Not many. The thing about globalization and repealing the 20th century is that its a wobbly 3D Rube Goldberg domino landscape. 1-2 dickheads per continent is all it takes.

Literally a chapter in the Art of War.

Gotcha, sorry I thought you meant in a sort of a more large-scale coordinated way with the authoritarians.

The easiest way for China to take Taiwan back is to wait for something complicated to occupy the military and WH, even only at the very top leadership level. A protracted and undeniable scandal, another major shake-up while the boss is out of town, or the end result of all this internal military use for law enforcement that seems to want to end posse comitatus within I think 80-ish days at this point, are all options. Spin up the machine to catch it’s own tail and the response elsewhere will be too little and too late because of the more hierarchical nature of decison-making now. Steve Bannon’s own “flood the zone with shit” tactic, inspired by Tsun Tzu.

Chip fab won’t matter because nothing else logical has mattered so far. Why jump straight to a trade war with all your largest trading partners without even preparing for it? Foolishness and ego. Same same here as well.

You’re correct, however, keep in mind that authoritarians have fragile egos and are often focused locally, often on how to further subjugate their populations and garner favor. That usually means conflicts like insurgency or cross-border attacks like Russia into Ukraine (x2), Russia into Georgia, US into Mexico/Canada, India and Pakistan fighting over Cashmere, PRC and Taiwan, Serbia and Kosovo, Kenya/Somalia/Somalil and, Uganda and eastern DRC, etc. etc.

Boomer pissing contest fantasies of China and the US duking it out in the Pacific are foolish as neither wants to risk direct conflict with no tangible gains expected. It’s a guarantee of either outright loss or maaaaybe a Pyrrhic victory of you already control your media. No landing party flotilla will land in Los Angeles or Hong Kong. The US only stands to lose.

Not at all.

What we’ll get is not one big World War of Axis vs. Allies, but everyone at war with some kind of small regional pissing contest or insurgency.

Sure, most of the world will be in some form of conflict, but it won’t be a “World War” in the same sense of a 20-on-20 prolonged conflict with well-defined nation-states on each side. Not that this opinion survey can really capture that.

Not surprised at all.

Who wants to out down some money in when countries just stop following the Geneva Convention because it’s “a regulatory burden”? Price is Right rules closest without going over.

This is the laziest excuse possible for ceeding responsibility to everyone else.

Know the law in the jurisdiction in which you are physically located. Know the reasonable expectations of internet privacy.

If the law and you end up crosswise, and lawyering up isn’t a viable option because it won’t matter, that means you were fool enough to tempt fate in a place with no rule of law, no civil rights protections, and likely no reasonable expectation of privacy in the first place.

Zero trust means the only person responsible for you is you and anyone else you trust with your life. Whining about it doesn’t change anything.

I would bet it was for a WWOOFing or Workaway style thing where you do a few hours menial labor in exchange for room and board. Often attracts backpacker types. Typical advice is to lie to Customs (in any country) and just get a tourist visa, which is always a gamble at best.

1. Don’t do illegal stuff that makes people paid to find you come looking for you.

2. Nothing done online is anonymous enough that you should do or type anything you wouldn’t want to read out loud in a court.

3. Privacy subreddit and privacyguides.org both are good starting places.

There’s not enough info in here to know how Google was involved if he sent the emails from Proton. Proton absolutely does not cotton to illegal shit, and actionable threats would be up there with LEO compliance.

My guess is he was on a VPN and had logins from a Proton account, validated with a burner phone he kept, and was also logging on to a personal Gmail or using some Google service that identifies him while in the same VPN location. Proton and the VPN give up an IP address that corroborates to what Big G tracks to him.

Edit: even a no-log VPN would likely be compelled to confirm a user at an IP address at a certain time. That’s not a a “log” per se…

Idiot should have known to change his VPN location between instances and/or use TOR like a big boy, but mental health issues seem to be there driving force, not rationality.

For what its worth, the golden age of piracy could only have happened thanks to a roughly century-long cool spell that effectively meant barely any hurricanes at all to sink pirate ships.

Turns out it was an NY Times article, which you are free to search for yourself because this thirsty for attention wannabe troll shit can fuck right off.

Fun fact: Being abrasive and needing someone else to spoon-feed you the exact baby food you want isn’t a great way to go through life.

Not fragile. I really do recall seeing an article about this, and digging into finding it to show that I was only wrong admit the citation and not the content of the comment and my heart. But thats a chore and I’m putting off spending time doing that.

And wait more you shall ;)

… Anyone on earth with two brain cells to their name says.

FTFY

You might need to learn how to read better…

https://www.theverge.com/news/642620/trump-tariffs-formula-ai-chatgpt-gemini-claude-grok

That was the goal.

In Rubio’s confirmation hearing, he literally said that the goal of the administration is to end global Post WWII stability.

There’s a pretty comprehensive article on The Verge outlining the likelihood of it bring probable.

Well, this is an openly jokey theocratical comment, so yeah.