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I kind of want it to come out that it was Abe who first persuaded him to call Taiwan at their meeting, knowing that it'd stir this up, just to see how gullible/poorly versed he is in Asian geopolitics.
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Dec 3, 2016 09:28
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It also seems a little unlikely to me Tsai would've really initiated the call. She might send an unofficial note or something, but unlike Trump she probably understands the implications of reaching out to Trump and Trump accepting the call. If an ardent proponent of declaring independence had become President, China would've already flipped its poo poo.
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Dec 3, 2016 09:41
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Phanatic posted:There's zero long-term benefit to continuing the pretense that Taiwan isn't actually an independent nation.
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Dec 3, 2016 10:19
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What worries me a little is that he comes along in an age when the tepid technocrats are being shifted to the side at the top echelons of the CCP by people like Xi Jinping, who practice a much more person-oriented type of politics, more prone to jingoism and nationalism and harnessing the power those things have over Chinese masses, and I'm not sure the mix is very good.
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Dec 3, 2016 10:27
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What if Trump is so competent at diplomacy that it wraps around and appears to be incompetence? 
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Dec 3, 2016 10:28
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Platystemon posted:What if Trump is so competent at diplomacy that it wraps around and appears to be incompetence? Don't worry, it's not a wraparound error.
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Dec 3, 2016 10:58
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Effective-Disorder posted:Just to reiterate a previous point that I wasn't entirely joking about, if anyone with experience in any sort of policy (not just end-of-the-world policy) were to find greener pastures because of an administration change, wouldn't that only reinforce the knowledge gap that the new administration presents in the first place? You're basically describing the bureaucratic duty to serve - the basic idea that no matter how bad a government might appear it's going to be a hell of a lot worse if you don't have competent people to make sure that basic services happen, and even on the executive level it's better to have a well informed madman running the show than an ignorant one. Off the top of my head, I think Max Weber wrote a bit about this, although it's something that was floating in the air in various forms by at least the 1850s in German speaking territories. I presume the US/England/France/etc as well, but I'm more familiar with the German context. Of course it has its upper limit. If the boss is literally Hitler then you might not want him having a functional bureaucracy. That said, it's kind of hard to judge before the fact whether even the shittiest of tinpot dictators is Hitler or more of a Papa Doc Duvalier.
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Dec 3, 2016 16:20
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Cyrano4747 posted:You're basically describing the bureaucratic duty to serve - the basic idea that no matter how bad a government might appear it's going to be a hell of a lot worse if you don't have competent people to make sure that basic services happen, and even on the executive level it's better to have a well informed madman running the show than an ignorant one. Off the top of my head, I think Max Weber wrote a bit about this, although it's something that was floating in the air in various forms by at least the 1850s in German speaking territories. I presume the US/England/France/etc as well, but I'm more familiar with the German context. It's been a while, but wasn't the whole image of a ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy in the Third Reich largely a myth? I seem to recall that the German government was basically composed of about a dozen fiefdoms competing with one another.
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Dec 3, 2016 18:51
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So a question about OPSEC, what happens if someone comes on and starts leaking opsec stuff in this thread but he isn't a US consultant/servicemember but is a foreign intelligence agent? Would Lowtax get an email from the CIA to do something about it? I'm curious about how much effort intelligence agencies put into counter intelligence operations stuff on internet forums.Force de Fappe posted:What worries me a little is that he comes along in an age when the tepid technocrats are being shifted to the side at the top echelons of the CCP by people like Xi Jinping, who practice a much more person-oriented type of politics, more prone to jingoism and nationalism and harnessing the power those things have over Chinese masses, and I'm not sure the mix is very good. Susan Shirk has called out these issues back in like 2008 in China: Fragile Superpower. There's an interesting key element how the Long March generation of leaders basically were the Army and could do "Nixon going to China" type of diplomacy, keep military funding lower, etc, all because they had the trust of the army. Starting with Hu Jintao you have leaders who in order to keep the military happy have been forced to raise the budget every year, they used nationalism as an easy short term solution to domestic troubles and now they can't stop using it. It's really interesting because the whole thing back then about China passing a law to make it illegal for Taiwan to declare independence was actually Chinese thinktanks desperately trying to come up with something, anything they could do to thread the needle between needing to take a strong stance and not going to a possibly nation destroying war they can't win. I'm not sure how much of this is Xi finding it useful as a means of consolidating his faction and power base and how much of it is him literally having no other options because of decisions made over the last 40 years ago by Deng, Zheng, and Hu.
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Dec 3, 2016 18:53
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Fearless posted:It's been a while, but wasn't the whole image of a ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy in the Third Reich largely a myth? I seem to recall that the German government was basically composed of about a dozen fiefdoms competing with one another. Yes, but there is a difference between that construct and the actual efficient Prussian civil service upon which it's largely based.
