I guess I need to write a disclaimer about Perun: He's a smug liberal commentator from Australia (the ideology, I don't know what party he votes for in elections), though his gaming channel is pretty comfy. He has a degree of western bias, and has been invited to high profile international weapon conferences. He does attempt to cover conflicts neutrally however.
Some big points I notice:
- The US continues to make staggering investments in assets against China, which will be ready in the early 30s.
- This increase by itself is greater than the entire Russian defense budget for 2025 while in active warfar- Special Military Operations
- "Golden Dome" will provide some protetion against Chinese retaliation on the US homeland which China can threaten with Type 93B Cruise Missile Submarines.
- Golden Dome may also provide good enough insurance against ICBMs for confronting China's relatively small stockpile of warheads.
- Large Investments in US nuclear forces, including a "classified nuclear deterrent", and a small yield ship launched nuclear missile which congress has funded despite navy not wanting.
- 4.5 Billion investment to "accelerate" acquisition of B21 Stealth Bombers,
- Massive increase to US capabilities in naval mining, including autonomous torpedoes and underwater drones, which the PLAN has limited countermeasures prepared
- Combine that with new missiles and the US leaving its missile treaties, it seems like the US may be positioning itself to take an asymmetric stance against China, which sounds unique since it's typically the side close to home that chooses to adopt asymmetric tactics.
Going with the doomer thing I wonder if the US will create some top secret fairly effective missile shield capable of intercepting 400 warheads or so. Given US militarization of space I'm going to say that actually all those Starlink satellites have a secret payload of a brilliant pebbles type interceptor or the ability to turn the satellite itself into one somehow because it just makes no sense to spend all that money on satellite internet just for the potential of military and CIA in field use when previous attempts in the 90s (when brilliant pebbles was rejected initially) by Bill Gates and other ghouls failed so badly. I mean I get it's more economical now so I am being a little silly here with this and that the US is more desperate than ever to create internet/comms not subject to local regulations and censorship for manipulation and propaganda operations. But uh it would be a little odd for the US to not have some militarized payloads on those Starlink systems. Even say nuclear weapons that can provide a revenge system, they all start falling out of the sky towards China under power if they don't get a certain signal every 15 days or something. Heck they don't even have to be functioning nukes, they could be dirty bombs with conventional explosives set to explode a mile up above China to shower it in radiation. Mad villain shit.
I am so positive they see nuking China as a necessity and as part of that have multiple things in the works to neutralize their retaliatory capabilities. Among other things we've seen they've been tricking hobbyists into installing free radio equipment they offer through vague internet cut-outs which can not only gather signals but also jam and block in the event of war. All the US would need would be the ability to jam the airwaves completely for 30 minutes in order to get the drop on China and nuke them without them being able to order their forces to retaliate in time. China's advantage and disadvantage has always been using mobile launchers and moving their missiles around. If they can jam the air and also using hacking via previously compromised (possibly hardware backdoors) to shut down wired communication networks then China is in trouble. Even blocking half their forces from getting the retaliate order for 15 minutes would be enough for the US to win. The empire I seriously worry is just suicidally homicidal and desperate to cling onto power, white supremacist rage blinds it to even the possibility of compromise so even a chance their plans might work might be enough to get them to launch the nukes.
I mean fuck I wouldn't put it past the US putting in the effort to have smuggled in suitcase (or full size) nukes into China which are remote controlled via radio signals which they threaten to set off and kill tens/hundreds of millions of Chinese and call that a "nuclear deterrent". They're just so much more vile than even that.
Bloomer take is though the US may be able to win a war against China as part of blockading and encircling them and shield its mainland from retaliation that China by 2030 or so will have nearly 1000 warheads and mount many of them on hypersonic delivery mechanisms.
Other thoughts on "classified nuclear deterrent" are maybe they're doing the doomsday machine deadhand thing, either a system (please be Elon AI so it doesn't work) on the ground or something like Russia has lately been proposing which is nuclear powered nuclear tipped cruise missiles which can fly for years. You send them up where they can't be intercepted easily, have them fly around, program them to strike their targets on a signal or on sustained cessation of a signal to them.
I mean this is an empire that's used biological weapons. That the Russians credibly accuse of doing illegal biowarfare work in Ukraine. That sprayed agent orange. I guess our hope is that the US military contractors sucker the US and don't deliver on time and keep delaying and delaying and the US just kind of collapses.
I think it's plausible the US would use it's regional proxies to full effect and support Islamists overthrowing Pakistan and directing them to launch their nukes at China.
Also a huge worry of mine. That or them getting some deranged person in India to seize some nukes and use them on China. Those two nations are the ones most likely other than the US IMO to use nuclear weapons.