US pulls last aircraft carrier in Asia as Trump focuses on Iran and the Western Hemisphere

China has attained WOPR technology!

Someone went on Hacker News today huh

It was. That's why Putin wanted him to be president.

The destruction of the US was always the goal.

Especially that dork who named his companies after Tolkien things and practically has almost all the world's cameras.

Troops who also quite likely would think the whole thing is an incredibly stupid farce, and that morale / commitment factor can't be ignored.

You can have tons of advanced tech, stockpiles of munitions, highly trained fighters, and still lose because they don't even know or care why they're there in the first place. History is full of examples.

Defenders are fighting for their homeland, invaders are often (not always) there because their babydink leaders wanna be in a history book.

Invasions and taking turf for national "interests" is just stupid strategy anymore, especially in a globally connected world, and troglodyte fossils like Dump and Pootin refuse to accept that reality.

Vietnam, Korea, The Middle East, all of it has been a tragic waste of human lives and a national embarrassment.

And somehow they keep getting to flavor it so the public will buy it, even while so many people personally know veterans that have been used up, maimed, and thrown out like garbage.

you should look up Iran on a topographic map some time, and see if you can find another example in history where the west (or russia for that matter) has failed to invade a country that is topographicaly similar, and much much smaller.

you simply don't have a clue of the logistics nightmare that would be providing for that number of soldiers, specially now that Iran has bombed most USA bases that used to be around them

That's a potential scenario in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. I think it's extremely unlikely for 2 major reasons:

1. China has very little incentive to invade Taiwan. At the current trend, China can just smother Taiwan instead. China has repeatedly demonstrated that they can impose a 100% naval blockade on Taiwan and nobody has a plan for how to break that blockade.

2. Even if China invaded Taiwan, somebody would have to actually do the act of blowing up all the Taiwanese chip plants. That would leave Taiwan without it's single biggest asset in a post invasion scenario. There's no reason to think it would reverse an invasion, it would just remove one of their biggest bargaining chip.

The question was why prices would go up after China had control of the chip factories. That's an entirely separate question from how many of the chip factories would survive.

But it's also crazy to think that China would invade with boots on the ground. They've shown repeatedly that they can enforce 100% naval blockades on a moments notice and keep it up as long as they like. They can literally go back to medieval tactics and win via siege. That keeps Chinese military assets and personnel safe while also preserving infrastructure.

You're absolutely right that it almost certainly wouldn't continue without a hitch. The blockade would stop all the raw material shipments and all the exports. Despite claims that Taiwan would blow up the factories themselves, I don't see why they would; once a takeover was underway blowing them up wouldn't serve as a deterrent but it would remove the ability to use them for negotiations.

China is the one superpower who isn't wasting their resources on a pointless war, and are investing heavily in infrastructure and their people, and their manufacturing base for EVERYTHING is unparalleled.

They are taking over the world without firing a shot. Why would they screw that up just to take a tiny island that is no more than a symbol. Let the Westerners think they have some sort of power over them, they know the real truth.

That's why he's playing his cards by deliberately not intervening publicly in the war in Ukraine, counting on chaos in the West all the while making most of the disillusionment among developing countries to align to China.

That a direct invasion of Taiwan would potentially destroy vital assets necessary for the Mainland's technological advancement.

I think everyone underestimates Taiwan. It's not a defenseless country.

Yes PRC has a massive army, but Taiwan is an island. The PRC military force on the island would be limited to how many they could send across the strait and maintain supply lines to. A large part of the island has cliffs for coastline, so there's a limited number of locations they could land. The landing operation would be a bigger operation than D-Day. The Germans didn't have much for radar and there was no satellite intel back then, and there were a lot more potential landing spots for D-Day. The Germans didn't know where the allies would make their landing. Taiwan on the other hand will be tracking those ships all the way across the strait, and they will know exactly where they'll be coming ashore.

And of course there's drones. Russia was supposed to take over Ukraine in a week (two weeks tops!) in their special operation. The US is supposed to be able to completely dominate Iran. But those damn drones are a real problem, aren't they? Where do you suppose Ukraine gets the chips from to control those drones? Taiwan likely has the designs Ukraine is using and they have drone production going completely on their island. Even if China were to completely blockade Taiwan, they could continue to produce drones endlessly. And those Ukrainian sea babies effectively neutralized the Russian Navy. Will the Chinese Navy fare better?

We can reasonably assume China is sharing tech with Russia to test on the battlefield against drone technology that Ukraine is likely sharing with Taiwan. Russia has to keep their navy far away from Ukraine to keep their ships safe from the drones. The US navy is keeping it's distance from Iran for similar reasons. If China has to keep its navy far from Taiwan to keep their ships safe from drones, an invasion of Taiwan just isn't going to work, is it?

China and Taiwan already do an enormous amount of trade. And some of Taiwan's biggest companies are heavily invested on the Chinese mainland.

Despite the DPP's fervent desires, that's not going to change. So now the only question is whether an isolationistv party can continue to hold a majority in a country with an increasingly China centric economy.