Comments by "yop yop" (@yopyop3241) on "Where in the World: Crater Lake, and Semiconductors" video.

  1. Hard to see the US losing connection with SE Asia. Look at a globe-- the great circle arc between anywhere in the Western Hemisphere with just about anywhere in East and Southeast Asia runs along the US west coast, up towards the Aleutian Islands, and past Japan. Assuming the US maintains control over the waters off its coasts, including near the Aleutians, we'd just need to maintain protection on the leg between the Aleutians and Japan to get to Japan. Russia has some submarines out there, and that's about it-- and no one does piracy via submarine. So maintaining connection from the US to Japan is easy. From there, Japan will maintain protection along its coasts. That gets you along the First Island Chain to Taiwan and along the Second Island Chain down to Guam. From either Taiwan or Guam, it's easy to get into the waters of and near the Philippines and Indonesia and on to the rest of Southeast Asia.  The naval operations to maintain the necessary sea lanes are easy, and the economic opportunities are large. Hard to imagine that the US would give that up.
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