this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2025
140 points (91.2% liked)

World News

51300 readers
2854 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

https://archive.is/bFJ0Q

A national security official under Joe Biden who reviewed the document is said to have turned pale on realising Beijing had “redundancy after redundancy” for “every trick we had up our sleeve”, The New York Times reported.

Last year, Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, said that “we lose every time” in the Pentagon’s war games against China, and predicted the Asian country’s hypersonic missiles could destroy aircraft carriers within minutes.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Well, it does make some sense that China's plan's to counter the US during an invasion of Taiwan would focus on nullifying America's main far-from-home force projection method, which has for decades been fighter planes and cruise missiles launched from naval assets 1000km plus off the coast of the target nation.

Since the US has been using the same overall strategy again and again for decades now, China would have had lots of time to develop counters for it, and it's not as if Chinese Engineering is any less than Western Engineering.

I mean, Russia too developed hypersonic missiles exactly to counter that very same American strategy. Now, Russia is well in range of lots of land-based assets of America's allies in Europe so it could be targeted by those, but that's not at all the case for China which America has to approach by sea, and that will be done with the usual Aircraft Carrier Group and hence that's exactly what China would have set itself up to counter.

[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago

Russia too developed hypersonic missiles exactly to counter that very same American strategy

IIRC the russians were buying hypersonic missiles from Iran

[–] Paddzr@lemmy.world -2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I don't like giving US credit... But all of that means nothing and is all speculative.

If US does one thing well? It's invent shit so advanced, even when captured it can't be reproduced. Russia has fallen flat on its face, where's all that military might? You want me to believe China is that different? I'm having major doubts there. Hopefully I'm never proven wrong. Hopefully we never find out. But this sort of shit was said before Ukraine invasion yet here we are...

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I suggest you read Sun Tzu's The Art Of War as well as the History of the Roman Empire.

This isn't about China or the US specifically, it's simply a mix of strategical thinking (nullifying an adversary's main advantage makes victory far more likely) and how nations at the specific stage of a nation's growth that the US and China are at spend money in their military - China is a large nation climbing towards Empire stage so their resources are increasing but they'll still parsimonious in their use (because that's exactly how nations climb up from poverty) hence it makes sense that as they have more resources to increase their military might they'll put a lot of them in things that give them the most bang for the buck (and that includes countering their main adversary's most relied-upon military strategy after the Vietnam war - the Carrier Group), whilst the US is at the late stage of Empire and already in decay, which means a fat, glutonous system of power used to lots and lots of wealth floating around and prone to grandiose projects both for the seeming prestige and because they're massive patronage operations and opportunities for corruption and taking a slice of the money sloshing around, and said waste in their military is allowed to happen because, due to their past successes and their size, they trully believe they're unbeatable.

This shit happens again and again in History - it's not even the exception, it's the rule: great empires get killed by the very elites in them becoming ever worse parasites and overconfidence in their might.

Things like the rise of a "Make America Great Again" movement spearheaded by a populist who himself is the ultimate rentier parasite is actually a pretty typical phenomenon of such a phase - again just go read the History of the Roman Empire.

[–] shawn1122@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The US became a military industrial complex state built upon military keynseianism during WW2. This worked well for them because of their unique advantages in the war, specifically being able to stay relatively disengaged while Europe burned, whilst also making immense profits selling weapons to the allies.

Essentially all of the European spoils of colonialism, the Atlantic slave trade and other economies of dispossession that made Europe rich went to the US as Europe self destructed. It was not unexpected either, the destruction of cultures, societies and peoples with a worldview of white supremacy was bound to bite back at them at some point (all conservative/purity politics eventually do).

There was also a massive brain drain with scientists escaping to the US for safety.

The US has managed to leverage that with 75 years of prominence as the global hegimon (some will argue it only became unipolar with the fall of the USSR) but that was never going to last forever. I wouldn't underestimate China. America, like all empires, has slowly become fat and lazy. China is hungry to reestablish itself.

Now, the US and NATO makes up up 80% of global military expenditure so they aren't going to just fade away but I would look at the US' massive bet on AGI as a negative sign. If they accomplish it then, good for them, that's probably another 50 to 100 years of US dominace but the approach reeks of desperation. China has had a much more measured and pragmatic approach to AI. If the bubble pops and the US takes too long to pick up the pieces, China will race ahead. China is already ahead on AI implementation in robotics which will have important military applications in the future as well.