The hourglass is an interesting frame. Indeed, America is a tellurocracy with a thalassocracy attached - Rome, married to Carthage. The latter relies upon the former for its base of operations, and is very much in the ascendant; as always the maritime trade empire is much wealthier (on paper) than the land empire. Yet for all that wealth its influence over the land empire is extremely limited.
Another factor: sabotage. A modern, high tech military has an incredibly long logistics tail, with a ridiculous number of points of failure, each of which is capable of crippling the great, lumbering machine. A military comprised of resentful conscripts would be fertile ground for saboteurs, who would be spoiled for choice.
Another factor, related to enforcement: how are draft dodgers and deserters to be handled? Imprisonment? Now we need guards, and potentially quite a few of them. Execution? Likely to inflame things further. Fines? Well sure but that doesn't work so well when the populace is already immiserated.
One note on Taiwan: my impression is that onshoring the island's chipfabs is difficult to accomplish on a short time frame. Decades of deindustrialization means that America has lost much of the know-how. Spooling back up will take a long time. Similar manufacturing problems afflict the rest of the American economy. This is mostly a problem for the maritime empire: replacing ships and aircraft lost in battle is not so easily done anymore, meaning that a naval war with a manufacturing power like China would probably see the balance of naval power shift quite rapidly.
On natural resources, indeed China has extended supply lines in this respect, but Russia has almost everything China needs and the US can't do much about those trade routes. China also has a lock on rare earths. No question the US could shut down the maritime trade routes overnight, but the US is largely dependent on Chinese manufacturing so that's a double edged sword.
Rail transport is plenty efficient. That doesn't change the conclusion that the US can't do much about it.
How China got a lock on the REs isn't relevant to the fact that they have that lock. Now, the US could try to simply take them by force. Most likely short term result would be a general shortage, meaning fewer electronics, meaning supply chain issues for the military. But that would affect China too.
Rail transport is still multiples more costly than sea transport, and it can takes years to decades to build...
Considering you'd be tapping into the Trans siberian network... which is already kinda stretched physically and with regards to capacity, and that China may or may not operate on the same Rail Guage as russia... This becomes very costly very fast.
Whereas maritime trade you just let the worlds ships show up.
China probably wouldn't collapse and starve, but we'd be talking about double digit hits to GDP, and permanent weight on growth that would kill most of it's great power prospects.
Maritime trade is much less robust to interdiction than land trade. Ships are so slow that they can be hit with long range missiles spotted by satellite. You are not going to hit a train travelling at 200km/h with a ballistic missile.
All it takes for China to make the Pacific a no-go zone for US ships, or any ships, is to simply mass produce long range missiles. An ICBM cost $10M, a ship + cargo is easily $200M+, this is an easy exchange.
It is also not clear how the US can enforce a blockade against China selectively if China can simply conduct saturation attacks against US surface ships with land based missiles.
The only possible course is unrestricted submarine warfare, which simply blockades everyone in East Asia.
> Except transport by land is much much less efficient that transport by water.
This is true only if you can secure the maritime LOC. Land transport is more robust than maritime transport when your LOC is susceptible to interdiction.
The US was able to shut down Japanese supply to its island bases in the Pacific during WWII, but even with much greater air power, was not able to do the same against Communist troops in the Korean War. Land supply lines are far more robust in a shooting war than maritime ones.
1. the Pentagon can probably build a large enough army by drafting illegal immigrants in exchange for citizenship after x amount of years. This has its own problems, but I think it would work.
2. AI will probably do most of the heavy lifting of surveillance in the future and probably way better than thousands of agents, so yes, I think they hear and know everything we say online or on phone etc... at least from the point of view of being able to separate the relevant from the irrelevant.
There are already programs for citizenship for recruits, and these are heavily used. Þey are not meeting goals because illicit immigrants make more income off of welfare programs than Þey would as an E-1.
At the moment my impression is that AI is largely used to flag conversations of interest. Certainly everything we do and say is recorded, but combing through that mountain of data requires a thick algorithmic interface. Enforcement is still labor intensive, though.
The enforcement theory is to broadcast the Fed's wins to discourage others. Even if they only kill one Chris Dorner they can parade his charred head around on a stick across every US household simultaneously via technology. That's why Gestapo numbers are so low, it's about scaring people into compliance not actual enforcement. Clinton's operation wetback sent more Mexicans back via fear than it did actual arrests.
In addition there are hordes of NPCs salivating at the chance to hurt their neighbor, as we saw with covid mask snitches. Tell the guy watching Rachel Maddow they have license to rape, steal from, beat and kill 'evil anti-drafters' and you'll have a mob overnight.
