from Hacker News

America's National Security Wonderland

by yo_yo_yo-yo on 2/21/25, 3:18 AM with 43 comments

• by beeflet on 2/21/25, 8:46 AM

  The discussion of what we're going to do about taiwan was totally absent this presidential election. It's the most important matter of our time and no one is addressing the elephant in the pacific.

  Instead, there is no primary election for either major party, and the minor parties don't even show up. What a joke of a system.

• by roenxi on 2/21/25, 7:51 AM

  Something like 40% of the US GDP is accounted for by direct government spending [0]. Then some % of the GDP is on things that are really non-discretionary, like food and shelter and a further % is private spending by people who are actually government employees. Noting that, it is conceivable that the US is undergoing a much softer version of Soviet-style dissolution. Overstretched, unable to pay for military needs that have been mis-assessed by central planners, no safety valve provided by a healthy decentralised market.

  America's gentle deindustrialisation has been noticed. Everyone seems to know about it. The problem is that nobody seems willing to put the legwork in to maintain the US as a global hegemon and - simultaneously and in contradiction - nobody has briefed the military planners that they have to pull back a bit.

  [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...

• by lq9AJ8yrfs on 2/21/25, 2:58 PM

  Can someone explain the root of tension between the US and China? Is it just vanity and inevitable that two major powers will fight? Resource scarcity?

  Beneath a few layers of culture it seems the internal values of the two countries are very similar and fairly compatible.

  Maybe that breeds contempt but seems like there is plenty of room for the two countries to play together nicely especially if they make progress on their faults. In spite of the online acrimony, each side seems to understand well enough its own and the other's faults, and they generally seem to be trying to work on their own faults as much as working on each others'.

  This seems like a relationship that may come to blows but should be salvageable, especially if the blows can be softened or avoided perhaps altogether.

• by yo_yo_yo-yo on 2/21/25, 2:44 PM

  It’ll be interesting to see how hands-off the present administration will be with the military. Certainly the aura of a consistent US foreign policy posture has been shattered by recent realignment regarding Ukraine. Foreign powers will naturally now be tempted to test how much of an actual threat any future US military action may be. That calculus has certainly shifted.

  I think the goal of the administration is to let China take Taiwan, but before this happens poach as much talent and knowledge from TSMC (hence the overtures of splitting Intel) so that when Taiwan destroys its capacity on attack it’ll be business as usual for the US.

  Taiwan is certainly in an extremely unenviable situation.

  But that’s the plan, I fully believe, to make America great yet again, all that Taiwanese industry will get reshored here in the USofA.