Zelensky Grabs Whatever Office Supplies He Can Get Hands On In Capitol, Saying He Needs It For War

People got really mad on twitter over this one lmao

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-military-unequipped-high-intensity-combat-206817 (archived, is anyone else having trouble with archive.is / archive.ph? they seem to just not load at all for me)

The U.S. Military is Unequipped for High-Intensity Combat

The U.S. military’s system was for uncontested logistics, with the ability to conduct depot-level maintenance after evacuating vehicles from the front lines and heavy reliance on a contractor workforce for highly technical repairs. It also relies upon air superiority on the battlefield, which is not a given in combat against a peer competitor.

Former Commandant Gen. David Berger stated that in a great power war in the Pacific, “It’s just fuel and bullets, that’s what I’m going to resupply. The rest you’re going to have to forage.” These logistical limitations will be acute when repairing damaged military equipment. Absent repairs, it may be impossible for Marines to get back into the fight.

Besides the astronomical costs of many of America’s boutique and exquisite systems, the trade-off between the price of these systems and the systems that can kill them is becoming unsustainable

U.S. adversaries will not allow it to build up the proverbial iron mountain of logistics, nor will it be easy to evacuate vehicles or bring forward parts via “just in time” (JIT) delivery by ship or aircraft.

One of the reasons that the Afghan air force collapsed was the withdrawal of U.S. contractors. With the air force collapsing, ground units also gave up as they were no longer assured of resupply, medevac, or close air support. The U.S. military made the situation worse by having the Afghans move away from Soviet-era helicopters such as the Mi-17 and transition to the more technical and maintenance-heavy U.S. airframes. The U.S. military may face its own issues in high-intensity conflict, as defense contractors have withheld the intellectual property behind some of the newest systems, such as the F-35, effectively turning them into black boxes that only the contractors themselves can fully understand. American farmers can tell horror stories of the problems encountered with high-tech tractors and their fights with manufacturers such as John Deere over the “right to repair.”

that bit about the Afghan Air Force was something I hadn’t heard before, absolutely amazing imagine having all of your military equipment be dependent on maintenance by foreign private contractors

SMIC Well on Its Way to 5-nm Breakthrough, Observers Say

In summation:

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) is likely to, in the next few years, again defy the U.S. government by manufacturing chips with feature sizes as small as 5 nm, industry insiders told EE Times.

The production of 7-nm silicon by China’s largest chipmaker just days ago has crossed a red line set by the U.S. government to keep its rival nation stalled at the 14-nm node. SMIC’s widely reported breakthrough erodes the U.S. strategy to use export controls and blacklists to halt China’s technological progress, according to Dick Thurston, former chief legal counsel for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).

“I never had any doubt that they would be doing 7 [nm], and I still don’t have any doubt that they’ll do 5 nm without the EUV tools,” he told EE Times.

The number of new phones suggests the yield at SMIC for the new process node is much higher than the 10% that some have suggested, according to Paul Triolo, who advises tech clients at Albright Stonebridge Group.

“Industry sources within China suggest that the yield is in the 70% range and getting better, which is usually the case with these types of efforts to push existing equipment beyond what it was intended for,” he told EE Times.

There is a limited roadmap for SMIC/Huawei to reach advanced nodes beyond some layers at 5 nm, Triolo added.

Given that SMIC has figured out multi-patterning for 7 nm, they can likely figure it out for 5 nm, Semiconductor Advisers President Robert Maire said in a newsletter provided to EE Times.

“SMIC has clearly proven it can get around the EUV ban,” Maire told EE Times. “Applied Materials, Lam, KLA and others are still shipping tons of tools to China, which is their largest market by far and growing.”

The only source interviewed by EE Times last week who would hazard a guess about how soon SMIC might have a 5-nm chip was Maire.

Maire’s estimate? “Likely somewhere between one and three years,” he said. “If SMIC is keeping pace, probably about two years.”

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) controls on SMIC have been ineffective, he added. “European, , various companies are not 100% following what the U.S. has asked them to do.”

