Kitbag Conversations - Episode 21: China in Focus

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

This week I am joined by returning guest Lethal Minds Journal (@lethal.minds.journal), the Cognitive Marine (@thecognativemarine), S2 Forward (_s2_fwd_), Analyze Educate (@analyzeeducate), and Comms and Logistics (commsandlogistics). This week we walked about: -China's logistical problem  -China's military community  -The Chinese civilian perception on a war on Taiwan  -And Steven Seagal     

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Crow and Toon Report podcast. This week is going to be a delightful treat because we have the most guests we have had at this point. There's five of us today and before I go down the list of who they are, let's have them introduce themselves. All right, everyone. How we doing? Good.

Good. Pretty good. Yeah. Happy to be here. So if we could just take a second or two and just go like, I mean, Lethal Minds Journal, he's been on before. We have him. We have Analyze and Educate.

He has his own podcast. We have The Cognitive Marine. We have Comps and Logistics. We get a lot of people. So if you guys just want to take a second and introduce yourself or we could just jump right into China. Yeah, me too. So if you guys want to introduce yourselves, who wants to start Weefo Cognitive Analyze

Educate, Comps and Logistics and the S2, do it that way, that way it was shouting over each other. Of course for me. Sweet. Who's going first? Sounds like you are. All right. So I'm Comps and Logistics.

I am the maintainer and the guy that responds to all your DMs on Comps and Logistics and I mainly focus on communications for, off-grid communications for civilians and stuff like that. Cool. Awesome. Well, this is the Cognitive Marine. I just got done with Command as an O5 CO in the Marine Corps in a logistics unit. And my big thing in the kind of center focus of my account is logistics, contested logistics,

especially as we face China. And my account is slowly drifting over to kind of meeting that threat on a day-to-day basis. Okay. Hey, everyone. I'm Analyze and Educate. I'm on Instagram. I have my podcast really talk about conflicts, current events, all that kind of stuff. I don't have any formal Intel background, anything like that.

I'm an 0311, or I was a 0311 rifleman in the Marine Corps and now I'm a student. So just, it's interested in the conversation and glad to be here. I'm Liefel Meinz. I'm the guy behind the Liefel Meinz Journal, tribute-based publication available on Substack through our Instagram. And both of the borderlands where we partnered with Fort Tone and Port is having this one again, Analyze, Educate, S2 Forward. Liefel Meinz partnered with Cognitive Marine, founding member.

My background is I'm an 89th Army, EOD officer, and a Russian armed policy man. This is S2 Forward. I have an intelligence background in the military. I run an OSINT slash news aggregator account that really focuses on Europe, the Middle East, and the China-Taiwan situation. So what I'm really excited for today is it's really Marine Corps heavy. And so I don't know if anyone's been to Oki recently, but that's the Marine Corps' bread and butter of the PISC. Pivot to the Pacific, focusing on what China has going on.

And honestly, after seeing how they rattled their sword with Taiwan and buckled, every single assessment that I've seen when I was in and still today almost came true. So I think it would be really fun to talk about this for about 60 to 70 minutes. Yeah, I'll give a kind of an opening salvo on it and get you guys' thoughts and feedback on it. But what's interesting about the China military and I guess the China situation as it pertains to Taiwan, there's really two things going on, or actually three, there's really three things. There is what's going on with the South China Sea, that nine-dash line that we all kind of pretty familiar with. And if you're not, you should get up to speed whoever's listening to this thing.

The other piece is the Taiwan piece. They're interconnected, no doubt, and there's no clear demarcation between them both. But the final thing is the internal control that China has on its population. And I mean that kind of with air quotes there, because really China is like a conglomeration of four or five different cultural zones. And there's some areas that have like, they're independently governed, as China likes to call that. But they consider them part of China. But anyway, so my big angle on this is that eastern district of China, and that is the eastern command is the one that is squarely focused on Taiwan.

