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Ghost of LL

Burnt Ends
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. Brisket tried to infect me, but I remain negative.
  2. "Auditors?" Is that what we're calling them these days?
  3. The tech reporter for The New York Times had a lengthy chat with the Bing AI ChatBot. It went really . . . weirdly.
  4. Whoa--we're talking about the 100-nuke scenario. I agree that if they have 4,200 nuclear weapons, then that's waaaay more than enough to do the job. But with only 100 warheads, you have to choose. Do you try a limited counterforce strike by taking out the missile silos in Montana and the Dakotas and the bomber forces in Nebraska and Kansas? Or do you take out the major cities? Because with just 100 warheads, you can't do both. Regardless, I think it's an academic discussion. We'll never find out, because the Russians know that only a fraction of their warheads are operational. But humorously, they probably don't know which ones. So that eliminates their ability to launch a counterforce strike. And with no ability to launch a counterforce strike, they would know that the retaliatory attack would be devastating. So basically, we aren't going to see a Russian nuclear attack on the United States (or probably anyone).
  5. I'm very skeptical, because I think that overstates the environmental impact and because I don't see why agricultural production would return to pre-industrial output. They're nuking New York, not Kansas. But that does raise a question--would Russia know how few operational warheads they actually have? If a bunch of them are categorized as operational, but are in reality inert due to lack of maintenance, then Russia would probably launch a counterforce strike rather than a strike at American cities. In that case they'd be nuking North Dakota. But if a lot of those missiles are inert, then they'd actually not be nuking North Dakota. The point is that their nuclear forces are a big question mark, perhaps even to the Russians. And that does a lot to prevent them from actually trying to use them.
  6. That's ridiculous. A hundred warheads wouldn't destroy the United States. A hundred warheads would really fuck our shit up. It would take months to restore basic things like electricity. And it would take years to return to some semblance of normality, although now "normal" is life without New York and Chicago and the fucking Packers winning the Super Bowl every year? But the United States wouldn't be "destroyed." Much less the entire world.
  7. In the history of modern warfare, I'm not aware of anybody outside of Russia using prisoners for combat operations. I know some countries have used prisoners for noncombat roles, but I can't think of anybody other than Russia that has used them for combat. And Russia seems to do that pretty regularly. The reasons not to use prisoners seem pretty obvious. Apart from the fact that they're not going to make very good soldiers because they lack both training and motivation, I can see some other very serious problems: 1) So to state the obvious, these guys are criminals. And to motivate them, presumably you're offering some form of clemency. But what happens then? You have a bunch of criminals running around Russian cities with weapons training and probably some serious PTSD. Is that really a good recipe for societal tranquility? 2) To restate the obvious, these guys are criminals. Not only do they have no motivation to fight for Russia; they have some motivation to fight against it. How many officers are going to get fragged by the prisoners they're ostensibly commanding? The officers know that risk, and that leads them to have less contact with the troops. Which is itself then going to have battlefield consequences when the troops are left without leadership. 3) But at some point, you run out of criminals. Even if Russia. So when that happens, the state has an incentive to "create" prisoners. So they'll start prosecuting things that ordinarily wouldn't be crimes that are prosecuted. And that leads to a reduction in the respect for the rule of law, which can endanger the regime. And so lurking in these problems we kind of see why Russia does this and nobody else does. 1) There is no societal tranquility in Russia. That's not something the Russian state has ever offered. If anything, the Russia state offers only a marginal reduction in social chaos. So the resultant increase in violent crime isn't really an issue, and certainly not an issue that would impact the regime's calculus. 2) Russia officers think they could be fragged by their non-prisoner troops, so it's really no change. The Russian Army is little more than a prison in the best of circumstances. So the risk to the officers is always present, regardless of who makes up the soldiery. 3) Russians have no respect for the rule of law--they know it's a farce. So their respect for the rule of law can't be diminished. It's a fucked-up country. So of course they're going to fight a war in a fucked-up manner. This has been my conclusion for some time. And I think Russian behavior shows this might be true. Putin and others keep threatening to use nuclear weapons. But they never make any move toward actually doing so. They don't put any more submarines to sea; they don't move any nuclear weapons around; they don't increase the alert status on their bombers or missile forces. And one very reasonable explanation for that is that they can't.
  8. The boy has a soccer tournament this weekend in Schertz of all places. So is there any good place in Schertz to get some grub?