What is the solution for this? It's simply going to be falling through the cracks as they show up. Letting blacks off because of the internal contradictions of the sorcery 'das raciss' creates one. Illegal immigration another, homeless encampments another, Mormon loopholes another and so on. These will increase in number til the point where there's more people outside the zoo cage than inside. It will almost be a voluntary choice to be a US slave. At least I think so.
Yes, that's what I meant by separating relevant from irrelevant, but AI will improve A LOT if the last couple of years are anything to go by. Also, if the "conversations" are stored, you can always go back and sift through them (though the amount of data will be quite literally "astronomical")
Exactly. It's why I tend to feel people should be relatively uninhibited in online speech. The bastards need to see in their models that if they push too far it will become bloody.
The utility is having a trove of information you didnt need a subpoena for. You can preemptively build a case. Trials are NOT about seeking truth, they are about building a circumstantial case and getting a conviction.
On point 1 - I've watched a lot of Ukraine war drone camera footage over the last 20 months. It's clearly been a hostile environment for infantry from day one, but over the last 3-4 months I've seen an exponential increase in quantity and quality of a specific anti-infantry tactic. Both sides (though I suspect Russians have really worked it out) are using quadcopters to spot for FPV racing drones that fly into trenches, bunkers and such.
I saw one where 3 guys enter the bunker, and the spotter notices a straggler, so the fpv held up and waited until he went inside, then boom. No where is safe now.
No reason the Taliban or the Somalis or whoever can't adopt this now against the Empire. And if this isn't clear to everyone now, it will be soon. Barring some major advances in defensive measures, it's really obvious that being an infantryman even in low intensity counterinsurgency wars just got a whole lot more dangerous than it was a year ago. Wait 3 years where you have swarms of killers controlled by an AI-enabled spotter.
I think this makes service for citizenship or whatever a less viable thing to rely on than it might otherwise be. Everyone will catch on that it's 10x or 20x or whatever more dangerous to fight even in the sandbox (much less Taiwan) than it used to be.
Start drafting the leftist, purple haired, inked, metal nose furniture feminist women and see what chaos that brings. They demand more than equal rights to slime our humanity, so let it be so. Let them die for what they believe in. It will be considered a mass post term non-binary abortion project. Planned Parenthood will endorse it and it will be good. Your carbon footprint has been reduced. Thank you for your support. Build back better. The air will be cleaner without your stench.
The draft wouldn't work because America's warrior caste hates the regime. Take it from someone who knows: the combat arms soldiers of the American Empire joined for the violence and adventure. They hate the regime just as much as any of us, and they'd jump at the chance for some of that military adventurism right here at home...
Here is a problem the Regime might not have considered. What happens if there is a war and through sheer necessity and attrition more competent men rise into positions of leadership? Wouldn't that be crazy? I mean who has ever heard of any fallout in history from a battle hardened expeditionary force that wanted to have a little chat with domestic leadership about how certain issues were handled? What if they even had inflamed political differences between them?
They sold us out and pissed away our blood and trust.
They’re justly afraid.
Here’s what worries them; the service is 80% generational - from the same families. The same families often law enforcement, and cross over into higher levels of law enforcement and yes the IC. Also Firefighters etc, we’re all as connected as the NYFD and NYPD (who also serve in the military) they are more typical of the nation than realized.
They’ve lost us. BYE.
They’re alone, guilty as Hell of every crime and sin known to Hell, and their delusions are collapsing.
I offer an alt-timeline vis a vis Taiwan. First off any war will be short and China will 'win'. Not a real win but they take it over. Here is the catch that wraps it up nicely.
Taiwan has ~20 extremely large landing craft. Now that many craft would be wholly inadequate to invade mainland China. But I propose they are for an entirely different purpose -- evacuation. Use of these craft would be used to move key pols, business and tech personnel off the island. Once off, by agreement with the US low level nukes just level the place.
Its a gruesome thought but it would make for a Pyrrhic victory for China proper. Considering that fab plant construction is going at break neck speed in the US makes one wonder if this might be a war plan.
Great read. Interesting thoughts. I will say that it no longer takes humans to do surveillance. It’s not a right wing conspiracy that texts and emails are forever and key words are scanned electronically and spit out to human analysts. Also Jan 6th was hardly a riot let alone an insurrection. Yet dozens of people have been sentenced to 20 years in prison for crimes that haven’t been enforced in a half century. Which shows us how paranoid the Feds are of the people. Well done sir.
