Hacker News Reader

Comment by treebeard901 | Hacker News Reader

Any non-nuclear prolonged conventional war will see U.S. ammo and shipbuilding far surpassed by Chinas manufacturing base and it isnt even close. The U.S. plan was to cut off oil shipments and food if this happened. Now China can likely have a Navy capable of guarding oil shipments from the Middle East all the way to Chinese ports. Everyone in the U.S. just assumes that they did it in 1940 so they can just do it again in 2040. It was the manufacturing capacity that won in the 1940s in the first place!

View on HN

You might be right. But a major 21st century conflict is likely going to be very different from past conflicts and we still don't know what that will look like. We're getting a few glimpses from the Ukraine conflict - drones, social media - but who knows what else. Having a numerical advantage in conventional arms might be the equivalent of having superior cavalry at the onset of WWI

> We're getting a few glimpses from the Ukraine conflict - drones, social media - but who knows what else

Actually, from the assessments that I have read, while new technology and drones have made a meaningful splash, it seems like manpower and the ability to produce large quantities of artillery shells have been the true determiner of the tides. The lesson learned thus far is that considerations from the past still matter.

Well I did say a glimpse. Manpower, food, supply chains and all the basics will never not matter. It's a question of what could be a deciding advantage that did not exist before, like mechanized divisions in WWI and air power subsequently. Russia-Ukraine is still a very conventional land war but it won't surprise me if a future China-US conflict was fought (and maybe even won or lost) virtually as well as conventionally.

In that scenario, they would use Russia rather than Middle East for oil shipments in the first place.

How far in the future are we talking about?

Russia doesn’t have the capacity to transport that much oil by land. It’d take years to build that infrastructure and it’s not even clear that China is at all interested in supporting huge investments that make them that dependent on Russia. Keep in mind that China and Russia are not fundamentally friends.. Russia is still holding territory that belonged to China, and that China wouldn’t hesitate to take back if they saw an opportunity.

Unless they can transport by sea by the arctic route year round (could eventually be enabled by climate change), the only way is to go south. Which is a far more vulnerable route than oil from the Middle East.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com