Beijing secretly fires lasers to disable US satellites

[Craig234]

The A bomb did not exist back in 1940 Had it existed, it may have aleviated problems back then.

When the US was the only country to have the A-bomb, was such leverage used to blackmail other nations?

Every leap in technology coiuld be termed aggressive because it generates an advantage for the person that has it. the difference is in how it is applied.

Gunpowder, Armour, elephants, galleys, artillery, aircraft, submarines, chemical weapons, missiles, etc

All were develop and provided an advantage to the user when the opponent did not have such capability

It's easy to confuse different situations. Many things were different in 1940 than they are today.

You may not know or may have forgotten a darker side to the period when we only had the bomb, when a major political faction did call for us not to blackmail, but to obliterate China and/or the USSR before they could do anything about it. Coincidentally, it was a democratic president who said 'no' to these forces, just as Gore would not have invaded Iraq.

But part of what you are not recognizing are the things that change. Our nation at its founding, with Washington warning us to avoid any foreign entanglements, is a far different culture than one today where we are the world's leading military power, with over 700 bases in other nations (and zero other nations' bases on our soil, of course).

THe old saying is 'power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely'. While the US may be the best nation on earth for having a lot of power, it's not immune to that corruption, and we should think long and hard about the 'unlimited' power the nation is pursuing. I don't think we're ready to use it well, and it's a high risk to bring tyranny.

It's a little funny that people using the name conservative are in such a race to make the more powerful government in world history more and more powerful. I think we need to stop those efforts now, and pursue a peaceful balance of power, rather than invite a pre-emptive attack by others and try for utter world dominance.

 

[imported_Tango]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn

Originally posted by: Rainsford
I don't think so. We have a choice in who we buy from, the price we pay for a lot of goods would almost certainly go up, but we are a wealthy country (relativly speaking), the price increases would not be crippling, and would probably be short lived in any case as other countries would gladly take up the slack. But it doesn't really work the other way around, excess supply is far more damaging for the supplier than excess demand is for the consumer, when demand exceeds supply by a large margin, economic theory suggests than supply will shift to meet demand. When supply exceeds demand, however, more demand will not magically be created to make up for it. Communism essentially proved that you can't have a supply driven economy, it simply doesn't work. Obviously supply is necessary in a healthy economic system, but it's the tail, not the dog.

Although getting advice from Tom Clancy books generally only works if you are President Reagan, "The Bear and the Dragon" contains a very relevant point about a theoretical cut off of trade with China...we can buy from any number of sources, although at a slightly higher price, while there is only one United States of America to sell to...it is easier to find alternative sources of the products China makes for us than it is for them to find alternative buyers. A big part of that is that they don't sell us anything specialized, nothing we'd have trouble getting anywhere else. Your Dell may be made in China, but Taiwan, Korea, India, etc, would be happy to start taking orders.

Look at Rainsford go, bust'n out the economics book. Very impressive.
There are TONS of countries that would love to make toys for Walmart to sell for less. India, Malaysia, all of Africa and perhaps even Iraq if and when we can get the security problem there handled.
It would make a lot more sense for a long term point of view to shift our trade to our "new" allies like Iraq and Afghanistan in order to prop up thier economies.

Another thing you guys are forgetting about China is its aging problem. Because of ?population? control they are not having enough babies to replace the people as they age. Eventually, maybe 20 years from now, this will catch up to them big time. They will end up with 30-40% of their population being past working age. Imagine our Social Security problems in a country with a LOT more people and a lot less younger replacement workers.

India has chosen a completely different development track from China, as has also done Malasya. For capital-intensive, low add-value productions China has no competitor. Iraq and Afganistan are so low in country risk rankings they are actually not even present in the WEF competitiveness report. Nobody would even consider those countries as a suitable place to outsource production, let alone places in competition with China.

And you are wrong about Chinese demographics. You would be right if China were a developed country with no unemployement and equal economic development among its regions. But China is not. Your analysis of demographics applyed to economic growth could apply to some european countries like Italy and Germany. China right now would get benefits from a declining population, which of course is the reason why of its policy. When they will start needing increasing population they will simply change their policy.

Fact is China has learnt a lot by the East Asia financial crysis of the mid-90s and won't do any of those mistakes. They know they will be the next hegemonic power of the world, and have no need to rush. With a very convervative monetary policy they are having both huge GDP growth, huge savings, budget surplus while accumulating foreign assets. Can't just be better than this. Usually countries have to run a deficit when looking for growth, China has managed to reach incredible growth while running a surplus, which means they will be able to achieve even higher growth in the future or use the accumulated surplus to soft-land in case of recession.

http://www.gs.com/brics/brics_intro.html
http://www2.goldmansachs.com/insight/research/reports/99.pdf

Another very unique thing about China and India is the fact that (again learning by other countries' mistakes) they are making long term investments that will pay out in the 20-50 years time-frame, that is energy, education, R&D and scientific research.

Nothing to be scared of, just history making his course. The world is going from a transatlantic economy to a transpacific economy, and nothing or nobody in the world can stop this process.

 

[Craig234]

Another thing you guys are forgetting about China is its aging problem. Because of ?population? control they are not having enough babies to replace the people as they age. Eventually, maybe 20 years from now, this will catch up to them big time. They will end up with 30-40% of their population being past working age. Imagine our Social Security problems in a country with a LOT more people and a lot less younger replacement workers.

We agree on this, but this is why it's predicted the poor of Latin American will become the 'new China' in 20 years.

 

[RichardE]

Originally posted by: dahunan

Originally posted by: Azndude2190

Originally posted by: dahunan

Originally posted by: beyoku
i love china. good job!