It all makes sense if you assume mass death of conscripted slaves was a feature not a bug. The oligarchy know what tech is in the pipeline (general AI and automation) and what jobs it threatens (all of them) and want to dispose of all the economically redundant unemployed-and-unemployable former working classes before we face a binary choice between starving and violently revolting to take their wealth?
I'm old but missed the Vietnam draft by 3 years. Any attempt at a draft would see resistance that would make the anti war movement of the 60s-70s pale in comparison
Do so enjoy reading your work. As a peaceful activist committed to self defense and the ideals of our founders, I find hope in the strength and good sense of my brothers and sisters.
I am so happy to see people are really starting to read and think about what you said. Your articles are the type of deeply disturbing thought pieces that I really enjoy reading. Keep that brain working.
I don't have faith in the American people. They didn't react when loved ones died via Cuomo nursing home directives, forced ventilators, remdesivir and the vax. They stayed in, masked up, went bankrupt. Only Soro$ funded mobs got rowdy.
The hourglass is an interesting frame. Indeed, America is a tellurocracy with a thalassocracy attached - Rome, married to Carthage. The latter relies upon the former for its base of operations, and is very much in the ascendant; as always the maritime trade empire is much wealthier (on paper) than the land empire. Yet for all that wealth its influence over the land empire is extremely limited.
Another factor: sabotage. A modern, high tech military has an incredibly long logistics tail, with a ridiculous number of points of failure, each of which is capable of crippling the great, lumbering machine. A military comprised of resentful conscripts would be fertile ground for saboteurs, who would be spoiled for choice.
Another factor, related to enforcement: how are draft dodgers and deserters to be handled? Imprisonment? Now we need guards, and potentially quite a few of them. Execution? Likely to inflame things further. Fines? Well sure but that doesn't work so well when the populace is already immiserated.
One note on Taiwan: my impression is that onshoring the island's chipfabs is difficult to accomplish on a short time frame. Decades of deindustrialization means that America has lost much of the know-how. Spooling back up will take a long time. Similar manufacturing problems afflict the rest of the American economy. This is mostly a problem for the maritime empire: replacing ships and aircraft lost in battle is not so easily done anymore, meaning that a naval war with a manufacturing power like China would probably see the balance of naval power shift quite rapidly.
On natural resources, indeed China has extended supply lines in this respect, but Russia has almost everything China needs and the US can't do much about those trade routes. China also has a lock on rare earths. No question the US could shut down the maritime trade routes overnight, but the US is largely dependent on Chinese manufacturing so that's a double edged sword.
> Russia has almost everything China needs and the US can't do much about those trade routes.
Except transport by land is much much less efficient that transport by water.
> China also has a lock on rare earths.
Only because they bribed the husband of a certain US senator to get the US to shut down its own mines.
Rail transport is plenty efficient. That doesn't change the conclusion that the US can't do much about it.
How China got a lock on the REs isn't relevant to the fact that they have that lock. Now, the US could try to simply take them by force. Most likely short term result would be a general shortage, meaning fewer electronics, meaning supply chain issues for the military. But that would affect China too.
Rail transport is still multiples more costly than sea transport, and it can takes years to decades to build...
Considering you'd be tapping into the Trans siberian network... which is already kinda stretched physically and with regards to capacity, and that China may or may not operate on the same Rail Guage as russia... This becomes very costly very fast.
Whereas maritime trade you just let the worlds ships show up.
China probably wouldn't collapse and starve, but we'd be talking about double digit hits to GDP, and permanent weight on growth that would kill most of it's great power prospects.
Sure. Main point though is that when Russia is considered, China has all the resources it needs.
Maritime trade is much less robust to interdiction than land trade. Ships are so slow that they can be hit with long range missiles spotted by satellite. You are not going to hit a train travelling at 200km/h with a ballistic missile.
All it takes for China to make the Pacific a no-go zone for US ships, or any ships, is to simply mass produce long range missiles. An ICBM cost $10M, a ship + cargo is easily $200M+, this is an easy exchange.
It is also not clear how the US can enforce a blockade against China selectively if China can simply conduct saturation attacks against US surface ships with land based missiles.
The only possible course is unrestricted submarine warfare, which simply blockades everyone in East Asia.
> How China got a lock on the REs isn't relevant to the fact that they have that lock.
The US could easily reopen its mines.
That would be bad for the environment though. If we were talking about a rational empire we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.
Depends on how much people care about winning.
Which war did the neocons win again?
> Except transport by land is much much less efficient that transport by water.
