Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Sam Harris"
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@prof.higgins3154 Normally when people counter Zeihan's forecasts, they do it on the basis of hope, optimism, with marginal and anecdotal data to support their yearning for an ideal future or some pretext.
Then they find out Zeihan has done very detailed analyses that cover the macro down to the micro with a unique blend of depth and breadth in aspects of the metrics that are very comprehensive.
George Friedman's approach at STRATFOR was to put aside ideology and foreign policy, and start with what nations can't do, then look at what they can do, what their interests are in the short, intermediate, and long-term, then study interlocking effects of regional and trade partners/rivals, then make forecasts.
They had to change one of their books from "Russia will invade Georgia" to "Russia has invaded Georgia" in 2008.
Zeihan has been on the record for a long time that 2022 is the last year when Russia could invade Ukraine with a high probability of success, due to population decline in Russia and the fact they won't have enough soldiers ever again.
So far, his assessment of the degrading global order has been accelerated faster than he expected.
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There's a joke about automation that the only job it has replaced is the elevator man.
We still have machinists, assemblers, painters, secretaries, personal assistants, while automation has mainly leveraged and augmented human labor, not replaced it.
On the front and back ends, we require significant skilled labor to design, program, maintain, repair, upgrade, de-bug, and drop software updates for all the systems that were supposed to reduce human labor.
Robotics and AI sound great for intellectually and physically lazy people, until you show them the real infrastructure and labor required. We haven't even talked about cyber security and vulnerabilities in that space to the habitually-criminal lazy elements of society who predate on the baseline networks that underly all these technologies.
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@JonZiegler6 He’s talking about 10% destroyer capacity to patrol the sea lanes. I’ve followed STARTFOR’s naval force structure and deployment updates since 2009, and US Navy carrier deployments since the 1970s. Not all ships are available since there is a rotation through overhauls, work-ups with quals, then deployment.
Once nations start quibbling over their regional choke points for trade (Strait of Hormuz, Strait of Malacca, Suez Canal), things destabilize. We’ve dealt with that for decades in the Persian Gulf with the Iranians, but the US is steadily losing interest in these regions because the taxpayers have foot the bill for so long, with no US politicians being able to communicate with them the benefits.
When you combine collapsing and contracting energy, food, and demographic metrics at a global scale, you come to the same conclusions as Peter Zeihan. Nations will obviously try to solve these problems, but you can’t manufacture adults to solve the demographic collapses, can’t police the trade routes successfully with rival neighbors who have comparable naval forces and theater ballistic and anti-ship missiles, and can’t solve the energy demands when the limited supply chains turn off. “Green energy” and AI sound cool to child-adults with no basic knowledge of geography and these other fundamental metrics, but they don’t amount to anything in reality.
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@JonZiegler6 Imagine you're India and short on energy supplies. Tankers sailing past your territorial waters to China have what your people need. Who will protect those tankers?
This is the kind of "piracy" that becomes a real problem going forward. China has no blue water capability, no distant ports to sustain long range vessels, and zero experience running that type of navy. Indian navy would skull-drag them around the Indian Ocean, and China can't afford to be humiliated like that. Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, and most ominously...Japan would get a whiff of the blood and be very tempted to get a piece as well.
US Navy will say, "Not my problem. You guys figure it out.", while US defense contractors continue to sell billions worth of weapons to all of China's rivals, weapons that actually work.
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@JonZiegler6 2007-2009 was a totally different market though, where European banks had made themselves vulnerable by purchasing US junk bonds that bundled high-risk variable interest rate loans. It wasn’t a global energy or food supply problem, but a liquidity and capital risk problem that they bailed-out with $800 billion, most of which went to Europe.
It took until 2020 for the markets to recover to their pre-2008 states in many cases, which I have seen all the way down to vehicle manufacturing and sales.
