>>>Dispersed AA missile launchers (MANPADs) that will deny complete aerial superiority over Taiwan airspace
MANPADs have altitude limitations. Fixed wing manned aircraft can fly high, and use precision munitions to prosecute targets. China also has a large fleet of combat drones that can fly the riskiest mission profiles, even drawing out Taiwanese air defenses by provoking fire, revealing themselves for counterattack.
>>>Satellite and other intelligence technology that can detect boarding ships and potentially guide missiles to eliminate them.
That would borderline on a pre-emptive attack which could be easily spun by the CCP in the court of international opinion. Also, the PRC's integrated air defense systems along the coast are damn heavy, not to mention their surface fleet's own air-defense ships. Good luck hitting ships in harbor with cruise missiles.
The main advantage Taiwan has is that the PLAN has insufficient amphibious shipping capacity to put enough combat power ashore in a reasonable timeframe. But they already have 2 brand-new LHAs out a total 8 planned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_075_landing_helicopter_do...
Combine with the PLAN's existing 8 LPDs ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_071_amphibious_transport_... ), and STUFT (Ships Taken Up From Trade, aka "civilian RO/RO ships pressed into moving military hardware"), and they should be able to credibly move several divisions by 2025. With the growth in their surface combatant fleet and the modernization of their air force, they should be able to keep the US/Japan/Australia busy long enough to not interdict their amphibious assault.
Yeah the Ford-class is obnoxiously overpriced. There is no way the key metrics of an aircraft carrier (sustained sortie generation rate, survivability, long-term maintenance) improved by the leaps-and-bounds necessary to justify tripling the price compared to a late-model Nimitz-class.
The last Nimitz-class carrier, CVN-77, cost $6.2 billion and was ordered in 2001, while the Ford cost $13 billion and was ordered in 2008. After adjustment for inflation in that period, it's only about 1.5x as expensive.
>>>I'm an American man in my late 20s/early 30s in a large city
1. What is your long-term objective for marriage? If the answer does NOT include "successfully raise well-adjusted children in a 2-parent household", then don't even waste your time with a marriage. It's an unnecessary legal entanglement if you just want to bang someone and hang out with them for a few decades.
2. Before digging deeper into your wife search, maximize your own attractiveness. This requires a serious period of introspection and self-improvement to correct deficiencies both in character and in physical appearance. There's plenty of solid "manosphere" content on the subject. Try to avoid most of the PUA psychology stuff, except for: tips on overcoming "approach anxiety", "maintaining frame", "abundance mentality", and avoiding "pedestalization".
3. If you are decently attractive, decently charismatic, and in an above-average economic bracket (let's just say debt-free and ~$75k+ annual income), understand that in the GLOBAL dating pool, you are holding the cards. YOU are the commodity. You are the one screening an abundance of applicants for the job position of "spouse", looking to disqualify the bulk of them. So get the fuck out of the United States and date internationally. Especially outside of "the West". It's really not THAT hard to find a woman who is moderately cute, not annoying, with sufficient domestic skills to maintain a household, and a consistently-loving demeanor to take the lead on childrearing. Which leads to my next point:
4. What kind of women are you physically attracted to? The US is a nation of immigrants. It's best to "go to the source" to get the pure uncut product, so-to-speak. If you like blondes, move to Scandinavia to wife-hunt. You like Latin women? Move to Colombia or Chile. "Lightskin" Asians? I would say Japan, but this place is essentially locked down due to COVID..."Darkskin" Asians? Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam. Black women? Don't date an African-American woman (binge watch some Kevin Samuels videos on YT to see why), go get a proper African from Kenya or Tanzania. Etc, etc....
5. Once you are in your target market, leverage benign social circle activities. English-language meetups, coffee shops, local guy friends (don't have some? make some), religious institutions if you are into that. Do NOT wife-hunt on Tinder/Bumble unless you are extremely adept at sniffing out women trying to take advantage of you. Swipe dating is fine if you just need to get some exercise in the bedroom but I generally discourage treating any of those connections as serious long-term prospects.
6. I suppose some of this is dependent on YOUR character and what you like, but I'd screen women based on their family background (are her parents still happily married? ), psychological issues, alcohol/drug abuse, previous relationships (if any), etc... basically disqualify anyone who looks like they might be damaged goods, excessively emotional, unpredictable, etc... When things get serious, definitely get to know her parents if possible.
7. Never repatriate your new spouse back to the United States. Removing them from the family and culture that turned them into such a quality wife undermines all of your efforts. The culture AND the legal framework in the US are toxic and destructive. Keep in mind that ~50% of marriages end in divorce, ~70% of those divorces are initiated by the female, and divorce court will absolutely demolish you with alimony and/or child support payments. NEVER give the US legal system, combined with a woman's whims, the opportunity to fuck your life up.
