The US has been fighting wars for the past… Well… Basically always. I think this still is an advantage China is missing. But the economic war might be another beast.
In not a Chinese shill but realistically modern war is a competition of industrialized might. China would whoop the US in a slugfest (i.e. not nuclear exchange. Nobody wins that) because the US can’t produce at the rate the Chinese can.
China can mass produce sophisticated weapons… The US’ military industrial complex and incentive structures (cost + % billing) has created a giant cancerous tumor of an arm’s industry. It’s currently tooled for bullying and murdering brown people for profit, not fighting a near peer nation and changing that system takes years.
It won’t change as long as cost + % and corruption continue, which they will. If the US finds itself in a war with China it’ll have entirely the wrong arm’s industry for fighting them and they won’t have the grace of 1939-1941 to scale their domestic arms industry prior to a major conflict… There’s also the fact that the US is heavily deindustrialized now too compared to WWII… China is closer to the industrial heavyweight the US once was in 1941-45, but they have technological sophistication and a knowledge economy now too…
Patriot interceptor missiles are a decent example of what I mean. They cost millions to produce and take forever to make which is by design. They could be made faster and cheaper but that’s less profit. If the arm’s industry in the US were paid a lump sum and not “pump your costs as high as possible to get the highest cost+% you can” things would be different.
The US military is a paper tiger, designed and optimize to funnel public funds to military shareholders pockets. and it’s extremely effective at only that.
When it comes to actual war, it is useless and ends up delegating actual war to mercenary groups.
The US has been fighting wars for the past… Well… Basically always. I think this still is an advantage China is missing. But the economic war might be another beast.
In not a Chinese shill but realistically modern war is a competition of industrialized might. China would whoop the US in a slugfest (i.e. not nuclear exchange. Nobody wins that) because the US can’t produce at the rate the Chinese can.
China can mass produce sophisticated weapons… The US’ military industrial complex and incentive structures (cost + % billing) has created a giant cancerous tumor of an arm’s industry. It’s currently tooled for bullying and murdering brown people for profit, not fighting a near peer nation and changing that system takes years.
It won’t change as long as cost + % and corruption continue, which they will. If the US finds itself in a war with China it’ll have entirely the wrong arm’s industry for fighting them and they won’t have the grace of 1939-1941 to scale their domestic arms industry prior to a major conflict… There’s also the fact that the US is heavily deindustrialized now too compared to WWII… China is closer to the industrial heavyweight the US once was in 1941-45, but they have technological sophistication and a knowledge economy now too…
Patriot interceptor missiles are a decent example of what I mean. They cost millions to produce and take forever to make which is by design. They could be made faster and cheaper but that’s less profit. If the arm’s industry in the US were paid a lump sum and not “pump your costs as high as possible to get the highest cost+% you can” things would be different.
The US military is a paper tiger, designed and optimize to funnel public funds to military shareholders pockets. and it’s extremely effective at only that.
When it comes to actual war, it is useless and ends up delegating actual war to mercenary groups.
This all doesn’t really matter in a war between nuclear powers. The US isn’t going to lose by itself.
I hate that I might be witness to the Great Filter, and finally have an answer to the Fermi Paradox