The US dominates nothing? Really... tell me what we don't dominate anymore.
As to the quality of US products sucking... be specific. Do our cars often suck? Depends. Some of them do. But often when they're compared to the European imports for example they are not done on a dollar for dollar basis. That is, you'll routinely see a 30k car compared to a 50k car. That's not reasonable.
As to cisco sucking, it dominates enterprise networking hardware internationally. So... if they're sucking... guess they mean they're sucking cash into their bank account.
As to immigrants being the ones that build things... ehm... not really. We have a lot of people that come to work in the US because the pay is better and it is the US which is generally better than whatever country they came from. But the majority? No.
As to the the supply of people that want to come to the US drying up because of dominance issues... what are you even talking about? Who works at a company because their country is dominant in that industry? What employee gives a flying fuck? They don't care. They care about wages, benefits, whether the work is interesting, whether the job makes them feel good about themselves, living arrangements, etc.
I mean... who sits there and says "well, I don't want to do this job in this country because they're not dominant in this industry globally"... no one.
As to moving operations out of the US.
We have a 12 trillion dollar economy. And beyond that, we are the dog that wages the tail of the global economy. Europe has economic problems and that doesn't effect the US too much. Asia has economic problems that doesn't effect the US too much.
The US has economic problems and the global economy crashes.
Look at the 2008 credit crash. That was a US economic problem. It fucked the entire planetary economy. China is debt spending like crazy to try and smooth out the body blow their economy took from the 2008 crash. And they're still doing because the buying hasn't recovered. The debt in Chinese banks has gone up by more than 100 percent.
Saying the US is going to lose stuff... you don't understand how these things work.
The US has mostly lost assembly jobs to China. We did lose quite a lot of fabrication jobs but we lost them to JAPAN not China. And even now China can't really make things to the same quality as Japan.
There was some doodad in a new iphone that was being made at a chinese factory and a japanese factory.The chinese factory had a fatal defect and it forced apple to do a recall. Apple responded by shifting all production of that part to Japan. Boom. They didn't tell the factory to fix the issue. They killed the contract.
That is the power US companies have in China. Now are there any chinese companies that are doing the same thing in the US? dictating terms to US companies?
You don't understand. China's share of most sales works out to about 30 percent. So when you buy an iphone or a pair of shoes or whatever that says "made in china".... the chinese get 30 percent of that value. And I'm not even talking about the retail markup. I'm talking about what the damn thing sells for wholesale. The chinese get 30 percent of it on average when it is made in china. The remaining 70 percent goes to other countries. A lot of it goes to the US.
Again... we have a 12 trillion dollar economy. We're not all fucking Flint Michigan. And ask yourself why places like Flint are doing so shitty while other parts of the country are getting NEW factories built right now? It is because the economic and regulatory environment that made the great factory cities of the north viable is GONE. But there are places in the US that have the right environment to make it work. It just isn't in the Rust Belt anymore. If the Rust belt wants factory jobs to come back, they need to swallow their pride and negotiate with the corps. It is going to mean not fucking with the bottom line. No more strikes. No more work slow downs. No more ultimatums. No more identity politics or go
First, who am I treating like a second class citizen and what have I done to do that?
As to my mommy telling me I'm special... Your mommy told me Quote: "YES, GOD YES... HARDER";-)
Lets not talk about our mothers, mkay shithead? You do not want to challenge me to a flame war. You cannot offend me. You'd as soon offend a stone. Where as you are clearly an emotional little fuckwit that I can manipulate rather easily. Look at how upset you are already? On top of that, I've much more experience being offensive than you do... I have years and years of practice. So you're not going to win. In the spirit of open and honest discourse, I suggest you refrain from presuming to be able to conduct a discussion on the basis of offense, insults, or really anything short of facts and reasonable arguments.
Furthermore, I like that you're calling me a special snowflake because I'm not letting other people be treated as special snowflakes. I am well aware I am not entitled to special rights. Guess what... Neither are you or the vast majority of people pretending they are victims when really they're just exploiting your credulity.
It isn't that they're victims. Its that they think you're stupid enough to give them your power.
yeah but they did it to themselves... didn't they? I mean a lot of this stuff comes out of feminist academia.
Sit there making gasoline and then accidentally burn their house down with it.
Look, if people want me to care, then you have to show you care about other people besides yourself. If you're one of those people that only recognizes something as an issue when it burns your house down... and you totally ignored that it burned everyone else's house down ages before it got to you, then you know what... I don't care about that person. I especially don't care when that person sitting there making gasoline made the fuel that hurt a lot of other people. I care about the issue. But I'm not wasting sympathy and empathy on people that had neither for anyone else.
