Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1. North Carolina used to be big in textiles, contract sewing, and furniture manufacturing until hostile Washington DC policies forced those businesses to Indonesia, China, and Vietnam. 9/11 saw a bit of revival of military textiles and sewing, but not at the previous scale for the commercial sector.
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  2. A lot of history professors don't even know geography well. Instead, they focus on ideology, especially in PolySci courses.
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  3. JDAMs were not used in Desert Storm. The primary Guided Bomb Units were Laser-Guided in Desert Storm. JDAMs came well after Desert Storm. We worked on GPS-guided bombs on the F-15 CTF at Edwards before it was even called GPS.
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  4. Same thing. I've been to 48 States, lived in 8 across different regions of the US, and the humidity in Houston hit us like a brick wall. Traffic was really crazy too. Just to get around, you had to get on these toll roads even for short distances. The layout of the city was planned by the mentally-deficient. Actually, if they let mongoloids run that, I bet it would be much better.
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  5. The Indians financed much of the PAK-FA/Su-57 program with about $300 million up front. When Russia showed them some of the more advanced prototypes and how it was coming along, the Indians said, “Uh.....that’s not what was advertised.” and pulled out without any orders, then they ordered Rafale F4 variants to the tune of $216million each in a huge arms deal with France. China can’t afford to export fighters and higher-end weapons because they think they need them for the defense of China, and they don’t have an advanced, exportable single engine fighter. They have kept the J-10 exclusively for the PLAAF.
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  6. It isn't 700,000 all at once. Russia couldn't marshall and train that many in centers before going to Ukraine. They're feeding them in 300-1000 at a time, like little branches into the fire.
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  7. ​ @migs7220 Public schooling (not education) is a curse to a child's development socially, emotionally, and academically. The teachers don't know the basic math and academics, so they aren't able to teach these subjects coherently.
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  8. They didn't have proper maintenance during the Soviet times let alone after. In USSR, you had to bribe people to get them to do their repair jobs... if they even had the capacity and tools to do them. If you look at their nuclear regulatory standards, Chernobyl '86 was only one of 2 major reactor incidents there that were known. They had a partial reaction meltdown before that in Reactor #1, which was kept secret. Plumbers would show up to emergency calls of flooding in high rise Khrushchev-era apartments, tell the people they don't have the parts, and head for the door. The people would offer all their cash or black market goods, then the plumber would produce the necessary gasket from his tool box and fix the leak, if he had it. That's how Russia functions at a structural level.
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  9. There’s a vast ancient civilization that had hundreds of little cities with pyramids and various buildings, canals, 165ft-wide highways, and trade, with millions of people inhabiting the Amazon. We are just barely discovering it with LIDAR mapping. It’s as if the Amazon is more of an overgrown garden they had all around their mini city-states. They had some type of miracle-grow soil as well, which is opposite of what you see mostly in the Amazon now.
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  10. Sweden, like many other remnants of the bygone empires, had some small firms that adapted to new developments pioneered in England, Germany, and the US, but its modernized infrastructure came much later, namely after WWII. Sweden was a major naval power in Europe up until the early 1800s, having spent centuries dominating the Nordics and Northwestern Russia, with bouts of competition with Polish-Lithuanian Empire as well. There is a delusional sense of romanticism among Swedes that they are still some type of super power, without even being a middle power anymore. They definitely contributed to the development of some new artillery technology and high quality steel barrel manufacturing even in the late 1800s, after the Prussians really took high-strength steel artillery to the forefront in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, but the 1800s-forward Swedish population has never been large enough to support modern industrial sectors. Take gas turbines, for example.
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  11. The humidity in Houston is brutal. I don't remember NC, GA, or even Panama being that bad.
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  12. ​ @DieFlabbergast Aircraft are left outside in the open, as are tanks because they don't have vast storage facilities constructed. The East Germans maintained their tanks better than Russia, and hardly any of those T72s were serviceable in the 1990s. I know Finnish armor officers who went and inspected those T72s for use in Finland, and they only found 2 out of a whole stadium of them. That was 30 years ago.
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  13. He has been privy to analyses and travel to/advising Brazil for the better part of 2 decades, so it’s more likely that he understands aspects of Brazilian politics that most Brazilians are unaware of.
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  14. This is one of the most disingenuous perspectives on Tucker’s interview from Peter. For starters, Tucker kept calling out Putin and asking him how any of his history lesson was relevant to the invasion in 2022. He grew impatient at times wondering what Putin was talking about and kept asking him to get back to the point. Putin is not used to being spoken to in this manner, as most “journalists” in Russia come in and lap at his boots if ever given the chance. Tucker was his normal self, didn’t care about the Russian conventions and kept to his questions. Calling Tucker a Russian shill is way off the reservation.
