Guess what is the second most powerful navy in the world (and is a very close ally of the most powerful navy in the world?). Japan's "maritime self defense force".
Not sure the US is eager to get into a kinetic conflict with China, which actually has a larger navy, and more importantly, is in their own front yard rather than 10,000km from home.
US Navy is stationed closer than the Chinese navy. The US’s seventh fleet is permanently based out of Yokosuka Japan. Only US fleet not based out of somewhere in the US.
The US has a far more advanced navy (a large proportion of Chinese ships are patrol ships without much tactical significance) and many more aircraft carriers. Aircraft are extremely important in naval conflicts.
> (a large proportion of Chinese ships are patrol ships without much tactical significance)
If each one is armed with a few anti-ship missiles, a swarm attack from many different directions might be a real threat to a carrier group. You either waste a ton of ordinance taking them all out, or some portion are able to launch against you.
There was a genuine video put up in the last three months and then pulled of a Chinese demonstration of a "swarm navy" deployable from an AI drone unmanned carrier mother craft.
It's a serious threat as everything is low low cost and big on bang.
The US would be looking at defending itself from 100+ unmanned cigar boats each packed with enough explosives to make a serious dent at water level and all interoperating like a flock of birds, some drawing fire while others push through.
As Churchill once said very wisely about war and optimism over certain tactics. "all things are always in motion simultaneously". In other words, we can't really know at all whether China's naval techniques, technologies or tactics will work well against U.S. naval power, or whether the opposite will happen, until the two actually fight for real on a major scale.
With that said, nothing prevents the U.S from imitating any tactics (including swarming by tiny boats and ships) that the Chinese use effectively against the U.S and its allies in a real naval war.
To name a very current example of my first point above in action 24/7, just look at the Ukraine/Russia war today. It has evolved in ways that very few people could have predicted just before or right after it started, with surprises on both sides.
To highlight how the same worked at the beginning of the second world war, partially prompting Churchill's own later phrase: the air defenses of the UK were thought adequate against enemies in 1939, until they were proven to not at all be so, and only improved through very deadly trial and error by 1943. France in 1940 was thought by nearly all powers to be more than a match against a German invasion (and indeed materially it was, on paper and stationary on the ground), until it was proven to not at all work as expected in just 6 weeks. All things always shift simultaneously in ways that can confound any expectation, particularly in situations as ferociously dynamic as large wars.
PRC has more proper blue water surface and subsurface combatants than USN currently and has for years. Many of which more modern. Last years count of "ocean going" / blue water capable is like ~350 PLAN vs ~300 USN. PRC also has a fuckload of "coastal" ships, but at this point even Chinese coast guard has sizable blue water fleet (retired PLAN ships go there).
US still has more displacement via super carriers, better subsurface and larger replenishment fleet to enable more persistent blue water ops. Incidentally PLA is rapidly building up replenishment capabilities, but ultimately most of fleet will stick around PRC shores, with some moving into IndoPac for SLOC security or Africa for anti piracy. But currenly PLAN has MORE "ocean going" vessels than USN, and gap is expected to widen to PLAN 400+ wheras USN ship building lucky to maintain 300 by end of decade.
If you build hundreds/thousands of boats with little to no effectiveness to prop up your numbers for the domestic public then it's easy to claim large navy sizes.
My previous comment was with respect to actual effectiveness. China has no significant blue water navy.
> little to no effectiveness to prop up your numbers for the domestic public
Citation needed. This is borderline beyond "useful idiot" hot take because even DoD propaganda/analysis or defense wonks do not allege this, and they allege a lot of dumb shit with respect to PRC modernization. Western assesment of PLAN in last few years, with respect to blue water surface combatants, being commissioned at tremendous rates, is one branch where recent DoD writings / analysis has no substantial tech/hardware criticisms, relegating to, their hardware good but maybe software (training/jointness) lacking.
Also to repeat "Many of which more modern". PLAN's blue water surface combatants built since 2010s are considered on par, if not superior with equivalent USN platforms in terms of systems and armaments, including latest flights. Certainly more than the significant portion of USN's aging hulls, many of which are not modernized to latest tech and are held together by duct tape / soon to retire. Like USN isn't going to have anything comparable to a type 55 for another 10+ years in DDG(X). It's hard to overstake the amount of USN program/procurement fuckups in the past decades and ongoing state of US ship building that enabled PRC to catch up in both quality and quantity. Majority of which concentrated in PRC backyard, on new hulls with better maintenance and readiness rates, that widens regional blue water naval power gap even further.
It’d come down to tech. The us probably has a leg up today. China being able to field new tech faster would pull ahead in a protracted conflict or one that starts in five or ten years.
Key word is "harassing". Like gnats or mosquitos. A nuisance, not a threat.
Plus starting a shooting war with China isn't in our best interest, yet. If we ever get there the fishing boats will make exactly zero difference in the outcome.
I wasn’t making a serious comparison. But it is a critical problem for modern geopolitics for which Navy’s play a major role in.
Paramilitia Fishing boats are like the local insurgents in Afghani/Iraqi cities. They are still there when big expensive American boats leave the other 99% of the year. They don’t provide real military prowess but they blend in with the locals (meaning hard to permanently bully out of neighbourhoods) and constantly apply pressure tactics and surveillance resources that benefit the parent resistance org.