This is one of the ways you can tell something has gone toxic... when they start turning on their own. The fire needs to be fed. And if they can't feed enough heretics into it, then they'll just grab anyone. The fire can't go out. It will feed.
They can't help it. Its what people care about it. Its the gossip column of science and tech.
Look at the Poe trial in the Valley. It is a thing.
Academia and tech are being accused of hating women because "reasons"... and it isn't going to stop until either women hold literally every position in every high status position... or the accusation starts being taken as a joke which is responded to with derision.
There's no other way out of the identity politics decision tree.
If the accusation means anything to you, it will loop endlessly.
The only way out... is to stop the loop. You say "prove it"... no off color jokes as evidence... no correlative data... evidence of discrimination or GTFO.
Sure, try there first. But don't rely on their approval.
The feds are so f'ed up at this point that I don't think you can trust them to be rational on the issue. If they don't respond in a timely manner with a "yes"... ask someone else and launch through them. The feds don't own space. You can launch from a lot of places. Talk to the French, talk to the russians, talk to the chinese, talk to the indians.
Make that part of your ask from the FCC... unofficially make it clear you're going to do it. And the only question is whether the US has a role or not.
No, it has to fail MAD. Anything else increases the risk of people thinking they can get away with a first strike.
You have to make it clear that a first strike will not stop the certain obliteration of your civilization.
Our system is fail safe to the extent that a launch must be deliberate. Our missiles are not launched by robots or computers. They're launched by men. They receive a code. They verify. A minimum of two men must enter in codes and turn their launch keys.
That's how all the launch platforms for all the ICBMs in the US work. I can't speak for other powers. And that means each launch is unanimous. What is more... I assume... though am not certain... that that the missiles can be scuttled in flight by NORAD. So if some group of idiots launches something, then NORAD could kill it.
Lay out a scenario that suggests this is not the most viable system?
And you'd just follow up the chain. You'd also have some physical evidence from the bomb. They have technological signatures. You'd know where the bomb came from.
Then you'd figure out how it came to the terrorists.
As to reprisals... the point is to make it not happen again. And that requires a certain amount of fear on the part of whomever is leaking these bombs. That requires the application of pain.
Maybe we just throw a black bag over the head of some general somewhere while playing golf or banging his mistress. Possibly some quid pro quo with a nuke leaked to someone that wants to blow them up.
It sounds petty but you can't have them doing that. If they're doing it on purpose there is no higher authority to appeal to. You can't go call mom and dad to make your sister stop poking you.
You're going to have to stop them. And most of what stops them is that they're too afraid to even try. And again... that means you're going to have to hurt someone. This is the sort of thing where toppling a few governments becomes justifiable. The CIA for example could get a blank check out of a situation like that. Just go nuts.
that said, nuclear defense technology is progressing more rapidly than a lot of people realize.
First, most legacy ICBMs are already obsolete.
Second, the new ones that Putin is building complicate things but most of their defense relies upon confusing defenses as to what is a missile and what is some crap the ICBM ejected in orbit to cloud sensors. Who has the best sensors and processing systems etc? Frankly, the Russian tech was painfully outdated before the end of the cold war and decades of stagnation haven't helped the Russian tech base.
Third, the chinese tech is mostly Russian hand me downs when it comes to military hardware. And what is left... the Pakistani weapons? Obsolete garbage. North korea? Doubtful whether they even have a bomb. A long range dirty bomb perhaps... that any modern destroyer could shoot down while laughing.
If the enemy know that you won't fire back on them then it isn't a deterrence.
Fool.
What makes MAD scary for the enemy is that they know we WILL retaliate. We will methodically annihilate them with the nastiest weapons we have at hand. Without hesitation, mercy, or remorse.
That is what makes MAD work. The certain knowledge in the mind of the enemy that should they cross that line... we will annihilate them. Down to the last screaming child. Horrified? Good. That is exactly the point.
That is why you don't nuke people with my attitude. Because we will respond.
Were those insulators designed to handle an EMP or not?
This is like saying because the shore break couldn't handle a typhoon, it is impossible to build a sea wall that could.
Listen. Please. Calm down. I'm sure you're a nice intelligent guy. But you're arguing about nothing here. The point is that you can harden something against EMP with shielding and fuses. Does the shielding and fuses need to be designed to handle EMP? Yep. But they're still shielding and fuses.
A deterrence doesn't have to be 100 percent effective to be effective.
An electric fence around live stock doesn't stop all the live stock. Some of them will jump over the fence sometimes. Sometimes they'll just get mad and run right through the fence. They're big animals sometimes. A little bit of wire isn't going to stop them. What stops them is the pain of the electric shock. But if they either leap over the fence or don't care about the pain then the fence isn't going to stop them.
Yet it does in nearly all cases. Its very effective.
