The US will lose a war with China | Hacker News Reader

The US will lose a war with China

washingtonpost.com

9 pointsrandtrain347 comments

Yeah, let's throw another trillion dollars at the defense industry.

It doesn't matter what weapons you start with, what matters is what weapons you end with.

Can you replace your losses of weaponry? You need lots and lots of manufacturing capacity for that. Did you know that Japan started WW2 with three times as many aircraft-carriers as the US? How many carriers did Japan and the US have in September 1945? Why was that?

Do you have enough men of military age? In 1945, Germany was reduced to using teenagers and old men as soldiers. Meanwhile both the US and the Soviets had plenty of military-age manpower left.

High technology is a help, but not the be-all and end-all most people think it is. The Germans had the most advanced weaponry in WW2 (jet aircraft, advanced rocket missiles, etc), but they were swamped by both the US and the Soviets producing overwhelming amounts of "good-enough" weapons. (It's no use having a plane that has a 100:1 kill-ratio if the enemy can throw 101 planes at it.)

A last point to ponder. The next war will be the West against the Rest. China BY ITSELF has more man-power and more manufacturing capacity than ALL OF THE WEST COMBINED (US+Europe).

I think China faces a larger threat of its people revolting against authoritarianism than war with the US. Predictions like these are pretty useless in any event.

What do people here think the actual chance of a war with China is, in the next 10-15 years?

I have no idea personally, but the thought of it scares the shit out of me.

Superpowers don't usually go to war directly against each other -- they make their client states go to war against each other instead.

A hot war with cruise missiles and carriers like this piece is fantasizing about? Extremely low.

Okay, yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. Trade wars, a cold war, economic war, proxy wars all seem plausible, but the type of war this article seems to be going on about doesn't seem to make sense. How would a war like that even happen without devolving into nuclear warfare, which surely neither country wants?

I have to admit I'm pretty naive about geopolitics, though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com