He told the New York Times that he thinks the U.S. will “very likely” find itself in a three-front war with China, Russia, and Iran. As a result, he said, the Pentagon should continue developing autonomous weapons at full speed, pointing to big mismatches in how far the U.S. would be willing to go while fighting a war compared with other countries.

Source

  • Hlodwig@lemmy.world
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    6 minutes ago

    Lol nah, China is winning by a long margin in this neo-capitalistic world, no way they are going to war against US. They have all the time in the world to regain Taïwan.

  • ssillyssadass@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    The US could probably take on Russia and Iran without much effort, but isn’t China’s military actually comparable to the US’?

    • Rakonat@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      China considers itself a regional power, and doesn’t delude itself into calling itself a world power like Russia does. So it’s unlikely they’d direct any strikes at CONUS if a war broke out. They would instead try to force all US/allied influences out of their sphere of influence and just play the defensive game until some kind of peace could be negotiated.

      They have aspirations to become a global power in the next century and possibly could do it, the real question is do they intend to share the stage with the US or find ways to erode US power down to regional power and rise up to take their place?

      • Pieisawesome@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 hours ago

        I think that if a war was to break out, it would be like US vs Japan in WW2. Except we would be Japan and China would be the US.

        The Japanese had superior weapons and ships, but were unable to replace losses in a timely fashion, leading to being dominant in the beginning of the war, but once the US manufacturing base started producing weapons and ships, the Japanese were quickly overwhelmed and unable to keep up.

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      The Chinese have little to no capacity for long range strikes. As long as you stay out of the way, they can’t do very much.

      • Rakonat@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        True but China really doesn’t need to strike the heartland. All of their war goals and strategic interests are south east Asia. The only reason they might want to conduct strikes on the US would be preemptive attacks to disable ICBMs and long range bombers.

        If China/US war broke out tomorrow their primary targets would be Taiwan, Japan and Korea. UD calculus would be to either come get involved and counter those pushes, or abandon their longtime allies in the region, which would send a dangerous signal to other US allies and partners abroad. Even if Trump wanted to avoid a war with China, US Navy has too many assets tied up in SEA to just turn away.

    • Zexks@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      No. Only slightly in number of people. And even then, they’re probably more Russian like than we’re expecting.

  • scott@lemmy.org
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    1 day ago

    He’s also got plenty of financial incentive to say shit like that. War on all 3 of those fronts would be so untenable with the state of things and he knows that which is why he’s advocating for more drones but really? How realistic is that? China’s drones are at least as advanced as ours

    • barkingspiders@infosec.pub
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      1 day ago

      In some sense our large contributions to Ukraine earlier in the war could be seen as us fighting Russia via proxy. If I recall correctly our involvement with conflicts in Syria were also seen similarly, as us fighting a Russian proxy state. My understanding is that war between nuclear powers often looks like this because all out war could escalate to nuclear weapons too quickly. All this to say, I think we were already at war with Russia before Trump regained office.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Not to mention China seems to choose the most economical decision it seems. They care about Taiwan strictly because of money. There is no economic growth for them from fighting the U.S.

      • MintyFresh@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I disagree about Taiwan. That’s a thing that goes back to the founding of modern China, it is, and has been a cornerstone of their policy. But otherwise ya, they seem to make rational economic choices.

      • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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        17 hours ago

        It only seems like that because theyre being compared next to the US which is currently sawing its own leg off.

      • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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        22 hours ago

        That is so false.

        China routinely hamstrings its industry with burdensome government involvement.

        And they act out like raging toddlers. Look at how poorly they managed integrating HK because they wanted to rush it with force.

  • mhague@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    So the guy who runs the AI intelligence corporation thinks the West is morally superior to the degree that more amoral, barbarous countries like China and Russia and Iran have some advantage over us.

    Like it’s just sensitive and soft westerners fighting against robotic Asians and Russians. Iranians are so evil compared to us: they’re willing to use nukes!

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    TBF I could have told you that was a real possibility like 3 or 4 years ago at least, but at that time I would have said it was unlikely because theres no way everybody just forgets how bad the Trump admin was and elects more republicans. The USA would have to be steeped in mental illness and masochistic mouthbreathing assholes for them to elect someone like Trump who escalates the situation.

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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      1 day ago

      Especially when one of the opponents has several times our population and all opponents are oceans away, besides two of the three being nuclear armed and the third being close. Even with the size of our military, I don’t think that’s a war we would stand a reasonable chance in.

      • Hello_there@fedia.io
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        1 day ago

        Imo, we are fucked. Ukraine drones show that our aircraft carriers, planes, and tanks are worthless when a 1000 dollar drone can carry munitions to cripple them.
        It’s a new world and we aren’t prepared for it.

        • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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          24 hours ago

          I wasn’t even thinking about that kind of thing, since drones are something I’m sure we could utilize as well. It’s mostly the sheer production capacity and population that China in particular has. I expect an actual large scale war against them, that both didn’t turn nuclear (since that renders the whole concept of a victor a bit moot) and wasn’t some very quick defensive action like an attempt to defend Taiwan might be (which might end fast enough for production capacity to not matter as much as existing inventory), would end up looking something like Japan’s war against the US during ww2: we might be able to cause a great deal of damage to their military assets at first, but if they can replace their losses much faster than we can, then all they have to to is drag things out enough for the numbers to swing decisively in their favor.

          • Pieisawesome@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            7 hours ago

            Taiwan invasion is something we should be able to see coming way in advance.

            China lacks the amount of landing vessels they would need to mount an invasion.

            If they start building hundreds/thousands of landing ships, then we should be concerned

          • Hello_there@fedia.io
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            23 hours ago

            Offshoring all our factories isn’t going to work out well. If only trump wasn’t an idiot, he could have made progress on that over next 10 yrs

      • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        Iran would be a non-issue in an actual war with us. Occupying it would be a far different story. Same with Russia. China, on the other hand, would be extremely devastating to both sides.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The United States military strength has, until very recently, been focused on the ability to successfully prosecute war on two major fronts and one minor front.

    • ghosthacked@lemmy.wtf
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      15 hours ago

      Bet you China has some checkmate against carriers they’ll pull from their sleeve if things go hot.

      Chinese think many steps ahead so they won’t escalate until victory is very likely.