War should sicken everyone involved, with each soldier that comes home dead acting as a motivation to ask the question "Is this worth the cost?". If one side never has to ask that question, how do you slow the war machine?
Related, I'm currently not afraid of my government using the military against us any time soon. I think the morals of the soldiers would severely limit this. With a fleet of robots, it seems it would be much easier to suppress the people.
Everyone knows this is the future, and saw it coming, but wow, I naively thought it would take longer.
This might be a controversial take, but I grew up in a very rural community in the Midwest and military service was widely seen as a pathway to stability and to a degree, glory, for those that didn’t have the opportunity to pursue higher education. It’s essentially a massive job creator that we don’t really talk about as a massive job creator. It’s always framed with national security in mind.
We often talk about the human cost of war, but as I’ve gotten older and seen the never-ending military presence in the Middle East, I can’t help but wonder how much of that is driven by this political desire to provide these kinds of jobs to thousands of young men and women that don’t have many opportunities back home.
Of course, it’s not really talked about this way, but I remember first thinking about it watching Ken Burns Vietnam war series. It wasn’t the rich kids that died in that war either, it was the children of the working class.
Military is just as much of a domestic political tool as it is a force to shape geopolitics globally, and it’s deeply effective in communities that are reliant on military presence.
You know, you can also just pay them to build bridges to nowhere. Roads to connect those bridges. And then resorts and mountain getaways to connect those roads. And build mass housing for everyone. This would still be far cheaper than endless wars. And you at least get some useful infrastructure out of it.
I'm a fan of this idea. If we have these people employed by the government in a highly disciplined environment, why not give them something constructive to do?
Grew up lower class, and am now comfortably making 120k a year. Family and extended family is all still lower class. The military gave me structure, discipline, and then a GI bill. Only catch was to survive a deployment in 07. But yeah, my case is not unique, and most the people I served with are doing well now compared to where they would have been without it.
Being too lazy to research this myself, I wonder if the "survival rate" of someone in the military is higher than the rate in other jobs, like construction.
The military is not an especially dangerous occupation, especially because politicians tend to be sensitive to the resulting news reports of soldiers dying. The US military has 2-3 million people, and even with recent wars at peak I don't think the US lost more than ~1k people/year.
In other words, you're looking at a rate in the upper tens of people per 100,000 in an active war. According to https://stats.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-in..., that would probably put it in the top 5 (fishermen might still have a higher death rate than the military). In a more peaceful time, it's probably not going to hit the top 10.
Those numbers are insane! Are they really per year? Every year, one in a thousand loggers die? When using paper you often hear warning about saving the forest, but it seems there is a big blood toll as well.
Just quick stubby pencil work, probably a bit safer to be active duty at ~100 per 100k per year. Once you're out of the 15-24 age range, mortality rates start to elevate rapidly. Of course those all include military deaths, but the overall effect should be relatively low given the small percentage of active duty vs. rest of the country.
That's by design, poverty is the main supply creator for recruitment; and the trillion dollars spent on war benefits on both fronts the military complex, meaning it's money they get to use and it's money not spend on reducing poverty. In developed countries without a huge military (eg Norway, Japan) there are many better options to escape from poberty, and it's less prevalent amomg it's citizens.
There isn't necessarily a causal relationship. Norway was poor while being a neutral country with a tiny military, it's more the resource blessing than anything which helped. Similarly, I have huge doubts that wealth redistribution of eliminating military in the USA would end up with the poor.
Maybe, but I could also see the shift towards automating war as a profit incentive for the military industrial complex.
It’s very clear that the military has enjoyed decades of relatively lax financial oversight. IIRC, the military branches were ordered to become audit-compliant during the Obama admin and they never did. Every once in a while, some general would retire in disgrace after financial impropriety was discovered, but by and large, its been a massive cash-rich free-for-all for those with military contract connections.
I think this is just next evolution of the private military sector tbh.
