> meanwhile, the United States is a nuclear weapons state
This logic is outdated because it is pretty obvious that no one is going to employ nuclear warheads in a typical conventional war and thus the nuclear factor suddenly doesn't matter for war economics.
Much of the world's mains-voltage electronics run at 240V (historical) and have PFC circuits (which are essentially just boost converters) that run at ~400V DC link voltages. 650V gives you enough headroom to tolerate overshoots and still have an 80% safety margin with a single level topology.
This voltage also coincidentally is a convenient crossover point where silicon MOSFETs start to become inefficient and GaN FETs have recently become feasible and mass-produced.
They weren't exclusively civilian targets, they were considered "mixed" targets. Hirohito's home wasn't considered strategically-important enough and therefore didn't make the cut.
The sites in question were also specifically selected because they hadn't previously faced conventional attack, enabling a more accurate damage assessment.
> they hadn't previously faced conventional attack
Which, by the way, illustrates a related point: Hiroshima and Nagasaki had stiff competition. WWII was devastating, to cities and civilians all over the map. More people died in the conventional bombing of Tokyo than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I think the atomic bombs represented some 2 weeks worth of casualties in a war that lasted 300.
No sir that's not a school we're proposing to bomb, it's a complex containing both a school and a vehicle maintenance facility. So it's mixed, meaning there's valid logistical reasons to attack it. Yes, hundreds of children will perish in the attack, but the action will also provide us with legitimate benefits. Just try not to think about the former and focus on the latter. I'm sure no one in the future will judge us too harshly for the decision.
Is that what the Japanese were doing? (Bit of a pointless diversion though because this is a nuclear bomb we're talking about here. Not exactly a surgical strike.)
Yes and no. They were doing that, but AFAIK they did so because it was deemed more efficient, not to use people as human shields. Also, at the time, there was no such thing as a surgical strike.
I didn't see it that way. It seems like NGOs and IGOs have been pushing for internet restrictions for a long time. There has suddenly been a push for age restrictions allegedly because of abuse material. This happens annually. Some international group claims there needs to be something draconian abolishing encryption, or some other privacy invading measure to stop child abuse and help security. The laws are 1000s of pages and appear out of nowhere and we're expected to believe it's organic and that politicians are deeply concerned about the issue.
So it really wouldn't be hard for the same legal framework that restricts age to happen in the US. It just takes compliance on our part. The UK is just one tentacle of the legal bureaucracy. It wouldn't surprise me if a bill appears called the Online Child Safey Act or something like that soon and it happens to coincide with a bunch of issues Ofcom raises in this lawsuit.
> It seems like NGOs and IGOs have been pushing for internet restrictions for a long time. There has suddenly been a push for age restrictions allegedly because of abuse material. This happens annually.
we’re seeing some good evidence the most recent pushes were secretly funded and directly written by meta, the corporation. [0][1]
according to the link in there,
> Rep. Kim Carver (R-Bossier City), the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her.
and they’ve put as much as 2 billion dollars into it. and yes, that’s billion, with a B.
corporations openai, meta, and google were absolutely backing the push for the age verification bill in california and ohio. [2][3][4]
Reading the original research and stripping away the motives implied by the bot, the data is aligned with another interpretation. Namely that Meta is going with the flow and using the opportunity to push for regulation that impact its interests less, while affecting its competitors more.
The original research is riddled with baked in conclusions, and has not been verified independently. Its also mostly LLM generated.
> and they’ve put as much as 2 billion dollars into it. and yes, that’s billion, with a B.
The original report that cited the $2 billion number was AI generated slop. The $2 billion number wasn't from Meta, it was from Arabella Advisors.
The AI-generated report showed only about $20-30 million in lobbying efforts per year across all lobbying.
Even the Show HN post was full of AI slop, claiming things like "months of research" when the Claude-generated report showed it began a couple days prior.
So please stop repeating this AI generated junk. It dilutes any real story and the obvious falsehoods make it easy for critics to dismiss.
