The audience is other Asian and African states. The message is "we can act with impunity". The US will probably do some tit-for-tat exchange, but the US scope to do anything is limited due to the potential for impact on US businesses.
They're also directing lasers at helicopter pilots, which is much closer to a actual war than mere bits.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-06/chinese-fishing-vesse...
The cannon doesn't have to work all the time, just once effectively, and possibly even accidentally.
After the meeting, Franz wanted to travel to the hospital to visit the civilians who'd been wounded by the errant grenade. En route, his driver, confused, took the same route from the morning procession. When they realized what was happening, they told him to turn around and get the out if there. When the driver stopped to turn around, they were ~1 block from the site of the first assassination attempt. One if the co-conspirators (who had lost his nerve the first time, and had been milling around and hoping that Franz would come back by), was standing where the car came to a stop. Two shots killed Fran's Ferdinand and his wife.
Fun fact about this--Franz Ferdinand's death was not the cause of the Great War in the way that people tend to think it was. The assassination caused the war in the sense that it was a convenient excuse for a war that the Austro-Hungarians already wanted, but not because (Austro-Hungarian Emperor) Franz Joseph wanted revenge or anything like that. In fact, Franz Joseph's secretary later said that he "almost seemed grateful" that Ferdinand (whose marriage was so problematic that he had been forced to proactively abdicate on behalf of his children) was out of the way.
0 - Peace 1 - Trade War 2 - Financial War 3 - Electronic War 4 - Shooting War
Note that 1 & 2 are different types of Economic war, and could be grouped together. The steps occur in order, but steps can be skipped.
From a US-centric point of view, North Korea and Iran seem to be at #3. China & Russia are at a limited version of #2.
Chinese/HK seem to be at #3 with each other.Given how invisible Electronic War can be, it's possible that they are deep in #3. It's also possible that #4 might be initially fought with HK Police forces as a proxy. Think of that as "4a".
"Countries that trade with each other don't make war with each other."
As we isolate countries and disrupt trade we definitely are increasing the risk of conflict.
I'm pretty sure this was the prevailing thinking prior to World War 1. A large scale conflict would be so damaging on a human and economic level that most assumed the people in power would find away to stop a massive war from breaking out. Well, they were right about the first assumption, but very wrong about the second.
There's plenty of good things from a moral perspective about power being diffused away from a hyperpower hegemon, but stability and peace have never been among the side effects.
Nobody really cares, except for those directly involved. Sad but true, nobody will ever go to war for that, for foreign citizens.
> I want my cheap plastic consumer devices!!
People do actually want that. And their cheap shoes and clothes and...
Foxconn's suicide rate is lower than China's, along with all 50 US states. They just employ a gargantuan amount of people (400k). I don't know much about the working conditions there, so I don't have a position, but it doesn't look like there's evidence to suggest that the working conditions have anything to do with the fact that some of their employees committed suicide.
To put it another way, there's roughly as much evidence of this as there is that working in a factory in Nigeria causes sickle cell anemia.
Page 25 (but see also page 23) https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Fencing off tall buildings is a useful short-term suicide prevention measure.
It's impossible to prove causality, but Europe has never seen longer and more widespread peace than the last 70 years.
But then you go on to claim that war among countries on the Western side was prevented by memories of war and not the EEC, without any reasoning as to why. I don't buy it. The first World War was already terrible, yet these countries were at each others' throats only a few decades later.
Tons of CPP members are getting rich off the economy which includes a lot of trade and foreign debt.
There’s plenty of correlation here.
Here's what Otto Mallery said though:
"If soldiers are not to cross international boundaries, goods must do so. Unless the Shackles can be dropped from trade, bombs will be dropped from the sky."
This was a common argument as to why WWI couldn't happen, countries were far too economically dependent, everyone would be ruined.
Except it did happen, and everyone was ruined.
At worst, it was an affirmation repeated, as with most affirmations, in the hopes that the repetition would make it true, which it doesn't, and for the usual reason, that it generally wasn't.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/hitlers...
https://www.phactual.com/8-american-companies-that-worked-wi...
https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-american-companies-that-aided...
How many major wars in the last 100 years were preceded by trade wars or electronic wars (I don't know what a financial war is, trade embargoes? - embargoes are not trade wars)? Perhaps my view is a bit us-centric (there have been many small wars in africa that I don't know the history of), but I don't think that us conflict participation in Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Grenada, Vietnam, Korea, WWII, or WWI were preceded by those sorts of policies. To find a trade war that preceded a war I think you might have to go to the US fighting in central america (banana wars), or maybe the civil war.
Meanwhile the US has engaged in trade wars with plenty of countries it hasn't fought with, dominantly europe (via the banana trade wars, not to be confused with banana wars, e.g.), and Japan.
https://www.amazon.com/New-Confessions-Economic-Hit-Man/dp/1...
"Peace" is built from war's stalemates. As the most violent (and therefore effective) means become ineffective, combatants shift towards less effective means, to the point that the war (which is still ongoing) continues through diplomacy and trade.
Hence, "war is diplomacy by other means."
Diplomacy and trade are means of gaining an advantage in the underlying (now "cold") warfare. They're maneuvers to defeat the existing stalemate. If either side is able to obtain an economic (or other advantage) sufficient to defeat their opponent in a more violent form of warfare, then they will return to violence because that is the basal state of nature.
The worst thing you could ever have in trade / diplomacy is a good working relationship that isn't balanced and equal. A trade failure is itself a stalemate which can strengthen peace, so long as it occurs before too great of an advantage is gained any group.