And that's where we saw all of that saber rattling that was done recently, was coming out of eastern district. And they kind of put a flavor on that, you know, for all the intel guys on this thing or anyone who's interested in the Chinese military, they really have this capability, they're trying to build this long-range missile capability, like the DF-21, DF-17, those hypersonic weapons, a bunch of other capabilities that the Chinese military is trying to stretch the battle space and have deep precision fires. Well, for me as a law guy, that's like squarely in our wheelhouse. And you brought up the Marines in the Pacific and what we're doing. I believe, in many cases, our, you know, our Marines who are in that weapons engagement zone, as the commandant likes to talk about, inside the Wes, once those Marines are going to be positioned there, whoever's there is going to be there, and resupply and getting logistics to them,

whether that be additional manpower or food, water, whatever it is, is going to be exceedingly tough because the Chinese are going to be able to strike our assets deep in the battle space, as in from Guam, the West Coast, the United States, Hawaii, so on and so forth. So, you know, like many of you, it was really interesting to see what was happening with the Pelosi visit and the Chinese response. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, so I guess I'm looking at the Sabre rattling, as you called it, and kind of wondering what was the point of it all. I mean, obviously they held military exercises, right, it's great to get out there and train, but I think they announced either today or yesterday that the exercises were over. So, I guess I'm wondering what was the point, where do we go from here? You know, the exercises were originally three days long, I think, and they announced a fourth day, but now what?

You know, I don't think they showcased any capabilities that we didn't already know they had, so it just seems like a lot of smoke to me. Maybe someone else sees that differently. Lethal here, I think actually, I've seen a couple of things on this, because I think that may have actually been a mistranslation. Because I read that from the South China Post, that the Eastern Command, the Fujian Army Command had announced, Fujian is the Eastern Helaid attack, they'd announced that all preparations were complete. And that may have been translated in Western media as the exercises were complete. So we could look at that as, and this is, you know, crotone, we could look at that as one of two things. Number one, they told their people that are completely isolated from the rest of the world that we will respond tactically to the US visit to Taiwan and that they want to legitimize Taiwan. And they did, you know, they shot missiles into the ocean and there was televised, everyone saw it, so they could report back to their people going, hey,

we said, we did what we said we were going to do. And so the Chinese people can go like, all right, yeah, I guess your government's like upholding their word. And on the other hand, the Chinese government can sit down and go, well, I mean, you just translated our words wrong. No, no, no, we didn't say we're going to invade Taiwan. We said we're going to have staunch tactical response. That's completely different. So, and all they have to do is pull that. And then the local people just go, yeah, I mean, it checks out for me.

So, I mean, I'm sure we'll get to it here soon, but the Chinese population has a lot going on right now. And I think the last thing the Chinese government needs is a. See the ground war with Taiwan. So. Yeah. One of the things I heard is that the entire saber rattling evolution. And I completely agree with you what we saw the Chinese respond tactically was kind of really nothing we've seen for worse. Before, and from what I'm hearing that that entire evolution the Pelosi visit was a full scale dress rehearsal of their command and control.

And what what the Eastern military district and that Eastern command basically did is only a portion of the ground forces showed up for the saber rattling event. But everybody showed up that was in part of the command and control aspect. And what we did see was a lot of fires like cyber fires, space actions. There was a lot of other things in this kind of information domain that didn't hit the media but some of it did that we saw the a lot of websites got defaced. And from what I from what I'm hearing from friends in the inside here is that everybody from the command and control showed up to their offices basically to write ready as a full dress rehearsal. So it's so the big picture Chinese government adopted their entire military strategy from the Soviets is what the Russians do today. They just took the Soviet method and went, you know, it's just applied to our same forces. It's down indoctrinated into our guys.

And so if we look at something like Georgia away is like a dress rehearsal and cyber attacks are a indication of something to come. That's one thing but that's land to land. It's really easy to roll a tank across the border into an unsuspecting country. It's another thing to take a landing craft load it with tanks and move it 100 miles east. And so it's like if Taiwan's entire military is designed to defend no offensive maneuvers. That's like, hey, I'm just saying like I was never in the military and I've never done intel or anything. But I think China knew that a snap reaction to their entire military doing they Taiwan was not going to be very fruitful. And so they just again went back to the people and reworded everything and say like, oh, no, no, no, no, you misidentified what we were saying.

What we said was and then I just go from there. I think, you know, I think there's actually to go back to, you know, Chinese people. The Chinese people were were and I think are expecting the invasion of Taiwan. Because there has been very nationalist criticism of the Chinese government's response. Now it's all been local, right? So it's criticism of local officials like army commanders not helping the troops do things to do stuff like that. But like, there have been calls for those planes to be shot down. You know, people asking on Weibo when the attacks start. And I think, yes, you know, in proton I touched on this in the last podcast I was on the Chinese military is based on the Soviet model.

But it lacks some of the flexibility the Russians, because of their experience, their military experience, we will work to previously. The flexibility they've learned. And again, they're not very flexible. He's entirely absent from China. Right. It's culturally not there. And it's also historically not there. Chinese have fought many wars, right? They don't have an experience base in Zyokor to lean on. Good. All right, guys, let's figure it out. Right. So I think they started this exercise and rapidly realized, wow, we can't actually solve a lot of things we need to solve to conduct. Make our first war in 50 years of massive water and sea to land invasion of a hard target.

