Permanently Deleted

  • princeofsin [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    “We don’t want autocratic governments like China, writing the rules of the road. We together with our allies, who care about privacy, freedom, individual rights, individual protection, we need to write the rules of the road,”

    :michael-laugh:

    • nohaybanda [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Make that argument to a lib and watch them take the mask all the way off and argue how the Chinese aren't really part of humanity so this shit isn't actually impeding human progress.

  • Thissiteiseh [doe/deer]
    ·
    3 years ago

    We flew out of Saigon on a Chinook. We flew out of Afghanistan on a Chinook. We spend so much in the military and its tech is garbage

    • BigLadKarlLiebknecht [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      The latest Radio War Nerd touched on this - that when you spend the amounts the US does on the military, its inevitably going to be shit as it’s all just funding grift.

      The US Navy has a global presence to support the empire, and in order to protect its global force projection it has a grand total of 11 minesweepers. It has 20 aircraft carriers. To me that speaks volumes.

      • Mardoniush [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Oh man, the straits of Malacca are going to be a fun time for a US battle group huh?

        • BigLadKarlLiebknecht [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          It’s even better. Apparently they’re getting rid of them!

          And what are they replacing them with? Why yes, the F-35 of the seas, the Littoral Combat Ship.

          It’s just so good:

          Rather than using a traditional sewage system, Navy leaders decided once again to reinvent the wheel and had the manufacturer install a new system similar to those used on a commercial airliner. According to the Government Accountability Office, the system suffers “unexpected and frequent clogging.” To deal with the problem, the Navy has to acid flush the sewage system on a regular basis, at a cost of $400,000 a pop.

          That’s not all!

          In late 2015 and 2016, four of the six LCSs then in service suffered engineering failures within a span of nine months. The USS Milwaukee and the USS Fort Worth had mechanical breakdowns within weeks of each other when metal shavings and debris got into their combining gear. The damage to the Milwaukee forced the Navy to have the ship towed into a Virginia port. The USS Freedom was damaged in July when seawater leaked into the diesel propulsion system through a faulty seal. The USS Coronado broke down in August when a defective coupling in an engine shaft failed.

          The fleet’s mechanical issues were so bad that not one of the ships deployed in 2018.

          :amerikkka-clap:

          • Thissiteiseh [doe/deer]
            ·
            3 years ago

            They are decommissioning tuhe littoral ships due to high cost of operation

      • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        The our tech and financial industries are a big part of that, along with the fact that the defense industry does everything it can to discourage smart, innovative people from working there.

        If you're a smart kid, even if you're a rah rah Patriot, why on Earth would you go work for some defense company designing ships and planes and fancy new bombs and radar? Everything moves at a glacial pace, the pay is crap, and you can make $250k designing fart apps or trading algorithms instead somewhere else.

    • Haste_Hall [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      :is-this: Is this the green military that Liz Warren wanted?

  • Multihedra [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    This is a pretty great article lol

    Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said Tuesday that the U.S. will rally allies in order to mount pressure on China, the world’s second-largest economy, an approach that differs from the “America First” policies pursued by President Joe Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

    Yeah this ones called “everybody last” gottem

    “If we really want to slow down China’s rate of innovation, we need to work with Europe.”

    It’s incredibly funny that people in the US just accept this kinda language; declaring your intention to pull a Tanya Harding is just something politicians can do (and they did it)

    semiconductors

    Hmm

    Last week, Biden met in person with the leaders of Australia, India and Japan at the White House to discuss shared concerns about China’s growing military and economic influence.

    The meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad — as the grouping of the four major democracies is called — came just a week after Biden announced a new security pact with the U.K and Australia, a move that angered Beijing.

    I would only add that, on especially quiet nights when Mars is in retrograde, you can actually hear The Great Democracies harmonizing

    I’ve realized that the US is probably the largest anti-democratic institution in Earth (in this case, it has decided that 1B+ people are actually not allowed to chart their own economic path)

    • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Literally any remotely smart countries will simply use this to extract more benefit from the US before doing exactly the same amount of trade with China.

      The stupidest ones - like :ukkk: & :aus-delenda-est: - will kneel before the US with their gruel bowls out begging for trade deals or military investment, and get basically fuck all, as is already happening.

  • Wildgrapes [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Pretty funny that the solution isnt to collaborate to innovate more. No the west can't possibly compete actually so we just gotta try and bring china down a bit.

  • Grownbravy [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Whats wrong with them catching up? Is that what capitalism is all about?

    :meow-floppy:

  • RedArmor [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    But they found a way through the free marketplace of ideas to do things better or cheaper or with less of an environmental impact. Isn’t it the competition a good thing?

      • RedArmor [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Imagine inventing a vaccine for deadly viruses and diseases in the 20th century only for the production of it to be patented and the prices for purchasing it be raised thousands of percentages.

  • SoyViking [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    :porky-happy: Capitalism breeds innovation! Competition in the free market!

    :porky-scared-flipped: Nooo! The Chinese are innovating! Do something! They have to be as stupid as we are!