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Comment by rkarnal | Hacker News Reader

Unlike the U.S., Germany has no natural resources. U.S. LNG dependency means that it has another master. Except that the previous one never dictated anything to Germany, just like Saudi Arabia never dictates anything.

They are not naive with security. Either they fully defend themselves and get nuclear weapons or they keep the status quo. Buying useless F35 (possibly with a kill switch) from the U.S. just enriches the MIC.

Germany should have build up a "high tech" Internet industry so it could control which parts of the narrative get flagged and which ones stay up.

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So which boogey man controlled their uranium access and made them shut down all their plants?

If you judge by U.S. Russian uranium imports until well into 2024, the culprit would have been Russia:

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/russia-restricts...

The U.S. of course is a sovereign nation and can decide for itself how long it trades with countries that it calls "terrorist states".

The US imports uranium from 12 countries and has its own deposits. Plus you can stockpile it. It was probably more to prevent Russia from selling to terrorists than a dependency.

It was the opposite - the lack of a boogey man in ~2011.

They were shut down because they weren't that reliant on it to begin with (the level to which electricity from nuclear power mattered to Germany is routinely exaggerated), because they were horrendously expensive to maintain and fix (nuclear power is always $$$$$$$$$) and because of Fukushima.

Most countries that are build their own nuclear power plants or nuclear power plants in other countries (e.g. Sweden, France, America, Russia) either have expensive nuclear arsenals which they want a nuclear industrial base to help maintain or have a boogeyman that makes them want to be able to ditch the NPT and build a nuke in a hurry. For Sweden that's Russia, for Iran that's America, for Japan that's China.

Poland has just recently gotten interested in building nuclear power stations, after having zero interest for a long time. You can probably guess which boogey man was responsible for that.

> because they were horrendously expensive to maintain and fix (nuclear power is always $$$$$$$$$)

almost the entire cost of nuclear is the capital cost of construction, running costs are a rounding error

germany shut down their nuclear because the russia successfully funded the greens over an extended period to convince germans that "nuclear bad"

Maintenance on aging plants is also very expensive (just ask the French) and German plants were getting long in the tooth.

Decommissioning is also very, very expensive, and disasters like Fukushima are also very very very expensive (that one cost about $1 trillion).

It wasn't some secret plot by Russia. Russia exported most of the uranium they used. Fukushima just made nuclear power more of a headache than it was worth, especially given the cost and pressure from the environmental movement (who had agency, despite what you might believe).

The reliance that the US/Europe had on Russian uranium is, in fact, one reason why it was never sanctioned.

The greens in Germany are mostly captured by America these days - that's why they shifted to becoming massive war hawks.

> Maintenance on aging plants

the three that were last turned off were practically new

there was even one that was fully constructed and ready to be turend on, and then never was

> Decommissioning is also very, very expensive

but once the plant has gone live you'd be paying that anyway

so you might as well keep the existing reactors running for as long as they remain safe

> and disasters like Fukushima are also very very very expensive (that one cost about $1 trillion)

fortunately germany isn't very prone to tsunami

the russian psyop seems to have worked pretty well on you!

Poland had a quarter of Germany's per capita GDP in 2010. You're basically saying that German acted like a developing nation in term of it's energy strategy. That's not a positive argument. When you don't have money then you do whatever you can to survive. When you do have money then you need to think about the future. Poland's GDP is now half of Germanys so it's doing just that since it now has the money to do so.

Oh, they were dictated to. It was simply implied. "Let us repress our people and reclaim our neighbors, and the pipes will stay open."

Russia used that NG to bully and dictate to it's neighbors like Poland, Hungary, Romania, and others. Germany learned to keep it's mouth shut. Divide and conquer.

It's very likely that arrangement would have still been in place had Russia's "special military operation" succeeded. Kyiv would have fallen in days, and by the time Germany and the others felt any sense of unease, it would have all been fait accompli. "Oh well, wasn't us, that's a Ukrainian matter." and life would have gone on for Germany industry.

Only that's not what happened, and Germany and the others were forced to take a good long look at things and the ugliness behind it. Poland had been ringing the alarm bell for years, and they were right.

Other notes: - There's a lot wrong with how the German economy doesn't reward risk, and that stifles their innovation. Economics Explained on YouTube has done a few videos on this, and it's more than just Germany. I think there's ways to German prosperity that doesn't require just another Google however, just as the U.S. economy isn't solely dependent on it's tech giants for it's GDP gains.

- The "useless F35" argument is a tired and uninformed one which fails to understand much about how these platforms are developed and why they're developed in the first place. I'll direct you to a link here, which, while hardly academic, is spot on with it's examples and references. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxVsS9ZNUOU (TL;DW: Every plane goes through this stuff. No, drones won't replace everything; that ignores the role of the strike aircraft. And if the F35 is so bloody useless, why is China pursuing so many versions of their own? Because regardless of what the internet peanut gallery thinks, warfighters around the world know exactly what they need.)

F35 are useful against insurgents. They are perfect for Israel.

Contrast that with Ukraine, where there is a de facto no-fly zone for both sides because anti-aircraft missiles are too good. That is why there is the strange mixture of WW1 trench warfare, howitzers, drones combined with glide bombs and missiles launched from far away.

China has other enemies than big ones. The Sukhoi 57 is also useless in a big power conflict, as we see now.

Germany only has big power conflicts to worry about, so why does it need F35s? Saudi Arabia on the other hand might need them.

Israel has the F35 because it can strike Iran, not because of insurgents. And it was successful in this.