That’s on all lobbying efforts combined. It’s not out of line for a company of that scale that is trying to do things like build data centers and other such activities.
There’s a motte-and-bailey fallacy happening with that “Meta spent $2 billion” report where the $2 billion number is used as a hook but then replaced with a different argument if the other parties are observant enough to see that it’s BS
India is considering these bans. I suspect every country in the world is thinking of them.
I work in safety, and you are right in that this comes up every year. The pressures have been building up and it’s coming to a head. However:
0) Techlash is a thing, and HN regularly underestimates the vehemence and anger behind it.
1) There IS an organic component, driven by voters globally.
2) It is also meta and governments, taking advantage of a crisis to further their ends.
Governments globally are tending towards authoritarianism. Tech firms impact most of the world, but are barely responsive to even the American government.
Voters around the world are increasingly terrified of what tech is doing, while tech is entirely unresponsive to their concerns. Tech is very firmly the bad guy today, when it used to be the “good guy” in the 90s.
So governments are more than happy to be seen as putting tech in its place, while gaining more power for themselves.
A few anecdotes about how bad the safety side is: NDAs are so prevalent and tech is so averse to customer support, that safety teams have no formal signal sharing methods.
The number of requests to recover accounts, point out fraud, or even to address CSAM, that go through WhatsApp, slack, discord, etc. is heart breaking.
To be blunt, it’s a Kafkaesque fuck up that the whole world is stuck in, and people are pissed.
Not so slowly. They've gone from a more or less respectable smaller country to more or less politically, culturally, and economically irrelevant in less than 10 years. I even question whether it's rational to allow them to have nukes; they should probably be required to give them up to some country that has a shot at remaining a stable and predictable geopolitical entity over the next century.
Their cultural decline seems to have definitely accelerated recently. Even 10-15 years ago it seemed like there was so much more British influence in the media, a lot more films and television set in Britain. It seems like the London Olympics were a kind of last hurrah. Even here in Australia which has always historically had more British influence than anywhere else it's receded - there's very little focus on their internal politics, much more on the politics and culture of the United States, even more than you'd expect given the population difference.
There are two kinds of "isolationism". In the first, the person becomes a hermit refusing to interact with anyone.
In the second, a cult grabs hold of the person and isolates them from their families and loved ones so they can brainfuck them. And, I suspect this has happened to the UK. England doesn't want to be a land for the English, because to do so would make them racist. They have strength in their diversity. Blah blah blah. And the English can't be allowed to talk with anyone else or they might realize how fucked-in-the-head all that nonsense is. They are under the spell of a cult, not as individuals, but collectively. And that cult won't be done with them until it's taken everything from them and coerced them to sign a "billion year contract". And to top it off, you're blaming it on them.
Don't mistake Brits' general disinterest in engaging with foreigners whose perspective on the UK begins and ends with lecturing us on "England for the English" with us not being able to talk with anybody else...
In case it wasn't clear, my comment was sarcastic. To be absolutely clear, I don't agree with racial discrimination.
So that we don't talk past each other, here is a summary of my perspective of the discussion so far:
NoMoreNicksLeft dropped an unhinged rant about "England for the English", including a clearly sarcastic and mocking reference to "They have strength in their diversity".
joe_mamba chimed in with "diversity is bad", and added that Germany has the same "issue".
DeathArrow expressed incredulity at witnessing open racial segregationism on HN.
You replied to DeathArrow with "diversity of opinions is good". It was unclear whether you were defending the expression of segregationism on HN, or disagreeing with the premise of it. In any case you didn't signal that you recognized the extreme irony.
I attempted to point out the irony with as few words as possible, and apparently failed to communicate well enough.
Ah I think I understand. I definitely think the point is worth making that England seems to be one of the only places on earth that doesn't value - or even recognise the existence of - its own native population, even as a point of debate. It's definitely nothing to do with segregation, which is just something else.