> It’s essentially a massive job creator that we don’t really talk about as a massive job creator.
This is very accurate. Similarly, the TSA doesn't protect america from terrorists, it functions as a conservative-palpable socialist jobs program.
The obvious counterpoint is that the attraction for furthering Dick Cheney's imperialist wars abroad almost entirely vanishes if you don't need to kill foreigners to get free healthcare and education.
So sure it's a jobs program, it's a path to education, and it's a guarantor of healthcare (it actually isn't, the VA is a dumpster fire), it does all three things perfectly awfully.
The problem with war is that if your side doesn't develop its armies, the other side will. Today, that other side is China. For all the faults of the United States, of which there are many, i'd prefer it any day over the Chinese politburo.
But even if you are being sincere, and usually nobody using china as a boogeyman are, we aren't using our military to defend ourselves from a nonexistent chinese invasion. We used our military to kill iraqis, syrians, libyans, vietnamese, etc.
If chinese did 1/100th of what we did, hypocrites would be crying they were the most evil nation on earth.
We have nukes to deal with china. We don't have armies to deal with china. They've got 1.4 billion people.
Pretty much all our wars have been offensive wars of conquest/genocide/domination. But yeah, it's china that's the bad guy.
Can you think of the last defensive war we've fought? Even ww2 wasn't really a defensive war as we already attacked japan with sanctions.
Edit:
> China is not yet strong enough to do that outright with the west like it does within Asia and its maritime claims.
Within Asia? Are you saying it's china that has troops in korea, japan, etc? It isn't china that colonized philippines, indonesia, india, etc. Lets be honest here, asia isn't in need of liberation from china, it's in need of liberation from the west. Just think about it.
> With the west, it has taken on a different approach: infiltrate all levels of political, educational, and corporate institutions.
Is that why everyone has a good opinion of china? China has infiltrated everything, that's why we started a trade war with china? If anything, I could understand if you said israel or saudi arabia has infiltrated all levels. But certainly not china or russia.
When it comes to china, all I see is projection. Everything we are accusing china of doing, we are guilty of. We are the ones who invaded and brutalized asia ( including china, india, etc ). We are ones that invaded and occupied. And as best as I can tell, it's us who are meddling in chinese affairs and telling them what they should do or not do.
Edit1:
> I can't name another empire or superpower in human history that has shown more restraint.
Is this a joke? We wiped out an entire continent full of people. Dozens of native nations were exterminated. We dropped nukes on civilians. That's restraint? And we've been involved in wars in every corner of the earth. What amazing restraint.
For those hypocrites downvoting me, try replacing US with china for every historical act. 9/11 happens and china invades afghanistan and iraq murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. I bet every hypocrite downvoting would call them monsters.
I'm not gonna change your mind, but I personally am glad I live in an era (for now, at least) of American hegemony. I can't name another empire or superpower in human history that has shown more restraint. Obviously it has done some terrible stuff, but on the whole America has been uncommonly benevolent.
The Chinese government is putting ethnic minorities in camps. The American government did that too, in WWII... The difference is, it's a point of national shame.
> but on the whole America has been uncommonly benevolent.
I bet you'd feel a little different if you were born in Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria for that matter. Conflicts the US triggered have cost close to a million human lives since 2003. And honestly, a lot more can be said of the "Benevolent" superpower of yours.
> However, in March of that year, 15 Syrian schoolchildren were arrested and tortured for writing graffiti that was inspired by the Arab Spring. One of the boys was killed.
> The arrests sparked outrage and demonstrations throughout Syria. Citizens demanded the release of the remaining children, along with greater freedoms for all people in the country.
> But the government, headed by President Bashar al-Assad, responded by killing and arresting hundreds of protestors. Shock and anger began to spread throughout Syria, and many demanded that Assad resign. When he refused, war broke out between his supporters and his opponents.
> ISIL was founded by the Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi under the name Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in 1999 and gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive,[103] followed by its capture of Mosul[104] and the Sinjar massacre.
