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Re:Chip wars: China, America and silicon supremacy by 3pt14159 on Friday November 30, 2018 @04:28PM (#18572808)
It's a fantasy.

Enough gear isn't networked or has fallbacks. C2 on the other hand, I'm less sure of. The French were so disturbed that they hacked the computers used by very senior people in the American military that they told the Americans so they would secure it better.

Far more likely is that both sides (other than Trump himself, maybe) know to default to standing down and absorbing the first blow then retaliate, if needed.

Re:Chip wars: China, America and silicon supremacy by jerf on Sunday December 02, 2018 @07:08PM (#18585411)
"It's a fantasy."

Oh, absolutely, total collapse is a fantasy.

How serious would the degradation be, now, that's an interesting question that probably literally nobody can answer.

But it's an amusing fantasy, and just connected enough to reality to not be in same nonsense realm as an alien eliminating all weapons or something.

Re:Chip wars: China, America and silicon supremacy by ethbro on Friday November 30, 2018 @05:18PM (#18573242)
This. Non-embedded software folks are far too quick to assume everything is consumer-grade crap.

Is there military crap? Sure. But part of the reason for double-price contracts is hardening and properly securing software.

Folks don't just sit at the Naval War College twiddling their fingers.

Re:Chip wars: China, America and silicon supremacy by thinkling on Friday November 30, 2018 @05:39PM (#18573397)
Imagine conflict breaking out and China disrupting most of the US's consumer network infrastructure. (read: everyone's DSL/cable modem and some amount of data center equipment.) The chaos and mayhem would be enormous.
Re:Chip wars: China, America and silicon supremacy by ethbro on Friday November 30, 2018 @06:21PM (#18573664)
Feasible. But let's not pretend it would stop nuclear ICBMs from launching.

Which is, paradoxically, why massive numbers of traceable nuclear weapons + early warning actually make the world a safer place. (At least for major-power, global conflicts)

Re:Chip wars: China, America and silicon supremacy by ghettoimp on Friday November 30, 2018 @07:48PM (#18574197)
I could easily be wrong, but it's hard for me to imagine that waging war is the Chinese objective here. Wars are costly, and destructive, and unpredictable.

But tech espionage would fit nicely into a different, long-term game. There is (of course) a lot of work left to do spread the modern economy to the rest of their country. But if they can do that, they will have a huge population advantage and be the largest market in the world. Meanwhile they are already competitive (if not dominant) in manufacturing. So what's left? Tech.

If they can become competitive with (or even leap-frog) the West technologically, they'll really be the de-facto leader of the world in every economic dimension.