No one in most countries would argue that their native population doesn't exist as a category. In fact while in the US the native Americans have been treated very badly in the past, that hopefully doesn't happen too much today, and they are quite honoured in some ways.
Yes, but the comment DeathArrow responded to, which is apparently what started all this bickering about racism (collapse that comment to see what I mean), was not.
joe_mamba's use of "diversity" reads as being about diversity of opinion; it only appears to be about race given the context you pointed out.
Seriously, what part of "United people are dangerous for the elites" suggests that the people should segregate themselves and each other?
I have a hard time believing that, sorry. joe_mamba literally quoted the same use of the word "diversity" that I did, and concurred with the sentiment - that it "leads to division". And went on to add that Germany was also "under the spell of a cult".
You're suggesting that joe_mamba simply used a paragraph of barely-veiled racist drivel as a jumping off point to make a completely unrelated and totally-not-racist point about how diversity of opinion is harmful and "leads to weakness"? And agreed with the "cult" rhetoric for good measure?
Why exactly should we ignore the context? An excess of charity, perhaps? How are we supposed to interpret "similar issue in Germany" without the context?
The biggest racial discrimination in today's UK is their inability to arrest and put an end to grooming gangs. Get educated on the subject to understand whats being insinuated by the slogan they have "diversity" as their strength. Most of western Europe & UK are unable to handle crime committed by certain groups, for fear of being labeled racists. Well, there is a teacher in UK in "hiding" because he offended the wrong people. In summary, UK neither has the soft power nor the moral authority to influence anyone in the today's world.
the UK has incarcerated plenty of participants in grooming gangs from a diverse range of ethnic groups (and elected none of them President).
No matter how many accounts you create to amplify the Epstein-associate media message that only other ethnicities participate in the systematic sexual abuse of children and get away with it, you're still not getting an invite to the island...
It used to be widely known that tech nerds are socially impaired.
Then they built the future and earned a lot of money and status, and now Silicon Valley is a hotbed of neofascist thought.
Turns out that if you give enough power to people who wrangle machines, they start thinking about wrangling people the same way.
Nerds are extremely dangerous. Through their work they quickly absorb the axiom of "predictability is good, unpredictability is bad" and from there to conclusions like "heterogeneity is dangerous and unpredictable" and "behavior of actors in a distributed system must be constrained". Put DevOps in charge of society and expect to get humans treated like cattle, not pets.
Are you saying that merely stating the practically proven fact of "diversity leads to political and social division" makes someone a neo fascist? Or did I misunderstand your comment?
This was already happening, it's just they were on your team and you were happy. One of the most obvious things to have happen is the overriding power of the left in tech and all the right (and centre-left) people warning that when the pendulum swings all the left-wing people who love giving authority more power will regret it. As though all authoritarian left wing countries in history were not evidence enough, they have to learn the lesson the hard way.
Firstly, I don't appreciate, at all, being told what "team" I'm on, or the smug tone that I'm now "learning a lesson". When you come on HN, leave that sort of thing at the door, please. I'm being polite but I'd like you to imagine this worded in the strongest possible way that is acceptable for whatever culture you happen to be from. Include swear words if it helps.
I don't know of any "big tech" going out of its way to enforce left wing values. Bandwagoning on large scale social movements, sure, in a "play it safe" kind of way, the same way literally every company gets all rainbow-y during Pride month - it's profitable, or they wouldn't do it. If you resented that, what you resented was having a minority opinion.
The relatively recent shift towards right wing values is also rooted in self interest. It doesn't indicate some kind of change of heart, it simply signals recognition of a power shift - the opinions of people / users / customers now matter less than the opinions of certain authoritarian right wing governments.
Unless you think I appreciate your first paragraph, it's a bit hypocritical to do something I don't appreciate while berating me for same.
> I don't know of any "big tech" going out of its way to enforce left wing values.
I believe you, and I think that is exactly the problem.
