Would the US act if China invaded Taiwan?

Class of 1958.

We definitely have some issues to fix. If you had told me about all the ludicrous left-wing nutty stuff 5 years ago I wouldn't have believed it. They have subverted the highest levels of the Republic, the education system (drag-queen hour for kindergarten through 2nd grade?), bogus impeachments of Trump while ignoring blatant corruption on the left, weaponizing the DOJ, open borders, rampant overspending, economic seppuku. Control of the media which completely denies and gaslights the blatantly obvious senility of the POTUS. Kids graduating with no useful education or understanding of our American principles. Election fraud on a unbelievable scale (completely gaslighted by the media as well). Strange times and I worry too.

 

I could not agree more. And its all at once... every aspect of America seems to be collapsing. Does someone have a plan we are unaware of? It seems too all-encompassing to be random.

I'm old and am almost thankful for it. I've had a great live... traveling the world, serving my country all over... raising a great family... SUPERWIFE... now enjoying a great, fun-filled retirement.

When I was in my 20's I had dreams of fun, adventure, and success. I've been able to accomplish a lot of that.

But to someone in their 20's today, the world must seem a lot bleaker, with freedoms and opportunities becoming more limited every day.

I don't envy my grandkids.

 

Not long ago I did some contract work in Baltimore Maryland. During the height of the COVID BS. The previous years test scores for graduating high school seniors had just come out. Out of 37 Baltimore high schools 0 students scored proficient or above in mathematics. Not 0 percent, 0 students (look it up). To rank below proficient in math you must score below the bottom 20% of students who took the test that year. In other words, as bad as the education is now, they were ALL the worst of the worst. Mind you, when we graduated the curve was much much higher. I actually looked at a sample test. In order do score below proficient you would have to either not be able to read the questions, or not know anything beyond basic addition and subtraction up to single digits. Telling time on an analog clock was also part of the basic math portion.

That is 0 out of 21,781 who can tell time or make change for a dollar. And it is multiple choice. On most of the basic math questions a moron could rule out 2 of the choices right off the bat! Questions like what is 9 + 7? Answers are -12, 78, 16, none of the above, and the hilarious all of the above.

When the results broke a reporter asked the incumbent mayor who was running for office at the time for her comments on the abysmal test results. She replied, "We have other more pressing priorities at the moment." She was referring to COVID and using it as an excuse to avoid the bad PR. Since COVID the national test scores have dropped dramatically. So the curve is even easier, yet Baltimore still hasn't had ANY students score proficient in math for the following 3 years of testing.

By the way, Chicago achieved the same dubious honor last year and they have many many more students than Baltimore. If you ever go to Baltimore you would be SHOCKED at some of the conditions!!!! Yet we spend 3 X as much per student as Japan. In my hometown here the best private school in the city has the distinction of scoring in the top 20 of all schools in the nation. Tuition is $11,200/year. Taking the number of students nationwide in the public school system and dividing by the budget for the department of education you arrive at almost double that amount. Getting specific numbers from the DOE website is virtually impossible. I'm guessing they can't do the math either. This DOES NOT include expenditures for the actual schools themselves (but does include heatng, cooling electricity). The buildings are accounted for out of the GSA's expenditures. I think any decent businessman (or woman of neither haha) would realize vouchers are the only solution at this point. Public education is an abysmal failure. Not just under performing, it is completion without any benefit whatsoever. It's value to the taxpayer could be measured in the 1000's of dollars. It wouldn't exceed the value of the average new home in it's entirety. In fact it's value could be considered negative by many in light of Drag Queen Hour, teaching personal pronouns, and encouragement of gender identify confusion.

 

Fantastic Post!

My son just missed that. He went to public school but did ok academically. He ended up graduating Cornell and Fordham Law. But the enemy left his mark. At Cornell he became a wokist. He's a solid socialist. He makes a bundle helping "poor widdle wictims" sue their "oppressors" in the workplace. The wokists will keep you from a decent education and, failing that, or in addition to that, they'll make you a roaring radical leftist.

Ever feel like its time to save up the food, water, fuel, and ammo for what's around the corner?