South Korea still makes all of the heaviest commercial vessels in the world, does it not? They're next door neighbors. I don't think China really wants anyone switching from commercial to military production.
I would expect a huge qualitative difference in our favor when it comes to war strategy and execution, not to mention that we are far ahead in our experience "managing" a war on the world stage, and that we still have an edge in military technology and war machine maintenance. China would ultimately resort to having just one option, like Russia, to use or not use their nukes, which is an end of world scenario.
Or a virus that targets caucasians. Or knockout the GPS satellites. Or target 3-4 internet backbone nodes. Or a high altitude EMP (which would probably come from a nuke). There’s a lot of scary scenarios.
The issue the west has with China, is that China produces all the consumer goods and a decent amount of the heavy equipment. The issue China has is the west provides access to food and energy. While that’s changing, to-date the two are too entangled for war imo.
That excludes a lot of US allies countries who are living under authoritarian regimes supported by the US in asia and the middle east. Like gulf countries who US depends on to cut oil off china if the war begins.
A war with China would be a lot more like WWI than any of the wars the United States has recently fought, in that a bunch of new technologies clash for the first time. I wouldn’t be so confident about how it all works out. Yeah, I’d still give the edge to the Americans because, let’s be honest, there’s a lot of us here who just really like making War.
But you have to go back to WWII to find a war where America fought a peer or neer-peer adversary and won.
>A war with China would be a lot more like WWI than any of the wars the United States has recently fought
Where did you get this crazy idea? China and the US are separated by a huge ocean; there's no way to do trench warfare there. A war between the two would entirely be a naval and air war, not a ground war. That's a war the US would easily win.
His analogy is to the new technologies being deployed by military leaders who have no idea how they will change the field of battle. Think the first tanks, chemical weapons, squad tactics, planes, etc. All technical and new hallmarks of warfare brought to the stage during ww1
> Where did you get this crazy idea? China and the US are separated by a huge ocean; there's no way to do trench warfare there. A war between the two would entirely be a naval and air war, not a ground war. That's a war the US would easily win.
You're omitting the second part of their sentence, which makes it pretty clear they aren't talking about trench warfare.
> in that a bunch of new technologies clash for the first time.
Not really, a US/PRC war happening off PRC coast (likely theatre) will also be against PRC land based aviation and rocketry where US is unlikely to win. The numbers game is increasingly favouring PRC is that US doesn't have the logistics to maintain a war near PRC shores going forward because PRC can take out USN sustainment fleet and turn carrier groups into single deployment assets with DAYS of endurance. US ability to generate useful sorties to actually erode PRC land based platforms and the effects they can generate that covers most of US East Asia security commitments (likely trigger) is diminishing fast.
E: over rate limit
>turn into a nuclear war
No it wouldn't, and PRC currently massively building up nuke umbrella, so US wouldn't even more against adversary that can strike back both strategically, and conventionally, especially existentially on CONUS. This US exceptionalist would salt the earth of enemies who sink a carrier wank is reserved for small/mid tier nations that US can bully with impunity. And at the end of the day without carriers, short medium term, US doesn't have the platforms to conventionally destroy PRC... because at that point they will lack "necessary" "whatever forces" to do so.
E2:
>the US has never been attacked on its own soil before in the modern age, except for 9/11, and the results there were catastrophic.
And non nuclear, on nation not particularly responsible. The broader point being US has never been attacked on it's soil because outside of single point vunerabilities like 9/11, US adversaries technically could not, hence US free to prosecute "all out", leading to exceptionalist talking point like losing a carrier will lead to nuclear war. But decision calculus change when US homeland is now permenantly vunerable to peer adversary, repeately, and at scale. This does not mean US would not be forced to escalate with full determination (again likely non nuclear) as result of homeland attacks, but change in vunerabilty means US will be more avoidant of initiating intervention that could lead to homeland exchanges, with respect to PRC this means being deterred from starting a war over TW in first place, which PRC is willing to go to existential ends for, whereas US, most likely is not.
> overestimating the Chinese military's strength
Maybe every relevant PRC platform is vapourware, but if they're remotely credible, then they don't need to match US military pound of pound but asymmetrically dismantle US power projection ability, which is what PLA modernization has focused on in past 20 years. PRC doesn't need to sink 11 carrier groups, it needs to sink 10 fast support ships at dock or and AWACs / tankers in their hangers that enables US projection, a much easier task done with concerted effort by a PRC with massive industrial base, extremely competitive S&T eco with multitude more STEM graduates, and defense budgets which in PPP terms is close to US. IMO, if anything, more people over estimate US miiltary strength vis-a-vis PRC now. Or that that PRC's goal is to build up strategic and conventional deterrance so we don't have to find out before too long.
Sinking even one US aircraft carrier would very likely turn into a nuclear war. Sinking multiple carriers definitely would; the US wouldn't stop until the enemy country is completely destroyed, using whatever force is necessary.
I guess we'll find out before too long, but you're overestimating the Chinese military's strength, and the US's determination to win at all costs. An attack on the US mainland would absolutely be met with a full-scale nuclear attack; the US has never been attacked on its own soil before in the modern age, except for 9/11, and the results there were catastrophic. A serious attack would be all-out war to the end, regardless of any long-term consequences for humanity.