> The relatively recent shift towards right wing values is also rooted in self interest
I agree, but this is why neither left nor right should be cheering for corporations enforcing hate speech rules (set by whomever is in power), shadow bans for the right wing voices, bans for people questioning the efficacy of the covid vaccine, or for questioning vaccine mandates, etc etc. The opinions of authoritarian left wing people for 10 years are now being ignored (well, not in HR departments and all the other places left wing authoritarianism exists) and the left seems to view that change as a rise in authoritarianism.
It's irrational to allow anyone other than yourself to have nukes. That's the whole point of having them, and the reason why nobody is going to bother asking for permission. No country with any self respect wants to end up becoming another Venezuela.
North Korea is still standing and even got Trump to play diplomacy. Only reason Iran got attacked is the fact they didn't have nukes yet.
Venezuela showed everyone what happens when you're a toothless country. USA shows up at your door uninvited, fucks your shit up, takes your oil and kidnaps your president for good measure, just to tack on some extra humiliation.
Don't get me wrong, Maduro deserved an even worse fate than what he got. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. It's still a cautionary tale for nations worldwide. It can happen to you. China continues to erode the economic power of the USA. They could very well discover one day that their military might is all they have left. Who's to say they won't suddenly decide to capitalize on their advantage before it evaporates?
As Venezuelan nothing angers me more than someone naming Maduro as our president, and that in some way I should feel bad about it. The guy and his government were pure evil.
You guys should have been the ones to personally get your hands on him. Hope you're doing alright now. Situation is far from perfect but at least one tyrant is gone.
We have tried so many times, and tbh if Venezuelans were the ones doing it this time so many civilians would have died. Because the military people that can do something about it, are so comfortable with all the stuff they have.
It should be UNSC acting on the arrest warrant from Den Haag sending the president snatchers, but that version of world police didn’t live up to expectations, so back to big shaitan ut goes
No one should feel bad for Maduro, but the reasons Maduro was evil had very little to do with the actual reasons the US grabbed him. Trump's motives were pure greed, and that's a terrifying reason for kidnapping a foreign head of state. And at least as far as I've seen, it didn't even help. Literally every other part of his regime is still in place isn't it?
Iran would be attacked even with nukes. If you promise relentless war- and nuclear attacks via proxxies - you basically show that game-theory does not apply to you. Religion explicitly states that MAD does not apply to them too. And they life by that.
So Iran with nukes, would be nuked 1 day after. No matter the cost.
Its similar to the a medieval pope having nukes, and everyone else being heretic witches. You just pick the size of the stake you burn on at that point.
What the west wishes the world to be and how they think everyone does see the world, does simply not apply. No matter how Nash pure. The All defector defects in all games..
I wish you had traveled the world and would have seen whats really on the ground, instead of staying in your bubble and earlying out with a "everyone is just like me".
The us is the most harmless empire that ever was.
The most extreme case in the us evangelical bullshit is a daily buisness case.
Literal neo-nazis have existed within the administration at relatively high levels (and likely still do, though they've gotten better about not outright bragging about it like some of those dipshits). People at even higher levels talk about conversations with literal neo-nazis, how they listen to their podcasts, etc. I'm not using this in the "I think everyone that has even remotely fascist tendencies is a neo-nazi" manner, I am using it in the "No these people are literally self described neo-nazis" manner.
The reality of the USA post WW2 is one that is full of plenty of shame. It still might be the most harmless empire there ever was, but that's a relative statement - the US has done * a lot* of harm. Perhaps a lot of good, too. Maybe even more good than harm. But almost all of that harm was unnecessary. But the past is not the future, and the present shows us marching to a darker and darker future.
Better to raise the alarm now and stop that descent rather than letting it continue.
Yes and now, go out of your bubble - and ask the immigrants streaming to the us- what do you think compared to home! And the answers is- at home they where all nazis, insane ideollougs with corrupt clans, all fanatics, buisness had no say and they hunted minorities in the streets. Thats why i left.. thats why they all leave iran, etc when they can.