 

BTW, on their website in Bold FONT they list their priorities for this year.
Increased funding for underprivileged schools
Health and well-being of students
Diversity Sensitivity Training
More focus on students with disabilities

That's it!!! All under the banner of "Raising the Bar". How about raising the bar above teaching them to read and make change for a dollar in under 12 years of schooling? Digging into the proposal, Health and well-being is mainly about COVID, making sure gender confused students get transition assistance - teaching and encouraging an environment of acceptance and normality; personal pronouns and alternative preference training. Strange they want funding for this and Diversity Sensitivity Training as well. Seems like double funding but who knows?

 

Done did that. Shows one knows what is going on. Everyone should have a stockpile.

 

On my long and exciting ride through life I taught high school Physics for two years. I never could figure out how throwing money ata school would get kids to study.

BTW, the school board had changed the curricula so that kids without the basic skills you describe would have a chance. Essentially there was no mathematics requirements. Can you imagine? No mathematics in a Physics class/ That's like teaching wood shop without a hammer. It was all demonstration. I was given two slinkies to teach wave theory, I stood at the door with a convex lens and concave lens to teach about lenses. No discussion of focal points and all the rest... that took the forbidden math. Teaching even the basics about electricity was ludicrous. When we got to certain subjects I tried to teach them exponential notation. A simple "just add the exponents when you are multiplying" led to a chorus of cries for the calculators we kept in the classroom. 2+3? They needed a calculator. I tried.

There were rewards like the young gal that had a druggie for a dad and a drunk for a mom. She came to class disheveled and her personal hygiene was poor. I worked with her a bit and made her the leader of one our lab teams (remember, it was all demonstration). On the last day she told me I was the only adult that ever said she was worth a damn and gave me a picture of herself.

And then there was the special ed kid, whose mom was a special ed teacher. With her help I gave him some individual projects to do, he was bad with working with others. He passed.

But it was all swimming upstream. Eventually I went back to Lockheed-Martin.

 

I'm not at all surprised. When I was in my early 20's my son was in kindergarten. His teacher sent home a note saying she was going to have a parent occupation day where parents could volunteer to come in and teach the class what they do for a living (Birmingham Alabama - but a decent pilot school). I mistook the request to mean she wanted us to teach them what we do instead of just tell them, "I'm a fireman and I put out fires".

You're probably aware electricity and plumbing function virtually identically for good reason. Both electricity and hydraulics are a result of the identical force (electromagnetism). One of the difficulties with understanding electric circuits is you can't SEE what is happening for the most part. But everyone is familiar and can see water flow. So I put together a demonstration using water, water pressure, and water flow and then taught them electricity using the same analogy. The teacher was enthralled and said she herself never understood electricity and for once in her life she now understood it. She asked me to come back in and teach the other classes and eventually this included the other grades in the elementary school. Teachers were using their break hour to come and sit in. Eventually I had done this up through the 3rd grade and developed other aspects of electronics like simple asynchronous and synchronous logic design and a miscellaneous 2 hours on video display, CCD's, transmission lines, radio, binary, etc. complete with easy to understand demonstrations. I was amazed at how quickly these young kids picked up on it. I would draw out the logic and cover up the output light and they would compete to be the first to flip the On/Off card over and raise their hand signifying they were done. Some could solve the circuits alarmingly fast. I even had them work out the logic for a 7-segment display and they would tell me the number which would be displayed. Then showed them the output so they could see it work. It was of course consuming a great deal of my time. I was still in college. I had learned mostly on the job and had finally returned full-time to finish my degree.

Half way through the school year they asked if I would consider doing similar lessons for some of the less affluent schools in Birmingham. I said sure but my time would be limited. They spoke with the other schools to determine their interest. Within a week we got a letter from the Teacher's Union lawyers demanding we "cease and desist". Apparently their union contract gave them sole right to teach the public school students. It threatened their sovereignty. What if everyone helped out with the education of our youth and weren't paying union dues? Every single teacher and the office staff at my son's elementary school signed a petition asking the union to reconsider and allow the lessons to continue, sighting how beneficial it was for the students and faculty alike. Their response was to file several torts against the state and myself demanding it be halted. That was my first real taste of the problem. Obviously, as a poor young student I couldn't fight it. I had no choice but to end the lessons.