For one thing, Hawaii wasn't a U.S state at the time. Secondly, that's still far from the mainland U.S, an attack on which would provoke a different sort of response.
The vast majority of the mainland US hasn’t experienced war in over a century, which is an extremely special geopolitical situation that hardly ever gets talked about.
Chinese reclamations are absurd, they want economic exclusive zone even in front of Malaysia, ~1500kms from their shores, it's basicslly a call for war.
Not something that is new. Absurd claims are something that even a European country can do like Greece interpretation of exclusive economic zone [1]. Not to say that this ia justification for China. Just to say that this is something happens with less outrage at different places.
Not to mention these are originally ROC / Taiwanese claims passed down to PRC when UN recognition formally switched, i.e. technically PRC didn't make these claims, but doing the geopolitically responsible / prudent thing of protecting them. Claims which btw predates other parties in the region, or UNCLOS formation, who does not rule on soverignty which makes PRC historic claims absurd and but also as legally valid as any other claims at UN (which does not recognize PCA "ruling" / kangaroo court).
Not every claim is the same. You can't really compare China to Greece, China is a nuclear power, millions of soldiers, she already showed not fearing using force.
You are basing it on military power, of which no doubt China and the US has some crazy claims, but if you just look at ridiculousness Europe's ones are probably the craziest because of colonies.
Portugal's EEZ claim for example is larger than the size of India.
Portuguese claims are pretty legit, the Azores and Madeira were previously uninhabited and settled by the Portuguese before the Eastern Roman Empire even fell.
Excluding small island states, the seafood consumption per capita is the highest in the world, you can literally smell it in their supermarkets, and this traditional diet is supported to a large degree by the fishing industry within their EEZ.
The proposed EEZ forms one continuous area with the mainland, something that can't be said for US, UK and French posessions.
The Greek claim is entirely reasonable, uncontroversial and correct according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. These islands have been continuously inhabited by Greeks for millennia. The border is drawn exactly according to the proximity to land.
It's not some artificial pile of sand on a bank that will erode away if you look at it wrong, or an uninhabited atoll in the middle of nowhere, first discovered a century ago.
I can't believe I'm reading someone earnestly disputing Greece's sovereignty on HN. Either there has been a lack of information or we're dealing with a case of rampant chauvinism and historical enmity.
You should overlay the Greek EEZ on Japan's or China's claims to see how little it really is. Take a look at the US, UK and France in the Pacific for god's sake!
Which relevant island is uninhabited? Go through them on maps right now, you'll be surprised. There's really nothing there to justify Erdogans neo-Ottomanist jingoism.
Sometimes it's valuable to question the underlying motives of leadership. He's not blinded enough to believe he has a leg to stand on, but perceptive enough of the intense nationalism that pervades Turkish society (to be fair the same can be said about Greek and the rest of the Balkan society). It's really not a novel insight that exploiting those attitudes, pushing those buttons, distracts from mismanagement at home and guarantees reelection.
I regard this feedback loop as one of the fundamental flaws of democracy. Echoes of every antagonising remark, every urealistic demand can be heard in Serbia, Palestine, Pakistan and wherever else there is a border dispute, causing perpetual bad governance and keeping the people riled up.
Well, China's history is that the British showed up and declared places like Hong Kong to be theirs. Then later Japan came along and did the same to large parts of the pacific, including some Korean and Chinese bits. So, it may not be nice of the Chinese to be doing what they are doing but claiming areas and land for economical reasons is not without historical precedent.
The US still has some strategic property in the Pacific. And of course bases in Japan and a partnership with Taiwan. And places like Panama used to be US territory as well. The British still hold on to the Falkland islands. It's not all about peace and democracy here either.
So, Japan using some resources that they found off their own coast isn't the end of the world. And of course the Chinese are all over that as well. Practically in their back yard and most of it is in international waters, which makes it fair game legally.
Only the "New Territories" part was leased. The original treaties had Hong Kong Island and parts of modern day Kowloon ceded. The Brits were in a pickle when 1997 arrived because they couldn't realistically return only the leased parts without causing massive chaos, and China was threatening to take back the whole thing by force.
Greece has Crete and a huge number of tiny islands whose economic exclusive zones overlap. Japan has such a big EEZ from very few remote islands and enough of those to form an enclave. The enclave is there because of a single island.
I know this, It is absurd because it ignores the whole of turkey because of this small one island. EEZ would extend at some points to inside turkey itself. It is just example of how absurd these claims even if they have basis ( actually the simple UN law doesn't address these problem -at least in a proper way). If you can't see how this is absurd from the photo I attached then there is nothing I can say.
Anyway, it is only one example of many that we can talk about. The main point is that these claims are not unique or gaining this outrage outside the Chinese case because of the geopolitics differs in this case.
Would need time travel for this interpretation to be true. Technically, ROC(TW)/PRC claims came first post WW2 at UN. So technically other parties who claimed after are interfering in ROC/PRC internal affairs/sovereignty, which post PRC recognition at UN, PRC is now entitled to defend. Through actions which all things considered, are pretty tame for a G5 member whose should get away with being more equal than the others.
Yes and that’s what makes mining an environmental issue. Considering what humanity is doing to the earth it’s always worth asking if what we’re doing is really the right thing. Just because a resource exists does not mean we have to extract it.
