perestroika

Since seawater is radio opaque and visually not very transparent, a submarine meets 2/3 of the criteria of being invisible... which leaves sound and magnetic field (of which the latter is rather local).

So definitely a submarine, but how does it propel itself, and how does it avoid emitting and reflecting sound?

Or perhaps, no large crewed vessels at all, since it's unpopular to lose them to sea drones made with garage level tech.

Perhaps the art of fighting is turning entirely towards small systems, ones that carry just enough to hurt the intended target type badly, and not a kilo more.

China itself seems to be learning lessons. One of their concepts is an unpiloted cargo plane to deploy a drone swarm. Applied to sea and to a situation of projecting power to distance - an uncrewed submarine to deploy a torpedo swarm. It wouldn't return home, just deny a certain part of the sea to opponents. It could be slow, quiet and sleep at the bottom ahead of a conflict - and open up when needed.

An aircraft carrier was appropriate in its age - just like a tank was. But times have changed.

Regarding defense of Taiwan: it has to be mostly located on Taiwan, and has to be capable of taking out maybe 1000 vessels per day for 30 days, to defeat any hope of putting an occupying force on the island.

Lower capability may help achieve defense, but may not deter enough to avoid conflict.

Once the realization dawns that one will need (30 000 * factor of not arriving) guided weapons, so maybe around 100 000 guided weapons capable of taking out a vessel, the conclusion is obvious: if bad stuff happens, the Taiwanese will be using ground launched torpedos or maneuverable mines, and these will be literally made of "cheap IT supplies and plumbing components", because that's how you get quantity.

If the US gets involved, both sides will wreck each other's capital ships, because those cannot be hidden.

So what happens when an unnstoppable force meets an immovable obect?

I know the answer for that. A lot of shrapnel will happen - that will eventually hit and damage other spacecraft.

There's also a longer article that explains the background by BBC:

EU backs indefinite freeze on Russia's frozen cash ahead of loan plan for Ukraine

Context:

• it's easy to guess that Russia owes Ukraine reparations for agression
• using Russian assets as a loan (or a guarantee to a loan) to help Ukraine is politically reasonable
• however, it is legally tricky as the EU could some day fail to keep the assets frozen
• article 122 of the EU founding treaties allows for qualified majority decisions instead of consensus if there's an emergency situation threatening the economy of the EU or one of the member states
• a condition that funds remain frozen as long as Russia threatens the EU seems to result in a long freeze, unless Russia actually changes its policies

As for the concern about markets, I think it's exaggerated. Nobody in their right mind is expecting to keep their assets in foreign banks if they pursue a war of agression. A reasonable party to a conflict should expect their assets to be frozen and seized much faster than it's taken.

Also, this seems to reliably remove Russian incentive to threaten or persuade politicians in Belgium. If they no longer hold the keys, harming them won't get anyone any goods.

Just don't go there. There's no due process currently over there, at least for foreigners.

If you absolutely need, send a robot instead of yourself. Much less hassle. :)

Follow-up: thanks to everyone who did something. Today, I received an update from the Qasim Child Foundation (run by Mehdi Ghatei).

He informed that via several donation campaigns, both outside of Iran and inside, the sum of blood money to the family of Goli Kouhkan's husband has been raised - and during negotiations, they have agreed to drop their demand somewhat and grant forgiveness.

Mehdi mentioned that the goal had been reached without using the donations he gathered, and offered to refund my donation. Since my donation was small, I asked him to use it to help other people in unjust situations.

I hope Goli Kouhkan recovers from the traumatizing situations she has gone through, and manages to re-establish her life.

If you think of Kadyrov, he's visibly very unwell. Watched a video of him condemning a Ukrainian drone strike recently. Barely keeps his eyes open and reads like a robot.

In the first 2 years, we waited for use of armoured vehicles to hit their monthly rate of production. This has largely happened, the reserves of armour that USSR built up have been spent by Russia. Vehicles that still stand in parking lots require deep renovation (slow and costly). So this prediction has largely come true.