Please go to your homeland then..

I suppose you also loved the Tiannenman Square incident too

You love CENSORSHIP

You love LACK OF FREEDOM

You love killing your female baby too

You love clubbing your neighbors dog to death because it may or may not have the necessary shots.. and then when your neighbor cries and tries to stop you chase them and club them to death also

Love China all you want .. but please do it from their shore

:roll:

You love China too.. right? Tell us why they are so great.. maybe I can be swayed to reduce some of my hatred for their restriction of human freedoms and their disgusting censorship.. I see the Chinese PEOPLE as Great people.. but their Govt and Leaders are 10x worse than Mr. Bush and the neocons..

It is just as good as teacher getting fired for nude statues

Or selective censored news from where your country is at war

Or its government spying on its own citizens

Perhaps you would love it if they had secret prisons to whish people away too

Not to mention abortion, where we can kill male and female babies!

You love watching your poor shoot each other over crack and meth, and when police come to help, they shoot them too

Please, tell me why you love America so much?

The point is, most countries that are the enemy of states(or governments), gets there ideas from the states (governments). It all works around. Pot calling the kettle black here. Everything does dirty deeds, its just convinient for you when your "boogy man" does them. (To be fair I can make lists like this for Canada, England, France, Russia, India ect, it isn't specific to the states.)

 

[RichardE]

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper

Originally posted by: Craig234

Heh, so the country that is spying on everyone is peace loving, and the country trying to prevent from being spied upon is engaging in some hostile activity.....

The US is spending a fortune trying to develop space-based weapons for world dominance, so that the agenda won't have to deal with the pesky problems posed by public opinion when 3,000 US troops are killed. This is, of course, enormously destabilizing to the balance of power in the world.

Because I think that the US gaining such dominance is a huge threat to the world freedom, because the US would shift yet further from being the world's leading champion of democracy into the corrupt power such imbalance would cause, I strongly oppose such weapons and support nations developing counter-measures.

The need is far more than against reconnaisance satellites as in the quote above - it's for defense from space-based attack.

Unfortunately, the US public is too caught up in Desperate Housewives or following militaristic ideologies to supervise its government and prevent these aggressive weapons programs.

funny that these so-called agressive weapons programs have prevented the world from speaking Chinese and Russian for the past 60 years.

and German or Japanese before that...

The major language of business and politics is English now

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: EagleKeeper

Originally posted by: Craig234

Heh, so the country that is spying on everyone is peace loving, and the country trying to prevent from being spied upon is engaging in some hostile activity.....

The US is spending a fortune trying to develop space-based weapons for world dominance, so that the agenda won't have to deal with the pesky problems posed by public opinion when 3,000 US troops are killed. This is, of course, enormously destabilizing to the balance of power in the world.

Because I think that the US gaining such dominance is a huge threat to the world freedom, because the US would shift yet further from being the world's leading champion of democracy into the corrupt power such imbalance would cause, I strongly oppose such weapons and support nations developing counter-measures.

The need is far more than against reconnaisance satellites as in the quote above - it's for defense from space-based attack.

Unfortunately, the US public is too caught up in Desperate Housewives or following militaristic ideologies to supervise its government and prevent these aggressive weapons programs.

funny that these so-called agressive weapons programs have prevented the world from speaking Chinese and Russian for the past 60 years.

and German or Japanese before that...

And ensured everyone keeps speaking English!
God bless the Anglosaxons! No, seriously, even if English speaking countries have had their share of atrocities as well.

They will end up with 30-40% of their population being past working age. Imagine our Social Security problems in a country with a LOT more people and a lot less younger replacement workers.

Is that taking into account that the Chinese working age lasts longer and begins sooner than the US's and most of the rest of the modern world?

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
I hope for our sake all those 10 year old stories about a super secret high speed plane to replace the SR-71 were in fact true.
Hate to think we are relying on Sats. to give us up to date information if they can be defeated so easily.

Is it to much of a threat to think that China could start a military build up, blind our sats and then invade and take over Taiwan? At that point are we going to risk WW 3 over one little island?

Of course the resulting economic embargo of China by the US would cripple their economy. Walmart alone imports a full 1% of China?s GDP.

BTW: Thanks to the Mod for unlocking this thread. We can't allow the Bush bashers to dictate what we can and can't talk about on this forum.

Considering China's economy is state run, can't they just decide that their citizens will continue working at almost no pay, or decide that the Yuan is very valuable within their own borders?

 

[bobdelt]

Originally posted by: kingtas
Heck. One of these days China is going to figure out that we don't have enough troops to fight in Afganistan and Iraq, guard our southern border from illegal workers, and they will attack in force. So study up on Chinese now.

Yeah? China is gonna ship a million troops over hear by boat or plane? And somehow we arent going to see that happening?

 

[CaptnKirk]

Originally posted by: bobdelt


Yeah? China is gonna ship a million troops over hear by boat or plane? And somehow we arent going to see that happening?

You'll mistake them for waiters.

 

[ntdz]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: dahunan

Originally posted by: JEDIYoda

Originally posted by: albatross
Text

china is busy with its peaceful rise...

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Note -

Irrelevant Bush bashing replies deleted. Please keep your replies relative to this topic.

Thank you.

AnandTech Moderator

To bad the source you have quoted is considred to be the britsh version of the Enquierer..lol

Whatever
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=...=1&q=beijing+lasers+satellites&spell=1

Reputable enough?
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2125489&C=america

I don?t believe anything in the news until Reuters shows me photographic proof!

Good one