They wouldn't if the us was this bad even now. Reality itself contradicts you..
The moment migration to the us stops- its finally become equally bad..
The UK has been declining for at least 50 years, it isn't a new phenomenon. It's only really relevant culturally; after all EU countries are forced to speak English or they wouldn't be able to communicate, even after the UK's departure from the Union and some unsuccessful attempts at increasing the place of French.
Not having the UK in the EU makes English a better choice, not a worse one. It was one of those things where the UK had a 'home court advantage'. This is one of the strangest fringe benefits and of course there were some countries that tried to jockey for position but fortunately that didn't go anywhere.
While it's the defacto public language (and the one of the required languages). These days all EU communication is done though either the translation service or governmental variants of it making it pretty much irrelevant due to most official languages being served (there seem to be some exceptions but they are minor in the grand scheme of things).
Not that I necessarily disagree but rationality doesn't enter into it. I mean Pakistan is probably less stable than the UK but I guess they're allowed to have nukes now?
I don't personally like their government but at this point they certainly have the appearance of long term social and political stability. More than most western countries for the time being.
The only real difference between Obama's foreign adventures in Libya and Trump's in Iran was that Obama lied to the security council to get their approval first.
Trump isnt all that different in character to previous administrations he just takes bigger risks and doesnt bother with the mask.
The person I was replying to was talking about China's own long-term social and political stability, not their foreign policy. If you're suggesting that Obama's boondoggle in Libya was the catalyst that led to Hillary Clinton's loss in 2016 and Trump's first presidency, that's intriguing speculation. But I don't think his foreign policy is relevant to the overall topic since it was largely milquetoast for the American public at the time, and certainly didn't cause any immediate domestic instability like we're seeing with Trump.
I've been hearing that since the 1990's when it first started to become apparent that their economy was on track to overtake the rest of the world within a few decades.
It hasn't happened yet. Is there something you perceive as especially problematic now, as opposed to the last 30 years?
I've never once heard it from somebody who correctly anticipated China's rise though. The imminent collapse story just quietly changes every 5 years or so.
If the US has an imperial rival one thing you can almost guarantee is that the predictions of economic collapse will be as frequent as they are absurdly overblown and as always, This Time It's Different.
> the one child policy has backed them into a corner
A policy that ended a decade ago, and was only ever marginally successful (even at the height of the restrictions their birth rate was nearer 1.4 than 1.0)
The one child policy was only for cities anyway. Agricultural areas were permitted, even encouraged, to have more children. There were other exceptions, like twins (obviously), if the first baby was disabled, etc. Later on, couples were allowed two children if both parents came from single-child families.
Totalitarianism aside, I'm not sure about the stability either. Personally I suspect Xi Jinping's reign will end with some kind of bang, either an economic one or something relating to invading Taiwan.
Taiwan's biggest problem is that the average age is currently ~45 and in 15 years it will be ~55. It's going to be hard to keep the economy going once half the country's retired.
Yes obviously. We would erase President Xi and his family as well. What are they going to do, cross the Pacific? Our total willingness to do is unconditional.
> Totalitarianism aside, I'm not sure about the stability either. Personally I suspect Xi Jinping's reign will end with some kind of bang, either an economic one or something relating to
That's mostly because of London's financial center, where a lot of foreign money is laundered; the city's GDP is comparable in size with small EU countries like Belgium or Ireland. If you take London out of the equation, what's left has an average GDP of only 30k per capita [0].
A quick comparison with [1] (using 1 GBP ~ 1.30 USD) shows that London would rank #8 in Europe (between Denmark and Norway), while the rest of the UK would come in somewhere around #25, between Spain and Italy.
Sure, if you exclude the wealthiest parts of the country then it does look significantly poorer. Just as if you exclude California then the GDP of the US drops significantly. The point was whether the UK is economically relevant, not whether the economy is ethically sound (which is quite a nebulous question I'm sure you'll agree).