While it is likely that U.S. officials will consider some further measures against both SMIC and Huawei, both are already on the Entity List and subject to the FDPR provision, leaving the “nuclear option” of Treasury Department sanctions, Triolo said.

“Any move in this direction would have a major negative impact on U.S.-China relations, which have seen some minor improvement after four Cabinet-level visits of U.S. officials to Beijing,” he added.

Whether DoC restrictions can successfully inhibit China, “my answer is no,” Thurston said.

“We’ve let the cat out of the bag. We’ve opened up competition to countries that can access all these tools. All this can be replicated.”

China’s chipmaking capabilities are not well-understood in Washington, Thurston said. “How do you actually estimate China’s technological capability? We don’t really understand. U.S. companies have done a poor job. I’m sure TSMC understands much better than others.”

The “high walls, small yard” strategy of U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to keep China behind the U.S. as many technology generations as possible faces a challenge.

“While U.S. officials have stressed that export controls are narrowly tailored to national security-related issues, no U.S. official has clearly explained how a consumer smartphone like the Mate 60 rises to the level of a national security concern,” Triolo said. “It remains unclear whether extraterritorial export controls like the FDPR, which would restrict one Chinese company from selling to another Chinese company, would stand up to serious scrutiny in terms of international law.”

> I storm into the room, flinging the doors open

> "The Poles! They've stopped sending weapons to Ukraine because of their stupid little trade war over grain; the cracks are forming, the united coalition is splintering! How long can this last? Once the spigot dries up, how fast will Ukraine fold? What new horrors will be wrought in this new multipolar world?"

> my gf turns to me," what the fuck are you talking about, go make some tea"

> I go stare at a screen for eight hours pretending to care about "action items" as I mutter on about Lviv/Lwów

> Work Slack Channel: "Has anybody heard about this really old documentary called 'Tiger King'?"

Pondering the orb of global misery with y’all is fine but god damn do I sometimes feel insane.

Communists and conservatives coincidentally not supporting Ukraine (nominally for the latter): proof that communism and fascism are the same

Liberals and conservatives systemically and deliberately supporting and funding every war, invasion, and occupation by domestic forces: mature, bipartisan, proof that democracy works

So it’s confirmed that the “WW2 Ukrainian freedom fighter” that got a standing ovation in Canadian parlaiment yesterday was in fact part of the 14th Division of the Waffen-SS (aka 1st Galician Division). Who do I need to talk to to get the Canadian Polish and Jewish communities on the cuck rankings?

I hate losers so much, there’s huge ass thread on republicans holding up pentagon funding (why are they actually able to damage/slow down the US war machine more than the US left y’all this is so fucking embarrasing…) and the comments saying that’s a good thing are downvoted to the bottom of the thread. Blue maga never changes I guess

Canadian Parliament gives a standing ovation to a literal nazi soldier

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Brazilian Pres. Lula, a former lathe operator, and former Volkswagen assembly line worker/Labor Minister Luiz Marinho met with UAW leaders in New York yesterday, with a delegation of Brazilian union leaders. There, they announced solidarity actions with striking US autoworkers.

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China’s healthcare tycoons lose US$17 billion as crackdown spreads

The combined fortune of the top 15 Chinese healthcare billionaires has fallen 17 per cent to US$84.1 billion from US$101.4 billion at the end of last year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The drop comes as the country’s top regulators started a sweeping anti-corruption campaign across the nation’s healthcare sector about two months ago. It has resulted in hundreds of hospital chiefs and pharmaceutical executives being probed, sparking a sectorwide share slump as investors chose to sell instead of guessing which companies will be hit by the clampdown.

$84 billion left to go

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Haven’t seen many people talking about the new Hersh article, he has some interesting claims:

Major portions of the Ukrainian army have stopped going on the offensive at all

The CIA is becoming very skeptical of the possibility of a Ukrainian victory, and a significant rift between intelligence agencies is forming

Quote from an intelligence official: “The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going. The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House.”

https://archive.is/2023.09.21-111210/https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/zelenskys-bad-moment

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