[ExI] chinese colonization of africa etc

[Adrian Tymes]

On Wed, Sep 3, 2025 at 4:05 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:
> Regarding my previous notion in light of the failure of naïve earlier efforts on that continent, I am convinced that such a vision could become reality, but the militarily defended perimeter is the prerequisite to ANYTHING that is to be done there.

Not just the perimeter.  You're also defending against desperation
from the people inside the perimeter, including the guards themselves.
If any of them think - with some justification - that if they could
steal a portable and vital part of infrastructure, they could go
somewhere else and resell it (say, to merchants who know that you're
about to be on the market for a widget just like that) for enough
money to let their family live comfortably for a few years, they will
focus on that at the expense of all their neighbors having comfortable
lives for each year that infrastructure continues to be in place.  How
do you guard something where anyone you'd hire as a guard either
eventually tries to rob the place or takes bribes to allow robbers in?

That alone seems to make the "first, establish a secure location"
notion invalid, but there are other issues too.

What governance is there?  What do you say when the local
government/warlord demands ever-increasing bribes to not have their
militia simply come by and seize the place?  ("Have my guards be more
powerful than their militia" is not an option.  You might be able to
outdo them in training, tactics, and technology, but their advantages
in military budget and manpower would overcome those.)

How is the operation paying for itself?  If it runs out of funding
(say, after a few years), the guards abandon the place and the
infrastructure gets stripped.

> Next the clean water facilities and the coal plant.  That preliminary infrastructure must be pumping clean water and belching thick choking black clouds of soot before further development can commence.

Better to do solar or wind power than coal plants.  Pollution aside
(though that is a factor too), coal plants have a supply chain that
can be attacked and looted.  Even nuclear would be better, for having
less of a supply chain (only needing refueling once every few years),
although people stealing nuclear waste thinking they could resell it
would be a concern.

> Until that other stuff is going, no clinics, no schools, no even StarLink.  No point in any of that stuff unless it is defensible.

Some sort of satellite Internet would likely be required as part of
the initial infrastructure.