In the first 3 years, we waited for Russia's sovereign wealth fund to empty, ending Putin's ability to shelter the economy against the cost of war. This now seems to have largely happened, as the central bank is selling reserves of gold. It follows that more appropriate things to sell are scarce.

We also waited for Russia's inventory of civilian planes and railway locomotives + carriages to degrade due to lack of spare parts. This has not fully come true. Planes fly less, railways transport less, but they smuggle spare parts from third countries.

We have waited for Russia's oil and gas revenues to fall, and they have fallen, considerably. At current levels, under Ukrainian "sanctions by drone", Russia has to cut other budget lines to finance the war - and it has cut or frozen other budget lines (social security, health care, education, almost everything - war makes up approximately 40% of the government budget).

We have waited for the wages of soldiers to drop, and for soldiers to understand that inflation will make the money they got worthless. This has only partly happened - several regions have announced that they cannot pay large one-time compensations to people going to war.

We have waited for a crisis in Russia's economy, and in some sectors there already is a crisis. Purchases of new cars, real estate and agricultural equipment have fallen sharply. Many companies have reduced work weeks (reduced pay), owe employees wages, or cannot service their debts.

If Putin overplays his hand and economy does collapse, this does not automatically mean his replacement. He's a dictator and has a KGB background, he knows to expect rebellions and can supress them. He knows to expect a coup and may prevent one.

Eventually he'll be replaced. We can't influence or predict the personal characteristics of his successor, but whoever replaces him will very surely want to end the war, and doesn't have to save face while doing that.

However, Levada's polls - arguably the only polls which could indicate the real state of Russian society - do not indicate the ground shifting yet. They indicate that people are universally tired of the war, but not yet willing to end it by returning land to Ukraine.

For example, the "country is going in the right direction" indicator currently stands at 65%. Surfing on waves of war propaganda, it topped at 75% last year (rising from a low of 48% before the war - explains why Putin needed the war - to secure his own power), but it's in a downward trend.

So, sadly, propaganda is still working, but it's not working as well as it used to. In the "battle of the fridge and TV" (for people's opinion) sadly the TV still prevails.

A few frustrated notes from Estonia. Not first hand information, but visiting Ukrainian soldiers noted at a militrary exercise: "why don't you have appropriate amounts of drones? if they attack you, they'll drone you to death".

One part of the answer honestly seems to be "we're dimwits, but trying already" and the other part seems to be "we don't want to buy the current generation of sports drones, and sincerely hope that the next generation of dedicated war drones [which a random person can fly with 15 minutes of training] will be ready really soon".

A few meta-notes about the note: the local defense ministry holds various development competitions. So poorly that if I was involved, I would hide my face and cry into a pillow. Yes, companies do participate and develop drones. Local companies make pretty nice drones, some quadcopters, some medium range surveillance aircraft, some combustion powered strike drones, but the ministry does poor work and is visibly overwhelmed. In recognition of them, I must say that recently their announcements have been emphasizing that they're looking for low cost, fast production and potential of mass production.

Not a small part of the nonsense that's going on is how funds may be granted for development. Current EU rules state that for a project to qualify for aid, relevant work may not be started. That's crazy. Companies don't request state aid to accelerate development because they looked at the blue sky and thought "at that point in future, we'll run short of something and request state assistance". They discover it first hand, so at that point, they are no longer eligible for assistance. It's a joke.

Regardless of this joke of a system, a few local companies have new air defense systems ready and capable of hitting targets.

As for the local military... well, we don't have strategic nuclear weapons here, just ordinary artillery and a few HIMARS-es here and there. They do seem to guard their bases because a few drones have been forced to land and their operators have been detained for questioning.

As for buying things from abroad, unfortunately I have to curse. Local idots have decided to buy so many things from a particular genocidal Middle Eastern country that I'm ashamed. The systems, if they arrive, will likely work, but we'll be paying through the nose and have a dependency on the good will of a wanted war criminal. If the war criminal doesn't approve export contracts, we'll cry a river. I hope things are much better in France.

Quick, bring out the bicycle meme.

The US has a president who's gone to great length in demonstrating that the US is unreliable and could be treacherous.