  9. But there's a point at which Moldova decides that Russia is too weak to make them find out if they fuck around with those 1,500 Russia troops, isn't there? I mean, I'm not sure we're there yet. Russia still has the ability to launch long-range cruise missiles in a retaliatory strike against Chisinau, which they would almost certainly do. And right now, I don't think the Moldovans think that juice is worth the squeeze--Transdnistria isn't really a threat; it's barely even an annoyance. But at some point, Russia is going to have exhausted its capacity to strike at Moldova (both because it's not going to have any strike capability and because Ukraine will have sufficient air-defense mechanisms in place to protect Moldova from any Russian strike transiting Ukrainian airspace). And at that point, we might see Moldova move, particularly in conjunction with Ukraine.
  10. And as I said--they're going to continue bullying the lies of the Philippines and Vietnam and Taiwan. But they're not fucking with the United States. And thanks to Biden's "gaffe," they now know pretty unequivocally that a hostile act against Taiwan would incur a military response from the United States.
  11. Except that hour when you and I went to lunch and you kept coughing into my pho.
  12. Can we please stop with this nonsense? China is not going to war with the United States. And that means that China is not invading Taiwan. For the reasons stated above, it is just not rational for China to start a war with the United States. It has no path to victory against the United States and its allies. And the cost of any war to China would be too catastrophic to undertake willingly. China itself seems to recognize this. For all its bullying of the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea, take a look at their behavior during this balloon kerfuffle. The Chinese foreign ministry was unusually apologetic at the outset. While they've since become a bit more accusatory toward the United States' decision to shoot down the balloon, they've been consistently de-escalatory throughout the entire episode.
  13. Well, her announcement was remarkably devoid of any policy positions, so it's tough to discuss those. And her chances of becoming president are nil, so it's really tough to discuss those. Her entry into the race does crowd the field somewhat, and prevents it from being a two-person race between Trump and DeSantis. And that is to Trump's benefit, as it was in 2016. And I suspect Haley won't be the last. You're probably going to have Hogan and Sununu and a few others jumping in. So this is going to be a pretty crowded field in which Trump is going to have a significant plurality to start.
  14. I would imagine the do, since they have so few of them. Any rational observer of American gun laws and the absence of any restrictive legislation in the years since Sandy Hook would conclude that we do not.
  15. That timing is interesting. Thanks for sharing.
  16. And that's how we started a war with the aliens.
  17. I don't give a shit how many missiles they have. I only care about warheads. And as of mid-2021, China had 272 warheads, with some vague plans to double that number over the next couple decades. We have 3,700 warheads in active deployment, with about an equal number in inactive storage. So let's say China gets super pissed off and launches all 272 warheads. That's very bad. Would they concentrate on military targets or civilian? Would they focus on the United States or would they also be targeting Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines? Perhaps you see the issue--there's not enough to go around. The United States, however, would be focused solely on China. And 3,700 warheads is enough to destroy all of China. So would it be rational for China to initiate a nuclear exchange? No--of course not. But, but, but . . . China could do something completely irrational. I suppose that's correct. But your fear that China would do something completely irrational--something that China itself recognizes is irrational and is therefore contrary to their own defense policy--is itself irrational. So yeah--I'm not terribly concerned about your phobias.
  18. You joke, but I think that's the real reason. The pilots unions are strongly opposed to increasing the data storage of the CVR.
  19. Pretty much. But let's break that down a bit. Relatively few American deaths. Virtually no American civilian deaths. So bad for us. Really bad for our allies in the region. Catastrophic for our enemies. Basically a replay of the last two.
  20. You would prefer that I formally pontificate? I mean, that's a problem, because my tuxedo is at the cleaners. Let me be unequivocal since you don't like hedge words--there is no chance that China would use nuclear weapons first. It goes against their nuclear doctrine, and it would be suicidal to do so. We have more than 20 warheads for every one of theirs. So any nuclear attack by China would be met with massive retaliation that would destroy China. They can hit a carrier group--I assume you're using the term "nuke" there metaphorically and not to mean the literal use of a nuclear weapon--but that's the nature of warfare. And while they can hit one of our carrier groups, we can hit every last one of their military assets. Their ability to hit all of our military assets is extremely limited (for example, they can't attack Whiteman AFB, from which attacks against China would be launched). So chill the fuck out, man. It's just a little conventional world war we're talking about here.
