So, Gary Brechner wrote an article about this, like 20 years ago: Basically, that the combination of expense to build, and vulnerability to specific asymmetric threats, that huge ocean-floating warships represent, means that in the long term they are doomed as a serious military platform. They should go on the shelf alongside that thing the Nazis did with trying to build small-building-sized tanks, as something that just doesn’t make sense when all factors are considered.

It might seem that the submarinization of the Black Sea fleet proves him out, but as it happens, I coincidentally got to talk recently to an actual military strategy expert on the topic and this was his take:

• Deterrence is a relevant factor. Lots of expensive military kit is pretty vulnerable. The issue is, if you do start taking steps to attack it, what’s going to happen to you in response. That’s at the heart of keeping a lot of big powers’ naval forces safe, more so than them being invulnerable. Real no-holds-barred war is pretty rare in the modern world; most military kit goes around most of the time being used for force projection or little proxy wars, usually not full-scale war against peer enemies.
• It may be that the big ships are becoming more vulnerable as time goes on, yes, but it’s not like that’s new. Once it does go past the level of “we don’t want to do that / provide weapons so our proxy can do that because we’re scared of the response,” and proceeds to a real fuck-'em-up war, losing big battleships and carriers at a shocking rate has been part of war since around World War 2. They’re hard as fuck to defend and navies tend to be super cautious with where they put them as a result, and once it comes to a real war, they start sinking yes. It’s not like land warfare; it only really takes one day where something goes wrong to sink billions and billions of dollars worth of your navy irrevocably. Adding a new way that that can happen doesn’t necessarily change the shape of the war because it was already happening and was already part of the calculus.

I think, as some other people have said, that most of it is bad strategy and tactics by the Russians, of putting their big naval assets within range of the weapons that can fuck them up and for some reason not reacting (until very recently) when as a result they started sinking like pebbles in a pond.

Fun fact! They think that because of some kind of electromagnetic issue, Kessler syndrome or its precursors could maybe destroy the ozone layer too.

I don’t think anyone is saying they shouldn’t be allowed to do it; just that they think it’s going to go poorly

Also I would add that it’s a moderately dire sign as far as the state of Russia’s manpower levels. Every country at war desperately wants more soldiers at all times but some desperates are more desperate than other desperates.

military has repeatedly said it is not deliberately targeting the media

“ There is no policy of targeting media personnel,”

These are actually two different statements, with a very small, very subtle, but profoundly important difference between them.

some within the IDF appear to have viewed journalists working in Gaza for outlets controlled by or affiliated with Hamas to be legitimate military targets

“affiliated with”

This comes right after Israel sending a delegation to the US to “talk about” the war in Lebanon and the so called war in Gaza, too. Presumably to talk about hey you’re gonna bankroll those into the fall, like always, right?

But… why? I am honestly baffled as to the business reasons behind the decision. I don’t think people are sick of propaganda. People love propaganda.

But it’s hard for me to say you are wrong, also, simply because like I say I have no idea what the thinking behind it is.

That’s what I mean. It’s like they are trying to get at an honest presentation of the facts of the story.

It’s fuckin weird from ANY corporate US news outlet but from those two it’s like bizarro world

It’s a fairly impressive propaganda double dip

DON’T explain the context, beyond “synagogue” and “antisemitism” and some vague language about how violence “evolved” into existence. Thus, anyone who isn’t pro Palestinian sees the story in a very particular way that will reinforce a particular wrong perception of the protestors.

But DO bring Biden’s name into it for literally no reason at all, so that the people who support the protestors and are able to realize that there’s probably more to the story, will have their particular wrong perception, that quite a lot of them probably have, that he’s anti protestor, reinforced.

It’s a rare and cunning story that can simultaneously communicate “look at these scumbag anti semitic protestors” and “look at Biden thinking these protestors are anti semitic scumbags” simultaneously, with each population receiving the message which is exactly appropriate to misleading them and them specifically.

CNN and fucking USA Today have been doing quite a bit of actual complete and honest reporting recently.

I have no idea where it came from, but I’ll take it

It has yet to pass the Senate, and Biden said he would veto it.

Of course, Biden is still swearing to everyone that he is still sending shipments except for the one that he paused because of Rafah, and that he plans to keep doing it. And, his administration conducted an investigation which somehow managed to conclude that they “may have” been committing war crimes but that it’s not clear enough that we would have to stop shipping them weapons or anything which we would be legally obligated to do if they “conclusively” were doing anything criminal.