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  15. ​@@moldevx64NATO is European-led, US industrial might-funded. There has never been a US NATO General Secretary and NATO HQ is in Brussels. Finland and Sweden will rotate NATO General Secretary duty and the US won't.
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  16. Remember that all of the Western defense analysts and retired Generals wrote Ukraine off before the 2022 invasion, and immediately after the invasion, everyone including Peter said Russia would own Ukraine within a matter of days, maybe a few weeks. The main reason Ukraine is still able to defend itself is all the weapons and logistics it gets from the West.
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  17. 1809-1917, as an autonomous Grand Duchy that refused to Russify.
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  18. ​ @danviewer2019 Your problem is a basic misconception of personal anecdotes vs large data. Violent crime and rape are on the rise in nations that used to have very low crime rates. It doesn't matter if you walk through a bubble in life and never see or experience any of that personally. It still is happening all around you. So what variable(s) changed?
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  19.  @Withnail1969  There are videos of Russian pilots using US-made GPS receivers, bolted into wooden frames on top of their instrument panel covers.
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  20. In the 70s, they were forecasting an ice age. They even sent satellites up to see it called LANDSAT. Most people talking about climatology don't even have a fundamental understanding of the planetary systems in place, the layers of the atmosphere, currents, magnetosphere, and how the earth and sun interact.
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  21.  @Ckomon  That was a great move. If you can budget to beat up your mortgage and auto loans, I highly recommend it. In fact, if you sell your vehicles for profit and buy older reliable Toyotas or Hondas and own them outright, then set aside a fraction of your auto loans for maintenance and put the rest towards your mortgage, you're close to being home-free. My wife and I haven't ever had a mortgage or auto loan throughout our marriage, and it feels awesome. Took a lot of sacrifice, but was so worth it. You can physically breathe easier when you don't have mortgage or auto loans. Neither of us have ever had student loans either, but we have multiple degrees.
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  22. ​ @TheVoiceofTheProphetElizer If you study the totality of the Soviet defector literature, you find two basic types: 1. Fake defectors 2. Real defectors who genuinely were disillusioned with the Soviet system The Soviets went to extremes to silence or discredit the real defectors. Bezmenov was a real defector who explained their emphasis on Active Measures, not collection. They had and still have thousands of people handing them over collection-focused technologies, material samples, and information. But the Russian leadership knew they could never go toe-to-toe with the US militarily. The only way to deal with the US was subversion.
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  23. There were waves of successive industrial revolutions that happened outside of the USSR during the Cold War, that left Russia and its satellite states behind, because of the centrally-planned economy that served as a vassal network to reinforce the Russian security apparatus, not enrich the infrastructure of the satellite states. This is what he’s referring to, especially in context of the revolution in electronics, automated manufacturing, advanced tooling, programming, semiconductors, telecommunications, aerospace, etc. Russia handicapped Czechoslovakia in many ways, even down to small arms. Czechoslovakia had superior weapons designs and cartridges that weren’t standard with Warsaw Pact, but Russia forced them to adopt their standards anyway. Czechs made some of the finest small arms prior to WWII, and still do, but weren’t allowed to really blossom with creativity and problem-solving to their potential. Russians didn’t like being out-shined, which all you need to do is show up, so they were very condescending and oppositional to Czech ingenuity. By the time the Russians political-economic abortion had collapsed, Czechs were ready once again to kick things into gear. Supporting evidence: Czech Republic went from $40.7 Billion GDP in 1990, to $282.3 Billion in 2021. Same thing happened in Poland, only they went from $254 billion to $1.6 Trillion (larger population, resources, etc.)
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  24. A data company tied to an affordable space services company tied to an EV company tied to a tunneling services company tied to a 1000+ low earth orbit satellite company tied to a huge social media company...
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  25. ​ @Sl1pstreams US GDP from exports is only 15% of our economy, and we're the 2nd largest exporter in the world.
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  26. From age 0-49, when I looked at the numbers, I counted 45million excess males with no female counterparts. It doesn't make sense to count the older males, so the gender imbalance is really horrendous.
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  27. ​ @Newbmann Somalis are despised by their neighbors in Ethiopia and Kenya for some reason.