It isn't the teachers on the ground in the trenches. They are hamstrung and forced to teach as the DOE and union dictate. The myriad of restrictions and regulations the DOE and union (often one in the same) place on the teachers is astounding and almost without fail make little sense in regards to learning. They either don't give a damn about whether the kids are learning or are too far removed to have a clue.

 

You stirred up a lot of memories. My dad's dad was an Irish immigrant who ended up being one of Tom Edison's techs at Menlo Park. I never knew him, but he set the tone for my family's interest in power, light, etc. My dad was an exec for Consolidated Edison, the power company in New York City. I remember as a young guy sitting on his lap and him explaining the analogy of the size of the pipe being like resistance (smaller pipe= more resistance, larger pipe =less resistance), the water pressure being like the voltage and current being the amount of water as he made me memorize: "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, E is equal to IR"

When I was teaching my Physics class I'd talk about that, then demonstrate (remember, it was all about demonstration) by skewering a hot dog on two ten penny nails, wrapping wire around the nails and sticking the two wires in a socket. It would heat up the hot dog. I always brought plenty.

When I was in my own senior year in high school, I took a college level course in electronics. One of the formulas was for the heat dissipation in a triode (remember those? tubes?). The instructor just gave us the formula and told us to memorize it. We didn't know calculus yet. Years later, at the end of taking two years of calculus at West Point, the "P" (professor) told us to sit back and watch as he demonstrated all the rules and "stuff" we had learned. He started at one end of chalkboards which lined the room and at the end, about an hour later... was that formula I had learned in high school. It was almost a religious experience. I thought I had touched the hand of God! LOL.

I fully understand your comment about not really being able to "see" what's going on. In my senior year at West Point I took a course in "Electromagnetic Field Theory". I had a project to design a radio transmission antenna array whose output would hug the "dogleg" of the Hudson River at that point, but would not be detectable away from the shore.

I understood the mathematics and did well on the project strictly on the strength of that. I had no idea what was actually HAPPENING. I signed up for GEOLOGY (ROCKS FOR JOCKS) the next semester.

 

Neat! I'm amazed now looking back at how confusing some made the subject only to find out looking back how simple it really is. I'm also aghast at what I've seen coming out of the universities now. One of my responsibilities is to be a mentor for those coming up the ladder. Like I was fortunate enough to have in my early days. I was VERY inquisitive and constantly asking questions. I've done this mentoring for many years now. Its gradually gotten worse over time, but lately it has gotten absolutely ridiculous. As a mentor the first thing is to find out "where they are at". You hope they aren't afraid to speak up and tell you when you mention something which confuses them. Nowadays, invariably they don't know what a voltage divider is (which is basically just an application of Ohm's law). Of course in electronics, understanding voltage division isn't important in regards to actual voltage dividers. They occur frequently. But the most important aspect of voltage division results from sources and loads. You always have something providing power connected to a load. The source of course has impedance and the load is the lower leg of a divider in essence. So if they haven't learned about voltage division you immediately realize they haven't learned virtually anything beyond. Often your lucky if they even know Ohms Law. And I'm talking they don't even understand it after you explain it to them. Just get a blank look and silence.

Recently I delved into one's university training. The response was, well they aren't allowed to give you less than a C unless you just don't attend or take any tests. You can also get them to raise your scores if you bug them or they like you. She wired a simple circuit on a breadboard for me (didn't really need it, but I thought it would be a good learning experience for her). She didn't connect power (i.e. Vcc) to the chips! When I came to see why she was having so much difficulty and told her she forgot power she replied, "Well how was I supposed to know it needed that? They don't tell you that." Almost equivalent to calling Tech Support for an issue your having with the vacuum cleaner only to tell you it needs to be plugged into the wall. But this is for a degreed engineer! And she came from a highly accredited school?

