I really don’t see a conventional hot war with China taking place. In a direct attack against the Chinese mainland, the best case scenario for the west would be to massively cripple China’s costal industry, but that’s about it. Such a war could set China back decades in economic development, don’t get me wrong, but the cost of men and material alone would be in the 10s of trillions of Dollars for the west, and the shock to the global economy would be enormous to say the least, especially since a lot of China’s industry is used to produce goods for the west. Even in the west’s best case scenario, China would win, crippled as it may be.

The population back home in the USA, Australia, UK, etc. are going to watch live on TV as thousands of lives and trillions of dollars of warships and aircraft are destroyed in a matter of weeks, all without ever even getting close to putting boots on the ground in China itself, and for what exactly? Freedom and democracy? That only worked in Iraq because we crushed the Iraqi army almost instantly. Imagine if Iraq had managed to hold up the US Army for months all while inflicting heavy casualties. How much would the US population care about “freedom and democracy” once US soldiers start dying by the thousands attacking a country that never attacked the US? If the Vietnam war already caused massive social unrest in the US, starting a war with China would be risking a full blown overthrow of the US government.

As things currently stand, the west can’t win a conventional war with China and they know it. This may change in the future, but for now, any talk about war with China should be viewed as the MIC fearmongering in order to justify defense spending.

Honestly probably doesn’t matter if they’re using Huawei or not, 'cause Egyptian intelligence new this was coming and warned Israel that something big was gonna happen in Gaza, and they chose to ignore it and focus on suppressing the West Bank instead.

Yeah, 4 days is a decent amount of time to be rescued (assuming they can make it to the surface), but they also said that this dive is probably going to be the only one of its kind for the entire year due to bad weather in the region, and that they started this dive during a gap in bad weather. So depending on how the weather is in the next few days, if they don’t find them soon then they honestly might never find them, even if then can both make it back to the surface and replenish their air supply while there.

I would not want to be part of a search & rescue effort braving a North Atlantic storm just to try a find 5 dumbasses who payed $250K to lock themselves inside a carbon fiber tube for 12 hours lol.

Yeah, I think at this point if Iran attacks Israel directly (or even indirectly), then things could very quickly snowball into something that normal people will recognize as a world war. So I’d say that we’re very close to the brink, but as has already been mentioned, if WW3 comes to pass then historians in the future will probably say that it’s already ongoing and we just haven’t recognized it yet.

US Coast Guard reports that an ROV has found a debris field near the Titanic: https://twitter.com/USCGNortheast/status/1671907901542211584

Not yet confirmed if it’s the Titan, but if it is, lol, lmao. That’s what they get for firing the safety guy when he said the sub wasn’t safe, dumbasses.

Update: Coast Guard confirmed it was Titan. Carbon fiber hull catastrophically imploded.

Considering that they’re bolted in there from the outside, I’m wondering if they at least have some sort of system to replenish their air supply if they actually make it back to the surface. 'Cause if not, it would be extremely funny if they actually make it back to the surface, but still died due to their air running out before anyone managed to find them.

Alice from Trash Future & WTYP did a thread on twitter collecting some of the most funny/insane details about the sub, and here’s some of the highlights:

• CBS journalist David Pogue said that the sub got lost for about 5 hours while he was visiting (Pogue was on the mothership at the time), which was due to the fact that the sub doesn’t have any sort of radio/GPS beacon on it to help locate it.

• OceanGate wrote an entire blog post about why their sub doesn’t need to be safety certified, which you can read here.

• The ballast is in the form of metal pipes resting on a shelf, and in order to release it, everybody on the sub has to move to one side of the vessel in order to lean it over enough for the pipes to simply fall off.

• When asked whether they’re making any money off of this, the CEO said “Ahhh, no. So not yet. People might say ‘Hey, that’s a lot of money, $250,000.’ But we went through over a million dollars of gas.”

• The CEO of the company that manufactured the hull of the sub would (up until 2016) give a $1000 bonus to any employee that got married while working for him, which violated a state law prohibiting discrimination based on marriage status, and would also reject any job applicants if he though they were Muslim.

Was made aware today that Israel has been working on a new Merkava model, the Merkava Mk.5 “Barak,” which at a glance seems to best be described by an overconfidence & over-reliance on technology.

Article: https://www.edrmagazine.eu/israel-starts-delivering-the-5th-gen-merkava-barak-tank-to-its-armoured-units

A first major improvement came from sights; the commander got a new panoramic sight while the gunner’s sight is also brand new, Idan Tavor underlining that these are one or even more generation ahead of previous ones. Improvements came in electro-optic performances, which provide better imaging, “but the main step forward is that they have integrated AI into those sight that have now autonomous behaviours, and are capable to identify targets and objects by themselves.”

I seriously doubt that current AI technology is going to be better at identifying targets than a well trained crew working in conjunction with infantry support who can function as additional eyes for the tank (granted Israel’s target acquisition only need be as sophisticated as to be able to determine whether someone is Palestinian or not). Best case scenario, it occasionally manages to pick out threats faster than the crew can, but I imagine the average experience using AI target acquisition is going to sifting though a lot of false positives.

The Fire Control System (FCS) has also been entirely upgraded. “The new version is faster and has better performances,” we were told, adding that the Merkava Barak is able to shoot on the move, day and night, with increased accuracy.

Being able to accurately fire on the move at both day & night has already been standard for most tanks made in the past few decades, so while it is probably an improvement over current FCS systems, I’m willing to bet it’s not significant enough to really be notable.

Human-machine interface has also be completely reviews, adapting it to the young conscripts experience, multi-touchscreens with smartphone-like interface being now adopted. “We worked on it pretty hard for the last two years in order to make it very approachable for young soldiers who are used to their cell phones and playstations and now need to fight in a tank and we developed for them a very nice and new HMI.”

It’s like a vibeo game!!!

But seriously, what’s the obsession with making everything touch screens nowadays? Especially in a military context where you’d think it’d be useful to have tactile controls that can be operated on muscle memory during high stress situations.

There’s probably more stuff to pick apart, but overall it just feels like they’re trying to use technology to compensate for the fact that they’re frequently having to use their tanks in situations that tanks really shouldn’t be used in, namely that they’re being operated by under-trained conscripts to fight in urban guerilla warfare.

New favorite conspiracy theory, courtesy of the last few minutes of DPA’s latest comment response video:

Zelensky wants the Ukrainian eastern army destroyed.

He was voted in on a platform of implementing the Minsk II agreement and bringing about peace in the east of Ukraine. But he almost immediately found out that the Ukrainian army on the Donbass frontlines were largely far-right extremists who’d sooner turn their guns on the Ukrainian government than give up the Donbass/Crimea. So he’s realized that the only way he’s going to be able to bring peace to Ukraine is to get all of the militarized far-right in Ukraine killed fighting Russia, and once that’s completed, he’s going to immediately change his tone and start seriously pursuing peace with Russia.

(I’m not gonna pretend like I actually believe this, but it’d be incredibly funny if it actually turned out to true)

Idk if anyone’s posted it here yet, but Josh Paul, a senior US State Department official who was in change of arms transfers, just resigned in protest over what’s going been going on in Gaza. He put up a letter on his LinkedIn page, which you can read here. It’s obviously coming from a lib perspective, but it is still pretty remarkable that the top gun runner for the the US empire is taking more issue with the situation than the vast majority of mainstream media or “progressive” politicians.