Good luck/happy hunting! Enjoy the process!
dons flamesuit (IME no-BS dating advice for men on HN is rarely well-received)
> dons flamesuit (IME no-BS dating advice for men on HN is rarely well-received)
I mean, when you say stuff like
> don't date African-American women
> find a wife outside The West with good domestic skills
> don't repatriate your spouse
It's hard to take your overall advice seriously, even if some of it (like not needing to get legally married). It seems more like you're looking for a servant than a partner, and it's very "trad-wife" esque.
I'm operating from a value framework that aims for building and maintaining multi-generational wealth. The family unit is the most basic, and arguably most important, institution over which we can exert influence. Can't link a relevant book on the subject (sorry, don't have my Amazon purchase history handy), but examine the practices of families that have been wealthy for in excess of 3 generations, and you will often find patterns of behavior that are completely contrary to "conventional wisdom" about marriage, relationships, dating, and family life....especially in the age of third-wave feminism.
>>> like you're looking for a servant than a partner
Who is more the servant, the adult who has the option to spend an entire day inside a physically-secure domicile, or the adult who risks death stepping outside the home 5 days per week (men make up 90% of workplace fatalities, and simply commuting to work on US roadways is a high risk activity)?
We recognize that labor specialization and comparative advantage are some of the most basic and powerful amplifiers of efficiency in an economy. Why would we not apply the same principles to our own household?
Or we can keep doing what we are doing, listening to the advice of charlatans [1]. That has led to women on anti-depressants [2], women unhappy [3][4], single parent (overwhelmingly single mother) homes [5] producing higher rates of maladjusted children [6], and a slew of other issues. Who paid for Cosmo to publish trash for decades? Qui bono? Maybe the same people who leveraged Edward Bernays to get men to buy diamonds? Why would we blindly embracing nerfing the efficiency of the economic and social construct that directly benefits us the most (the family unit)? Meanwhile the richest ~500 FAMILIES in the US are basically robbing the rest of us blind.
>>>it's very "trad-wife" esque
Sure, and it may be strange to those living in the West, but outside the West, "trad-wife" is rather popular with women. Hence why I would overwhelming encourage American men to abandon the US dating market and find what they are looking for elsewhere.
> Sure, and it may be strange to those living in the West, but outside the West, "trad-wife" is rather popular with women.
While I'm not sure that I agree with you in general, you are absolutely right about this. My Russian (girl)friends won't stop going on about how sorry they feel for the poor career oriented western women wasting their lives at the office working for someone else, when they could instead be working on their family.
It's not like these girls are lazy either, many of them work full time to look beautiful. A fair bargain for many husbands.
But I guess westerners are likely to view this either as abusive or transactional, not a healthy relationship. They'd be wrong though.
> If the answer does NOT include "successfully raise well-adjusted children in a 2-parent household", then don't even waste your time with a marriage.
A good counter argument could be - what if your plans could change? Should you keep this change of plans possible?
> You are the one screening an abundance of applicants for the job position of "spouse", looking to disqualify the bulk of them.
Don't forget the rather plausibly-looking model when the better you are, the higher bar you have to satisfy you, so of course you'll have to disqualify the discouraging bulk and be left with the pool smaller and harder the more achieving you are.
> Never repatriate your new spouse back to the United States.
If you're planning to live in US, this advice may cost you dearly. A woman disconnected from her roots and struggling to find her new place in society is something I wouldn't recommend to be near as the cause of issues.
>>>A good counter argument could be - what if your plans could change? Should you keep this change of plans possible?
A multi-year dating period is advisable. Definitely don't RUSH into popping out babies, but don't wait too long either. That's a difficult needle to thread. But I would think figuring out whether to propagate your genes in an supportive social construct, or not, is something a man has figured out by his early 30's.
>>>Don't forget the rather plausibly-looking model when the better you are, the higher bar you have to satisfy you
Hence why knowing YOURSELF is so important in mate-hunting. A high-flying extrovert might require a dime-piece social butterfly "trophy wife" as essential for impressing his peers, and needs that external validation. YMMV. But IME men "date down" to an adequate woman far far more than women do, so guys insisting on ONLY the absolutely cream of the cream for a spouse are an outlier, and unlikely to be seriously getting advice on HN for that search.
>>>A woman disconnected from her roots and struggling to find her new place in society is something I wouldn't recommend to be near as the cause of issues.