You would be scarcely rubbing two sticks together rather than browsing HN if we did not extract resources. Encroachment is not a function of the specificity of resources but of demand. Damaging a marginal piece of Earth in and of itself does not matter in any existential sense, the only thing that does is long term survival. Since population growth is poised to stagnate in 100 years or so globally, we can expect demand to level off in kind, all the while gains in efficiency through innovation and recycling will continue to the extent that encroachment will be minimal.
There is far more damage done owing to the demand for fossil fuels, which is still irreplaceable currently for non-electrical cases (75% of their use). We use it for ammonia, steel, concrete, plastics, all pillars of modern civilization.
The most rapid viable intervention in the near term is lowering growth, by expanding access to contraceptives, and other incentives. Westerners treat that as a right so everyone should be on board.
> You would be scarcely rubbing two sticks together rather than browsing HN if we did not extract resources.
There is a chasm between "we do not need to extract every last resource we find" and "no resource extraction".
> Damaging a marginal piece of Earth in and of itself does not matter in any existential sense, the only thing that does is long term survival.
I would prefer not just to merely survive, but still have the fish and the birds and the insects intact as well. It's not about one piece of "marginal land" (whatever that means), but about our desire to scrape every last piece of this earth clean to extract everything we can. In any case you said "Mining exploration of any kind impacts ecosystems, what of it?" and I answered your question. There are environmental costs at play and they should be considered and balanced against our need to continue consuming more and more of the planet's surface.
> The most rapid viable intervention in the near term is lowering growth, by expanding access to contraceptives, and other incentives.
Actually the people who already have contraceptives use the most resources, so instead of pointing fingers at "them" we would do well to look at our own resource consumption.
> There is a chasm between "we do not need to extract every last resource we find" and "no resource extraction".
That is rather redundant seeing as
we already do not extract every resource available - we extract to meet demand.
> still have the fish and the birds and the insects intact as well.
Another redundancy as the large part of the human population would face doom if most animals cannot survive. We do not have the means to engineer survival for even a fraction of 8 billion people without ecosystems.
> There are environmental costs at play and they should be considered and balanced against our need to continue consuming more and more of the planet's surface.
They are. And the growth in consumption is largely driven by emerging middle class in China and other countries. It would be inhumane to demand that they do not improve their quality of life.
> Actually the people who already have contraceptives use the most resources, so instead of pointing fingers at "them" we would do well to look at our own resource consumption.
You still don't see the big picture.
Fertility rates in the west are stagnant. Growth rate is pegged through policy, as a device to prop up the GDP (primarily benefiting the rich).
This is a measure of consumption. Immigration is the reason total GDP (consumption) grows over time. It should be trivial to infer that those elements that lead to our individual carbon footprint are what constitutes a better life for those moving over - the houses, infrastructure, food, comforts, etc. No one moves here to lower consumption.
Notwithstanding, the significant increases in consumption are in emerging economies, not ours. This will continue as more of the world is lifted out of poverty. It's a positive, but will lead to more emissions. Fertilizer, steel, cement, and plastics require it. The basic pillars of modern living, even if you keep gadgets like iPhones out of the picture.
Ultimately, the global population growth is projected to level off in 100 years. If you care so much about birds and fish though, you would do well to support initiatives to expedite the stagnation. The numbers don't lie.
Blaming consumers in abstract is ineffective and absurd. We could and should target some problem areas through policy (greener homes grant to improve insulation is a good real world example, also reducing food waste), but ultimately consumption will rise with our growing population and you cannot outrun that.certainly not with innanities like scolding people about arbitrary consumer choices like buying a phone or driving a car to meet their needs.
Since the radical leftists have appropriated the green sphere, I detect more cognitive dissonance, such as the notion that it is imperative that any and all should have the opportunity to emigrate here owing to better standard of living while simultaneously calling on people to lower their standard of living in completely arbitrary ways.
This bears repeating: even if you hypothetically lowered consumption of a large demo of westerners through messaging (unlikely), the govt policy is explicitly to increase consumption. Immigration would just increase. Consumption WILL increase, at least for 100 years. The anti-consumer rhetoric is pissing in the wind.
> from the mud on the deep sea bottom in an area off Minami-Torishima Island, a coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean about 1,900 kilometers southeast of Tokyo.
If they were a way to make resource extraction from asteroids commercially feasible, I’d take that over ruining this or any other planet to make our gadgets.
That would be nice, but it's a ways off. The question here is: which is ecologically worse? Conventional mining on land, or mining the sea beds? I don't know the answer here.
It’s an easier decision for me when it’s just digging a deeper and deeper hole in the ground to extract iron ore to make steel structures vs deforesting large swathes of forest for timber. But I’d err to destroy ecosystems we somewhat understand and can rehabilitate vs deep sea where we can’t even comprehend the damage we’re doing, if those were my only choices.
This is probably crazy, but I wonder if it would be possible to leave these sites with better ecology than they have now.
What if, after mining, a smaller amount of the minerals are put back, closer to the surface so that a smaller amount are more easily consumed and life could flourish again with less available?
Why are you assuming that rare earth metals deep below the surface of the earth would benefit the life ON the surface that has evolved to live in the absence of those metals?
Even if for some bizarre reason the metals were beneficial, what about when the mining operation is done and humans leave the area? It just goes back to the previous status quo.
