America After Bin Laden

[Pentegarn]

Well they are going through their industrial revolution at warp speed and they can make anything cheaper and faster than anyone else. Their computer espionage branch is top notch and the people i know involved with stopping them are not sure they will be able to.

The next war will be the Cyber War, where China will hack into our systems and we will be like the boy with his finger in the dam trying to stop them

[The Leader]

The US and China will never go to war because our economies are now dependent on one another. If one of us goes after the other, then both are going to suffer horrific economic downturns along the lines of complete collapse. And why would we fight China? Where is the motivation for either of us to engage in conflict?

The only reason people think of China as some enemy is because of their rapid growth coupled with the fact that they claim to be a communist state. Their ability to project hard power is laughable, and soft power is their only real tool. That soft power is reliant upon continued economic relations with the United States.

If there's an aggressor who causes war between the two, it will be the US simply because China has more to lose and would have no prospects of winning in a war with the United States. If anything, there's going to be pushes for even closer alignment with China simply because it benefits our economy.

Originally Posted by Pentegarn

Well they are going through their industrial revolution at warp speed and they can make anything cheaper and faster than anyone else. Their computer espionage branch is top notch and the people i know involved with stopping them are not sure they will be able to.

The next war will be the Cyber War, where China will hack into our systems and we will be like the boy with his finger in the dam trying to stop them

Ok, I don't see a problem with this because "Cyber War" occurs mostly on the internet. Hackers deface government websites and other things. Actual government systems are not connected to the internet.

If you want to disrupt the computer system of a military facility, or steal data from said facility, you have to actually enter the base and stick a pin drive or an external hard drive into a base computer and upload/download the stuff.

The only way to attack stuff that is actually important would be focusing on economics. Stocks and things like that. But because the Chinese economy is interlinked with the US economy, China isn't going to be trying to disrupt the US economy.

[Pentegarn]

Originally Posted by The Leader

The US and China will never go to war because our economies are now dependent on one another. If one of us goes after the other, then both are going to suffer horrific economic downturns along the lines of complete collapse. And why would we fight China? Where is the motivation for either of us to engage in conflict?

The only reason people think of China as some enemy is because of their rapid growth coupled with the fact that they claim to be a communist state. Their ability to project hard power is laughable, and soft power is their only real tool. That soft power is reliant upon continued economic relations with the United States.

If there's an aggressor who causes war between the two, it will be the US simply because China has more to lose and would have no prospects of winning in a war with the United States. If anything, there's going to be pushes for even closer alignment with China simply because it benefits our economy.


Ok, I don't see a problem with this because "Cyber War" occurs mostly on the internet. Hackers deface government websites and other things. Actual government systems are not connected to the internet.

If you want to disrupt the computer system of a military facility, or steal data from said facility, you have to actually enter the base and stick a pin drive or an external hard drive into a base computer and upload/download the stuff.

The only way to attack stuff that is actually important would be focusing on economics. Stocks and things like that. But because the Chinese economy is interlinked with the US economy, China isn't going to be trying to disrupt the US economy.

There's a place where I live, it is known as Batelle. It is a contracted facility that works for the government developing new technologies, be it agricultural, military, industrial, etc. This facility is not unique, there are dozens like it scattered all over the USA, these facilities all have one thing in common, they are connected to the internet because they are not official government installations. They have been attacked before by China, I know this because a relative to a person very close to me is a big part of trying to keep China out. So I get to hear a lot of stories about things that have been thwarted. They don't need the government computers to steal information when they can steal it from a contracted third party source before it gets to any secure off the net facility. China only has to succeed once, while these third party contractors have to succeed every day.

People may think China won't/can't get us via the internet, but I am here to tell you that this in fact not the case.

[Zhukov]

But they can't shut down your missile defence networks or shit like that.