Aceticon

You're still getting product placement on imported American TV series and Films, same as everybody else.

I suggest you read Sun Tzu's The Art Of War as well as the History of the Roman Empire.

This isn't about China or the US specifically, it's simply a mix of strategical thinking (nullifying an adversary's main advantage makes victory far more likely) and how nations at the specific stage of a nation's growth that the US and China are at spend money in their military - China is a large nation climbing towards Empire stage so their resources are increasing but they'll still parsimonious in their use (because that's exactly how nations climb up from poverty) hence it makes sense that as they have more resources to increase their military might they'll put a lot of them in things that give them the most bang for the buck (and that includes countering their main adversary's most relied-upon military strategy after the Vietnam war - the Carrier Group), whilst the US is at the late stage of Empire and already in decay, which means a fat, glutonous system of power used to lots and lots of wealth floating around and prone to grandiose projects both for the seeming prestige and because they're massive patronage operations and opportunities for corruption and taking a slice of the money sloshing around, and said waste in their military is allowed to happen because, due to their past successes and their size, they trully believe they're unbeatable.

This shit happens again and again in History - it's not even the exception, it's the rule: great empires get killed by the very elites in them becoming ever worse parasites and overconfidence in their might.

Things like the rise of a "Make America Great Again" movement spearheaded by a populist who himself is the ultimate rentier parasite is actually a pretty typical phenomenon of such a phase - again just go read the History of the Roman Empire.

Quantity has a quality of its own

This is a lesson America knew back in the WWII days when they countered the superior Tiger and Leopard Panzers with Sherman tanks, but seems to have forgotten in recent times with its multitude of white elephant projects for "superior systems" which are much more expensive whilst yielding tiny improvements over existing systems.

Meanwhile the era of the drone is upon us, and that's all about using said "quality of its own" of masses of cheap and easy to make drones.

Russia had prepared itself for the usual American strategy of a Carrier Group sitting out far way from the coast and throwing long range cruise missiles and fighter jets at it whilst too far away to be hit by return fire - as used for decades now, for example in the Gulf War - by developing hypersonic missiles and advanced AA capable of shooting down those fighter jets and cruise missiles.

Then they went and started a land war with their next door neighbor - which is almost the opposite military scenario of that which they prepare themselves for - plus on top of it it turned out EVERYBODY was on the take in their Military so it was a hollowed out shell far lesser than it seemed on paper and finally, to add insult to injury, the era of the drone was upon us changing the nature of land warfare as well as on the long range side making mass attacks with cheap quasi-cruise missiles possible.

Given the geography of it if they attack Taiwan, China is - unlike Russia - almost certainly going to be facing the decades old way of American sea-based force projection in the form of the Carrier Group, which is the one they've prepared themselves to counter.

America has long wasted tons of its military budget in things with tiny or even no Return On Investment in terms of additional effectiveness for every extra dollar spent.

In a sense the greatest enemy of the US is itself, in the form of the MIL and Corruption from the lowest levels to the highest.

I mean, notice the recent change in the budget for the military which this year removed the Right To Repair for the Military, something which does nothing other than hinder Military effectiveness whilst further enriching military hardware suppliers.

The way the money is misused and redirected to feather the nests of large military companies' shareholders and CxOs, as well retired Procurement Generals who move to cushy jobs in the very companies they bought overpriced items from and MIL-friendly politicians in subcommittees approving white elephant military projects, is sort of a twisted mirror version of what happened in Russia were everybody in positions of power was on the take and their military when finally faced with a proper adversary at the same technological level - in the form of Ukraine - turned out to be a lot less than it seemed on paper.

Also America went down a route similar to Germany in WWII when they went for tanks like the Tiger Panzer which were peak-tech and very costly to manufacture, which the Allies countered by just throwing lots and lots of not-quite-as-perfect yet much cheaper and faster to manufacture tanks like the Sherman at it.

America has the biggest military budget in the World by a large margin, but also outright wastes a huge fraction of it and pays top premium for small incremental improvements, so the results aren't as impressive as one would expect from just looking at money spent.

If you want to see efficient use of a military budget, look at Ukraine.

Well, it does make some sense that China's plan's to counter the US during an invasion of Taiwan would focus on nullifying America's main far-from-home force projection method, which has for decades been fighter planes and cruise missiles launched from naval assets 1000km plus off the coast of the target nation.

Since the US has been using the same overall strategy again and again for decades now, China would have had lots of time to develop counters for it, and it's not as if Chinese Engineering is any less than Western Engineering.

I mean, Russia too developed hypersonic missiles exactly to counter that very same American strategy. Now, Russia is well in range of lots of land-based assets of America's allies in Europe so it could be targeted by those, but that's not at all the case for China which America has to approach by sea, and that will be done with the usual Aircraft Carrier Group and hence that's exactly what China would have set itself up to counter.

Yo momma IS the boat!

At one point President Obama had the definition of "enemy combatant" be changed to "Any man between the ages of 16 and 60" because the numbers of "collateral" civilian casualties from the drone attacks he ordered were so bad.

The mere though of getting their hands on so much "free" oil made many in this Administration high.

Also all lots of "may" and "[unnamed] American official claimed" in the article.

The whole thing reads as Propaganda, which makes sense given that we're talking about the pro-Zionist New York Times (which also has a long history of backing American warmongering in, for example Iraq) - morally a little propagandizing to whitewash American Administration's piracy on the high-seas is nothing compared to relentlessly providing cover and support for the active mass murdering of Palestinian children in Gaza for more than a year.

The Pravda in the days of the Soviet Union had more truth than this Propaganda Outlet.

I genuinelly believe at least some people in positions of power inside and around the MAGA-Fascist party have plans to make Slavery legal again.

(I would certainly bet that Peter Tiel is one of those).

I'm starting to get the impression that a large fraction of Americans have lustful thoughts at the idea of mass murdering civilians (including children) as well as at the idea of their "leaders" having sex with children.

Theirs is a diseased relationship with power.