  21. We're talking about China here. And that's very different from a war with Russia. China does not have first-strike capability. And its nuclear force is relatively small. Currently, China has fewer than 300 warheads. That's enough for a retaliatory strike; it's definitely not enough for a preemptive counterforce strike. And that's China's nuclear doctrine. China maintains a no-first-strike policy. It focuses its efforts on maintaining a survivable nuclear force (though how survivable it actually would be against a full American counterforce first strike is pretty debatable). So its nuclear doctrine is not based on "mutually assured destruction." It's based on "assured retaliation." A war with China, therefore, is not particularly likely to go nuclear. And the only way it would go nuclear is if we were pretty damned sure that we could take out their warheads with a counterforce strike. Because there's no real likelihood of China actually starting a nuclear exchange.
  22. Yeah, because I totally want to put another plane back into the approach pattern being handled by a guy who just fucked up a landing clearance. But honestly--what purpose is served by having Southwest go back and land? There's no mechanical issue with the plane or anything else that would hinder its ability to complete its flight. Conceivably you could recover the cockpit voice recorder, which only records the previous 30 minutes. But I don't really care what the pilots are saying. What I'm interested in is the flight data recorder. And that continues recording for 15 hours. So the data you actually want for the investigation is safe and can be recovered when the plane gets back from CUN.
  23. I'm not talking about small wars against regional powers. I'm talking about major wars against global powers (i.e., Russia and China). Vietnam was the equivalent of putting a hundo on the Super Bowl; a war with China would be a bet-the-farm undertaking. We haven't had a lot of those. Realistically, we've only really had one of those: World War II. And look at how that went. Just consider the diplomatic end. Look at the dates on which Latin America declared war on the Axis Powers. The United States didn't let Latin America sit around and be neutral (although Argentina and Chile were a scooch late joining the party). We made it pretty goddamned clear to them that they needed to declare that they were with us (particularly countries in Central America from which Japanese planes could conceivably be based to attack the Canal). If you think we wouldn't do the same thing in the event of a war with China, you're crazy. So don't assume that a war with China is a war simply against the United States. It's not. It's a war China would be undertaking against the United States and Japan and South Korea and Taiwan and the Philippines and the whole of NATO and probably Latin America and probably the Gulf Arabs. And for good measure Vietnam and India would probably jump in to get their pound of flesh from the Dragon, because they've got their own quibbles. We didn't go through any of that effort with Vietnam. Because fundamentally, we didn't need to. Losing in Vietnam didn't threaten our national existence. Losing to China would. Paradoxically, winning in Vietnam could have threatened our national existence, if "winning" came at the expense of escalating the war into a confrontation with the Soviet Union. And for that reason, we didn't do things that were probably necessary to win the war (including, but not limited to, bombing North Vietnamese bases from which Soviet advisors were operating). But in a war with China, there wouldn't be a similar consideration. We'd be at war with a major power. All the stops are coming out.
  24. I don't think you (or anyone else on this thread) is appreciating just what is involved in going to war against the United States, particularly for a country like China that is a net importer of food and fuel. In any real war against a global power (i.e., not a regional power like Iraq or North Korea or even Iran), the United States would not accept neutrality from any country. A full blockade would be implemented, making it impossible for China to import enough food and fuel to sustain its population, much less its economy and military. It's not like we'd have to sink a bunch of oil tankers, either (though we wouldn't hesitate to do so). It's that Saudi Arabia would be told that if they don't abide by the economic blockade of our enemy, all of their assets in the United States will be seized and they won't do business with the United States or anyone who wants to do business with the United States. And a naval blockade against China would be effective. We don't need carriers to pull it off, because China's seaports cannot be approached without coming within range of American basis in South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. And that's kind of important, because 90% of China's population lives east of the Heihe–Tengchong Line. China's west is so vast and unpopulated as to make the importation of goods overland very difficult. In contrast, China can't blockade the United States. It doesn't have the navy to do so. And it doesn't have any allies close to our shores that would be able to enforce a blockade. And even if it did, the United States is a net exporter of food and fuel--we can feed ourselves. The United States isn't really a superpower. It's a megapower. It's simply not susceptible to being defeated in a major conventional war. And China really doesn't have the capability to undertake a nuclear war against the United States because it lacks full counterforce capabilities.
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