Apparently its founding purpose was actually to overthrow the Jordanian government for being insufficiently Islamic:
> Al-Zarqawi started JTJ with the intention of overthrowing the 'apostate' Kingdom of Jordan,[1] which he considered to be un-Islamic. After toppling Jordan's monarchy, presumably he would turn to the rest of the Levant.[1]
> For these purposes he developed numerous contacts and affiliates in several countries. His network may have been involved in the late 1999 plot to bomb the Millennium celebrations in the United States and Jordan.[12]
> The American government is putting ethnic minorities in camps right now too.
That's a false equivalence. While I do not endorse the treatment of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers at the US border, it's quite different from what the PRC currently doing, which is forced imprisonment and indoctrination of its own citizens.
And it's a national shame that contributed to the largest mandate in American presidential election history. I think people misunderstand my point. America is far, far from perfect. It's just that other empires have been far worse.
The Japanese Concentration Camps are not a point of national shame. Instead, they are a point of American pride.
Case in point: One of Trump’s goons, Carl Higbie, referred to the Japanese Concentration Camps as “precedent”. [1]
If this word came from some random racist prick, then nobody would bother paying him any attention. But instead, it came from one of Trump’s closest associates.
> The Chinese government is putting ethnic minorities in camps.
No. They are putting separatists/terrorists funded by the west in "camps". They aren't putting minorities in camps.
> The American government did that too, in WWII...
No. Our government exterminated our minorities. It's how a nation of 13 states became 50. Of course we became a nation of 13 states by genocide as well.
The idea of benevolence is laughable. Not only did we nuke japan, burn german cities to the ground, use biological weapons in korea, etc ( and these are our vassal, or allies ). Look at how we benevolently nuked japan. As I said, for everything we've "benevolently" done in history, switch that to china.
Invasion doesn't need to be with armies. China is not yet strong enough to do that outright with the west like it does within Asia and its maritime claims. With the west, it has taken on a different approach: infiltrate all levels of political, educational, and corporate institutions.
China is using its money to achieve world domination in such a vastly smarter way than the US (Belt and Road initiative, controlling natural resources) that I expect my children will be learning Chinese someday the way that Chinese kids had to learn English.
Well, I expect that China is building world domination for the benefit of the Chinese people, not the benefit of everyone who comes under their dominion, similar to the white men who built American world domination.
This is a false moral equivalence. The US was founded on the idea that "all men are created equal." The US has made terrible mistakes, such as not immediately banning slavery and not extending voting rights to women, and the US still has room to improve today. However, the founding ideas of the US provide a mandate and inspire people to work towards a more equal society. I would greatly prefer the US over China as the world hegemon.
I am Chinese-American, so if China were to displace the US as world hegemon and put Han people at the top of society, that would personally benefit me. However, I do not want that, as I support racial equality.
The revolutionary war started because we wanted to take more land from the natives and the king forbade that because he wanted good trade relations with the native peoples. That's it. Everything else is just propaganda.
> I am Chinese-American, so if China were to displace the US as world hegemon and put Han people at the top of society, that would personally benefit me.
China will never be world hegemon due to geographical, racial, historical, etc issues. China vs the US, Europe, Russia, Australia, Canada, etc isn't even a fair contest. Not to mention western aligned nations like india, japan, etc wouldn't allow china to be a hegemon. Also, how would it benefit you if the chinese government view you as a traitor?
> However, I do not want that, as I support racial equality.
If you equate hegemony with racial supremacy, why would you support US hegemony? How about "no hegemony"?
Don't you think the world would be better if the US didn't have to maintain a world empire? The world wouldn't have to worry about invasions and we can finally start investing in american infrastructure. When I see the amount of infrastructure china has built the last few decades ( heck just the last 10 years alone ), I have to say I'm a bit envious. Instead of sinking trillions in foreign wars, imagine all those trillions were invested in new railways, new airports, nuclear energy, green energy, reviving inner cities, etc.
and china is called "the people's republic", what US or China call themselves is irrelevant.