You're goal post moving. Look, you want to argue MAD doesn't work? Oh KAY... the last 60 years of history call you a fool. But whatever.
As to some philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, other thinkers occasionally having troubled minds... that is nothing new.
If I told you that the man that invented the airplane was convinced elves lived in his ears... would that mean the plane was an unsound invention?
Your argument is literally ad hominem. You're saying that because something was wrong with the person that made an argument that the argument itself is invalid.
I mean... are you literally retarded? Am I speaking to a someone with a football helmet on his head that types on this forum by banging his head into the keyboard?
I mean... you're an AC... so that is quite likely... most of you seem to have the IQ of a stunned trout. But I mean... how can you not know ad hominem is bullshit at this point? You people baffle me. You really do. Fucking learn... anything.
Also it is spelled "xenophobic"... from the greek... xenos.
Also, MAD has nothing to do with xenophobia. Just fyi... totally unrelated concepts.
Because of four examples? Fuck off. What is your arbitrary number of examples you'd consider credible? 5? 50? How many do I need?
Give me a break.
As to the difference between long and short being arbitrary. It literally is actually. Jesus. Are you another idiot that doesn't know what the word arbitrary means?
I ran into about dozen of you fuckwits in the metric versus imperial discussion.
As to causation, people try to show causation with trend lines all the time.
They'll say "we did this thing at time X" and you can see that variable Y changed by some significant amount. So obviously our change of whatever at time X caused variable Y to change.
You don't know that. You have to isolate for any other variable before you can claim causation. That very rarely happens with these models and so they're often quite presumptuous.
okay, fuckwit... if it isn't state sponsored, you're saying that a terrorist got their hands on a nuclear weapon, fired it into orbit, and then detonated it over the US? This is your scenario?
Now here is the bit where you say "well what if they didn't put it into orbit"... then the damage area will be very small and help from people outside the blast will be save the survivors. it will suck but it won't be any worse than the damage from a hurricane or something. Not great but not a reason for everyone to go to the expense of hardening everything.
As to EMP devices not requiring controlled material... lets look that up:... Okay, did some research. You're talking about a Non-Nuclear EMP or E-Bomb? From what I can see, they're not going to knock out more than a small area. They're not powerful enough. And that is even with nation state resources.
A city losing power and having all its hardware trashed is bad but not a justification to harden fucking everything on the off chance that some terrorist is going to get such a thing and use it.
THat there are going to be issues is likely but run the cost benefit analysis.
The benefit of having less shit to deal with on doomsday versus the probability of doomsday in the first place... and the relevance of those problems you're talking about on doomsday?
Okay... so EMP... you think there is ONLY going to be an EMP? I rather suspect that you're going to get an EMP PLUS a full nuclear strike. I don't see how you're going to just get an EMP? Are you assuming a terrorist EMP? A terrorist fires a nuke into high orbit and detonates it over the US? I mean... I don't see it happening.
A nation state would have to do that. And a nation state has territory. And territory can be retaliated against. And thus deterrence policy has some validity.
So if a nation state is doing it and they know this is going to put the US immediately into DEFCON 1... we can assume they are prepared for that which means they're going to try and hit us as hard as they possibly can as quickly as they can. Which means a full nuclear assault. A modern nuclear war is over in couple hours to a week at most. After that... everything that could launch has launched... and the damage is so extreme that neither power should retain a credible industrial base rearm.
The worries of "just in time" inventory are contextually irrelevant. You think your city is going to survive that? Call yourself lucky if you're eating dead dogs with all their hair burned off on one side... much less worrying about whether your new shipment of nikes arrived on time.
... Okay... so you think something is a deterrence even if you have no intention of using it as a deterrence?
What you are suggesting is that we basically point unloaded guns at people to scare them away from shooting at us. But if they actually just shoot us anyway... we should drop the unloaded gun and die without firing a shot?
So do you suggest the police do that? Guy whips out a gun and says "I'm going to shoot people"... And then he does. He shoots them. He shoots them dead. Well, your deterrence failed. Guess we don't need the gun anymore. Just put it away. Let him finish. Let him reload. Let him just go to town.
The deterrence only works if they know we'll do it. That bead of sweet that forms on their brow when their finger gets near the button. That only happens if they know that if they press that button, their cities get nuked in response.
And beyond even that... what is to stop them from threatening and nuking other countries TOMORROW? Day 1... they nuke us. Day 2... they nuke some other country. The point is to make sure there is no day 2... they die on day 1. End of issue.
And that isn't the whole human race. Just a handful of countries at most. South Africa will be fine. Brazil will be fine. Australia probably will be fine. Stuff like that. And because whomever started the stupid nuke war is glowing in the dark, they won't be around to annoy the countries that were just minding their own business.
