Neither of us are arguing that the USA or Russians are the good guys. For lack of a better analogy, USA=the Yankees and Russia=the Oakland A’s. And you’re arguing that because the A’s use a moneyball approach that they are the superior team. I’ll grant that they are using scarce resources more efficiently(they have no choice other than to use that strat), but the Yankees still have the most rings even if they do blow 9 figures on a bad free agent contract.
4 Likes
Yeah I think Boredsocial makes a good point that in Russia if you’re super smart and talented and ambitious a lot of paths lead you to their intelligence program like ours would lead you to being a business person or w/e. Their carrots and sticks lionize that like ours does making money.
I mean look at all the chaos they were able to cause in the US with Trump.
Listening to history podcasts, Russians personal intelligence services have always been the best in the world by a huge margin and they clowned us so hard during the cold war. I’m sure the gap has closed since then simply based off of the money gap, but the foundation and skills are still there.
2 Likes
That assumes we aren’t circling the toilet bowl right now as we sit here typing. There’s a very real chance that someone already flushed.
That also assumes that our military spend is being invested at all well. It occurs to me from time to time that our military probably isn’t all that impressive if they are stealing 85% of it.
This gets two "wat?"s.
Oakland As can compete with the Yankees though so you are both right. This whole derail started when Microbet said that Russia is a broke country that isn’t a real threat to the US.
And the response to that is that Russia deals with that by picking and choosing its battles to find mismatches. Soft power wise they’re a fucking beast, and thanks to hypersonic missiles the regular military don’t matter.
They’re like the Oakland A’s if they got to choose to only pitch, only hit, or only field. In the real world this is how you beat someone stronger than you… you figure out where the ceiling is low enough that their height is a problem and make them fight bent over.
Now my view on this is that the world should go back to a regional power model… because I don’t think this Team America World Police deal has much life left in it, and I don’t want to fight any wars with China, Russia, or Iran. As long as everyone realizes that a war between major powers isn’t viable because of nukes the Pax Americana should hold.
And let’s be real… it’s not going to be that much more a human rights disaster than the last 70 years were. A lot of awful shit happened on our watch, and there’s no reason why we need to take responsibility for stuff happening on the other side of the world. Economic sanctions maybe if they do something really gross (I would argue China has already crossed this line) but we’ve got our own human rights crisis to deal with at home, and that’s what we should be focused on fixing.
1 Like
lol just saying that their culture leads to really talented people going into their intelligence programs while ours is mostly failsons who couldn’t succeed at anything else but still got connections.
The best and brightest in Russia have gravitated towards their intelligence services because it was like the best thing you could be since WWII. It was the best path to power, influence, and social status while in America that was through becoming rich. They dominated us in the cold war on this front.
Honestly I mostly have no idea what I’m talking about, but this is the impression I get from learning a lot about history and WWII through the cold war.
2 Likes
My probably misguided and overly simplistic view is that you really can’t get rich in Russia without some kind of partnership with the government. I could see the intelligence agencies as a kind of kleptocrat graduate school. When you google most of the oligarchs their past inevitably includes some kind of intelligence history.
3 Likes
Seriously go look at the backgrounds of the Russian oligarchs. It’s a bunch of mafiosi who used to run whole industries in the Soviet System and a bunch of guys from the KGB. These are some of the most individually rich and powerful people in the world.
And they do things totally different over there. It’s a system whose culture was born in a amoral Tsarist serf state with rigid hierarchies and permanent secret police. It’s a different way of thinking that I don’t claim to be able to fully understand, but I’ve tried… which is enough to be able to tell you that it’s fucking weird.
Again this is the realities of their system vs the realities of ours. The ideals of both are obviously pretty different from the realities.
2 Likes
The best way to think about it is a state composed of an interlinking chain mail made of allied criminal cells. The big boss sitting at the top table giving commands is Putin… but it’s only because the next layer below him remain loyal to him, and so on down. Russian organized crime is a part of their statecraft in the same way that corporate interests are part of ours.
Our society is structured like a corporation. Theirs is built like a crime syndicate. There are a lot of commonalities, but there are some major divergences as well.
I want to be so very very very clear that I’m not implying a worse moral judgement with the term crime syndicate than I am with the term corporation.
The reason why your perception fits well with reality is that it’s impossible to have anything of value in Russia without the protection of someone or without being that someone yourself. That might be the guy who collects the taxes in your area, or runs the factory, and that can vary from place to place… but it’s a land of petty bosses who took the place of the nobles of the tsarist era. So yes if you’re a big person in Russian society there’s definitely a connection from you to someone a layer closer to Putin than you are.
The simplest way to think about it is that in our system you want money so that you can get power. In Russia you want power so that you can get money.
They aren’t, really. It’s an old airframe, but the stuff inside is state of the art. There are constant programs to replace airborne sensors, which usually get greenlit because they are orders of magnitude cheaper than an entirely new aircraft, and they are black programs that fall under different budgetary umbrellas.
So, what will happen is the sensors and payloads will be separated from the C-135 airframes which will go to the boneyard in AZ. In normal times, the sensors would be stored, cannibalized for parts, or modified for integration into a new/different airframe. I have no idea what “liquidated” means in this context…we’ve never sold off stuff like this before, and if we do, that is truly worrisome.
Anything but sexy fighter jets don’t really go obsolete anymore because they can’t. Congress is so busy funneling money to the newest hottest sports car, that the planes that actually do real work for the AF have to keep scrounging for funds to stay flying. We don’t still use the RC-135 and U-2 because they’re cool…we use them because, as hard as it is to believe, the political will isn’t there to budget for the development of true replacements.
This was my job in the AF, and specifically in airborne reconnaissance acquisition. AMA if you want.
8 Likes
Well after that last question, this probably won’t be funny but does the AF really issue survival kits like Major Kong had in Dr. Strangelove?
2 Likes
I don’t know what I’d ask but I would gladly find something if you hosted an AMA
Peeked over at TheDonald. They are all very confident still for a Donald win.
5 Likes
Sorry, that was a misleading summary. It seemed like they had an overhaul for digital equipment recently (though I’m not sure if that was actually completed?). But, as you say, useful sensors wouldn’t be included in any sale, hence they’d be a bit useless as things to sell. Then it seemed they would ideally be replaced, but (as you say) there’s never been any money in Open Skies and the like. Happy to say that doesn’t really equal just ‘obsolete’, though.
One thing that would be interesting to know is how important the actual intelligence gathered this way is vs satellite imagery?
Edit more questions - Part of my thinking was also that given the sensors still exist and so do other spy planes, then if they did destroy them but got Open Skies back then the military would probably find a way to make flights (though clearly not as good a way). Is that just madness? Also, I know there’s requirements for things to be certified as part of the treaty, is the problem that that process needs to be for the full package and so there would be a big delay while a whole ‘new’ aircraft was put together for it?
1 Like
Judge Sullivan sounds pretty insistent that DeJoy is appearing in his courtroom and soon.
When DeJoys attorney said they would have to check his availability, Sullivan flipped it and said he would tell DeJoy when to be available.
I’d put DeJoy pretty high on the will be pardoned list.
5 Likes