I am Chinese as well, I do not think Chinese has ambition for world domination, but I believe it deserves the right to develop and enjoy a living standard similar to the west.
I agree with you that people in China deserve a standard of living similar to the West. I also think that people in China deserve to have more freedoms and a representative government, as opposed to a closed one-party bureaucracy. Historically, the West opened up to China as China economically liberalized, in the hopes that China would also grant more freedoms to its people. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Now, China is also trying to expand its territory. I fear that Chinese hegemonic status will have negative consequences for other Asian peoples. I hope that one day, people in China may enjoy their right to a liberal democracy.
Well how do you define a representative government? is election the only method of creating a representative government?
Any Chinese can take up posts with in the government. Instead of worrying about what the color of the ties to wear because it polls better for a target group, chinese officials are given a KPI like deliverable to complete and that's how you rise through the ranks. Sorta like any modern private company.
I'm aware there are pros and cons to both models but so far i think the chinese government is doing the right things to develop economically.
Yes, as long as you're Han chinese, you have the opportunity. What he means by representative govt is other ethnic groups having the same say. If not, then be prepared to fight many wars.
That is simply not true. Ethnic minorities in china get preferential treatments when it comes to college admission, job placement, they are also exempted from the one child policy. Of course you wouldn't know that because that doesn't fit the western narrative of chinese oppression of minorities
Not the person you were replying to, but I am aware of the college affirmative action for minorities and the exemptions to the one-child policy. From what I understand, the current trend is that such policies are being rolled back as the Chinese government begins to force the assimilation of minorities more heavily.
(In case this is on your mind: As for college discrimination against Asians in America, although many people conflate this issue with affirmative action, it is actually separate. One must make the distinction between pro-minority affirmative action and Asian penalization relative to the white majority. Asian-American penalization relative to white Americans is morally comparable to the historical Jewish quota, and the justification that affirmative action corrects for historical injustices absolutely does not justify anti-Asian discrimination. Nevertheless, I am also against pro-minority affirmative action because it is illiberal, but it is orthogonal to Asian-American rights.)
A lot of the discussion of China revolves around treatment of minorities. I would also like to draw attention to oppression of the Han majority. One example is that the Chinese government blocks websites, even for trivial or oversensitive reasons. (China recently blocked https://scratch.mit.edu, the children's website where I was introduced to programming...) Another example is that the Chinese government performed forced abortions to enforce the one-child policy. Now in America, there is a complicated political debate over the morality of abortion that involves issues of fetus rights, personhood, and choice. However, it seems to me that whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, the one-child policy, which involves abortions that are not up to choice, is profoundly immoral.
I believe that all human beings are endowed with certain unalienable rights, including the right to freedom to voice opinions without government censorship and the right to partake in democracy (whether that be a direct democracy, a republic, or another form of democracy). Everyone in the world inherently possesses these rights, regardless of whether their government recognizes them. I wish for the government of China to recognize these rights, because human rights are Chinese rights.
I'm not a political theorist but the Chinese government is out-competing the US government by leaps and bounds. The current President is busy whining that he won while the Chinese are building probably 100 railroads at the same time.
I didn't realize this when I wrote my earlier comment, but something that I found disturbing was that you seemed okay with the prospect of your own children being discriminated against, since you merely "expect that China is building world domination for the benefit of the Chinese people." I certainly don't want my future children to be discriminated against. Why do you think that a future where your progeny are second-class citizens is a morally acceptable one?
Even if we suppose that America and China are morally equivalent (which I strongly disagree with), just out of the self-interest of yourself and your family, why would you prefer China over America?
I do not believe that it's "morally acceptable." I believe that it is where the world is going. America is fracturing itself while China just keeps executing. Our bridges and electrical grid and transit systems rot into oblivion while people riot in the streets against their political opponents. While China is building up its hard power, soft power, and economic force projection with the Belt and Road initiative.