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Dec 3, 2016 18:54
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Fearless posted:It's been a while, but wasn't the whole image of a ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy in the Third Reich largely a myth? I seem to recall that the German government was basically composed of about a dozen fiefdoms competing with one another. The Third Reich was a mindfuck of inefficiency, yeah. In the milhist thread, I actually came across an example of the Nazis being more efficient than the west, and was kind of blown away by it because of its sheer unusualness. [For the curious, Adm. Donitz after the Norway campaign took the evidence that submarine torpedoes were malfunctioning, formed a investigative comittiee, and found that the rear Admiral in charge of torpedo testing knew about the problems but what ignoring them. The torpedoes were fixed, and that Rear Admiral spent six months in prison.]
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Dec 3, 2016 19:15
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Raenir Salazar posted:So a question about OPSEC, what happens if someone comes on and starts leaking opsec stuff in this thread but he isn't a US consultant/servicemember but is a foreign intelligence agent? Would Lowtax get an email from the CIA to do something about it? I'm curious about how much effort intelligence agencies put into counter intelligence operations stuff on internet forums. I imagine US authorities would still be interested in identifying the person, and if possible, have their own government sit down and chat with them about not being stupid on the internet.
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Dec 3, 2016 19:15
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Godholio posted:I imagine US authorities would still be interested in identifying the person, and if possible, have their own government sit down and chat with them about not being stupid on the internet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger#Overview
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Dec 3, 2016 19:39
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Godholio posted:I imagine US authorities would still be interested in identifying the person, and if possible, have their own government sit down and chat with them about not being stupid on the internet. I mean more specifically, like, what if a KGB agent was leaking US OPSEC stuff. So someone in this thread asks a question that can't be answered except in at best the vaguest way, but Yuri is like "Yeah it's like this, that, that, and like it's over there like so."
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Dec 3, 2016 20:00
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Raenir Salazar posted:I mean more specifically, like, what if a KGB agent was leaking US OPSEC stuff. So someone in this thread asks a question that can't be answered except in at best the vaguest way, but Yuri is like "Yeah it's like this, that, that, and like it's over there like so." Probably capped by Putin because they don't want anyone to know that the info is out there.
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Dec 3, 2016 20:05
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Nebakenezzer posted:The Third Reich was a mindfuck of inefficiency, yeah. In the milhist thread, I actually came across an example of the Nazis being more efficient than the west, and was kind of blown away by it because of its sheer unusualness. [For the curious, Adm. Donitz after the Norway campaign took the evidence that submarine torpedoes were malfunctioning, formed a investigative comittiee, and found that the rear Admiral in charge of torpedo testing knew about the problems but what ignoring them. The torpedoes were fixed, and that Rear Admiral spent six months in prison.] For anyone not in the know, US torpedoes throughout the pacific war were so bad someone should've been executed over it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo
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Dec 3, 2016 20:11
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quote is not edit
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Dec 3, 2016 20:11
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Raenir Salazar posted:I mean more specifically, like, what if a KGB agent was leaking US OPSEC stuff. So someone in this thread asks a question that can't be answered except in at best the vaguest way, but Yuri is like "Yeah it's like this, that, that, and like it's over there like so." Generally speaking the whole point of protecting U.S. information is to hide it from the Russians (or whoever), so if the Russians (or whoever) reveal that our hiding was unsuccessful it's basically a win for us. It would give our CI folks an opportunity to discover their sources and methods, and a chance to mitigate the loss. Movies make it seem like stamping something TOP SECRET is just a way to hide the nefarious activities of the military and three-letter agencies from the good townsfolk of Hawkins Indiana, but in fact in virtually no case is classified (or sensitive unclassified) information sensitive for reasons other than exploitation by foreign militaries and/or nonstate violent actors. If you know that we just found OBL and are about to whack him, no problem in theory. If OBL finds out, not so great.
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Dec 3, 2016 20:26
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There are very few corner cases where it's in your interest to reveal what you know. For example, we revealed a ton about our listening capabilities after the KAL 007 shootdown, because it was more important to prove the truth of the matter.
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Dec 3, 2016 20:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:So a question about OPSEC, what happens if someone comes on and starts leaking opsec stuff in this thread but he isn't a US consultant/servicemember but is a foreign intelligence agent? Would Lowtax get an email from the CIA to do something about it? I'm curious about how much effort intelligence agencies put into counter intelligence operations stuff on internet forums. You generally don't want the enemies/rivals/friends know how much you know about their secret stuff. I mean, you know that they know that you know some of their stuff because they're not naive enough to believe themselves immune to espionage; but you don't want them to know precisely what you know, because if they know exactly what you know about their stuff, then they can guess how you got to know it. And once they know how you got to know, then they can take action to plug that hole.