For example, why should Denmark or its allies (the entire EU and NATO) buy weapons from a country whose president has indicated that he dreams of annexing Greenland?

The situation currently is such: Ukraine needs weapons right now, and will happily use European money to buy US weapons. But purchases where multiple alternatives are viable, and there's no hurry? Countries have started preferring their own weapons, or those of countries that are in the same boat.

Here in Eastern Europe, if offered a choice between a hypothetic identical US missile and a Swedish missile, I would consider it likely that supplies of the US missile may be absent at a critical time, while supplies of a Swedish missile will surely increase at a critical time. They're under the same umbrella and will help patch it if someone tries breaking it.

Attempting to make contraceptives expensive in the 21st century makes me grin. Let's try to make water expensive in a sea.

They might prevail by enforcing a 500% tax on the most effective contraceptive: smartphones. :)

However, more realistically - until people feel secure about their future and feel that having children is not a setback or big risk...

...and have time and tools to find likeminded partners and build relationships (current dating sites are miserable tools in the West, not sure about what they have in China, and participants in a corporate rat race don't have time)...

...and until people have education to maintain and fix those relationships...

...until then, hasta la vista government (try again after figuring things out).

Is it because it is not PC to call a culture primitive?

If you know its history and are absolutely sure that your evaluation is correct. But I have the feeling that you haven't checked Iranian history - because historians don't tend to put Iran in the same sentence with that.

So, I would add some notes. Islamic extremism has not been in power "for 1500 years" in Iran - it has been in power since 1979. Iran has political problems. And let me tell you, political problems can quickly bring down a society that might otherwise have its problems under control.

Did folks call Germany "primitive" when Hitler rose to power? Nope, they used other terms. Do we call Russia "primitive" because of Putin? Will we start calling the US "primitive" if Trump manages to become a dictator? Do we call China "primitive" because they have a one-party dictatorship? Nope, we don't.

They're advanced societies facing difficult problems of various sorts. They are also extremely unequal societies - some people in the capital have modern life, but some in the periphery don't even have jack s**t.

Iran could be spending its time selling satellite launches if it wanted, but has an Islamist theocracy in power. Any candidate can be disqualified in the elections if the grand ayatollah doesn't like them. Iran does various extremely shortsighted and I would really say... extremely stupid things. Like fighting proxy wars with Israel and then fighting real wars with Israel, depending on Russia for ammunition and then supplying Russia with ammunition against Ukraine...

...but "stupid" and "primitive" are not synonyms.

After islamic extremists came to power in the 1979 revolution, they broke down Iranian society in many directions. Executions were widespread, terror was used to subdue opposition, women's rights were trampled on, many things happened. Thing went wrong, got entrenched in the state of being wrong, and remain wrong to this day. :(

The regime before the islamists was the Shah (king). He had already been ousted and there had been parliamentary democracy in Iran, but the shah came back to power with UK and US support. He also terrorized the population through his secret police. The shah was hated and propped up by foreign powers - a ripe fruit for Islamists to pick and eat.

Before the shah, Iran had a problem with left-leaning populism and government-parliament relations, but I think this was their smallest problem. The last democratically elected PM (Mosadegh) was somewhat populist and wanted to nationalize the oil industries (wanted to hurt Western business interests), which would have been OK, but he also had problems with the Parliament, which was definitely not OK. With some Western assistance, he was couped out of power, which, in my books, spent Iran spiraling out of control.

That's a brief summary of what's been going on in the center of society, in the Persian speaking regions (I apologize for gross simplification, but I can't summarize Iranian history into a single post, they have so much of it and it's not simple - and not primitive).

In border regions, however, we observe different processes. Persians (Iran's majority population) have easier access to what little justice their system can ensure, while minorities (the Azeri, Kurds, Arabs and among smaller groups, the Baloch) are marginalized and cannot get just treatment.

Iran is a former empire and has a considerable number of people who've been conquered at some time. Some of them want independence (ask a Kurd in private and you'll hear). Society is neglecting them. If there was peace, and not islamic theocracy but democracy like in the 1950-ties, minority groups would likely have better living conditions. But as things are... sigh. Minority groups get the highest levels of poverty and oppression.