This is true only if you can secure the maritime LOC. Land transport is more robust than maritime transport when your LOC is susceptible to interdiction.
The US was able to shut down Japanese supply to its island bases in the Pacific during WWII, but even with much greater air power, was not able to do the same against Communist troops in the Korean War. Land supply lines are far more robust in a shooting war than maritime ones.
I'll take issue with some of your arguments:
1. the Pentagon can probably build a large enough army by drafting illegal immigrants in exchange for citizenship after x amount of years. This has its own problems, but I think it would work.
2. AI will probably do most of the heavy lifting of surveillance in the future and probably way better than thousands of agents, so yes, I think they hear and know everything we say online or on phone etc... at least from the point of view of being able to separate the relevant from the irrelevant.
There are already programs for citizenship for recruits, and these are heavily used. Þey are not meeting goals because illicit immigrants make more income off of welfare programs than Þey would as an E-1.
Points for casual use of thorn.
You’ll see lots of thorn, ash, and long s when reading things from me. English letters need more love.
I've been saying Þis for years.
At the moment my impression is that AI is largely used to flag conversations of interest. Certainly everything we do and say is recorded, but combing through that mountain of data requires a thick algorithmic interface. Enforcement is still labor intensive, though.
The enforcement theory is to broadcast the Fed's wins to discourage others. Even if they only kill one Chris Dorner they can parade his charred head around on a stick across every US household simultaneously via technology. That's why Gestapo numbers are so low, it's about scaring people into compliance not actual enforcement. Clinton's operation wetback sent more Mexicans back via fear than it did actual arrests.
In addition there are hordes of NPCs salivating at the chance to hurt their neighbor, as we saw with covid mask snitches. Tell the guy watching Rachel Maddow they have license to rape, steal from, beat and kill 'evil anti-drafters' and you'll have a mob overnight.
What is the solution for this? It's simply going to be falling through the cracks as they show up. Letting blacks off because of the internal contradictions of the sorcery 'das raciss' creates one. Illegal immigration another, homeless encampments another, Mormon loopholes another and so on. These will increase in number til the point where there's more people outside the zoo cage than inside. It will almost be a voluntary choice to be a US slave. At least I think so.
Yes, that's what I meant by separating relevant from irrelevant, but AI will improve A LOT if the last couple of years are anything to go by. Also, if the "conversations" are stored, you can always go back and sift through them (though the amount of data will be quite literally "astronomical")
I suspect most of the utility in all that data is in building sociometric models of public sentiment, which can be used to game out various scenarios.
Of course, another use is blackmail material.
Yes. Game out and also improve models for "nudging and manipulating" the public.
Exactly. It's why I tend to feel people should be relatively uninhibited in online speech. The bastards need to see in their models that if they push too far it will become bloody.
The utility is having a trove of information you didnt need a subpoena for. You can preemptively build a case. Trials are NOT about seeking truth, they are about building a circumstantial case and getting a conviction.
Security through obscurity...
On point 1 - I've watched a lot of Ukraine war drone camera footage over the last 20 months. It's clearly been a hostile environment for infantry from day one, but over the last 3-4 months I've seen an exponential increase in quantity and quality of a specific anti-infantry tactic. Both sides (though I suspect Russians have really worked it out) are using quadcopters to spot for FPV racing drones that fly into trenches, bunkers and such.
I saw one where 3 guys enter the bunker, and the spotter notices a straggler, so the fpv held up and waited until he went inside, then boom. No where is safe now.
No reason the Taliban or the Somalis or whoever can't adopt this now against the Empire. And if this isn't clear to everyone now, it will be soon. Barring some major advances in defensive measures, it's really obvious that being an infantryman even in low intensity counterinsurgency wars just got a whole lot more dangerous than it was a year ago. Wait 3 years where you have swarms of killers controlled by an AI-enabled spotter.
I think this makes service for citizenship or whatever a less viable thing to rely on than it might otherwise be. Everyone will catch on that it's 10x or 20x or whatever more dangerous to fight even in the sandbox (much less Taiwan) than it used to be.
You know, per your point 1, the Romans did this with Barbarians and see what that got them.
True. It's why I added "This has its own problems".
Note though it worked for the Romans for a couple of centuries, so there's that. :-)
Start drafting the leftist, purple haired, inked, metal nose furniture feminist women and see what chaos that brings. They demand more than equal rights to slime our humanity, so let it be so. Let them die for what they believe in. It will be considered a mass post term non-binary abortion project. Planned Parenthood will endorse it and it will be good. Your carbon footprint has been reduced. Thank you for your support. Build back better. The air will be cleaner without your stench.