But a good or bad disruption? Are you arguing that the ecosystem is currently optimal? It seems unlikely. So there's interesting questions; what's an optimal ecosystem look like? How can it be achieved?
Industrialized humans have a historically abysmal track record of ham-fistedly “optimizing” ecosystems.
Any manual intervention into an ecosystem generally requires establishing an indefinite commitment to more manual maintenance.
Who determines what “optimal” means? Who implements the optimization? Who pays for it? What happens in a few decades when people lose political interest in the project? Which creatures do we optimize for? Why are we doing this at all? How have similar projects fared in the past?
I can tell you haven’t seriously studied ecology from the way you are approaching this question, so I’m not too worried. But consider questions like those as you ponder this scenario.
Also even if it is beneficial to some or all organism, generally eco system are based on equilibrium. Disturbing that would have consequence which we generally don't understand and can't predict.
This might be an honest question, I dunno. The downvotes seem to suggest that most people didn't take it that way. Probably because it sounds a lot like tired old arguments that miners in the 19th century trotted out, when in reality they left behind toxic lakes and wastelands where there were once flourishing forests.
I’m not a rare earth metal baron masquerading online as a Typescript developer. Yes I was asking honestly. I wish someone who downvoted me would tell me why the answer is no.
I didn’t vote, but personally it seems somewhat obvious to me that the best thing we can do for existing ecosystems, if they have not already been disturbed, is to leave them as they are. Generally the creatures that live there evolved to live there, and the conditions required for the ecosystem to thrive are complex. What I’ve seen of ocean mining involves completely scraping the sea floor of everything and extracting the metals from the disturbed material. Proposed machines leave behind them a complete wake of destruction. There is no possibility to make things better than if we had left it alone.
The only opportunity we have to make things better is in areas we have ourselves destroyed. Then we have a chance to improve it. But if something is undisturbed we can’t really improve upon that.
>I wish someone who downvoted me would tell me why the answer is no.
This is an internet forum full of know-it-alls with Dunning-Kruger Syndrome and toxic personalities. You're not likely to get reasoned answers when you ask honest questions; instead, you just get downvotes and insults.
Sure, there's usually some helpful people here and there in any such forum. But you also got a lot of downvotes and bad comments. I never said everyone in these internet forums is a bunch of jerks. The problem is that so many people are, that the places frequently become un-enjoyable.
These aren't formed nodules like other seabed metals, this is mud with higher than normal amounts of rare earths present.
What isn't clear from the article is if they plan on dredging the top layer, which would entirely disrupt the ecosystem, or somehow pump up mud from under the seabed itself.
If it is the latter, the ecosystem is unlikely to have a dependency on the rare earths in the mud itself; at that depth you don't have plants with deep roots or anything transecting the layers. You will certainly have surface deformation which will be disruptive, but not so much as dredging would be.
Ctr+f for "refining", 0 results. Extracting is not the PRC rare earth dominance bottle neck, it's the decades of infra and tech built up for processing. This is JP spending 40M on research+trial hoping for some sort of resource "moonshot". The lack of strategic resource land deposite continues to cripple the islands security, but underwater recovery/extraction unlikely to be economically feasible vs land producers. And where is JP going to process without fucking up the enviroment? ~80% of PRC rare earth is refined in relatively sparsely populated parts inner mongolia or sichuan, which are more or less periphery. Which part of JP is going to be sacrificed to turn into Mordor? Maybe Hokkaido? Or are these extracted materials going to be shipped to PRC for refining (like many current short/medium term plans for new AU/US rare earth extraction efforts), thereby negating the point of reducing reliance on PRC.
I can't read the article as it's pay walled but I wonder if Japan has considered just being friendly with another country that has rare earth minerals already being mined? Such as Australia, America or Thailand?
Seems kind of stupid to start doing this when it already has apparently strong ties with other suppliers.
I don't want to be too negative but a lot of "unusual thinking" seems to be coming out of Japan lately.
One thing I struggle with when it comes to Japanese news is it very often comes across as "Pro-Japan" propaganda these days. The headlines always seem to start with "Japan to <something awesome/edgy/innovative>"
To me it seems like it’s the same anti-globalization thing that’s going on everywhere. Suddenly no one wants to have any dependency on anyone. Everyone sees possible levers which others could use against you if you import from them. Everybody wants to be self sufficient now.
Really a strong mind shift across society and I don’t like it.
I think all of the supply chain shortages from events of the last 3 years has caused a bit of a push-back on long supply chains and to some extent globalism.
Given their auto and tech industries (they do have fabs after all), having a local source of metals for semis and battery production makes a lot of sense.
Not an expert in this area but the supply chain issues seem as simple as, let's have China (a dangerous dictatorship) do basically everything, including making all our medical equipment seemed stupid.
What's starting to concern me, I know this sounds ageist, but a lot of countries have aging politicians and voting populace who (scarily) might think this is possible. It started with Brexit IMO.
Such as China, who currently dominate most of the world supply in rare earths. I guess Japan are trying to peace out with their traditional advantage in traditional (software-light) robotics.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamitorishima#/media/File:Ja...
especially compared to South Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone#/media...
No-one wants a shooting war, but the US is eager to keep China contained, and enforcing the EEZ rules serves that interest.