I think they just rapidly discovered that wasn't possible. So real quick, when it comes to, say, the former Soviet doctrine where we saw before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russians were on VK explaining everything they were doing. And they invaded with open comms into Ukraine so the SBU could just intercept that really quick. And so this is for like comms and logistics. China is a real tough nut to crack when it comes to getting anything out of them. So if you looked into that at all and or if you have, how easy is it to pick up on what the Chinese are talking about? Yeah. So a lot of it can be broken down into several categories. You have their senior military communication structure, which is pretty heavily protected.

And if you break down, the further you go down the chain of command, the more exposure there is to the rest of the Chinese Internet. Like we talked about people asking, when are they attacking Weibo and stuff like that. It's not 100% clear how much of whatever they're talking about is going to end up in the Chinese populace. But it's generally speaking, it's very hard to secure that many people. It's very hard to secure the actions of your military when you have so much going on and so much potential for leaking and stuff like that, at least on the Chinese side. So, you know, it's just, there's a lot of uncertainty with their communication structure. We really haven't seen it work at its fullest potential, like the Russians, like how we have seen the Russians. So I hope that maybe gave you some insight. I could probably break it down a little further.

If I could jump in here just real quick on a point this is analyzed one thing I'm concerned with is, I think just how little we know about their military and how it functions at the highest levels you guys can correct me if I'm wrong but It just seems like we don't have a lot compared to our other adversaries say Russia or Iran or somebody else. I know the CIA had a network of informants in China that were basically on prisoner killed off years ago and now our intelligence agencies really have nothing inside the country and that's something that's really concerning to me. Yeah, I definitely agree. It's very difficult to know the enemy or it's very difficult to combat the enemy when you don't know a whole lot about them. And I feel like that's that might be by design. I feel like that is the uncertainty of their capabilities the uncertainty of how they'll play out is part of their tactic. So I think something that's really funny is, and this might be just, you know, a little narrow focus or something, but I live in the DC area, and the Pentagon is just down the road. And every single time a quote unquote Chinese tourist shows up and takes pictures of the Pentagon, they're immediately just on a watch list. So if you see a Caucasian or an African showing up in China going like, oh, I'm just going to hang out outside of the military base.

They're like, yeah, watch him. He's, they're already on restricted comms. Number one, they can't touch the outside world from the internet. Number two, they don't look like they know what's going on. So we just got to watch them. So it's, it's completely different when it comes to it's different, but it's the same where it's like, hey, we can just isolate people really quickly and go, yeah, they don't look like they belong here. Yeah, let's go ahead. Oh, thanks. Just to put it out there with this Pelosi visit to Taiwan, I think what we're going to might be might be seeing the future like obviously increased rhetoric from more senior diplomats from China, saying that, you know, this is inappropriate and like going back on the road, there's only one China, there's no Taiwan, there's the province of Taiwan. But when I'm more concerned about an actual kinetic military action is coming from in the form of the hybrid warfare aspect for plausible deniability, specifically in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, going over those disputed islands through the Chinese maritime militia, or other actors that they have that might be able they might be able to leverage to squeeze their political opponents or to essentially say a message like, hey, we can reach out and touch you. Just, you know, are you going to prove that we can essentially, those are just my thoughts in the whole situation. Yeah, you're definitely onto something. This is the Kaigen Marine here that so there's two points I really wanted to respond with here. So the reason why we don't have good insight is because we just don't.

And we don't have from what from what I've heard and have seen the truth of the matter is is probably a lot, a lot worse and maybe a lot more benign. And the reality is is we just don't got really good sources and the sources we do have got to stay low, you know, and we they're the Chinese have purposely have kept much of that close hold for for good reason. You know, there's a tactical advantage, obviously, in that. But your second point about the about what's going on in the South China Sea, there's one more thing I want to throw in there, and that is the Chinese are almost looking for a reason to respond. And right now, everything is kind of, you know, there's a credible photos of near collisions occurring a US aircraft being brushed away by a Chinese J 20 or whatever it is. And the reality is that one day that's not going to happen. One day there's going to be a collision or surface to air missiles can be fired. We've seen far less benign areas, or, you know, far far more benign areas accidentally strike a civilian airliner, or, you know, accidentally shoot down a military aircraft. And that is the situation I, I'm not going to say I fear, but that's the situation that I'm certainly waiting to pop up in the news one day early in the morning or late at night. So when it comes to something like that, I like to look at the fact that China claims that they have the second largest GDP in the world for funding in the military, where it's like US number one, you know, China number two, Russian number three.