The draft wouldn't work because America's warrior caste hates the regime. Take it from someone who knows: the combat arms soldiers of the American Empire joined for the violence and adventure. They hate the regime just as much as any of us, and they'd jump at the chance for some of that military adventurism right here at home...
Here is a problem the Regime might not have considered. What happens if there is a war and through sheer necessity and attrition more competent men rise into positions of leadership? Wouldn't that be crazy? I mean who has ever heard of any fallout in history from a battle hardened expeditionary force that wanted to have a little chat with domestic leadership about how certain issues were handled? What if they even had inflamed political differences between them?
This is part of the reason i advocate an invasion of mexico
It's how we got meritocracy last time.
War can be the rebirth of the nation.
I'd like to see the upper middle class revert to WASPish patriotism and drag their private school kids to the recruiting office to fight the commies.
Hell will freeze over first...
I’m not worried about a draft.
The last grifters in DC can turn out the lights.
Why Conscription?
Fear.
They’ve lost the military caste.
Warrior class.
Whatever you want to call us.
They sold us out and pissed away our blood and trust.
They’re justly afraid.
Here’s what worries them; the service is 80% generational - from the same families. The same families often law enforcement, and cross over into higher levels of law enforcement and yes the IC. Also Firefighters etc, we’re all as connected as the NYFD and NYPD (who also serve in the military) they are more typical of the nation than realized.
They’ve lost us. BYE.
They’re alone, guilty as Hell of every crime and sin known to Hell, and their delusions are collapsing.
Let them go, we have.
Believe me America we’re not in your way.
I offer an alt-timeline vis a vis Taiwan. First off any war will be short and China will 'win'. Not a real win but they take it over. Here is the catch that wraps it up nicely.
Taiwan has ~20 extremely large landing craft. Now that many craft would be wholly inadequate to invade mainland China. But I propose they are for an entirely different purpose -- evacuation. Use of these craft would be used to move key pols, business and tech personnel off the island. Once off, by agreement with the US low level nukes just level the place.
Its a gruesome thought but it would make for a Pyrrhic victory for China proper. Considering that fab plant construction is going at break neck speed in the US makes one wonder if this might be a war plan.
We’re not likely to nuke Taiwan
However
The Fab plants here are well
Fabulous!
I absolutely believe that Taiwan will run, they already are...
Also Taiwan gutted its military already.
If info correct-
The KMT wants to reunify with China
The non Chinese Taiwanese want to reunify with Japan
They do seem to agree on not defending Taiwan
Great read. Interesting thoughts. I will say that it no longer takes humans to do surveillance. It’s not a right wing conspiracy that texts and emails are forever and key words are scanned electronically and spit out to human analysts. Also Jan 6th was hardly a riot let alone an insurrection. Yet dozens of people have been sentenced to 20 years in prison for crimes that haven’t been enforced in a half century. Which shows us how paranoid the Feds are of the people. Well done sir.
It all makes sense if you assume mass death of conscripted slaves was a feature not a bug. The oligarchy know what tech is in the pipeline (general AI and automation) and what jobs it threatens (all of them) and want to dispose of all the economically redundant unemployed-and-unemployable former working classes before we face a binary choice between starving and violently revolting to take their wealth?
I'm old but missed the Vietnam draft by 3 years. Any attempt at a draft would see resistance that would make the anti war movement of the 60s-70s pale in comparison
Draft a phantom
Also
No, it wouldn’t see much resistance unless they went after vets or their kids 🤣
Do so enjoy reading your work. As a peaceful activist committed to self defense and the ideals of our founders, I find hope in the strength and good sense of my brothers and sisters.
> Just pray to god our leaders aren't so senile as to believe the yes men around them...
Are you kidding? I hope they do it and then execute a few refuseniks to ensure things kick off!
The hourglass empire is a really good analogy, rolls off the tongue nicely too. I'm taking it.
My God the wailing about a draft is the only point in its favor...
I am so happy to see people are really starting to read and think about what you said. Your articles are the type of deeply disturbing thought pieces that I really enjoy reading. Keep that brain working.
I have seen you mentioned on Ace of Spades Ace.mu.nu and in this article on American Greatness. https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/13/why-doesnt-the-department-of-defense-defend-us/
I don't have faith in the American people. They didn't react when loved ones died via Cuomo nursing home directives, forced ventilators, remdesivir and the vax. They stayed in, masked up, went bankrupt. Only Soro$ funded mobs got rowdy.