pissed off masses start closing in on the presidential palace with dear
>> bloody goddam vengeance on their dear minds, which would be understandable
>> considering all that has happened.  I thought of a most worrisome scenario:
>>
>>
>>
>> The Chinese president looks around and finds that Russia is busy in
>> Ukraine, NATO is (for the past few decades) temporarily weak with little
>> willingness (and even less apparent actual ability) to project force, the
>> USA government is at war with itself, occupied in putting together a
>> massive taskforce aimed at deriving strategies to get the American people
>> to stop talking about a laptop computer.  He orders the military to grab
>> Taiwan and calls on the protestors to stand down and contribute to the
>> glory of China’s reunification, after which the Dear Leader controls most
>> of the world’s computer chip production capacity.
>>
>>
>>
>> Oy vey.
>>
>>
>>
>> Someone offer a more optimistic scenario please.
>>
>>
>>
>> spike
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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