And so you can look at that go. All right, so we already know China is hyperinflated when it comes to their accusations of their own military. And so their inability, quote unquote, to rapidly respond to a invasion in Taiwan within 72 hours where, hey, here in America, we know that we could pick up an entire airborne division from Fort Bragg and drop it in Lithuania in 72 hours and it will happen. China could not muster all of their logistical support to invade Taiwan 100 miles away, which makes me go like, they're going to take a backseat for a little bit and readjust some things because number one, they're based on the Soviet doctrine. The Russians are, they're taking ground in Ukraine, but they're taking significant tactical losses. And it's because they're based on that. It's not a strategic corporal and, you know, in Marine Corps terms, calling a strike on a building. It's the general of the local division going, yeah, you can do that. So I think China is going to take a backseat after this going, yeah, we rabble, we rattled our saber. We got our message across to our people, the whole world kind of called us out and we need Taiwan by 2049 and that's not invasion by 2049. That is in corporation by 2049 and it takes one generation at least to do that. So I think they're going to have a lot to think about in these next few years. This is exactly right.

They go here. I think, I mean, yes, China, the intelligence problem with China is that we don't have a lot of Chinese people looking to get into China and operate back. We know, but we can always sort of look back at Chinese performance over the past 4050 years. And we do know for a fact that one Chinese army has not fought a war successfully in 400 years and hasn't fought a war since 1975. Not a single member of its general staff or any of its field great officers or any of its company great officers or any of their commissars, which they still have have seen action or engaged in military activity. I think the only combat they've actually seen has been at Tiananmen Square where they killed a bunch of protesters. Second, you also know like Proton was saying, most Chinese economic numbers are falsified, if not all of them. So all Chinese economic activity in general terms, this is why we're seeing them having major problems internally with runs on banks, mass defaults. Businesses suddenly turning out to be bankrupt because they've been lying.

They've been reporting great numbers to the Central Committee because no one wants to be the guy reporting bad numbers. They're making all the green check marks green and they're sweeping problems under the rug. That's also probably true in the Chinese army. There was a recently purged Chinese army official who informed the Central Committee that there wasn't a single general in the Chinese army who hadn't paid him personally for his stars. That suggests to me that there is anemic corruption inside the Chinese PLA. If it's in the PLA, it's in PLM and it's in the PLAAF, the Air Force and Navy, respectively. So that brings me to another point where I was talking about this with Al-Khanna as to, you know, he's a Kiwi, but he was in the Australian or New Zealand army for like 15 years. I went, hey man, was New Zealand in Afghanistan? He went, yeah, of course.

And I went, great, brings me to question number two. When was the last time China fought a war? And he was like, I don't know, Korea. I was like, yeah, successfully. So it's any American or Western military officer does not work their way up unless they've A, been a part of global war on terror. And so that's very, you know, very culturally identity to how the military works over here. And then in China, it's Russia too. It's, who has the most money? Oh yeah, you could be a division commander. No, I know you've never been in the military, but it's really cool that you have $10,000.

So, and that just goes down to the idea that China is very top heavy in the space in that Soviet doctrine where if they, you have a say general and or lieutenant all the way up or any period who's never been into the military, they're not going to perform properly. So moving at 100 miles east in an LAV is just not, you know, like logistically possible. I mean, I think it's, I don't even, I don't necessarily like the term Soviet because they don't have that necessarily have that sense to sacrifice the Soviets. When one of the great successes in Soviet military is the Chernobyl disaster, right? Where the Soviets at their lowest point say, we are putting 100,000 troops into Chernobyl to clean up this nuclear disaster zone by frigging hand, right? And they did it. And those troops went in, you know, either because they were made to or because they just thought like, okay, got it. This needs to happen.

Right. I served the Soviet Union, right? There's a Russian expression. I'm forgetting how to say it in Russian, but it's, if not me, then who? Right? It's a World War II expression. Like, I'm here. Someone's got to take that machine gun out. The person who does it's going to die. But I'm the guy here.

So I'll do it. China's culture doesn't do that, right? The one child system means that in a culture where the elders are cared for by the young, there is one guy that has to carry on the family name and take care of the family when they're old. That dude's not running a machine gun. Culturally, it's not. And also there's that bureaucracy that's been with China since Confucius, where they have this very like Sun Tzu style of military thinking. And being like, oh, if the general, like, you know, perceives the way, you know, he does what he needs to do and the commanders on the ground are obedient enough. It'll all work because the general in charge saw the way and so wise, you know, I think that comes to them just not having fought a war since Vietnam and not being very good at it when they did.