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Dec 3, 2016 20:58
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Raenir Salazar posted:I mean more specifically, like, what if a KGB agent was leaking US OPSEC stuff. So someone in this thread asks a question that can't be answered except in at best the vaguest way, but Yuri is like "Yeah it's like this, that, that, and like it's over there like so." So, Wikileaks?
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Dec 3, 2016 21:27
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Cyrano4747 posted:You're basically describing the bureaucratic duty to serve - the basic idea that no matter how bad a government might appear it's going to be a hell of a lot worse if you don't have competent people to make sure that basic services happen, and even on the executive level it's better to have a well informed madman running the show than an ignorant one. Off the top of my head, I think Max Weber wrote a bit about this, although it's something that was floating in the air in various forms by at least the 1850s in German speaking territories. I presume the US/England/France/etc as well, but I'm more familiar with the German context. Well, I'd say that I hope we're not talking about a dictator in the first place. I'm thinking about Nixon or Reagan, not Hitler or Papa Doc. On the other hand, now that you mention it I'd wonder how interwar bureaucracy was in Germany, and what that may have contributed to later events.
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Dec 3, 2016 21:48
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Platystemon posted:What if Trump is so competent at diplomacy that it wraps around and appears to be incompetence? In my experience analyses that invoke 12-dimensional chess moves that will pay off long into the future are always wrong. When profound moves escape notice it's not because they are subtle, but because nobody is paying attention.
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Dec 3, 2016 22:08
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Craptacular posted:So, Wikileaks? This. It's basically exactly what is happening right now: a foreign government is selectively leaking intelligence it obtained for it's own purposes using a third party, with perhaps broader motives, who is a willing tool. Germany is getting the wikileaks treatment now that Merkel is running for another term vs Russia's preferred candidate.
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Dec 3, 2016 23:25
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Effective-Disorder posted:On the other hand, now that you mention it I'd wonder how interwar bureaucracy was in Germany, and what that may have contributed to later events. The short answer is not much.
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Dec 4, 2016 01:26
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Cyrano4747 posted:The short answer is not much. The Effective-Disorder fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Dec 4, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 02:43
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shame on an IGA posted:For anyone not in the know, US torpedoes throughout the pacific war were so bad someone should've been executed over it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_torpedo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Grunion quote:Although it is not absolutely certain, the evidence strongly suggests that the Grunion was lost as a result of horrific torpedo performance during her encounter with the Kano Maru. Her first torpedo ran low, but despite its magnetic pistol failed to detonate. Two more bounced harmlessly off the Kano Maru without exploding. However, the remaining torpedo missed its target and circled back, striking the periscope supports on the submerged submarine without exploding.[9]
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Dec 4, 2016 04:16
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Regarding the morality of good men serving in an adminstration they oppose in order to lessen the impact of Bad Things, this article makes a good argument about the institutional effects that can subvert that strategy. The author concludes that serving in a Trump administration would be the sort of "rotten compromise" that should be avoided at all costs, as opposed to simply "bad compromises" that are inevitable. He (reluctantly) references a Nazi Germany story about a lawyer named Bernhard Lösener, who opposed the regime and stayed in government to mitigate damage, and well...quote:Lösener was not an ideological Nazi; he was a conservative civil servant who joined the Party because he “wrongly assumed that only this party could succeed in rescuing Germany from the not-so-rosy situation in which it found itself back then.” (Sound familiar?) And, as the new government formed, “there was an urgent search for higher-ranking civil servants who belonged to the Party.” He joined the Ministry, but within months he grew disenchanted. He had an insider’s view, and “saw with dismay that all the promises made before the Party assumed power had given a completely wrong picture of a future National Socialist state.” But: “Over and over again, my personal and political friends … persuaded me to remain in my position even as disgust threatened to choke me.” In his job, he could do some damage control. Outside the job, he could do nothing.
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Dec 4, 2016 17:55
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Slamburger posted:Regarding the morality of good men serving in an adminstration they oppose in order to lessen the impact of Bad Things, this article makes a good argument about the institutional effects that can subvert that strategy. The author concludes that serving in a Trump administration would be the sort of "rotten compromise" that should be avoided at all costs, as opposed to simply "bad compromises" that are inevitable. He (reluctantly) references a Nazi Germany story about a lawyer named Bernhard Lösener, who opposed the regime and stayed in government to mitigate damage, and well... This is kinda a hosed up take given that there were plenty of ideologically on-board lawyers around to draft the document in question who absolutely would have gone with the more murdery version had this guy not taken the "rotten compromise".