Fuckin assholes

In general, they get grants of cash from the US which they are required to use to “purchase” from US suppliers more or less any weapons (with few export restrictions). We’re giving them weapons but they still get to pick out what they think they need. This is a pretty good overview which seems like it’s mainly missing:

• The fact that congress authorizes aid, and then the White House is generally responsible for actually sending it. That’s important in cases like the most recent aid package congress passed, which Biden is at least partially simply deciding not to provide, which he is more or less able to do (the “more or less” is complicated and I don’t really understand it).
• A detailed breakdown of what shipments got “paused” and what aid has actually been delivered since then. Presumably, the White House is able to keep the details of this information secret. Currently, Netanyahu is claiming that they’re cutting off a lot of shipments they should be giving, and the White House is claiming that that’s wrong and they’ve been delivering aid as normal (and as far as I know not saying how much that is); it would be nice to know the detail of what’s being sent and who is lying (although I have a theory).

I know this whole message is preaching to the choir but:

You guys managed to find like the one time in history that US military ordinance killed civilians that unequivocally wasn’t our fault, when they were attacking a clearly military target under occupation from a clearly malicious invading force

And you are, predictably, complaining like it’s our fault you put the airfield right next to a fucking public beach and then didn’t sound any kind of warning that it was under active bombardment and knocked one of the missiles off its military target and it fell on some people

Pack up

Go home

IDK if I am the clueless one, but I had absolutely no idea what “S’pore” was supposed to mean.

Bloody hell, you are right (well, sort of; apparently it’s complex.) That’s convenient for the map makers, I guess, although best of luck to them in enforcing any of it (and according to that article they’ve sort of clarified that that doesn’t mean they’re actually claiming the sea, as best as I can understand it.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8HdOHrc3OQ

Acting aggresively, but in a carefully crafted way to avoid an escalated response. The message sent internally that the other side restrains themselaee not out of reason, but fear.

That actually might be it. We can’t look to people in our own government / own country like we’re anything other than the boss and everyone knows it, but also, we definitely don’t want to pick a massive fight with another nuclear armed power and our biggest trading partner for literally no reason at all. And so, let’s play this stupid fighter-plane-chicken game with them and spin it at home like we’re out there telling them what’s what.

IDK if I buy it. It sorta makes sense.

It’s hard to square that, though, with actually fucking up the sailors on Filipino ships in a way that seems like it should demand some kind of response. Maybe the orders were to just be pushy in a non-escalational way and things got out of hand on the ground in a way that for-real wasn’t intended?

That “China/Taiwan” is just kinda thrown in there without even an asterisk or anything

(Actually I guess leaving Taiwan out of the legend entirely would have looked like an accident or something, and having a separate color for it would have been a huge deal and they’d have started to get phone calls, and so they just shrugged and put that down and said you know what it’s not a perfect world let’s move on)

But they do this shit with the US too. Their fighter planes play the “I’m not touching you I’m not touching you” game with US aircraft right up until the point it turns into the “oh no I did touch you and now I’m dead and my airplane is falling apart in fiery chunks and your airplane is crippled what an exercise in futility that whole thing was” game.

Like I say, I won’t even say that that didn’t impact US policy in some way similar to what they wanted. I don’t know that it did but I don’t know that it didn’t. Overall my main reaction is just wtf are you guys doing why is your strategy like this.

(I do of course suspect that they will not try to play the firehoses and spear wielding game with the US Navy. Just some similar version of the same type of tactics.)

The Chinese are pursuing a very weird passive aggressive strategy here that I do not at all understand.

“Surely if we spray water at the other boats and run our boats into them and jump on board the opposing ships with poking weapons like some kind of Maori tribesmen the rest of the world will get sick of it and go away and give us what we want i.e. full control of the South China Sea, without us having to actually start a war about it”

I really don’t understand. I can’t even say for sure it is a bad idea, because like I say I just don’t understand, but it seems unlikely that it’s going to produce the impact that they seem like they want it to produce.

You broke the code yes

😢

It is changing slowly but that doesn’t do anything for someone whose child is dying quickly, right now

Part of it is just the news. They would present it VERY differently and in a much more compelling fashion than they present what’s happening in Palestine today. But that’s only part. The average American also cares far more about white people and countries that are “our friends” than they do about people who are neither of those things.