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  28.  @repo445-d4h  Your assessment of the US defense manufacturing sector doesn't match the reality. Defense articles have to be made in the US for the most part, so it's an extremely robust manufacturing sector and one of the many factors of what makes the US the 2nd largest exporter in the world. Aerospace and Defense manufacturing jobs are some of the highest-paying in the world, with high concentrations of engineering, science, technicians, and even menial jobs that require security clearances. Subcontractors have to be cleared as well, so it's a very high-skilled workforce with extensive demand for high quality products that push the technological edge.
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  29. All of the critical Gripen technologies are US and UK, not Swedish, starting with the engine and Radar.
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  30.  @theragingmoderate7797  When you abort, you must import...
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  31.  @Foogle6594  Peter started out with STRATFOR in the 2000s, where they continually did white papers for US and global clients, to include DoD, defense ministries, foreign governments, huge industrial sectors all over the world, finance, transportation, intelligence agencies, etc. He's not a YouTube guy who relies on YouTube for income. I suspect he recognized YouTube as the new marketing medium standard, where if you don't have a channel, you won't be taken seriously.
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  32.  @sethdecamp4919  Imagine the PLN trying to counter piracy in the Persian Gulf or Indian Ocean.
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  33. I know some Finnish armor officers who were tasked with going to East Germany after the collapse, to buy T-72s. They inspected a whole stadium worth of T-72s, and picked out 2 of them that were serviceable. They paid for them and gave the East Germans the shipping instructions. A few weeks later, the entire stadium worth of tanks rolled in on the train. They pulled the tanks they had marked and a few spares, then sent the rest up into the Arctic Circle to Oulu for the smelter and centrifuge. By the way, the East Germans maintained their equipment better than any of the SSRs, very by-the-book army that took their jobs seriously, unlike drunken Russians.
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  34. One of the worst places to learn political science is in universities in most countries. There are professors and "professionals" with PhDs who don't know geography or demography to a respectable degree. Instead, they focus on political philosophies, foreign policy, and limited historical narratives based on partisan ideology-all of which ignore ground truth.
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  35.  @basestone  Marshall Plan immigration brought in unskilled workers from Turkey, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, and North Africa. They loved socialism with all its hand-outs, which left the burden even greater on actual Germans. The posterity of the immigrants are a mix of a few technically-inclined, failures to integrate, and straight up welfare-class people. The unity of Germanic peoples from the Prussian Reforms, Kaiser Republic, and reactionary Nazi era are long-gone. The Brits and French finally got their wish by destroying Germany, but they suffer from the same problems too. They all are headed into demographic winter, flooded with incompatible ethnic immigrants who have no historical or ideological connection to the land, hate its native inhabitants, and expect hand-outs and "free" services. Continental Europe is ripe for internal conflict, let alone Russian invasion. Have you been to France lately?
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  36. ​ @korayven9255 Have you shopped for groceries, insurance, a car, or tried to buy a house recently? Stop reading stupid mainstream trash and get out some. "Structural" is now a buzzword used by ignoramuses who are trying to sound educated.
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  37. USD is much more than a petro-dollar. It's also the global: Agro-dollar Weapons dollar Shipping dollar Techno-dollar Finance-dollar Language dollar Air traffic dollar Medical dollar Entertainment dollar Tiny-minded people looking for a simple understanding to complex systems coined the petro-dollar moniker, but it ignores all of the above.
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  38.  @BW022  Ukraine knows Russian geography and critical nodes better than the US since they've been fighting with or part of Russia since the 1100s. Yuri Dolgoruki founded Moskva from Kiev as part of the Kievan Rus back then, expanding Kievan Rus territories for his father up into the steppe.
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  39.  @altratronic  Polish Air Force would rapidly attrit the regional Russian Air regiments in Air-to-Air and their IADS net with Patriot PAC-3, IBCS, and IAMD would render Russian cruise and hypersonic missiles mostly useless. Once they get F-35A Block 4, it will be even more unfair.
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  40.  @SianaGearz  I've lived all over the US, Europe, and Russia, have been to Canada (among 30 nations in total). I'm also a continual student of the geography and population statistics for G20 and other nations. The biggest difference you see between Europe and the US are suburbs. Suburbs are where the bulk of the US population lives. We never saw sprawling suburbs in Europe after WWII because Europe was already population-dense, suffered massive destruction to cities and infrastructure, and was very poor due to substantial losses of prime age males. Open land in Europe is used for farming. Europe remains a very apartment and government project-focused housing market with extremely limited ownership opportunities, high taxation/theft of labor, with centrally-planned urbanization. Russia is like stepping into a time machine back into a frozen world only our great-great grandparents might recognize. The US has vast open spaces, especially West of the Mississippi. East of the Mississippi, the population is more dense, but you can still own large lots of land for individual family residences not only on the South, but in New England. In the Midwest, there are very large parcels for single family residences as well. In the West, it's much more dry, but still has large parcels and homes in the suburbs. What we consider tiny and claustrophobic would be spacious and opulent in Europe. Geography and climate form culture. The US is warm, wide, open, and free. Europe is tighter, colder, crowded, and very diverse.