 

I graduated from college in 1975. It was still an analog world. I did computer programming by punching holes in IBM cards and if you made a mistake... you were doomed. By the time I got out of the Army my employers thought I was too senior to do grunt work, dealing mainly in system concepts and managing folks that did the grunt work. No one ever figured out that I didn't even understand what they were talking about half the time. I did manage to get a patent for a "Siz degree of freedom piezoelectric aiming device for lasers, though" The PRF (Pulse Repetition Frequency) of the laser about 6 KHz as I remember and I had to cover a ten meter wide area at ten kilometers before a complete pulse was transmitted. It was for Apache helicopters. Boeing loved it.

So with technology marching on and my technical skills beginning to atrophy like Joe Biden's cognitive skills... I moved into marketing where I spent time talking to big wigs around the world in general terms instead of technical detail. It fit. I remember my first car. I drained the transmission fluid and added four quarts of oil. I've never been real good with the details.

I remember passing by a marketing booth at the huge Association of the United States Army Convention in DC one time. THALUS is a huge defense contractor that makes everything from weapons to radios. A three star General was standing in front of a huge display that listed all sorts of the systems characteristics... megabyte this... megacycle that. and on and on. He was pissed. He turned to his aide and said, "Why can't they just tell me how far it will let me talk, how secure it is, and how easy it is to use?" I never forgot that. Engineers can get lost in the details and hurt sales. There are great opportunities for folks that can translate technitrivia into customer interests about "what can this gizmo do for me?"

It all goes back to breaking the complex into the simple... like the plumbing thing only more extensive.

 

OMG! I too remember the punch cards. Saw a girl drop a whole box of them once. 1 hour before program due. She started crying. lol.

Believe it or not, many of them do it on purpose. They don't feel comfortable with their knowledge and therefore decide to confuse. One of the 1st engineers I worked for when I was a junior engineer had a poster on his wall that listed 3 columns of words. Everyday he would memorize one word from each column. When asked what he was doing, or what a particular problem was he would reply, "I'm working on the designs for the Differential Data Deinterleaver", or "There might be an issue with the Cross-matrix Multiplexor coupling". It rarely received a follow up query. Guy did absolutely squat and ended up getting promoted to management where he F'd everything up. You'd be amazed at the imbeciles I've come across. The failure of the education system has only made it worse.

I could tell you one such story which would absolutely shock you. Don't know whether you would die laughing or curl back in horror. Not the proper forum for that though.

 

Here's an anecdote you might enjoy.

I worked on the Comanche helicopter program at Boeing years ago. (It eventually died.) But we had an in-process review with the government one time. Must have been 500 government visitors. Each major subsystem manager had to give a talk. The Program Manager told us all that the government was looking for weight and space savings in everything. So the day came, and the first briefer got up and gave his presentation. He was in charge of the power plant and talked about his new use of composites to save space and weight. Then the Mission Equipment Package guy got up (that's the main on-board computer.) One after the other, after the other each guy went up and described his system, ending with his efforts to save space and weight... the optics guy... the weapons guy... the avionics guy and on and on. Finally, the software guy got up... the last speaker. Now understand this guy was the epitome of a software geek. He ended his talk in a very serious tone talking about how he had saved weight and space by cutting 5,897 "zeros" and 8, 221 "ones". He was very serious throughout it all. Meanwhile the PM was in the back of the room about to commit suicide. All the government guys nodded approvingly, very pleased. The guy finished and the briefing was over.

The geek didn't stop laughing for a month! Saving weight and space by cutting ones and zeros... it was a joke. This was the SOFTWARE guy.

And none of the government folks said a word.

 

That's funny. I think our discussion has migrated off topic though.

I have a bunch of my own. Crazy stuff with the potential of winding up on the national news. Perhaps if we ever meet up in person. haha.

 

Have you caught the news on the Chinese economy. OMG! They are imploding. What a mess.

Interesting thing is, Just as their economy drove off the cliff they decided to set up barricades around the Scarborough Shoal. Looks like they are thinking now or never. You may be right. It might be sooner than I thought.

 

Their anti-ship cruise missiles can reach out a little ways.

We will want to take it seriously if we want to avoid being nuked.