Besides 7th in Japan, there's 6th fleet is in Italy and 5th in Bahrain.
So really half the US Navy is always stationed overseas with the first fleet being inactive.
The US has a far more advanced navy (a large proportion of Chinese ships are patrol ships without much tactical significance) and many more aircraft carriers. Aircraft are extremely important in naval conflicts.
Most importantly, we have tons of bases in Japan and South Korea[1].
1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-mili...
If each one is armed with a few anti-ship missiles, a swarm attack from many different directions might be a real threat to a carrier group. You either waste a ton of ordinance taking them all out, or some portion are able to launch against you.
It's a serious threat as everything is low low cost and big on bang.
The US would be looking at defending itself from 100+ unmanned cigar boats each packed with enough explosives to make a serious dent at water level and all interoperating like a flock of birds, some drawing fire while others push through.
With that said, nothing prevents the U.S from imitating any tactics (including swarming by tiny boats and ships) that the Chinese use effectively against the U.S and its allies in a real naval war.
To name a very current example of my first point above in action 24/7, just look at the Ukraine/Russia war today. It has evolved in ways that very few people could have predicted just before or right after it started, with surprises on both sides.
To highlight how the same worked at the beginning of the second world war, partially prompting Churchill's own later phrase: the air defenses of the UK were thought adequate against enemies in 1939, until they were proven to not at all be so, and only improved through very deadly trial and error by 1943. France in 1940 was thought by nearly all powers to be more than a match against a German invasion (and indeed materially it was, on paper and stationary on the ground), until it was proven to not at all work as expected in just 6 weeks. All things always shift simultaneously in ways that can confound any expectation, particularly in situations as ferociously dynamic as large wars.
China itself is the larger aircraft carrier. They also have advanced rocketry, which may render the other ones obsolete.
US still has more displacement via super carriers, better subsurface and larger replenishment fleet to enable more persistent blue water ops. Incidentally PLA is rapidly building up replenishment capabilities, but ultimately most of fleet will stick around PRC shores, with some moving into IndoPac for SLOC security or Africa for anti piracy. But currenly PLAN has MORE "ocean going" vessels than USN, and gap is expected to widen to PLAN 400+ wheras USN ship building lucky to maintain 300 by end of decade.
My previous comment was with respect to actual effectiveness. China has no significant blue water navy.
Citation needed. This is borderline beyond "useful idiot" hot take because even DoD propaganda/analysis or defense wonks do not allege this, and they allege a lot of dumb shit with respect to PRC modernization. Western assesment of PLAN in last few years, with respect to blue water surface combatants, being commissioned at tremendous rates, is one branch where recent DoD writings / analysis has no substantial tech/hardware criticisms, relegating to, their hardware good but maybe software (training/jointness) lacking.
Also to repeat "Many of which more modern". PLAN's blue water surface combatants built since 2010s are considered on par, if not superior with equivalent USN platforms in terms of systems and armaments, including latest flights. Certainly more than the significant portion of USN's aging hulls, many of which are not modernized to latest tech and are held together by duct tape / soon to retire. Like USN isn't going to have anything comparable to a type 55 for another 10+ years in DDG(X). It's hard to overstake the amount of USN program/procurement fuckups in the past decades and ongoing state of US ship building that enabled PRC to catch up in both quality and quantity. Majority of which concentrated in PRC backyard, on new hulls with better maintenance and readiness rates, that widens regional blue water naval power gap even further.
Your move hegemony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK7nzZU6C90
Plus starting a shooting war with China isn't in our best interest, yet. If we ever get there the fishing boats will make exactly zero difference in the outcome.
Paramilitia Fishing boats are like the local insurgents in Afghani/Iraqi cities. They are still there when big expensive American boats leave the other 99% of the year. They don’t provide real military prowess but they blend in with the locals (meaning hard to permanently bully out of neighbourhoods) and constantly apply pressure tactics and surveillance resources that benefit the parent resistance org.
It also critical keeps their flags waving 24/7.
The issue the west has with China, is that China produces all the consumer goods and a decent amount of the heavy equipment. The issue China has is the west provides access to food and energy. While that’s changing, to-date the two are too entangled for war imo.
I assumed we were talking about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_disputes_in_the_So... which isn't really related to Japan.
But you have to go back to WWII to find a war where America fought a peer or neer-peer adversary and won.
Where did you get this crazy idea? China and the US are separated by a huge ocean; there's no way to do trench warfare there. A war between the two would entirely be a naval and air war, not a ground war. That's a war the US would easily win.
You're omitting the second part of their sentence, which makes it pretty clear they aren't talking about trench warfare.
> in that a bunch of new technologies clash for the first time.
Not really, a US/PRC war happening off PRC coast (likely theatre) will also be against PRC land based aviation and rocketry where US is unlikely to win. The numbers game is increasingly favouring PRC is that US doesn't have the logistics to maintain a war near PRC shores going forward because PRC can take out USN sustainment fleet and turn carrier groups into single deployment assets with DAYS of endurance. US ability to generate useful sorties to actually erode PRC land based platforms and the effects they can generate that covers most of US East Asia security commitments (likely trigger) is diminishing fast.