Exactly. Actually a former fling of mine was in just such a situation. Spent years in the Atlanta suburbs a bored housewife. She couldn't work because they didn't have a second car. She felt so isolated and useless that she divorced her husband and moved back to Japan. Now she's 40 and wondering why nobody here wants a serious relationship. shrug
>>>I had no idea people outside of tech were taking this stuff so seriously
I know a Navy dentist who told me back in February that he was putting all of his disposable income every month into Cardano. One of the Staff Sergeants I work with made ~$15k back when Doge spiked to the moon, and all of our Lance Corporals discuss the latest coins daily.
I looked up Major Murphy using Marine Online's Locator: he shows up, with his place of work as the Office of Naval Research. My initial skim of the docs didn't raise any immediate red flags to me (things like poor adherence to Naval Correspondence standards for documents). Seems legit. Just my $0.02...
>>>Have you read the actual documents? Most of it is Murphy’s unsubstantiated opinion.
His letter to the Inspector General lists reference documents. Even a cursory search via DDG yields some of them, which were covered on HN when they were released back in September ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965770 ).
"The team discusses risk mitigation strategies to address potential risks of the research to public health and animal safety but does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research and DURC. Given the team's approach does potentially involve GoF/DURC research (they aim to synthesize spike glycoproteins that may bind to human cell receptors and insert them into SARSsr-CoV backbones to assess capacity to cause SARS-like disease), if selected for funding an appropriate DURC risk mitigation plan should be incorporated into contracting language that includes a responsible communications plan."
Major Murphy's letter also states: "When synthesized with the EcoHealth Alliance proposal, US collections confirm EcoHealth Alliance was performing the work proposed. The analysts produce their reports in a vacuum, absent the context the proposal provides. As a fellow at DARPA, I could see both, and can do the synthesis."
Do you have access to the intelligence agency collections plans, and/or their analyst outputs? What information do you have that contradicts his statement that his conclusions are corroborated by Top Secret intel analysis?
The hysteria displayed both by the FAA and in this thread is kinda shocking. I work with the military in Japan. Every time a North Korean missile flies into/over Japanese territory we get a warning about it...and then go about our business as usual. We can usually see their flight trajectories on our Common Operational Picture. This one was not significantly different from the dozen or so previous incidents. No idea why people in the States shat a brick and grounded civilian aircraft, especially if NORAD didn't concur with such an action.
Shit, I won't even go there to study kung fu! A few years back I was considering studying Bajiquan ( https://www.studymartialarts.org/school/an-wushu-internation... ), and even then, back before they started detaining random Western businessmen as spies, I figured being an ex-military officer would probably be an unnecessary risk.
On some other forums/blogs that I follow, there are Turkish information operations guys who post about the triumphs of the Turkish defence industry. Their lead guy says that Turkish companies are throwing million-dollar salaries at experienced American engineers with things like aerospace experience. Take that statement with a pound of salt. But I did look at a few Turkish companies that seemed to be hiring foreign expertise, and their domestic arms industry has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade, despite their broad economic problems.
They don’t pay high salaries to foreigners at all. In fact they lose local engineers to foreigners, especially the likes of Airbus, who poach them. Their only success stems from US and foreign unofficial embargoes and sanctions which has forced them to produce domestically. Turkey used to produce airplanes even in the 1940s which were then shut down by US allied governments.
The PRC is basically "flying the wings" off of the Taiwanese airforce: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-may-be-trying-to-wear-...
>>>Dispersed AA missile launchers (MANPADs) that will deny complete aerial superiority over Taiwan airspace
MANPADs have altitude limitations. Fixed wing manned aircraft can fly high, and use precision munitions to prosecute targets. China also has a large fleet of combat drones that can fly the riskiest mission profiles, even drawing out Taiwanese air defenses by provoking fire, revealing themselves for counterattack.
>>>Satellite and other intelligence technology that can detect boarding ships and potentially guide missiles to eliminate them.
That would borderline on a pre-emptive attack which could be easily spun by the CCP in the court of international opinion. Also, the PRC's integrated air defense systems along the coast are damn heavy, not to mention their surface fleet's own air-defense ships. Good luck hitting ships in harbor with cruise missiles.
The main advantage Taiwan has is that the PLAN has insufficient amphibious shipping capacity to put enough combat power ashore in a reasonable timeframe. But they already have 2 brand-new LHAs out a total 8 planned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_075_landing_helicopter_do...
Combine with the PLAN's existing 8 LPDs ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_071_amphibious_transport_... ), and STUFT (Ships Taken Up From Trade, aka "civilian RO/RO ships pressed into moving military hardware"), and they should be able to credibly move several divisions by 2025. With the growth in their surface combatant fleet and the modernization of their air force, they should be able to keep the US/Japan/Australia busy long enough to not interdict their amphibious assault.