That is incorrect. Taiwan makes the most powerful CPUs in the world, including all of AMD’s and Apple’s CPUs.

 

Not really, their realistic limit is only around 300 km.

Do you think they are really going to start a global nuclear war if they do not get what they want?

No, actually that is still Intel in the US. But they regularly swap places with AMD for the top positions so it is one of the two. But none of those are made in Taiwan. Intel makes almost all of their CPUs in the US, and AMD makes almost all of their CPUs in Germany (Europe) and Malaysia (Pacific Rim and US). Now Taiwan does make a lot of other chips for both AMD and Intel, primarily the Northbridge and Southbridge components for motherboards. And for the AMD CPUs they indeed make the dies, but they do not actually make the chips themselves. And once again, none of those chips were designed in Taiwan, they just pass part of the manufacturing process there.

Now Apple does indeed make their CPUs in Taiwan, as do a lot of others that use ARM architecture. However, everybody should know that ARM processors are not particularly complex or advanced. What they are is low power, and you can cram a lot of them into a single processor. But even their most advanced 6 core A17 ARM processor does not hold a candle to a mid-range AMD or Intel processor. In fact, I don't think there is even an ARM processor that ranks among the top 50 CPUs in the world.

However, it is incorrect to say they "make" the processors. It is far more accurate to say "manufacture" them, as the chips are actually designed in the US. All Taiwan does is manufacture them, and that can literally be done almost anywhere in the world.

 

That fits my definition of "reaching out a little ways". We will not want to get too close to Chinese shores.

They may go nuclear, or we may go nuclear. Wargames show that large conventional conflicts directly between two nuclear powers have a good chance of uncontrolled escalation.

That's why the US and USSR were always so careful to avoid direct war with each other.

Not a chance. AMD's Zen 3 and Zen 4 clobbered Intel's Alder Lake and Raptor Lake. The only way Intel was able to even perform in AMD's league was by boosting the power output of their CPUs to the point where they put out insane amounts of heat.

Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs have the potential to alleviate their massive heat problems, but with only 8 performance cores and no hyperthreading, I don't anticipate that they will stack up well against Zen 5 CPUs that have hyperthreading and up to 16 performance cores.

Of course, we'll have to wait until later this year to see what the reviews have to say about Arrow Lake and Zen 5. But I think we'll have to wait until Nova Lake comes out in late 2026 before Intel pulls ahead of AMD again.

Intel is usually at the top. But now and then they get something wrong and AMD pulls ahead. Late-2020 through late-2026 is one of those periods where Intel got it wrong and AMD pulled ahead.

AMD's Zen 3 CPUs were manufactured on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's "7nm" process.

AMD's Zen 4 CPUs were manufactured on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's "5nm" process.

AMD's Zen 5 CPUs are planed to be manufactured on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's "4nm" process.

Of course I put those numbers in quotes because TSMC makes bogus size claims. Zen 3 and 4 were 10nm CPUs just like Alder Lake and Raptor Lake. Zen 5 and Arrow Lake will be 7nm CPUs.

But TSMC is manufacturing AMD's CPUs.

Agreed.

How about Apple's "M3 Max" CPU?

Most of the EUV lithography machines are in Taiwan. No one is going to be manufacturing lots of advanced CPUs without those EUV lithography machines.

That is how Intel screwed up. They sat on their hands and did nothing while Apple gave TSMC the money to go buy up most of the EUV lithography machines.

Intel does have some EUV lithography machines, and they will start using EUV lithography on their Arrow Lake CPUs. That's why I said they will have the potential to perform without putting out massive amounts of heat. But most of the world's EUV lithography is still based in Taiwan.

 

And what makes you think the Navy would be operating right off the shore?

Most wargames and reports I have read have been placing the US Navy on the Eastern side of Taiwan, not sitting out there in the water between Taiwan and China. Taking advantage of their ability to strike from a distance, only using submarines in those waters "close to China". In other words, using Taiwan as a shield as any threats would have to not only somehow locate them, but then target them then cross over Taiwan before reaching them.