E: over rate limit
>turn into a nuclear war
No it wouldn't, and PRC currently massively building up nuke umbrella, so US wouldn't even more against adversary that can strike back both strategically, and conventionally, especially existentially on CONUS. This US exceptionalist would salt the earth of enemies who sink a carrier wank is reserved for small/mid tier nations that US can bully with impunity. And at the end of the day without carriers, short medium term, US doesn't have the platforms to conventionally destroy PRC... because at that point they will lack "necessary" "whatever forces" to do so.
E2:
>the US has never been attacked on its own soil before in the modern age, except for 9/11, and the results there were catastrophic.
And non nuclear, on nation not particularly responsible. The broader point being US has never been attacked on it's soil because outside of single point vunerabilities like 9/11, US adversaries technically could not, hence US free to prosecute "all out", leading to exceptionalist talking point like losing a carrier will lead to nuclear war. But decision calculus change when US homeland is now permenantly vunerable to peer adversary, repeately, and at scale. This does not mean US would not be forced to escalate with full determination (again likely non nuclear) as result of homeland attacks, but change in vunerabilty means US will be more avoidant of initiating intervention that could lead to homeland exchanges, with respect to PRC this means being deterred from starting a war over TW in first place, which PRC is willing to go to existential ends for, whereas US, most likely is not.
> overestimating the Chinese military's strength
Maybe every relevant PRC platform is vapourware, but if they're remotely credible, then they don't need to match US military pound of pound but asymmetrically dismantle US power projection ability, which is what PLA modernization has focused on in past 20 years. PRC doesn't need to sink 11 carrier groups, it needs to sink 10 fast support ships at dock or and AWACs / tankers in their hangers that enables US projection, a much easier task done with concerted effort by a PRC with massive industrial base, extremely competitive S&T eco with multitude more STEM graduates, and defense budgets which in PPP terms is close to US. IMO, if anything, more people over estimate US miiltary strength vis-a-vis PRC now. Or that that PRC's goal is to build up strategic and conventional deterrance so we don't have to find out before too long.
except for when the Brits burned Washington DC in Aug 1814.
And there was this little thing at someplace named after a rental car company, "Alamo" I think.
You could argue that the wars with the various indigenous people were not fought on US soil, because the soil wasn't "ours" until after we beat them.
Oh, wait, you said "in the modern age". Ok, so since WWI, no one has attacked the US.
So Pearl Harbor doesn't count?
For one thing, Hawaii wasn't a U.S state at the time. Secondly, that's still far from the mainland U.S, an attack on which would provoke a different sort of response.
This is not a CCP thing Americans underestimate Chinese nationalism when faced with foreign devils.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3AMap_of_territorial_disp...
[1] https://cdn.cosmosphilly.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2020/01...
The US lays claims to many deserted islands in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific for their HUGE EEZs and bird poop.
No one dares contest the most well-armed navy on those though...or else.
Portugal's EEZ claim for example is larger than the size of India.
Excluding small island states, the seafood consumption per capita is the highest in the world, you can literally smell it in their supermarkets, and this traditional diet is supported to a large degree by the fishing industry within their EEZ.
The proposed EEZ forms one continuous area with the mainland, something that can't be said for US, UK and French posessions.
It's not some artificial pile of sand on a bank that will erode away if you look at it wrong, or an uninhabited atoll in the middle of nowhere, first discovered a century ago.
I can't believe I'm reading someone earnestly disputing Greece's sovereignty on HN. Either there has been a lack of information or we're dealing with a case of rampant chauvinism and historical enmity.
You should overlay the Greek EEZ on Japan's or China's claims to see how little it really is. Take a look at the US, UK and France in the Pacific for god's sake!
Sometimes it's valuable to question the underlying motives of leadership. He's not blinded enough to believe he has a leg to stand on, but perceptive enough of the intense nationalism that pervades Turkish society (to be fair the same can be said about Greek and the rest of the Balkan society). It's really not a novel insight that exploiting those attitudes, pushing those buttons, distracts from mismanagement at home and guarantees reelection.
I regard this feedback loop as one of the fundamental flaws of democracy. Echoes of every antagonising remark, every urealistic demand can be heard in Serbia, Palestine, Pakistan and wherever else there is a border dispute, causing perpetual bad governance and keeping the people riled up.
The US still has some strategic property in the Pacific. And of course bases in Japan and a partnership with Taiwan. And places like Panama used to be US territory as well. The British still hold on to the Falkland islands. It's not all about peace and democracy here either.
So, Japan using some resources that they found off their own coast isn't the end of the world. And of course the Chinese are all over that as well. Practically in their back yard and most of it is in international waters, which makes it fair game legally.
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/hong...
Anyway, it is only one example of many that we can talk about. The main point is that these claims are not unique or gaining this outrage outside the Chinese case because of the geopolitics differs in this case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian
There is far more damage done owing to the demand for fossil fuels, which is still irreplaceable currently for non-electrical cases (75% of their use). We use it for ammonia, steel, concrete, plastics, all pillars of modern civilization.
The most rapid viable intervention in the near term is lowering growth, by expanding access to contraceptives, and other incentives. Westerners treat that as a right so everyone should be on board.
There is a chasm between "we do not need to extract every last resource we find" and "no resource extraction".
> Damaging a marginal piece of Earth in and of itself does not matter in any existential sense, the only thing that does is long term survival.