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  41.  @JimLambrick  Trillion dollar COVID relief scams are the main driver of recent inflation, along with foreign investors in the US and Canadian residential real estate markets, along with supply chain disruptions.
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  42.  @paskowitz  100%. I lived all over Russia, which is a very poor country compared to the 30 other countries I’ve been to or lived in. Poland’s economy grew 6-fold since 1991, which is what Ukraine saw happening and wondered why they couldn’t have the same thing, especially since they have more people and more resources. It’s why Ukrainians wanted out from under the boot of Russian puppets, so I’ve been paying close attention to the events in Ukraine, especially since the early 2000s. I like Tucker Carlson a lot, but he’s simply out of his league when it comes to foreign policy. Sure, you can go to Globus (German mega store) in Russia if you have money and buy plenty of quality food, but most people don’t have that kind of money in Russia. What I noticed in Russia is that adults had no sense of hope, no happiness. Just struggle day-to-day between packs of cigarettes and alcohol, whatever comes is their fate.
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  43. Yup. We developed some of the first GPS-guided kits in conjunction with Eglin and Nellis when we were on the F-15 Combined Test Force at Edwards AFB, and it was done in the early-mid 1990s after Desert Storm. There were no JDAMs in Desert Storm, as the systems had not been developed yet. GBU-12s and GBU-10s were used in ODS, especially by the F-111F, F-15E, and A-6E.
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  44. Yup. Imagine how much greater America would be if Congress rarely assembled, had term limits, couldn't be paid more than part-time salaries.
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  45. ​ @theswede5402  Middle ground fallacy is usually wrong. In this case, Russian casualties could very likely be worse than almost everyone's assessments, while Ukraine doesn't even know what theirs are due to the civilian losses.
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  46. ​ @MarcosElMalo2  Zeihan has studied Russian history and Russian military history for decades. He and every other military historian, retired General Officers, and defense analysts all thought Ukraine would fall quickly and turn into an occupation/guerilla conflict with Russia controlling the sea ports and airfields. Zelensky threw a wrench in that plan by refusing Biden's attempt to pull him out. Ukrainian Army then had a rallying cry with a functioning government who could still coordinate imports of foreign military supplies and weapons. Combined with Russia's utter incompetence and derelict military forces, we got a drawn-out conflict. Peter distills all of that into a format that the layman can understand, rather than getting so lost in the weeds that most won't know what he's talking about. It's very easy for specialists to question his forecasts for that reason.
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  47. ​ @nunyabidness3075 Most nations. Being an officer means you came from a certain family with connections and privilege, but not good enough to be higher up in government. As such, officers distance themselves from conscripts and only associate with each other, using their power to enrich themselves and pretend to be part of the class structure they're not. They don't like anything resembling discomfort, uncleanliness, hardship, or inconvenience. The US, Canada, UK, Danes, Norwegians, Germans, legacy NATO nations, and Australians are the exceptions to this where a meritorious framework is more in-place. Combat arms officers pride themselves on embracing and enforcing hardship, or at least the impression of it for the garritroopers.
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  48. ​ @jmolofsson Finland got tons of assistance from the US after WWII, after USSR forced them to pay for reparations to Russia for being invaded by Russia. US also re-built Europe and continues to subsidize European security, medical systems, finance, transportation, etc.
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  49. Peter has been analyzing and forecasting China’s situation since the early 2000s. I watched videos of him debating guest analysts at STRATFOR that were very interesting, where the guest was a big Chinese alarmist, and Peter was a Chinese skeptic. They politely disagreed for about an hour with the map and metrics supporting each position. It was very intriguing and compelling. This isn’t new. I disagree with Peter on several things, but his analysis on China has been almost spot-on for 20 years.
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  50.  @flo_growngnome3431  I was a STRATFOR subscriber from the 2000s up until the data breach, so I’ve literally been processing Peter’s analyses for almost 20 years. To see him show academic liberal bias bleed into more left-leaning talking points is a big disappointment, but we all need filters. He is a refreshing generalist who has drilled down into a lot of silos that are normally never connected in discussions about geopolitics, so if you’re capable, you can still process his perspective on things and come to more accurate conclusions.
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