This is an entirely delusional twitter-brain take.
Despite its problems, the UK is still a sixth largest economy, a cultural powerhouse (how many Hollywood actors are British?), with a lot of soft power, a capable and currently renewed nuclear arsenal (Astraea and Dreadnought are on track), a globe-spanning network of alliances (from AUKUS to Japan deploying to the UK first time in their history to being one of the closest and most unwavering allies for Ukraine), and a constitutionally healthy and adaptive system of government (we just passed another constitutional change and it's not a big deal, we can just do that).
Frankly, this meme stinks of projection. Going from a shining city on a hill to a place where public executions by state backed paramilitaries are just another partisan talking point, that starts Special Military Operations with no plan or goal, that threatens to annex territory of its allies in about a year is an achievement. I guess projecting this free fall on the UK makes living through it more bearable.
True, but the the UK has under 30% of the population of the US and less than 6% of the population of China.
If you compare per capita, it's a very different story. USA is around $93k, UK $61k and China $15k. So about 2/3 of the USA's and more than 4x China's. This was using my figures calculated from your table and the population figures I found elsewhere.
An actual source of GDP per capita [0] puts the USA at 9th globally, UK at 20th globally and China at 74th.
When you factor in that the US's GDP figures are quite skewed because there are lots of multinationals headquartered in the US. If you ignored just the Mag7, who all derive the majority of their income outside the USA, the USA would be significantly further down that GDP list.
>Despite its problems, the UK is still a sixth largest economy, ... Going from a shining city on a hill to a place where public executions by state backed paramilitaries are just another partisan talking point, that starts Special Military Operations with no plan or goal, that threatens to annex territory of its allies in about a year is an achievement.
Why would you use the economy to defend the UK's status and then point to a bunch of non economy stuff to try to knock the US? The US is the largest and has been for awhile. Isn't that what mattered to you? Plus, pointing out that a bunch of prominent UK residents leave to participate in US industry hardly seems a point in favor of how well the UK is doing.
They didn't put it very well but they're right that being the 6th largest economy, and likely to become the 5th or 4th quite soon puts a hole in the "economically irrelevant" accusation.
It's not "knocking the US", it's an example of the (likely, projected) decline. The size of the economy is an example of why "irrelevant" is delusional. Two different points.
The "prominent UK residents" don't "leave" the UK. Benedict Cumberbatch lives in London, despite constantly starring in Hollywood films. It's an example of the UK culturally punching way above its weight in proportion to its population.
> it's an example of the (likely, projected) decline
Again, you just used the present size of a nation's economy to argue that a nation isn't in decline when someone was talking about the ongoing decline of a nations politics, economy, and culture. It seems odd to me you're able to, for other countries, understand that the present moment can be viewed with both historical and likely future context.
>The "prominent UK residents" don't "leave" the UK. Benedict Cumberbatch lives...
Plenty move, but that wasn't the point I think anyone was making. If I wanted to say they were moving to the US, I would have said that instead of "leave to participate in US industry". And all of that ignores that the original commenter was talking about the decline of British media rather than saying that they're aren't talented Brits. It's not like they they're saying the UK had a bunch of great actors ten years ago and they suddenly died. Them working in American industry rather than the UK producing it own is, I'm pretty sure, the sort of point the commenter you replied to was making.
The Yanks see in the UK their own inevitable decline. The British Empire disappeared, and every time they turn on the TV and see their retarded paedophile in chief struggling to express even one single coherent thought, they must surely know they are witnessing the end of their own empire.
They're just lashing out, emperor has no clothes, their empire is collapsing, and those who are paying any attention at all, are fully aware of it. All they have left is to go on the internet and shit on Europe for daring to regulate their precious social media companies (that elsewhere they generally admit we would be better off without). They are desperately clutching onto this tech-company-based nationalism. It's absolutely pathetic.