Anti-aircraft missiles are not that good. If anything, this conflict is showing that. But the platforms both sides are using aren't up to par either, which is why aircraft like the F35 were made. Vaunted systems like the S-400 didn't prevent Israel from reaching deep into Iran, which is giving some of it's buyers second thoughts.

Su-57 had serious problems because the Russian aerospace industry lacks the technical ability to build a reliable 5th-gen fighter. (Engine problems galore). They made some excuse around "its so good, we don't need it".

The rest of your argument is built around the premise that the F-35 is not for use in big power conflicts, which frankly is incorrect and the opposite: That's exactly what it's for. Much of the hate it gathered early on was centered around why it existed when insurgencies were the majority of what we were fighting. (You don't need a stealth strike aircraft to drop a 1,000 LGB on a Toyota with a DShK attached) but you certainly need one if you want to penetrate defended airspace.

If you can't penetrate said airspace, you throw glideb bombs from long range instead. =P

China's stealth fighter projects are not for "other enemies", but precisely in line with missions like the F-35: To penetrate defended airspace to attack high-value targets. Like Taiwanese and U.S. defense sites and naval assets.

But it is amusing how many accounts there are out there saying F-35 is useless and the U.S. should stop building them, while China, South Korea, Japan, India, and others are all working on building or are building its equivalent.

Good try.

> But it is amusing how many accounts there are out there saying F-35 is useless and the U.S. should stop building them, while China, South Korea, Japan, India, and others are all working on building or are building its equivalent.

The comment you reply to literally says that the Sukhoi 57 is useless and that the F53 is useful in certain situations.

It must feel very powerful to argue in bad faith and maintain upvotes just because the opinions align with the U.S. state department views. And you can do it from you own account because you know there is no penalty.

I left Russia out not because they don't want an F-35 equivalent or wouldn't benefit from them. But because the Su-57 in particular is a bad airplane.

Sorry if I wasn't more specific on that.

But the point I argued with the comment above is that the situations for which the F-35 is deemed useful is incorrect. It misunderstands the aircraft's role and the missions for which it's buyers intend. It makes broad assertions about the nature of warfare that have been repeated ad nauseum lately. I hope to correct the record there.

> And if the F35 is so bloody useless, why is China pursuing so many versions of their own?

because China has the resources and motivations to bet on everything all the time.

back in the covid days, China invested heavily on all types of vaccines, more precisely, for each possible tech route, they invested in multiple companies. they ended up approving like dozens of different vaccines.

they are now leading in the EV sector, interestingly the CCP recently ordered to continue to invest on the R&D of ICE cars.

I needed a certain type of instrument in my current project, did my research and found there are three commercialised tech routes, one took by the US, one by the EU, China recently claimed to have invented the third route. guess what, they have 3 competing companies selling 3 different commercial products that implemented those 3 tech routes when the US and EU just have one company working on it each.

> good long look at things and the ugliness behind it

German strategic thinkers probably saw the obvious before - profitable DE industry = RU gas inputs. DE security = US military and Baltic as buffer. It doesn't much matter for DE bottom line if UKR die if the gas kept flowing. Even if the Poles did the dying. If anything it would keep east euro labour cheap. That was really the optimal setup, the optimal was ugly, but acceptable.

Do German's really care if RU slaps around some buffer states if it kept their industries competitive and people wealthy? Of course as Europeans, they do. But we'll see in a few years how they feel as Germans, but current voting patterns hint no and imo GDP going to contract eventually when germans realize being dictated by US who promises (promised?) to protect her neighbours but also jacked up the pipe prices "feels" suboptimal for german prosperity. Germany sipping LNG directly from RU via NS2 even if their neighbours burn is going to "feel" more optimal in retrospect.

But realistically/geopolitically, DE continuing RU energy relationship even post war would piss US+co off too much, and US has much more net leverage on US-DE trade surplus than cheap RU gas. Frankly that's a much more difficult/awkward conversation(s) between "friends" to have than if someone made decision on DE behalf by having NS2 mysteriously explode, and everyone not think too hard about it. Saves bickering. Saves face.

Regardless, in the military sense F35s is useless for Germany because in world with cheap RU gas access, DE wasn't incentivized to use it against the Russians regardless. Now without RU gas, DE now knows buffer states can hold out against RU, so it's still frankly not optimal procurement vs just dumping that cash into reviving domestic DE MIC. But what ~10 billion dollars of F35s are useful for is ensuring Germany keeps getting US gas, and maintain ~70 billion per year of trade surplus from US, whose going to continue buying overpriced DE cars, since cheap PRC cars will be functionally banned. Likely same deal Korea got for complying with CHIPs. But that was under Biden. No telling what Trump will do with respect to trade imbalance.

> Germany should have build up a "high tech" Internet industry

Could have been cool. But even project like a digital medical patient journal that other countries had for 2 decades they have trouble with.

There was a certain NHS fiasco in Britain ... Apart from that, Germany has still some data protection left and Germans like their privacy. Which is the real factor that prohibits large data collection brokerages.

Additionally, if every country goes into the digital fluff economy, nothing real is produced and you are even more dependent on China (and Russia for resources).

> if every country goes into the digital fluff economy, nothing real is produced and you are even more dependent on China

funny that China itself has a huge digital economy while producing real stuff for the entire world.

I suspect the german state's total reliance on fax machines, notaries and and physical paper forms is what keeps german records out of giant electronic databases

rather than "germans liking their privacy"

They have rocks. They have arable land. What exactly does "no natural resources" mean in your view?

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