As the grandparent said - steps can be skipped. Since 3 is a relatively new medium for offensive actions, I suspect there are not a lot of well-known examples around. Would be interesting to see if any currently active conflicts were preceded by DoS (not necessarily Distributed, could be just a "cable cut" from outside), and how long before it escalated to active conflict.
The whole point of the cannon is that you can leverage the bandwidth of other countries. The CCP already controls the telecoms in China. They don't need to hijack Chinese computers for DDoS attacks when they can directly DDoS from their ISP's backbone.
https://forward.com/opinion/424071/jews-are-speaking-out-aga...
The reason England and France got into the war is because of Germany's expansionist policies and not because of moral reasons at the time.
What Hitler did was terrible, but that's not the reason we had a war. "Germany (or Japan) might invade us next" is what was really in everyone's mind.
That's 2+ years after the start of WW2.
As WW2 progressed the Nazis attempted to ship the jews elsewhere. Sadly countries refused to accept these refugees.
Nazis then started to pile up Jews into Ghettos. Note that these Ghettos are almost identical to the Uyghur's current situation.
As the Ghettos started to fill up, the Nazis needed a plan on what to do as the ghettos started to reach capacity. Their decision is known as the "Final Solution" or death camps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Évian_Conference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
Hitler was elected under the pretense that he represented socialism that was friendlier to the middle class and workers. This way people could get their socialist improvements to the economy (which was shit due to bad world-wide economy and war reparations) while still having defense against the the sort of upheaval and murderous destruction that the Reds represented.
The take-home lesson of WW2 shouldn't be that 'The other side was evil and we won'. Because the entire Eastern half of Europe and most of Asia was submitted to governments that were incredibly evil due to the Soviet victory.
WW2's lessons are meaningless without WW1. They really are effectively the same war. The treaty of Versailles and the humiliation of the German civilian government are directly responsible for the rise of power of the Fascism in Germany.
The take-home lesson of the 20th century wars is that massive murder and atrocities are only possible because people obey their governments. That 'The people' cannot discern true evil running the state until it's far too late.
Because evil doesn't show up saying "Elect me because I want to gas the Jews". They gain power by promising what you want. By telling you what you want to hear. And once they gain power then it is the average person's willingness to obey authority and carry out orders is what turns shoe makers, engineers, and doctors into mass murderers.
Which is the sort of thing that is happening in many parts of China.
Always remember that in Vichy France when they rounded up the Jews for the holocaust it wasn't the Germans troops that went around arresting them. It was the French police that rounded up people to be put on those trains. It was under the order's of the French politicians. This problem of obeying governments is not something that is limited by national borders.
adverb
_in a mass_; all together; as a group:
I can tell because that's how it already went down with the Tibetans and Uhgyrs. Because the CCP has already committed a multiple of genocides including their planned mass famines in 1960 that killed tens of millions of their own citizens.
I wouldn't have felt the need to make my comment if the original comment was modified with "early Holocaust" rather equating it to the entire thing which inherently includes and is often more synonymous with the death camps.
Also what China is doing is not in the magnitude of the Nazis.
I am not saying any of this to defend China. I just want these things clear because this is the type of rhetoric that is often used by Holocaust deniers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schoo...
If I again compare with the US as an example even if people don't like that. You have had many hundred if not thousands of suicide bombers that have stated that they sacrifice their life to strike against targets because of US imperialistic ways. Imagine the circumstances that lead to that.
The guy who just wants to be left alone is constantly pushed into a corner by the guy that wants to control and manipulate people and those are the two types of people in the world. The American revolution was filled with guys that just wanted to be left alone. Congress is now filled with guys that want to control and manipulate. They are naturally attracted to power. It will take them pushing the US citizen who wants to be left alone (AKA the silent majority) into the corner before anything changes.
>The problem is you have two types of people, you have the guy that sees his kid get blown up and is like F'it I am going to detonate myself. I get it, I could be that guy under the right circumstances. The problem is the world is just as full of people ready and willing to exploit that guy and that is what happens. The situation is a lot more complicated than the American imperialist kills babies meme. The problem is though when you go after the other guys, who need going after, some good people get killed and it creates a newly exploitable class based on that anger and resentment.
That is also the exact motivation that China uses for its re-education camps. It is because of terrorism that they need to go after.
It's clearly not exactly the same as the Holocaust. But it's disingenuous to say it's nothing like the Holocaust either, because there are a lot of similarities.
Are they death camps yet? Well, perhaps not. But there are none the less a hell of lot dehumanization. There are reports of forced abortions, rapes, medical experiments, and other tortures.
To be clear, the US internment of the Japanese is a horrendous stain, but it clearly is far less evil than these camps.
[0] that is, one brutally murdered innocent child of innocent parents is not really different than some other brutally murdered innocent child of innocent parents.
I'm comparing our oil grab under various guises, vs Chinas attempts at unification.
When both are causing murder, why is oil better than submission?
We need to weane ourself off a dependency on China for cheap goods. We need to decide that we value human life over a cheap phone.
China gets away with what it does because it feeds our need for shiney new trinkets. Frankly, it's disgusting. The world could stand up to China and say it doesn't want it as a trading partner. Maybe that wouldn't even help, but do we really want to be doing trade with a country that operates like China does?
Where are our values?
It's like saying that police aren't a solution to murder - what we really need is to stop killing each other.
That hypothetical president who cared about e.g. Tibet or the Uighurs couldn't have expected any popular intellectual support for that effort, however, since our popular intellectuals act largely to feather their own nests with Panglossian tributes to how wonderful TPP could have been.
One shouldn’t mistake a seeming return to the status quo as proof that the status quo is just as strong.
Do they just not care?
Some day soon a war will not be started with an assassins bullet but with a tool like this. I wonder when we start looking at them the same way?