It’s kind of sad to read your arrogant and xenophobic rantings. I’m not sure you’re really down for the sort of inclusive and open minded discussion that normally takes place here.
I would normally agree but if you see Brexit and the kind of "people" that are getting ready to take over power (Reform UK), I do have to say I understand some of this sentiment.
Living here the decline is tangible. And this is West Oxfordshire; not one of the poorer parts of the country.
An example in microcosm: a local village suffered road flooding due to failed maintenance of water pipes. Our rent-seeking privatized water company effected the minimum repair required by regulation.
The next section of old pipe burst almost immediately, flooding the road further for most of January, utterly destroying the surface, through the road base in many places. Even at a crawl it's difficult to avoid tyre damage.
Over a month later the water repairs were effected. Then shortly after some local roadwork notification signs were put up.
Those expecting repairs to the moonscaped road were disappointed: instead the relentless bureaucracy of British local government installed traffic calming measures on top of the broken road, as the work had already been booked and could not be stopped by any means as even basic roadworks lack any degree of dynamism in their execution.
All this still needs to be made right. These small scale failures will compound and compound until the entire state is drowned in the consequence of its incompetence.
We need to recognise the difference between the GP rant and what you're describing. The austerity is undeniably still reverberating through the country. It will take years for this ship to turn around, although it is being turned around. For example, in just about a month we're getting European-style rents with the Renter's Rights Act, which is transformational. We can and should do better, and everyone can contribute to solving those issues, but after a decade of nothing the necessary changes are finally being implemented.
But the rant is entirely counterfactual. Britain is a very rich country with beautiful and recovering nature, a healthy and educated population, one of the more capable armies in Europe, a functioning deterrent, and a relatively healthy political system. We just got two new parties becoming credible threats to the "main" two (regardless of the parties' views, the political competition itself is a much healthier situation than the American duopoly)! We just abolished hereditary peers, which is a constitutional change (and it can just be done)! Below the everyday media noise, we're doing alright as a democracy.
The UK is still a respected "brand" in most of the world despite what chronically online people say. British education is the most sought-after in many countries for example.
It's important to realise that the US is full of fascists obsessed with the perceived decline of Europe. They love to shit on Europe. I think it's about distracting themselves from the abject moral, political and economic failure of voting for Trump twice.
> An example in microcosm: a local village suffered road flooding due to failed maintenance of water pipes
Your example only compares against the UK past.
It has zero relevancy because it says nothing about relative change against other countries.
Anecdotally for the USA, I went to New Orleans last year, and I was stunned at the rotting infrastructure. Coming from New Zealand, the USA seems to be trying to copy the trajectory of Argentina.
Then again, I see serious problems in my hometown (e.g. sewage treatment plant) and country (e.g. big problems with rail, ferry, air, electricity, 3 waters). Apart from the societal issues that it seems all countries are facing.
I know what a rebuilt city looks like, because I come from one. Hurricane Katrina was 2005. Christchurch Earthquake was 2011. In my opinion, my home town has recovered better and faster from destruction than New Orleans has.
I also live within a floodzone. There is a high probability I will learn how we deal with flooding in the future (different flooding - shallower and lacking the winds and hopefully better pre-planning for avoiding harm).
> everything looked brand new
Absolutely not, to me.
And the conversation is regarding infrastructure. A bunch of Christchurch infrastructure is brand new.
Fyi, this is not true. California has them but they are not routine, and are a function of internal political dysfunction that is quite unique to California. The grid here is still extremely fragile, and vulnerable to e.g. cyberattack and other disasters, but let's not get carried away.
Given that the nukes that the UK has is Trident, which is a US system that the UK cannot use without US cooperation [0], it seems entirely appropriate that the USA gets to decide if the UK has nukes.