Was a incalculably powerful US that toppled democratically elected regimes in Latin America/Iran/etc. a morally acceptable one? No but that's what it is and all you other fucks had to learn English to get some of our money. Now the shoe is on the other foot and we are the fucks who will need to learn Chinese. Serves us right but I still ain't happy about it.
> Historically, the West opened up to China as China economically liberalized
We "opened up" china by war. Opium wars? Boxer rebellion? I'm not chinese and I seem to know your history more than you. Why is that? And china opened up their economy as a result of threat of nuclear war by the soviets and the west.
> in the hopes that China would also grant more freedoms to its people.
This is just propaganda. Since when did we care about freedom for chinese people? Did we invade hong kong while the british ruled it to give freedom to them? Heck, for most of the 20th century, chinese people like you were banned from even coming to the US. The only nationality to specifically be banned for immigration to the US was your people.
> Now, China is also trying to expand its territory.
You mean take back its territory right? What non-chinese territory is china expanding to?
> I fear that Chinese hegemonic status will have negative consequences for other Asian peoples.
More propaganda.
> I hope that one day, people in China may enjoy their right to a liberal democracy.
More standard propaganda.
> people in China may enjoy their right to a liberal democracy.
The founders hated the idea of liberal democracy. It's why the US is not a liberal democracy but a constitutional republic. You seem to be very keen on what the US was founded for. It wasn't for equality and it certainly wasn't for liberal democracy.
It's hard to take you seriously when you claim to be chinese and you spout anti-chinese propaganda. Not just in this comment but your other comments - "false moral equivalence", "US was founded on the idea of all men are created equal", etc. It would be like an iraqi claiming that the US invaded iraq to bring freedom. You sound exactly like gordon chang except I don't think he's aspiring to be a hacker. And for an aspiring hacker you sure seem down on your state propaganda.
Xinjian, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Taiwan are all non-chinese territories. china is also claiming maritime rights into neighboring territories that don't belong to them.
So does every country, but not at whatever cost, i.e. it does NOT deserve the "right" to systematically commit racism or genocides against people who are not Han simply because they are in the way.
When they wrote "all men are created equal," they had black slaves. Why do you take their words at face value?
It's possible to have this conversation without framing it as some sort of binary choice between xi jinping's happy social currency reeducation camp club, and white america's causally racist military industrial imperialism. Imo you can't love your country without always seeking to improve it.
My comment doesn't contradict anything that you're saying. I pointed out that America has made many grave mistakes, such as slavery, and that we can still improve America today. The words of the Declaration of Independence are an inspiration and mandate to work towards the goal of equality.
Our founding fathers were certainly hypocrites and flawed men, but that doesn't invalidate the truth of their words.
China for all of their 5000 years of existence as a civilization, has never invaded a distant country. They have never brought wars, death, destruction, slavery, genocide, and concentration camps to those distant lands.
Yes, they expanded along their periphery, which is how they got to their size today.
But even when they had boats, they visited as far away as Africa, and traded with them, instead of enslaving them.
However, in contrast, let’s list all the countries that have enslaved foreign lands.
Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, United States, Netherlands, Australia. Yes, you guessed it. All these are European countries that have brought an untold number of deaths and destruction to the lands that they visited.
But of course, you are free to turn a blind eye to all their injustices that they have done in the past.
If you're going to count the United States as having "enslaved foreign lands", you'll have to include the Chinese domination of Korea, Mongolia, Manchuria, Tibet, and the Tarim Basin at various points in history, since those are ethnically non-Chinese areas that were ruled by China at different points in history.
China also established a pretty extensive tributary system in the past, requiring a variety of local states to pay tribute every few years. This is really venturing far from my knowledge of history, but I believe this system would have included much of modern central Asia (the -stans), and all of East and Southeast Asia, through much of the Indonesian islands.