I would prefer not just to merely survive, but still have the fish and the birds and the insects intact as well. It's not about one piece of "marginal land" (whatever that means), but about our desire to scrape every last piece of this earth clean to extract everything we can. In any case you said "Mining exploration of any kind impacts ecosystems, what of it?" and I answered your question. There are environmental costs at play and they should be considered and balanced against our need to continue consuming more and more of the planet's surface.
> The most rapid viable intervention in the near term is lowering growth, by expanding access to contraceptives, and other incentives.
Actually the people who already have contraceptives use the most resources, so instead of pointing fingers at "them" we would do well to look at our own resource consumption.
That is rather redundant seeing as we already do not extract every resource available - we extract to meet demand.
> still have the fish and the birds and the insects intact as well.
Another redundancy as the large part of the human population would face doom if most animals cannot survive. We do not have the means to engineer survival for even a fraction of 8 billion people without ecosystems.
> There are environmental costs at play and they should be considered and balanced against our need to continue consuming more and more of the planet's surface.
They are. And the growth in consumption is largely driven by emerging middle class in China and other countries. It would be inhumane to demand that they do not improve their quality of life.
> Actually the people who already have contraceptives use the most resources, so instead of pointing fingers at "them" we would do well to look at our own resource consumption.
You still don't see the big picture.
Fertility rates in the west are stagnant. Growth rate is pegged through policy, as a device to prop up the GDP (primarily benefiting the rich).
This is a measure of consumption. Immigration is the reason total GDP (consumption) grows over time. It should be trivial to infer that those elements that lead to our individual carbon footprint are what constitutes a better life for those moving over - the houses, infrastructure, food, comforts, etc. No one moves here to lower consumption.
Notwithstanding, the significant increases in consumption are in emerging economies, not ours. This will continue as more of the world is lifted out of poverty. It's a positive, but will lead to more emissions. Fertilizer, steel, cement, and plastics require it. The basic pillars of modern living, even if you keep gadgets like iPhones out of the picture.
Ultimately, the global population growth is projected to level off in 100 years. If you care so much about birds and fish though, you would do well to support initiatives to expedite the stagnation. The numbers don't lie.
Blaming consumers in abstract is ineffective and absurd. We could and should target some problem areas through policy (greener homes grant to improve insulation is a good real world example, also reducing food waste), but ultimately consumption will rise with our growing population and you cannot outrun that.certainly not with innanities like scolding people about arbitrary consumer choices like buying a phone or driving a car to meet their needs.
Since the radical leftists have appropriated the green sphere, I detect more cognitive dissonance, such as the notion that it is imperative that any and all should have the opportunity to emigrate here owing to better standard of living while simultaneously calling on people to lower their standard of living in completely arbitrary ways.
This bears repeating: even if you hypothetically lowered consumption of a large demo of westerners through messaging (unlikely), the govt policy is explicitly to increase consumption. Immigration would just increase. Consumption WILL increase, at least for 100 years. The anti-consumer rhetoric is pissing in the wind.
If they were a way to make resource extraction from asteroids commercially feasible, I’d take that over ruining this or any other planet to make our gadgets.
What if, after mining, a smaller amount of the minerals are put back, closer to the surface so that a smaller amount are more easily consumed and life could flourish again with less available?
Even if for some bizarre reason the metals were beneficial, what about when the mining operation is done and humans leave the area? It just goes back to the previous status quo.
It’s a disruption either way.
Any manual intervention into an ecosystem generally requires establishing an indefinite commitment to more manual maintenance.
Who determines what “optimal” means? Who implements the optimization? Who pays for it? What happens in a few decades when people lose political interest in the project? Which creatures do we optimize for? Why are we doing this at all? How have similar projects fared in the past?
I can tell you haven’t seriously studied ecology from the way you are approaching this question, so I’m not too worried. But consider questions like those as you ponder this scenario.
The only opportunity we have to make things better is in areas we have ourselves destroyed. Then we have a chance to improve it. But if something is undisturbed we can’t really improve upon that.
This is an internet forum full of know-it-alls with Dunning-Kruger Syndrome and toxic personalities. You're not likely to get reasoned answers when you ask honest questions; instead, you just get downvotes and insults.
What isn't clear from the article is if they plan on dredging the top layer, which would entirely disrupt the ecosystem, or somehow pump up mud from under the seabed itself.
If it is the latter, the ecosystem is unlikely to have a dependency on the rare earths in the mud itself; at that depth you don't have plants with deep roots or anything transecting the layers. You will certainly have surface deformation which will be disruptive, but not so much as dredging would be.
> at that depth you don't have plants with deep roots or anything transecting the layers
Seems kind of stupid to start doing this when it already has apparently strong ties with other suppliers.
I don't want to be too negative but a lot of "unusual thinking" seems to be coming out of Japan lately.
One thing I struggle with when it comes to Japanese news is it very often comes across as "Pro-Japan" propaganda these days. The headlines always seem to start with "Japan to <something awesome/edgy/innovative>"
Really a strong mind shift across society and I don’t like it.
Given their auto and tech industries (they do have fabs after all), having a local source of metals for semis and battery production makes a lot of sense.
What's starting to concern me, I know this sounds ageist, but a lot of countries have aging politicians and voting populace who (scarily) might think this is possible. It started with Brexit IMO.