[0] Yes, the UK can fire them without US approval, but the actual hardware is maintained and supported by the USA, and they have to be shipped to the USA regularly for maintenance. If the USA decided that the UK should not have nukes, there's not a lot the UK could do about it, the Trident system would have to be scrapped entirely and replaced with some completely different system. Which the UK doesn't really have the capability to do and it would cost a fortune to acquire that capability.
That's only the delivery method, the warheads are UK-designed and built.
So yes, if the US withdrew support then the existing nuclear program would be pretty fucked for a while, but the US couldn't unilaterally de-nuclearise the UK.
Who else on the planet would have the effective power to possibly even think about who should and shouldn't have them, while plausibly being able to do anything about it?
Then you're in no position to throw rocks. The US is currently humiliating itself on the world stage in a fashion that makes Brexit look positively sage in comparison.
Given how the situations w.r.t Ukraine & Iran escalated, the US is the only country that has specifically and publicly demonstrated it's inability on both counts.
We can't give Ukraine their nukes back because they were decommissioned (and they were rotting at the time), but there'd be no nation more deserving.
Corollary: no individual nation is able to shoulder such responsibilities.
The US has layered contingency plans for every conceivable mission against every conceivable foe. It's been like that since WWII. Iran hasn't made any meaningful impact on US forces, but Iran is essentially crippled. Of course they were going to launch some drones. Of course that was expected.
> The US has layered contingency plans for every conceivable mission against every conceivable foe.
Sure man, you can believe whatever you want to believe if it makes you feel good. I will trust what I see, which is that Iran is continuing to threaten shipping through the straight exactly as predicted by every expert who ever studied the topic. That will have and continue to have large impacts on US and global economy. It’s basic economics.
The best part is that Ukraine wanted to sell us their anti-drone tech to us a year ago and Trump and co didn't see fit to pursue it.
Did they not know that the Shahed-136 has seen massive fucking use in Ukraine by Russia? Did they not think that Ukraine now being able to shoot like 75%+ of them down might be an indication that, if we are planning to start some stupid pointless war with the country that makes these drones, it might be a good idea to have that same capability?
Or did they think we have an infinite ammo cheat, and we can just launch an infinite number of missiles that cost millions of dollars to shoot down a drone that costs tens of thousands?
We had literally years of intelligence on the capabilities of these drones. The admin claims "We thought it was Zelensky being Zelensky. Self promotion" - but we know how successful their anti-drone capabilities are. We have the data! YOU JUST HAD TO TALK TO THE PEOPLE TO VERIFY IT. The sheer incompetence of these people is astounding.
> It’s pretty damned hard to completely secure any area from a potential attack when all one side needs is a drone.
Right. So maybe get a good plan before showing up and bombing all the things? We are not setting the bar, Trump told us why he expected to do in Iran. It was about as realistic as Putin’s fantasies about Ukraine surrendering on day 3.
Funny that's what Israel kept saying about Hamas too. "We'll have killed all of them any day now". But really they were mostly blowing up civilian buildings and , well, civilians. But I'm sure in the case of the US its not propaganda /s
> they should probably be required to give them up to some country that has a shot at remaining a stable and predictable geopolitical entity over the next century.
I really hope this wasn't posted by an American....
"You might be thinking of the British overseas territory"
Not just them, but I'll leave it at that.
Some years ago when the United Nations started critiquing colonies, the British overseas ones were rebranded as "territories" and "dependencies." (The French still have overseas colonies, the so called DOM-TOMs, and also some nearer to home.)
Some of these overseas ones like Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands have overwhelming support for British rule thanks to an aggressive neighbour. Some of these remaining colonies have active independence movements with varying support.
Okay then if you're just going to be cute and nonspecific there's no point in continuing this discussion. I'm not interested in trying to decipher vague insinuations.
You can rebrand something as a territory or a dependency (or a DOM-TOM in the French case) but they're still the same. Even during the height of colonialism many of these places had some self-government and even democracy (Hong Kong). That was partly a practical consideration as many of them were so far away they had to run themselves to some extent.
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