You made a mistake. Mongolia invaded China. And they succeeded, back in the 1200s.
Then the Manchurians invaded China, and they also succeeded, back in the 1600s.
The key distinction here, is that the Mongolians and the Manchurians invaded China, and succeeded, only at their own peril, where they essentially subsumed themselves and their culture into the mainstream Chinese culture.
China for all of their 5000 years of existence as a civilization, has never invaded a distant country.
I like how you inserted "distant" in there as if it matters.
Even in just recent history, China has:
- Invaded Vietnam, purely for political reasons as they were stymieing China's aspirations in SE Asia, Cambodia in particular
- They provided military support to North Vietnam as a way to increase their sphere of influence and offset the USSR in SE Asia
- They are currently expropriating land and sea for economic purposes that although justified in their own public statements, I'm not sure even they believe
Honest question for those in the know: at what point in history did non-adjacent invasions become feasible and beneficial? I'd imagine if a country ever had a large army and a desire for more land, they would choose neighbors just because of how much simpler it'd be to fight and rule after conquering.
This is a strange thing to say. Are you implying for example that every German must bear the sins of Hitler? An offshoot of Chinese governance exists as quite possibly one of the most egalitarian democracies on earth right now in Taiwan, how can you paint such a wide brush of entire nations as if you're describing single individuals?
The last time the US was involved in anything resembling actual warfare was Vietnam. I can say this as somebody who has been in the Army for 23 years and deployed 5 times. The risk of traditional warfare is astonishing low because the costs are too high and the superior modern force moves too fast. You have to keep in mind 10x more people have died in the Mexican drug conflict than all the years the US had been in Afghanistan.
Those things said I find it strange that anytime somebody mentions investment in revision of military tactics or technology somebody cries about some unrelated moral ambiguity from some value vacuum.
> The last time the US was involved in anything resembling actual warfare was Vietnam.
I'd count the First Gulf War as the last conventional war the US was involved in, although the Iraqi army did not prove up to the task of actually fighting a modern army. If you consider wars the US hasn't fought in, Russia's invasion of Georgia is probably the last conventional war, although again, it was pretty one-sided.
I was in the Army for 7 years and deployed 3 times. What does "actual warfare" look like? If what I experienced wasn't war, what is? You are minimizing the sacrifices that we and our combatants have made which is, quite frankly, disgusting.
The risks related to traditional warfare are incredibly high, not low, and risk will continue to grow as technology becomes the strongest variable in military dominance and success. Simply put, from now and well into the future, lethality will become greater. We can kill faster and with greater accuracy than we ever could in the past. Our capacity to kill is there -- just restrained.
The situation in Mexico [and further south for that matter] is dire and probably incredibly similar to that of Afghanistan after the Russians left. The cartels are the law. There is no effective form of government in Mexico.
I suppose it is drawing a distinction between warfare (strategic engagement) versus combat (tactical hostilities). For example Mogadishu was a battle not a war.
Huh. Not my son's experience. He did convoy duty. Three times they encountered bombs causing death and dismemberment. Mortar attacks on their camp were a daily occurrence. His turret on the vehicle he was gunner for resounded with the pings of small-arm fire.
Twice he survived mortar attacks - one exploded on the wall behind the staff during morning assembly in the yard. Another crashed through the roof on the other side of the wall when he was in the phone room talking to his Mom.
It took years for him to finish surgeries and physical therapy at the VA. His college degree took extra years to complete because of it.
That 10x figure doesn't sound right to me. Between the Taliban and government forces, Wikipedia says there were over 130,000 killed. Have over a million Mexicans died in the drug war?
Otherwise, (as I assume) you are comparing foreigners killed in Afghanistan to Mexicans killed in Mexico, which doesn't seem like a fair comparison.
