- cross-posted to:
- us_news@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- us_news@lemmygrad.ml
A report for the Pentagon was released by Arlington, Virginia-based Govini, which in 2019 received a five-year, $400 million contract from the Pentagon to provide data, analysis and information on Department of Defense spending, supply chain and acquisitions.
The report also states that dependence on the Chinese supply chain is present on every major weapons platform, including US aircraft carriers.
It is separately noted that the current dependence on China cannot be resolved even in a decade. Because a “supply chain” at this scale is an entire economy, as it is a network of many firms that buy and sell from each other.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erictegler/2024/01/09/americas-carriers-rely-on-chinese-chips-our-depleted-munitions-too/
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Excuse me, they paid $400 million for someone to tell them how they're spending their money??
It really is completely made up huh?
The Pentagon had like a trillion dollars completely unaccounted for in their budget vs actual spending so this is chump change
Oh yeah, that was the trillion dollars they announced they "lost" like a day before 9/11 right?
An audit report, released on Feb. 25, 2000, about financial statements for the fiscal year 1999 by the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Defense says, “For the accounting entries, $2.3 trillion was not supported by adequate audit trails or sufficient evidence to determine their validity, $2 trillion was not reviewed because of time constraints, and $2.6 trillion were supported.”
So they ACKSHUALLY revealed they could not track 2.3 trillion dollars a year earlier (but yes, Rumsfeld also did have that speech September 10, 2001)
I'll bet you feel silly
Fact checkers are deeply unserious people.
That’s a masterful burying of bad news. But to be fair if I had to do presentation on how I’d lost a large countries GDP’s worth of money, I’d probably also do it the day before I knew a biggest news day for a deccade would be happening.
Pentagon: pays 400 million bucks for basically audit
Pentagon: still can't pass an official audit
Lmfao how does the military with the most bloated budget in the history of the planet not have base up control of their supply chain? Not only do they not, they rely on their biggest rival who they constantly sabre rattle at for basic components?
I know capitalists can only plan one quarter ahead and will readily sell you the rope to hang them with but it still manages to surprise me a little
Lmfao how does the military with the most bloated budget in the history of the planet not have base up control of their supply chain?
Gunpowder is only manufactured by two private companies in the US lol. Not even government owned, privately run like some of their ammo factories.
Jesus Christ I knew they had privatized everything they could but I didn't realize they don't even own the gunpowder production. Is there anything they actually control or is everything contracted out to the lowest bidder?
Is there anything they actually control or is everything contracted out to the lowest bidder?
"Not if I did my job!"
this is why the US will not go to war with China (that and it is generally cowardly and never attacks anything but crippled failed states)
It certainly shows that US military would grind to a halt very quickly if US did go to war with China. I wouldn't underestimate the sheer stupidity of the political class in US though. These people are completely divorced from material reality.
They would if they believe they can easily win
Like the Nazis and their opinion of the Red Army
The fact that the US hasn't fought an actual power since WWII (and stayed out of that as long as possible) is a good illustration of why I don't think that's a useful comparison. This is a rule without exception: the post-WWII US never, ever goes to war with countries even remotely close to being peer states. The biggest power it ever took on directly was Vietnam, and that was only when it could jump in on one side after an extended civil war, and there was still a gargantuan gap in military capacity - and the US still lost! The US just lost to YEMEN. It will not go to war with China.
I'd argue Iraq, Yugoslavia, and a USSR backed DPRK + a late China were very real powers
Let's not pretend the US military isn't extremely powerful. They can and do win firefights, it's just the ideological aspect they fall short on
The US was handed half of Korea after WWII. That war was predetermined, and frankly, half of a ruined Korea + newborn and poor PRC so not qualify as a "peer power" to what was at the time the absolutely undisputed military, industrial, and economic power of the entire world. The only true peers at that time were the USSR and maybe the UK. Also, the US couldn't win that war. Iraq was a US dependent regional power in the first war and a failed state ruined by sanctions in the second. Also, the US couldn't win that war. Yugoslavia collapsed primarily due to internal contractions and external squeezing, and the US didn't put boots on the ground. None of these were in any way peers of the US.
The US military cannot win. It can only destroy, and so it does not go against enemies with true retaliatory capacity. It especially won't do so against its own manufacturing base.
That would be interesting to see happen. I think we're on course for something like that to happen in the future.
It won't come down to a dramatic public break between political and military leaders. Political leaders will say they want war, they'll go to military leaders through private channels, and the military leaders will say it's a doomed prospect. None of us will ever hear about it except a few stories from anonymous sources.
I'm sure this has already happened multiple times. I'd be surprised if there has been a single president this millennia that hasn't asked about going to war with Iran.
America goes to war with China.
Every price of American equipment plays "The East is Red" at max volume and self destructs.
I only have time to read this, not deliver line by line dunking, but I encourage comrades to read this article critically as it is a masterclass in neoliberal interests making a correct critique shared by the left (hollowing out domestic production and overreliance on Chinese suppliers has consequences) but wedded to entirely the wrong takeaway and diagnosis. Truly sublime
Indeed, the problems are inaction, lack of will, layers of obstructionist government and Pentagon bureaucracy, and executive policies that do nothing.
Sensible chuckle!
Somewhere in Grundrisse, Marx considers nations conquering others. He points out that pillaging a country consists in taking control of the components of their material production, and that the process of pillaging looks very different wether you're considering conquering a rural economy (occupying land, taking hold of slaves...) or a nation of rentiers.
We won't be alive to see it, but I bet future historians will consider this current era as the conquest of the US empire
I hate when know-nothings think that any electronic device with a Chinese made component is a threat. They literally think it'll started beeping and glowing red then burst in to flames like a damn simpsons sight gag.
I think in this case it’s less china spying on you through your asic chip, and more a failure of American industry and wartime manufacturing capacity.
Let’s say we have the great American-Chinese war, it’s not unreasonable to assume the US will lose some material right? Well that’s a big problem when your replacement parts come from your main adversary. Who has, coincidentally, by manufacturing all your peacetime supplies built all the infrastructure and expertise to build their own wartime supplies.
It should make the world nervous. If America can’t win a conventional war those nukes are going to look real attractive to whoever is holding the button.
They’re sending their weapons to China to test? 💀 reminds me of Taiwan shipping their missile to a Chinese company to repair lol
That top graph is strange. They couldn't have ordered the number of Chinese suppliers in any sensible way? And only 5 of those categories of suppliers have more than 1 corresponding component category?
I agree the chart is kinda shitty... I mean that's just what you get tho when you're the Pentagon paying some contractors $400 million. American excellence
Nah, keep at it Xi, every time the US outsources another thing to china it is neutering US industrial might and giving more money and control to Beijing.
cut the cord