But whatever, cupcake. You want to pretend you're more evolved even though you don't understand basic game theory? Oh kay, pudding.
Ironically around the time most people start focusing on the graph it is usually about due to change.
That isn't a hard and fast rule or anything. I've just noticed that often by the time anyone even notice a pattern the pattern tends to change. It has happened so many times that whenever I hear someone talking about one pattern or another, I think "oh, we'll then its going to flip"
I've actually made a lot of money on the stock market by doing that. By low and sell high... When people start running around like idiots saying "wow the market is so good look at all this money... the waters are made of wine and every tree is dripping honey!"... That's where I sell because that sort of stupidity is fatal. And it has been fatal pretty much every time.
I'm not a market genius with that stuff. I tend to buy long. But every couple years this shit starts getting pumped on the financial trades and I say "oh shit" and pull out.
And the opposite is true. You'll read this stuff and it sounds like the brokers are just sitting in their basements listening to the Cure while cutting themselves... and that's where I buy.
I actually sold before the crash and bought after it. One of the few people that actually did very well in the whole thing.
And it comes from my general cynicism about the validity of the social gestalt. I think the popular vibe is often bullshit. I'm one of those guys that likes to go in the opposite direction everyone else is going. Sometimes that doesn't work out for me but often it is either fine or really positive.
As to the banks... possibly. The issue is rebuilding will be harder if we disagree about who owns what. A free for all with surviving resources will lead to chaos and that will require a command economy if you don't preserve ownership.
And that means... basically whatever remains will turn into something sort of like WW2 England or the soviet union in that everything will be rationed and the government will decide who owns things.
I'd prefer to try and preserve the existing system as it has a lot fewer cons. But to each his own on that one.
As to retaliation, to the contrary that is extremely important.
First, it is retaliation that keeps the enemy from striking you in the first place. If the enemy doesn't think you'll retaliate it makes them more likely to hit you in the first place. So you have to do that.
Second, those fuckers just glassed your cities and if you don't return the favor they're going to be in a world where your people are mostly dead/radioactive ant people... and they're totally fine. Which means they're going to rule the world if you don't knock them back. And if you do... maybe you can save your civilization. But if you don't... your people lose and will never recover.
shield and fuse anything sensitive enough to have a real problem.
We've been hardening things against EMP since the 40s.
Cue the endless stream of people saying "but its really hard" or "we're not doing it now so we can't do it ever"... or other related nonsense.
Look, do we need to shield every fucking thing from EMP? No. Obviously not. Obviously... Not. BUT a few things really should be shielded. Core military communications, power, and computer systems? Yep.
The data center facebook keeps your duck face picts in? Nope.
The datacenters that keep account information for banks? Yep... unless you want an end of FlightClub moment.
The datacenters that keep all your cat videos? Nope.
The datacenter that keeps inventory and manages logistics for the military? Yep.
Notice a pattern?
We don't need to EMP harden consumer devices. If your car or your phone or whatever dies in an EMP, that is fucking tragic but that is the least of your problems if we've got nukes detonating in the upper atmosphere.
What needs to be hardened are those assets the guys in the strategic defense bunker need access to when they're sending orders to the ballistic submarines to conduct retaliatory strategic strikes. Very little outside of that actually needs EMP shielding on planet earth. In orbit... I'm not sure about solar flares... correct me if I'm wrong but that is similar phenomenon that is likewise negated by EMP shielding. if not, then ignore the reference.
But the consumer networks don't need to be shielded. Because who gives a fuck. Maybe you want some medical stuff sheilded as well just because people will die if the life support machine divides by zero. I don't know. Secure the military stuff... some of the finance stuff... the rest can blue screen when the apocalypse comes. No one will care.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey bingo.
I can only make 25 posts a day. How long do you think it takes me to make a post?
The only thing that makes this site take a long time is that I have to wait awhile between posts.
Otherwise, I'd burn my post quota out in about half an hour.
The US dominates nothing? Really... tell me what we don't dominate anymore.
As to the quality of US products sucking... be specific. Do our cars often suck? Depends. Some of them do. But often when they're compared to the European imports for example they are not done on a dollar for dollar basis. That is, you'll routinely see a 30k car compared to a 50k car. That's not reasonable.
As to cisco sucking, it dominates enterprise networking hardware internationally. So... if they're sucking... guess they mean they're sucking cash into their bank account.
As to immigrants being the ones that build things... ehm... not really. We have a lot of people that come to work in the US because the pay is better and it is the US which is generally better than whatever country they came from. But the majority? No.
As to the the supply of people that want to come to the US drying up because of dominance issues... what are you even talking about? Who works at a company because their country is dominant in that industry? What employee gives a flying fuck? They don't care. They care about wages, benefits, whether the work is interesting, whether the job makes them feel good about themselves, living arrangements, etc.