Technically, Afghanistan has been in a continuous state of warfare since 1979 the most bloody of which were the civil wars of armed militias around Kabul in the early 90s although the Soviet invasion was pretty unconcerned with collateral damage. The Taliban eliminated that and arguably saved many lives in the process. In the broadest since the entirety of the Afghanistan conflicts easily stretches into millions dead, but I was only speaking to the US conflict.
While it is usually the assumption that only one side has access to some kind of groundbreaking technology in these dystopian futures, that is rarely the reality in actual conflicts. Consider the Arab Spring, largely held with cellphones most of us would consider heavily outdated. Citizens were still able to communicate and plan protests against the will of their governments despite the fact that their governments obviously had the capital and resources to invest in better technology than existed in consumer hands at the time.
In a civilized world, the only thing stopping rapid equalization of technology in peoples' hands is intellectual property law, preventing thousands of copycat companies from ripping off the new iPhones until the price is so violently driven into the ground that you can find them at dollar stores. In a world at war, IP laws don't apply, and the only thing stopping the "other side" from standing up their own robot army is the will to invest in and support that technology. We may consider it to be secret government technology now, but all you need is one hardware hacker with some JTAG wires and one disabled unit for all of their secrets to spill out onto the open Web.
The Arab Spring was mostly a failure, and then up against some very weak an ill-funded regimes.
'The people' are never going to gain access to networks of information systems, complicated weapons, training / support etc..
You can overthrow a weak government by getting a lot of people on board, some of them with AKs, but not much otherwise.
And it's not 'IP laws' that stop China from building the same weapons as the US it's 'trade secrecy' - my gosh Boeing doesn't just 'patent and make public' their tech, they keep it very secret. Also - there's tremendous 'know how' in there, all the unspoken stuff, skill, knowledge that isn't very well summarized in any kind of document.
China in 2020 is still having a hard time making it's own 5th gen jet engines, having to buy from Russia, though that may change.
> 'The people' are never going to gain access to networks of information systems, complicated weapons, training / support etc..
Who make up those networks if not people? Turncoats decide the fate of battles for a reason. The government cracks down hard on people like Snowden for a reason. These networks are only as secure as the weakest, and least loyal, link.
> my gosh Boeing doesn't just 'patent and make public' their tech, they keep it very secret.
How secret can you keep an aircraft once it gets shot down? The Russians reverse engineered the B-29 [1] , the Americans reverse engineered the Hind [2], the Chinese reverse engineered the F-22 [3], in part using wreckage from an F-117:
"On 27 March 1999, one of the US Air Force’s stealth bombers was shot down in the NATO raid of Yugoslavia during Operation Noble Anvil.
The wreckage was sent to China to study the stealth phenomenon except for the cockpit, which remains in a Belgrade museum."
> Also - there's tremendous 'know how' in there, all the unspoken stuff, skill, knowledge that isn't very well summarized in any kind of document.
Of course! It would take time to unravel this "know how" and get it documented. But the clues are there if you can afford to look. Almost every proprietary system can be documented and clean-room-reverse-engineered if you dedicate enough resources to it. Could a people's army do this? Maybe not, but it's not impossible either.
> China in 2020 is still having a hard time making it's own 5th gen jet engines, having to buy from Russia, though that may change.
I can guarantee you this project would advance much quicker if we were actually at a state of war, rather than peace with heightened tensions. These engines are not the end-all-be-all when compared to all their other priorities, but they could become a priority if war breaks out (obviously I hope it never does). When they do become a priority, history is on their side in terms of insurmountable odds beaten by skilled teams (see Manhattan Project, Have Blue, etc.)
??? Nobody in the Middle East is going to get to 'form' or 'control' their own Military Industrial Complex.
They may be able to 'assemble a crude drone' but they are not going to be 'creating their own GPS system' and 'air force' with 'global drones' and 'hyper guided weapons'.
"How secret can you keep an aircraft once it gets shot down?"
You can't but what's your point?
How many F22's shot down? F35s? Heck F18s?
If the Russians captured an intact F22 it would take them 15 years to copy it. There's an incredible about of know-how and knowledge in those sytstems.