Oh, they might be between the island and China as a show of force early on, but the moment it looked like things were going to go hot, they would quickly move to the other side other than a small number of AEGIS class ships to provide early warning and missile defense systems. The bulk of the firepower will be on the other side of the island.

 

Operating on-site allows an area to be directly controlled. It’s why areal bombardment can’t capture territory but troops on the ground can. If it was possible for the Navy to be present directly off shore, they would be more effective.

Plus, the range of carrier airstrikes is not what it once was.

The plans to do it that way were likely drawn up with the goal of keeping our ships out of range of those cruise missiles.

I’ve had another look at the early reports about Intel’s forthcoming Arrow Lake processors. I might have been a bit harsh about the lack of hyperthreading. Intel is rebuilding their architecture from scratch like they did in 2006. And their Core 2 processors in 2006 managed to take the lead back from AMD even without hyperthreading. So maybe Arrow Lake will be the next “Core 2”.

 

That was very true, in the era when the main armament of a ship was it's guns. Those had a range of no more than 20 miles, so you literally had to park your ships right off the shore. But the US retired the last of their gun ships more than three decades ago, so doing so would be absolutely idiotic unless it was in direct support of an amphibious landing.

Today they use missiles, that can fire a hell of a lot farther away.

Oh, and that is why there are once again some in the Navy talking about reactivating one or two of the Iowa class Battleships. And likely for the same reasons they were brought back four decades ago. They can put a hell of a lot of damage onto a shore target with their guns, and their armor is impervious to any missile short of a nuke. Of the ships of that class, the New Jersey and the Wisconsin are the most likely to be reactivated if needed. The Iowa itself would likely never be recalled, because of the damage from the turret explosion. And the Missouri is considered by many to be a key part of the USS Arizona Memorial, as it sits nearby as a symbol of where WWII ended just a short distance to where it began for the US.

And interestingly, the USS New Jersey is going to the Philadelphia Naval Yard to be put in drydock in less than two weeks for a major inspection and maintenance. At this time it is expected to be there for 3 months, but if it goes for more than that it might mean something else.

Really? What about aircraft has reduced their range, exactly?

And that is only common sense, but not for the reason you think. You keep your own ships beyond the visual horizon so they can not be seen and targeted. Surface combat 101, you can only realistically hit what you can see. Anything else is literally firing blind and hoping the missile can actually find and hit something. It has nothing about "out of range", missiles today have ranges a hell of a lot farther than that. It is keeping them out of visual range (which includes RADAR), with an island in between the ship and the potential missiles. Which makes it almost impossible to see the ship, but the ship and other defenses can see the missiles.

Because with airborne platforms like AWAC, the "visual range" jumps from around 20 miles to 300 miles or more (up to 450 miles if at the limit of their operating altitude). However, the RADAR can not penetrate obstacles. Which in this case is the island itself. Anything beyond the island might as well be one of those from the 15th century marked "Terra Incognita". A Chinese AWAC between China and Taiwan could see everything between the mainland and the island, but nothing on the other side of the island. However, an AWAC over the island can see everything all the way to shore (and a bit inland for aircraft).

And with modern fire control, our ships can now do tricks they could not do several decades ago. Like fire their own weapons from beyond visual range, but get midcourse correction from an AWAC or other aircraft on the way. Once again, an advantage on the far side of an island that the US would enjoy, but China would not. Because they first would have to get their AWAC to within range to see the ships, in what would be an area where their lifespan would be counted in minutes at best.

Modern "cruise missiles" have a range of thousands of miles. But that is really only realistic against a fixed ground target that can not move. Like a building, a bridge, things like that. Their use against targets that move is actually very poor, because for the most part they would be fired blind and then hope that they can somehow acquire the target with their RADAR before they run out of fuel.

And putting an island between you and the source of those missiles makes it almost impossible to target the ships. They literally have to fly over the island before they can turn on their RADAR and begin searching. And at that point they become highly visible to not only every ship in the fleet, but every system on the island as well (even though they would have been visible to the ground based RADAR long before they even got to the island).

And the best weapon against cruise missiles has not changed in over 7 decades. And that is actually not missile defense systems, but fighters.