I mean... who sits there and says "well, I don't want to do this job in this country because they're not dominant in this industry globally"... no one.
As to moving operations out of the US.
We have a 12 trillion dollar economy. And beyond that, we are the dog that wages the tail of the global economy. Europe has economic problems and that doesn't effect the US too much. Asia has economic problems that doesn't effect the US too much.
The US has economic problems and the global economy crashes.
Look at the 2008 credit crash. That was a US economic problem. It fucked the entire planetary economy. China is debt spending like crazy to try and smooth out the body blow their economy took from the 2008 crash. And they're still doing because the buying hasn't recovered. The debt in Chinese banks has gone up by more than 100 percent.
Saying the US is going to lose stuff... you don't understand how these things work.
The US has mostly lost assembly jobs to China. We did lose quite a lot of fabrication jobs but we lost them to JAPAN not China. And even now China can't really make things to the same quality as Japan.
There was some doodad in a new iphone that was being made at a chinese factory and a japanese factory.The chinese factory had a fatal defect and it forced apple to do a recall. Apple responded by shifting all production of that part to Japan. Boom. They didn't tell the factory to fix the issue. They killed the contract.
That is the power US companies have in China. Now are there any chinese companies that are doing the same thing in the US? dictating terms to US companies?
You don't understand. China's share of most sales works out to about 30 percent. So when you buy an iphone or a pair of shoes or whatever that says "made in china".... the chinese get 30 percent of that value. And I'm not even talking about the retail markup. I'm talking about what the damn thing sells for wholesale. The chinese get 30 percent of it on average when it is made in china. The remaining 70 percent goes to other countries. A lot of it goes to the US.
Again... we have a 12 trillion dollar economy. We're not all fucking Flint Michigan. And ask yourself why places like Flint are doing so shitty while other parts of the country are getting NEW factories built right now? It is because the economic and regulatory environment that made the great factory cities of the north viable is GONE. But there are places in the US that have the right environment to make it work. It just isn't in the Rust Belt anymore. If the Rust belt wants factory jobs to come back, they need to swallow their pride and negotiate with the corps. It is going to mean not fucking with the bottom line. No more strikes. No more work slow downs. No more ultimatums. No more identity politics or go
First, who am I treating like a second class citizen and what have I done to do that?
As to my mommy telling me I'm special... Your mommy told me Quote: "YES, GOD YES... HARDER" ;-)
Lets not talk about our mothers, mkay shithead? You do not want to challenge me to a flame war. You cannot offend me. You'd as soon offend a stone. Where as you are clearly an emotional little fuckwit that I can manipulate rather easily. Look at how upset you are already? On top of that, I've much more experience being offensive than you do... I have years and years of practice. So you're not going to win. In the spirit of open and honest discourse, I suggest you refrain from presuming to be able to conduct a discussion on the basis of offense, insults, or really anything short of facts and reasonable arguments.
Furthermore, I like that you're calling me a special snowflake because I'm not letting other people be treated as special snowflakes. I am well aware I am not entitled to special rights. Guess what... Neither are you or the vast majority of people pretending they are victims when really they're just exploiting your credulity.
It isn't that they're victims. Its that they think you're stupid enough to give them your power.
And they're right.
As to poe vs pao, thanks for the correction.
yeah but they did it to themselves... didn't they? I mean a lot of this stuff comes out of feminist academia.
Sit there making gasoline and then accidentally burn their house down with it.
Look, if people want me to care, then you have to show you care about other people besides yourself. If you're one of those people that only recognizes something as an issue when it burns your house down... and you totally ignored that it burned everyone else's house down ages before it got to you, then you know what... I don't care about that person. I especially don't care when that person sitting there making gasoline made the fuel that hurt a lot of other people. I care about the issue. But I'm not wasting sympathy and empathy on people that had neither for anyone else.
This is one of the ways you can tell something has gone toxic... when they start turning on their own. The fire needs to be fed. And if they can't feed enough heretics into it, then they'll just grab anyone. The fire can't go out. It will feed.
They can't help it. Its what people care about it. Its the gossip column of science and tech.
Look at the Poe trial in the Valley. It is a thing.
Academia and tech are being accused of hating women because "reasons"... and it isn't going to stop until either women hold literally every position in every high status position... or the accusation starts being taken as a joke which is responded to with derision.
There's no other way out of the identity politics decision tree.
If the accusation means anything to you, it will loop endlessly.
The only way out... is to stop the loop. You say "prove it"... no off color jokes as evidence... no correlative data... evidence of discrimination or GTFO.
Sure, try there first. But don't rely on their approval.
