As a nation, Palantir’s CTO argues, we are in an undeclared state of emergency:
Around 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, China militarized the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, and Iran was allowed to pursue the bomb. A decade later, we have had more than 300 attacks on U.S. bases by Iran, 1,200 people slaughtered in a pogrom in Israel, an estimated 1 million casualties in brutal combat in Ukraine, and an unprecedented tempo of CCP phase zero operations in the Taiwan Straits.
This is a hot Cold War II. The West has empirically lost deterrence. We must respond to this emergency to regain it.
We have a peer adversary: China. “Near-Peer” is a shibboleth, a euphemism to avoid the embarrassment of acknowledging we have peers when we were once peerless. In World War II, America was the best at mass production. Today that distinction belongs to our adversary. America’s national security requires a robust industrial base, or it will lose the next war and plunge the world into darkness under authoritarian regimes. In the current environment, American industries can’t produce a minimum line of ships, subs, munitions, aircraft, and more. It takes a decade or two to deliver new major weapon systems at scale. If we’re in a hot war, we would only have days worth of ammunition and weapons on hand. Even more alarming is our lack of capacity and capability to rapidly repair and regenerate our weapon systems.
Given the vast sums we have spent on defense in these decades of Pax Americana, it would be reasonable to wonder: what went wrong?
(Hat tip to VXXC.)
“Around 2014, Russia annexed Crimea.”
Out of nowhere, for no reason!
“[A]nd plunge the world into darkness under authoritarian regimes.”
And here was I under the impression that that had already happened!
“Talent is not fungible.”
Also had no idea Palantir’s market cap was so high. Holy smokes!
Isegoria, thanks for getting the word out.
My BASD [date entering the service] is May 1986. This is over the next 23 years of service in 3 stints, with 2 breaks, 5 deployments and the shameful farce of DC Jan 10–Feb 3 2021, easily the biggest potential changes and reforms of my lifetime.
Now we don’t need war, although we’ve set ourselves up to get it. We do need an industrial base in America, and if rebuilding the defense industrial base is the way we do so, it’s also in my humble opinion the path to industrial and to an extent moral redemption — at least for the working class, and all the parts of government that touch Defense.
Thanks all.
Perhaps we should stop attacking the rest of the world? It’s just a suggestion.
Iran has attacked out bases in occupied Iraq, from which we attack Syria? I doubt it. Has Iran given weapons to the locals to do it for them? Of course. Just exactly like we do.
Something something 2014 formal policy of genocide by the CIA backed revolutionary Ukrainian government against ethnic Russians something something.
Remember when Obummer sent a billion dollars of cash to Iran, in defiance of law and policy?
Remember when BJ Clinton sold submarine and ICBM technology to the Chinese, in defiance of law and policy?
Remember when BJ Clinton gave the Norks the nuclear reactor they then used to breed nuclear weapons with?
“Pax Americana”:
Since 1945, there have been at least 250 wars and military interventions, and the US started over 200 of them, always attacking a country that was at peace with the US and our allies.
The reality is that the US is an aggressive, expansionist empire, and an ever present threat to all other countries. World peace requires the disarming of the US and regime change in Washington.
Shyam Sankar (the CTO referenced) is a war criminal, and he should be in prison. He is typical of the great majority of “experts” and political commentators, and neocons who infest Washington and London and Brussels, all of whom need to be in cages in Gitmo.
“Since 1945, there have been at least 250 wars and military interventions, and the US started over 200 of them, always attacking a country that was at peace with the US and our allies.”
False.
The defense establishment is a money laundering scheme and Palantir is part of it.