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Dec 4, 2016 18:57
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Warbadger posted:This is kinda a hosed up take given that there were plenty of ideologically on-board lawyers around to draft the document in question who absolutely would have gone with the more murdery version had this guy not taken the "rotten compromise". Exhibit A is Oskar Schindler.
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Dec 4, 2016 19:15
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Warbadger posted:This is kinda a hosed up take given that there were plenty of ideologically on-board lawyers around to draft the document in question who absolutely would have gone with the more murdery version had this guy not taken the "rotten compromise". Well that's his exactly his point: Its not morally justified to say "well somebody else would have done worse, therefore I did good". A lesser but related case could be made for the lawyer that wrote a memo saying waterboarding is not legally torture if his personal justification was "well better me than some other guy who would say electrocution isn't torture". All of those are immoral acts, and on an individual basis, people should avoid them like they would any other that goes against their moral code. If that creates a vacuum that will be filled by worse people, so be it but you should then fight those people rather than appeasing and condoning their behavior by becoming a part of it yourself. If you disagree with that and think all actions should be measured in the context of relative objective harm, that's certainly a valid philosophical position but not one I agree with.
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Dec 4, 2016 19:56
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Slamburger posted:Well that's his exactly his point: Its not morally justified to say "well somebody else would have done worse, therefore I did good". A lesser but related case could be made for the lawyer that wrote a memo saying waterboarding is not legally torture if his personal justification was "well better me than some other guy who would say electrocution isn't torture". All of those are immoral acts, and on an individual basis, people should avoid them like they would any other that goes against their moral code. If that creates a vacuum that will be filled by worse people, so be it but you should then fight those people rather than appeasing and condoning their behavior by becoming a part of it yourself. If you disagree with that and think all actions should be measured in the context of relative objective harm, that's certainly a valid philosophical position but not one I agree with. In my opinion it is. In the example you gave the law was getting written either way, with or without his attempt at sabotage. If he had not done it, there is every reason to believe more people would actually have been killed under the much broader definition. This isn't even a theoretical "well maybe" kinda thing, that poo poo was getting written down by somebody with or without his participation. This is little different in principle than a factory worker who sabotaged ammunition/engines for German war production. The engines and shells are going to be made either way and until this regime is short on replacement workers they are doing the moral thing by not stepping aside to allow a loyal worker to take his place and produce working weapons. They did not need to bring down the entirety of German war production to be morally in the right. Edit: I would also argue that by doing a thing that got fewer people murdered (and no additional people murdered) he was in fact fighting the mass murderers, not appeasing and condoning them. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 22:05
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it's a trolley problem!
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Dec 4, 2016 23:27
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Splode posted:it's a trolley problem! Well, more like a "trains pulling cattle cars with bars on the windows" problem, but yes.
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Dec 4, 2016 23:38
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Dead Reckoning posted:Well, more like a "trains pulling cattle cars with bars on the windows" problem, but yes. It differs from the Trolley car problem mostly in that he removed people from danger and did not add anyone who wasn't already included. It's less a case of diverting a trolley from hitting one group of people to hit another group of people and more about the choice to get some, but not all, of the people off the track. Should you save anyone if you can't save everyone? Warbadger fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 00:33
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"Yeah sure I was a Nazi but I helped minimize the millions of people they killed"
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Dec 5, 2016 01:22
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That Works posted:"Yeah sure I was a Nazi but I helped minimize the millions of people they killed" "Yeah sure I was a Nazi but I used my membership to keep the other Nazis from killing a few million more people". As Mortabis pointed out that is basically what Oskar Schindler and a lot of other objectors did. Not taking action to stay uninvolved, knowing that you could have saved people if you had, is a conscious action in itself. Warbadger fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 01:25
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Schindler was not at all an example of this sort of behavior. There is a chasm of difference between being a Nazi party member and using every ounce of your money and influence to actively save lives, and drafting a monstrous genocidal law that was tempered in such as way to not be as bad as it could be. You can compare the utility of the two actions and judge that Lösener's actions caused fewer deaths than Schindler saved but the whole point of this argument is against a utilitarian philosophy. If I was holding a match to burn a building down and then didn't do it and said "hey guys, I just saved 100 lives, what did YOU do today" that doesn't make me better than a firefighter that saved one person.
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Dec 5, 2016 02:41
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Father Pedro Arrupe's liberation theology held that you should change corrupt structures from within. But I don't think he'd be cool if you made sure the Nazis killed only like 6 million innocent people instead of 8 million.
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Dec 5, 2016 03:26
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The Syrian war appears to have found a sorta-Ann Frank figure. Naturally, twitter is involved... ...and her account was deleted today. 
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Dec 5, 2016 03:31
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