The feds are so f'ed up at this point that I don't think you can trust them to be rational on the issue. If they don't respond in a timely manner with a "yes"... ask someone else and launch through them. The feds don't own space. You can launch from a lot of places. Talk to the French, talk to the russians, talk to the chinese, talk to the indians.
Make that part of your ask from the FCC... unofficially make it clear you're going to do it. And the only question is whether the US has a role or not.
Then count to ten and pull the trigger.
more ad hominem? yawn
No it doesn't. Annihilation can't be escalated. How is a country going to nuke me if they're all dead?
As to neanderthal terms... how about I just fuck your sister? While I'm doing that, you can talk to me about what is and is not neanderthal behavior.
Kindly stop talking to me. You're that internet typical mix of fucktard and arrogant that is a complete waste of oxygen.
No, it has to fail MAD. Anything else increases the risk of people thinking they can get away with a first strike.
You have to make it clear that a first strike will not stop the certain obliteration of your civilization.
Our system is fail safe to the extent that a launch must be deliberate. Our missiles are not launched by robots or computers. They're launched by men. They receive a code. They verify. A minimum of two men must enter in codes and turn their launch keys.
That's how all the launch platforms for all the ICBMs in the US work. I can't speak for other powers. And that means each launch is unanimous. What is more... I assume... though am not certain... that that the missiles can be scuttled in flight by NORAD. So if some group of idiots launches something, then NORAD could kill it.
Lay out a scenario that suggests this is not the most viable system?
As to obfuscating the origin... only temporarily.
You'd grab one of the terrorists and you'd make him squeal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And you'd just follow up the chain. You'd also have some physical evidence from the bomb. They have technological signatures. You'd know where the bomb came from.
Then you'd figure out how it came to the terrorists.
As to reprisals... the point is to make it not happen again. And that requires a certain amount of fear on the part of whomever is leaking these bombs. That requires the application of pain.
Maybe we just throw a black bag over the head of some general somewhere while playing golf or banging his mistress. Possibly some quid pro quo with a nuke leaked to someone that wants to blow them up.
It sounds petty but you can't have them doing that. If they're doing it on purpose there is no higher authority to appeal to. You can't go call mom and dad to make your sister stop poking you.
You're going to have to stop them. And most of what stops them is that they're too afraid to even try. And again... that means you're going to have to hurt someone. This is the sort of thing where toppling a few governments becomes justifiable. The CIA for example could get a blank check out of a situation like that. Just go nuts.
that said, nuclear defense technology is progressing more rapidly than a lot of people realize.
First, most legacy ICBMs are already obsolete.
Second, the new ones that Putin is building complicate things but most of their defense relies upon confusing defenses as to what is a missile and what is some crap the ICBM ejected in orbit to cloud sensors. Who has the best sensors and processing systems etc? Frankly, the Russian tech was painfully outdated before the end of the cold war and decades of stagnation haven't helped the Russian tech base.
Third, the chinese tech is mostly Russian hand me downs when it comes to military hardware. And what is left... the Pakistani weapons? Obsolete garbage. North korea? Doubtful whether they even have a bomb. A long range dirty bomb perhaps... that any modern destroyer could shoot down while laughing.
... You really don't get it.
Its only a threat if it is a credible threat.
If the enemy know that you won't fire back on them then it isn't a deterrence.
Fool.
What makes MAD scary for the enemy is that they know we WILL retaliate. We will methodically annihilate them with the nastiest weapons we have at hand. Without hesitation, mercy, or remorse.
That is what makes MAD work. The certain knowledge in the mind of the enemy that should they cross that line... we will annihilate them. Down to the last screaming child. Horrified? Good. That is exactly the point.
That is why you don't nuke people with my attitude. Because we will respond.
To the pain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Were those insulators designed to handle an EMP or not?
This is like saying because the shore break couldn't handle a typhoon, it is impossible to build a sea wall that could.
Listen. Please. Calm down. I'm sure you're a nice intelligent guy. But you're arguing about nothing here. The point is that you can harden something against EMP with shielding and fuses. Does the shielding and fuses need to be designed to handle EMP? Yep. But they're still shielding and fuses.
A limited number of things in the strategic arsenal... is not... the most... complicated thing... why would you say something silly like that?
Stop saying silly things.
No it hasn't.
A deterrence doesn't have to be 100 percent effective to be effective.
An electric fence around live stock doesn't stop all the live stock. Some of them will jump over the fence sometimes. Sometimes they'll just get mad and run right through the fence. They're big animals sometimes. A little bit of wire isn't going to stop them. What stops them is the pain of the electric shock. But if they either leap over the fence or don't care about the pain then the fence isn't going to stop them.
Yet it does in nearly all cases. Its very effective.