And what are 'People on the Arab Street' going to do with an F22? Absolutely nothing.
And yes, the Chinese are 'very aggressively' pursuing their own Engine technology, they have been for 20 years.
There are literally only like 4 countries in the world that con produce modern, 5th Gen fighter engines - let alone the 'rest of the jet' which gives you an idea of how far away the 'Arab Street' is to doing anything with tech.
They are fighting with sticks and stones. If there are a million bodies there, they can have power, but aside from that, the only hope is political terror within their own borders against dysfunctional regimes.
> I think the morals of the soldiers would severely limit this.
You should read War & Peace, or any number of other legendary books about war written since the 19th century to learn how quickly millennia of military training has conditioned young soldiers to turn morality off when it is required of them.
I feel one of the domestic risks here is the combination of robots & less than lethal weapons.
For a gov to take the step of gunning down crowds is significant with backlash. And while I dont doubt countries could head this way I think for the west its much easier for governments to deploy robots that use any of the less than lethal tech and keep enough of the population on side while they deal with those <insert politics you dont like> trouble makers. And this could be the start of a very slippery slope.
I really think this is going to be one of humankinds great challenges: 1) tech where few can increasingly control many + 2) Advanced nations ability to conduct war with limited human cost on their side.
> 1) tech where few can increasingly control many
> 2) Advanced nations ability to conduct war with limited human cost on their side.
Indeed. Moreover anti-war protests often are conducted on a "don't get our children killed in your war" stance, therefore 2) will considerably reduce them. See squarefoot's comment above.
1) will be useful against protests at home, and also (to some extent) to control the population of an occupied country.
Or the hundreds of civilians killed, raped, etc for every soldier killed. The biggest victims of war are the civilians. In ww2, vietnam, iraq wars, etc, the civilians accounted for the vast majority of the casualties, not the soldiers.
> how do you slow the war machine?
You can't. The elites who control the war machine control the propaganda in every country. Once they want war, the entire propaganda apparatus beats the war drums and anyone in their way gets steamrolled. Ask the dixie chicks, phil donahue, etc. Remember freedom fries? Go look at how quickly germany turned from being the heart of european civilization to nazi germany.
> I think the morals of the soldiers would severely limit this.
Has nothing to do with morals. Is it moral to go to another country and kill people? If you are labelled "enemy of the state" ( a great movie btw ), then you are fair game.
> Everyone knows this is the future, and saw it coming, but wow, I naively thought it would take longer.
It's not the robots that are worrisome. It's the concentration of money and power.
Mercenaries already exist, and the mercenary leaders hold political power. I don't think robots change the picture significantly.
When you say the morals of the soldiers, maybe you mean racism of the soldiers? American soldiers are more than happy to act immorally, and it's not like suppressing and torturing foreigners is very different to home. You can look to Portland for supposedly moral people suppressing locals
Is it worth the cost? Literally, yes. The United States having the world’s most powerful and expansive military is what makes it the best place to invest your money and keep your stuff. I keep all my stuff in the United States, don’t know about you.
> The United States having the world’s most powerful and expansive military is what makes it the best place to invest your money and keep your stuff.
This needs a stronger argument.
Russia, North Korea, and Turkey have very powerful militaries, yet are much less safe for investment than various comparatively weak small European countries.
A country being a good climate for business seems to have more to do with a lot of factors other than military strength.
> yet are much less safe for investment than various comparatively weak small European countries.
That is because those weak small European countries’ security is guaranteed by the United States and its allies.
Ultimately, force underlies prosperity and stability. Right now the United States maintains the greatest ability to apply force and subsidizes the security and guarantees the security of Europe.
Related, I'm currently not afraid of my government using the military against us any time soon. I think the morals of the soldiers would severely limit this. With a fleet of robots, it seems it would be much easier to suppress the people.
Everyone knows this is the future, and saw it coming, but wow, I naively thought it would take longer.