Russia doesn’t have the capacity to supply South America, Africa, ME, and Asia with all their grain demands, and Russia’s wheat is a low quality coarse wheat that doesn’t meet EU standards. Russia has also ceased its normal wheat exports, most of which leave from Novorossiysk sea port in the Black Sea to service Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, etc. Those nations were already suffering from 2 years of shortages and IMF bail-outs in some cases, with Egypt running back to the IMF months ago begging for more.
We’re not talking about a housing/bad loan banking sector exposure problem. We’re talking about real people who need to eat and keep the lights on....roughly 2 billion of them once you look at the market through Africa and Asia. This isn’t a typical series of events that everyone just lets “the experts” worry about. That’s what Zeihan is saying.
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@krityaan You can't find any such claim that "all academics" are anything, since I never made it.
China is trying to weasel its way into the Persian Gulf with bribes and huge trade deals, even tried to build a naval base under UAE's noses, which was halted temporarily at least after US protests and inspections.
China is trying to act like a blue water Navy, but just doesn't have the long range vessels and port facilities to sustain such a force. Their port in Djibouti is an attempt to address that, but is only 1 port in Africa, where the US is already based. US is already based in UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, but expressing continual disinterest, then knee-jerk when China shows signs of moving in.
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@krityaan Imagine a world where global energy and food supplies are compromised, where India has suffered from heat waves and reduced crop yields, China is suffering from continual floods, food shortages, energy shortages, lock-downs, increasing elderly population, infanticided young generation, 45+ million excess prime age males (based on CCP fake numbers), and China is increasing its naval presence in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.
I tried to see some harmonious opportunities for India where she could trade more with Iran, since Iran has oil and India had excess grains, but then India has been hit with weather-restricted crop yields from sand storms and droughts.
Iranian oil has increased almost 3x since July 2021, so Iran will be raking in revenue by the billions.
Iran is frantically looking for new weapons, but is very constrained in that space because they don't have access to US or European fighters, aircraft, and munitions, and the Russian equipment is being destroyed for sport in Ukraine.
The new Russian Su-57 can't be mass-produced with its high saturation demanding semiconductor and integrated circuit component requirements, and India already rejected it after investing hundreds of millions into the Su-57 program, opting for French Rafale instead.
I'm not saying piracy is the only possible outcome, just that the degradation in stable global supply chains and regional instability are highly likely to break out into regional conflicts, using asymmetric and conventional actions.
Someone used drone weapons to attack oil carriers and even in-land Saudi pipelines in the Gulf, just as an example of asymmetrical actions that normally would result in open conflict if flagged vessels could be identified.
I'm an eternal optimist, but things are not looking so great for the Persian Gulf, India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, and China.
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@minoozolala So the actual Deputy Foreign Ministers who knew Putin's plans are wrong and outdated, even though Putin has done exactly what he planned with expanding as he communicated to the Foreign Ministry when he took office.
I've watched it all happen in real-time.
The US isn't interested in Russian resources because the US is largely independent with critical resources, and gets marginal minerals and elements from a large spread of nations. The argument that the US has any resource or territorial ambitions into Russia falls very flat on its face if you study trade.
Russia lacks deep water sea ports and normal access to the oceanic trade routes that the European peninsula has, so Russia has lusted after those territories for centuries, attempting to break into that sphere under Czar Peter, who started the Russian Navy.
Control over Ukraine is a strategic imperative for Russia, because of Ukraine's proximity to Moskva, Ukraine's seat on the Black Sea, the Russian oil pipelines through Ukraine into Europe, and critical resources from Ukraine. Most of Russia's naval fleet was built and serviced in one of 13 Naval yards in the Ukrainian SSR, including the now-defunct Admiral Kuznetsov.
The US has been withdrawing forces from bases in Europe since 1991 on a massive scale, moving back into détente and less physical presence with NATO.
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@minoozolala My close contact in the Russian foreign ministry said they would take back Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland per Putin's strategic vision. The head foreign minister told this guy to shut his mouth and stop blabbing.
Georgia was invaded in 2008. Ukraine in 2014 after Ukrainians threw out Yanukovych, Putin's puppet.
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