You're goal post moving. Look, you want to argue MAD doesn't work? Oh KAY... the last 60 years of history call you a fool. But whatever.
That is a pro with fiber until you realize that the fiber has boosters every few miles and those are complicated electronic doodads.
You'd have to shield each of those and THEN you'd have to make sure those little boxes still got power.
The copper lines are actually more fault tolerant than the fiber unless you can shield and power the boosters.
As to some philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, other thinkers occasionally having troubled minds... that is nothing new.
If I told you that the man that invented the airplane was convinced elves lived in his ears... would that mean the plane was an unsound invention?
Your argument is literally ad hominem. You're saying that because something was wrong with the person that made an argument that the argument itself is invalid.
I mean... are you literally retarded? Am I speaking to a someone with a football helmet on his head that types on this forum by banging his head into the keyboard?
I mean... you're an AC... so that is quite likely... most of you seem to have the IQ of a stunned trout. But I mean... how can you not know ad hominem is bullshit at this point? You people baffle me. You really do. Fucking learn... anything.
Also it is spelled "xenophobic"... from the greek... xenos.
Also, MAD has nothing to do with xenophobia. Just fyi... totally unrelated concepts.
Because of four examples? Fuck off. What is your arbitrary number of examples you'd consider credible? 5? 50? How many do I need?
Give me a break.
As to the difference between long and short being arbitrary. It literally is actually. Jesus. Are you another idiot that doesn't know what the word arbitrary means?
I ran into about dozen of you fuckwits in the metric versus imperial discussion.
As to causation, people try to show causation with trend lines all the time.
They'll say "we did this thing at time X" and you can see that variable Y changed by some significant amount. So obviously our change of whatever at time X caused variable Y to change.
You don't know that. You have to isolate for any other variable before you can claim causation. That very rarely happens with these models and so they're often quite presumptuous.
okay, fuckwit... if it isn't state sponsored, you're saying that a terrorist got their hands on a nuclear weapon, fired it into orbit, and then detonated it over the US? This is your scenario?
Now here is the bit where you say "well what if they didn't put it into orbit"... then the damage area will be very small and help from people outside the blast will be save the survivors. it will suck but it won't be any worse than the damage from a hurricane or something. Not great but not a reason for everyone to go to the expense of hardening everything.
As to EMP devices not requiring controlled material... lets look that up: ... Okay, did some research. You're talking about a Non-Nuclear EMP or E-Bomb? From what I can see, they're not going to knock out more than a small area. They're not powerful enough. And that is even with nation state resources.
A city losing power and having all its hardware trashed is bad but not a justification to harden fucking everything on the off chance that some terrorist is going to get such a thing and use it.
THat there are going to be issues is likely but run the cost benefit analysis.
The benefit of having less shit to deal with on doomsday versus the probability of doomsday in the first place... and the relevance of those problems you're talking about on doomsday?
Okay... so EMP... you think there is ONLY going to be an EMP? I rather suspect that you're going to get an EMP PLUS a full nuclear strike. I don't see how you're going to just get an EMP? Are you assuming a terrorist EMP? A terrorist fires a nuke into high orbit and detonates it over the US? I mean... I don't see it happening.
A nation state would have to do that. And a nation state has territory. And territory can be retaliated against. And thus deterrence policy has some validity.
So if a nation state is doing it and they know this is going to put the US immediately into DEFCON 1... we can assume they are prepared for that which means they're going to try and hit us as hard as they possibly can as quickly as they can. Which means a full nuclear assault. A modern nuclear war is over in couple hours to a week at most. After that... everything that could launch has launched... and the damage is so extreme that neither power should retain a credible industrial base rearm.
The worries of "just in time" inventory are contextually irrelevant. You think your city is going to survive that? Call yourself lucky if you're eating dead dogs with all their hair burned off on one side... much less worrying about whether your new shipment of nikes arrived on time.
... Okay... so you think something is a deterrence even if you have no intention of using it as a deterrence?
What you are suggesting is that we basically point unloaded guns at people to scare them away from shooting at us. But if they actually just shoot us anyway... we should drop the unloaded gun and die without firing a shot?
So do you suggest the police do that? Guy whips out a gun and says "I'm going to shoot people"... And then he does. He shoots them. He shoots them dead. Well, your deterrence failed. Guess we don't need the gun anymore. Just put it away. Let him finish. Let him reload. Let him just go to town.
And here is the part where I laugh at you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The deterrence only works if they know we'll do it. That bead of sweet that forms on their brow when their finger gets near the button. That only happens if they know that if they press that button, their cities get nuked in response.
And beyond even that... what is to stop them from threatening and nuking other countries TOMORROW? Day 1... they nuke us. Day 2... they nuke some other country. The point is to make sure there is no day 2... they die on day 1. End of issue.
