A few details to toss in for consideration.
-The real emergent threat lies in the recent diplomatic warming between Moscow & Beijing. Our two most intractable foes have apparently reached some sort agreement that removing/marginalizing/minimalizing USA pre-eminence on the world stage lies in their joint best interests, and is absolutely crucial to each furthering their own strategic ambitions. Beijing possesses an abysmally huge intelligence advantage over the USA, and demonstrated with SHADYRAT that they'd hung an ear everywhere they wanted one by 2011. While the USA can't even get assets placed for more than a few months in the mainland before they're identified and rounded up. Those fuckers are still somehow able to see DNI constellation personnel lists that should be restricted to Section chiefs or higher Moscow, if provided full access to that treasure trove could likely make very good use of it. The only sticking point between Xi and Putin seems to lay in Xi's desire to not kill the golden Goose the USA represents. While Putin has made it clear for over a decade that he absolutely wants to see the USA suffer the same fate he blames us for inflicting on the USSR. He's gone positively messianic on this point. May actually believe he was anointed by God to destroy us. To 'protect' the rest of the world from our "western corruption". If the thought of a zealot with a large nuclear fleet and a serious grudge to settle doesn't make your butt pucker, you need to check to see if you still have a pulse.
-if Beijing is willing to wait it out, they could absolutely impair the USA by cutting us off from rare earth access. China hit the terrestrially available rare earth jackpot. Sitting on 80% of the total terrestrially available supply of all of them, and sole access to three. Used in everything from our cell phones, to our advanced weapon platforms like the F-35. Infrastructure as-it-stands would be able to coast for about two years before we'd start feeling it from bits breaking we couldn't replace. By five years we'd have to downgrade large chunks of our national infrastructure to 1970's era technologies.
-Beijing is also seeking to mitigate our naval advantage by developing long range, land deployable torpedos.This would seem to be in an advanced stage of testing, and looks to be widely deployable within a matter of a few short years. Some satellite imagery even suggests they're incorporating the launch silos(tubes? Sleeves? Due to the fuzzing line between land & sea domains here, i'm not sure which proper nomenclature applies) into layouts of all those little islands they're scraping up out of the sea to dominate the SCS sealanes.
...All i have time for now.
-The real emergent threat lies in the recent diplomatic warming between Moscow & Beijing. Our two most intractable foes have apparently reached some sort agreement that removing/marginalizing/minimalizing USA pre-eminence on the world stage lies in their joint best interests, and is absolutely crucial to each furthering their own strategic ambitions. Beijing possesses an abysmally huge intelligence advantage over the USA, and demonstrated with SHADYRAT that they'd hung an ear everywhere they wanted one by 2011. While the USA can't even get assets placed for more than a few months in the mainland before they're identified and rounded up. Those fuckers are still somehow able to see DNI constellation personnel lists that should be restricted to Section chiefs or higher Moscow, if provided full access to that treasure trove could likely make very good use of it. The only sticking point between Xi and Putin seems to lay in Xi's desire to not kill the golden Goose the USA represents. While Putin has made it clear for over a decade that he absolutely wants to see the USA suffer the same fate he blames us for inflicting on the USSR. He's gone positively messianic on this point. May actually believe he was anointed by God to destroy us. To 'protect' the rest of the world from our "western corruption". If the thought of a zealot with a large nuclear fleet and a serious grudge to settle doesn't make your butt pucker, you need to check to see if you still have a pulse.
-if Beijing is willing to wait it out, they could absolutely impair the USA by cutting us off from rare earth access. China hit the terrestrially available rare earth jackpot. Sitting on 80% of the total terrestrially available supply of all of them, and sole access to three. Used in everything from our cell phones, to our advanced weapon platforms like the F-35. Infrastructure as-it-stands would be able to coast for about two years before we'd start feeling it from bits breaking we couldn't replace. By five years we'd have to downgrade large chunks of our national infrastructure to 1970's era technologies.
-Beijing is also seeking to mitigate our naval advantage by developing long range, land deployable torpedos.This would seem to be in an advanced stage of testing, and looks to be widely deployable within a matter of a few short years. Some satellite imagery even suggests they're incorporating the launch silos(tubes? Sleeves? Due to the fuzzing line between land & sea domains here, i'm not sure which proper nomenclature applies) into layouts of all those little islands they're scraping up out of the sea to dominate the SCS sealanes.
...All i have time for now.
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