Hacker News Reader

Comment by stickfigure | Hacker News Reader

The invasion of Taiwan would require a massive amphibious assault across a sea full of hostile submarines. You couldn't hide all the ships required from satellites. And China's economy depends heavily on trade with the west-aligned world.

View on HN

But for some reason, China is massively expanding its navy, with lots of amphibious ships along with advanced weaponry that would be a serious problem for the US.

It goes both ways. The current supply chain crisis already demonstrated how reliant EVERYONE is on Chinese manufacturing. No politician would dare to sanction China when it means immediate runaway inflation.

I'll keep posting this list every time this subject comes up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...

China is 15-25% of the trade for those countries, but the west-aligned countries represent 80% of China's trade. A coordinated trade war would be vastly more devastating for China than the rest of the world.

I don't say this gleefully - I hope it never happens.

Every electronic thing made has parts from China. I can't build a car in Germany and export to America without having done trade with China first. Who cares if I could still get Irish butter if I can't get replacement parts for my MRI machine?

Pardon my ignorance, but isn't it the case that a lot of stuff coming from China is stuff produced in China, but using western technology? If that's correct, moving production outside of China would be so hard I can't imagine it, but not entirely impossible. It would be a huge crisis that would be eventually, heroically fixed.

Another problem is the access to resources like rare metals, that China stockpiles.

When I worked at Garmin, they made all of the aviation electronics in house on production lines in Kansas due to FAA requirements. I don’t know how deep the “must be made in USA” requirements go though.

Where are the resistors, capacitors, power ICs coming from?

Do you think those parts aren't currently being made elsewhere? South Korea is a powerhouse. The loss of China would be a capacity problem, sure. But market economies (aka price incentives) are terrifically good at solving capacity problems.

Russia waltzed into the Black Sea with it's navy without a hitch.

And what did they do with it? How is that related to Taiwan?

They partook in an invasion with it maybe? Do you think Ukrainians scuttled their own ships for fun or because they wanted to slow down whatever role Russia's navy can have with access to ports?

"You couldn't hide all the ships" implies that would stop or deter them from moving in if they wanted to. Russia's navy getting to the Black Sea no questions asked has shown you can make obviously aggressive military repositioning without repercussion (unless the West gets more proactive with sanctions after this).

Imagine that Russia's only access to Ukraine was through the Black Sea. How well do you think that invasion would have worked?

You're missing my point entirely and making some weird, unrelated argument.

I'm no military mind but indeed, they wouldn't have been quite as effective in shelling the country if they only had access to the sea rather than sharing virtually half the land's frontier.

Russia didn't hide their military buildup, they just lied and gaslit the world via their various disinformation channels into believing that Putin would have to be insane to actually invade.

As it has indeed turned out to be.

It is very worrying to me that China tones down the invasion in their media (if that is indeed true, I don't follow Chinese media myself).

Better to let people know what war really is. Unless you want it.

What's more worrying still is if they start toning it down in the West's media.

This weekend China has refused to show Premiership Football because of protests at matches against the Russian invasion[1].

Right now the English FA and clubs are just ignoring that but it's a big market. How long will they ignore that revenue stream?

Already the way Disney, Netflix, Apple, NBA and Hollywood cozy up to the CCP is pretty worrying.

1. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/football/china-blocks-broadc...

Yeah he puts these videos on Youtube designed to make him look bad on first blush, but then you think it over and what he responds to crappy questions makes perfect sense, so because it occurs to you the viewer "spontaneously" it makes these thoughts more convincing. But that's a double-bluff you see, in some cases quadruple-bluffs, I think I even saw one sextuple-bluff, even-numbered bluffs.

https://blog.windscribe.com/top-r-russia-mod-admits-to-ownin...

Yup. It's crazy how many of these are out in the wild. I mostly notice Chinese ones from my time there or ones highlighted by friends. But the Russian disinfo coming out in the lead up was insane.

I'm all for freedom of press but state sanctioned media is such a fucking blight.

The most vociferous against Russia today are the ones that predicted Putin is not a gambler and would not attack. These are not Putin's puppets. These are the people considered well respected International relations people.

To call everything and everyone Putin's propaganda and disinformation is simplistic. Hindsight is 2020, it always feels like we missed the obvious signs.

Being an willing or unwilling participate in propaganda makes you a tool regardless.

To be fair, many experts too believed that it was madness to invade Ukraine.

And, judging by the faces on the videos that I saw, many members of his cabinet and top generals were thinking the same.

And judging by the embarrassments of the last 10 days, it probably was indeed madness to invade.

Were there very many people who didn’t think Russia’s buildup was almost certainly a precursor to an invasion?

I hadn’t heard of that before.

There are still people who believe that today. It all depends on what you want to believe. People believe that Russia was forced into this, people believe that Ukranians secretly long to be liberated and saved. People will believe the most crazy stuff.

Absolutely, feel free to peruse my comment history for examples right here on this site.

I originally thought that Putin was trolling Ukraine and West with this buildup for the sake of winning some concessions.

I knew it wasn’t just trolling because there are much, much easier ways to do that than moving tens of thousands of troops into a new arena.

For trolling you’d do something flashier but much easier, like fighter flyovers or a missile launch.

Zelenskyy himself was telling people to calm down with the invasion rhetoric, indicating that there is no evidence of an imminent invasion, and that the rhetoric is counter productive.

Personally, I thought Putin would establish a stronghold in the Donbas and gradually improve position from there. This full on assault of the entire country is shocking and seems wildly aggressive and overly ambitious.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com