And that isn't the whole human race. Just a handful of countries at most. South Africa will be fine. Brazil will be fine. Australia probably will be fine. Stuff like that. And because whomever started the stupid nuke war is glowing in the dark, they won't be around to annoy the countries that were just minding their own business.
But whatever, cupcake. You want to pretend you're more evolved even though you don't understand basic game theory? Oh kay, pudding.
Exactly.
Ironically around the time most people start focusing on the graph it is usually about due to change.
That isn't a hard and fast rule or anything. I've just noticed that often by the time anyone even notice a pattern the pattern tends to change. It has happened so many times that whenever I hear someone talking about one pattern or another, I think "oh, we'll then its going to flip"
I've actually made a lot of money on the stock market by doing that. By low and sell high... When people start running around like idiots saying "wow the market is so good look at all this money... the waters are made of wine and every tree is dripping honey!"... That's where I sell because that sort of stupidity is fatal. And it has been fatal pretty much every time.
I'm not a market genius with that stuff. I tend to buy long. But every couple years this shit starts getting pumped on the financial trades and I say "oh shit" and pull out.
And the opposite is true. You'll read this stuff and it sounds like the brokers are just sitting in their basements listening to the Cure while cutting themselves... and that's where I buy.
I actually sold before the crash and bought after it. One of the few people that actually did very well in the whole thing.
And it comes from my general cynicism about the validity of the social gestalt. I think the popular vibe is often bullshit. I'm one of those guys that likes to go in the opposite direction everyone else is going. Sometimes that doesn't work out for me but often it is either fine or really positive.
... would you mind clarifying your point? Your citation didn't specifically elaborate on the issue so I don't know what you're talking about.
As to the banks... possibly. The issue is rebuilding will be harder if we disagree about who owns what. A free for all with surviving resources will lead to chaos and that will require a command economy if you don't preserve ownership.
And that means... basically whatever remains will turn into something sort of like WW2 England or the soviet union in that everything will be rationed and the government will decide who owns things.
I'd prefer to try and preserve the existing system as it has a lot fewer cons. But to each his own on that one.
As to retaliation, to the contrary that is extremely important.
First, it is retaliation that keeps the enemy from striking you in the first place. If the enemy doesn't think you'll retaliate it makes them more likely to hit you in the first place. So you have to do that.
Second, those fuckers just glassed your cities and if you don't return the favor they're going to be in a world where your people are mostly dead/radioactive ant people... and they're totally fine. Which means they're going to rule the world if you don't knock them back. And if you do... maybe you can save your civilization. But if you don't... your people lose and will never recover.
It is actually, you naive little insect.
Let me explain this to you:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Maintaining the fault tolerance of the retaliation ensures MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction.
And that preserves the deterrence of the strike.
And that means the strike is very unlikely to happen by any rational power because they know a lethal retaliation is certain.
That means the EMP never happens in the first place.
Thus the commercial and private systems are largely protected because things that don't happen can't hurt them.
How can anyone in the 21st century not understand nuclear deterrence?
The mindless headless chicken ignorance of some people will probably always amaze me.
And he presumed to call ME the neanderthal? No, child. You're the one that doesn't understand.
shield and fuse anything sensitive enough to have a real problem.
We've been hardening things against EMP since the 40s.
Cue the endless stream of people saying "but its really hard" or "we're not doing it now so we can't do it ever"... or other related nonsense.
Look, do we need to shield every fucking thing from EMP? No. Obviously not. Obviously... Not. BUT a few things really should be shielded. Core military communications, power, and computer systems? Yep.
The data center facebook keeps your duck face picts in? Nope.
The datacenters that keep account information for banks? Yep... unless you want an end of FlightClub moment.
The datacenters that keep all your cat videos? Nope.
The datacenter that keeps inventory and manages logistics for the military? Yep.
Notice a pattern?
We don't need to EMP harden consumer devices. If your car or your phone or whatever dies in an EMP, that is fucking tragic but that is the least of your problems if we've got nukes detonating in the upper atmosphere.
What needs to be hardened are those assets the guys in the strategic defense bunker need access to when they're sending orders to the ballistic submarines to conduct retaliatory strategic strikes. Very little outside of that actually needs EMP shielding on planet earth. In orbit... I'm not sure about solar flares... correct me if I'm wrong but that is similar phenomenon that is likewise negated by EMP shielding. if not, then ignore the reference.
But the consumer networks don't need to be shielded. Because who gives a fuck. Maybe you want some medical stuff sheilded as well just because people will die if the life support machine divides by zero. I don't know. Secure the military stuff... some of the finance stuff... the rest can blue screen when the apocalypse comes. No one will care.