You know, I don't think they have a realistic understanding what actual war planning is. Anywhere in their notes are lethal. If I can make a point real quick, I like that you brought up the one child policy and cognitive. I know you made a post about this later or earlier today. I think it was China's population is aging rapidly because of the one China policy. So it makes me wonder the more and more years that go by how capable are they going to be able to keep up a war with the West when they're going to take high casualties, they're going to have to replace those numbers in the units. If they have an aging populace, then that's going to be a lot more difficult for them and it's also going to be difficult for them to keep up their industrial base if they have an aging workforce. That's exactly right. I mean, you're hitting the nail right on the head here.

All that is absolutely true. And I think the so what and all that is the timeline for seizing, seizing Taiwan moves up and moves to the left. Basically, it's going to happen much sooner than I think any of us are predicting a good assessments out there. And you're right, that 2049 date is to have like full control. So, you know, that's like the latest possible date of when the entire island of Taiwan is totally incorporated into China. But so yes, I think all of that is a long way of saying that the date for when the seizure of Taiwan will occur moves to the left and it'll happen sooner. I'm hearing less than four years. So, this is Consul logistics, I sort of have a point to make maybe a counterpoint or maybe a counter argument.

The thing is, is that we really have to ask the question is, is China in any condition to fight a war against against an island that they are so logistically dependent on. And what I mean by logistically dependent is that I feel like this is sort of a topic that that not a whole lot of people cover on, but it's about the chip, the microchip foundries and assembly in Taiwan. And the thing is that the whole world really relies on Taiwan for microprocessors and electronic assembly and stuff like that. When and if the Chinese attack Taiwan, what will happen to those foundries will they get destroyed, what will happen, right? So, and we know that China heavily relies on Taiwan for those chips that is something that the Taiwanese have leveraged quite successfully is to kind of keep that on their island. And I feel like if they do attack when they run the risk of destroying those foundries to they definitely might have logistical issues in terms of supplying their military with electronics. You know, night vision, if they have any, I'm sure that there's some dependencies on Taiwan and, and especially manufacturing missiles or any weapons systems of any kind, I guarantee you that there is some logistical dependence on the Taiwan for that. So I feel like Taiwan is a very, very critical control point.

And if you rock the boat a little too hard with kinetic war, then it could ruin it for everybody. That's just my point. Yeah, so I have something on this growth zone, I have something on that. So China understands that Taiwan is the world's leading producer of chips, you know, the chip manufacturing from your iPhone to your car are so dependent on Taiwan, which is why a the United States went, yeah, we're going to open our own factory in Arizona, which is very far away from Taiwan. Number two, China went, where do you get these minerals? The Horn of Africa. All right, so I'm just going to buy the land on the Horn of Africa Donald Trump method.

I don't need to own the house and need to own the doorway. So it's, so they're trying to get one step ahead to within not this generation, but the next before 2049 to economically strangle the Taiwanese government to win this generation's voters, or in politics in 20 years going, let's just give it up. It's, it just makes more sense. We're getting crushed here. So, and then on that one child policy, you have two generations of only men running around. It's a lot of horned up guys, you know, who they fight a lot, the Indians, because there's no water coming into their agricultural areas where they import food or produce food. So they're trying to redirect the water from the Himalayas into the Chinese kind of like agricultural centers, but the Indians are going, no, we're building dams. So it's, it's strange to say China's fighting like a two front war, Cold War kind of thing where they're going, we got to stop the Taiwanese from making money, but we got to stop the Indians from taking our water.

So they're kind of like moving their forces all around. And just by watching how they interact with the Indians, it's, they can't have guns, but they have fists and the Indians beat the hell out of them. So it's, there's a lot going on. And a point, actually, question for a tone. First, anecdotally, there is a video of a secret regiment of the Indian army that is issued sabers as part of real sabers as part of ceremony dress uniform, hacking a Chinese company off a pole top in the fall with their sabers. The sabers aren't guns and therefore not ban. So the Chinese guys showed up with sticks and the Indian soldiers showed up, Sikh soldiers showed up with swords.

It's very reminiscent to the Soviet sign award from like the 70s and the 80s, where the Chinese out of nowhere went, hey, Soviet Union, this is my island along the borders of Manchuria. And Soviets went, no, it's not. It's always been ours. So the Chinese sent guys and the Russians sent tanks and ran over and they said, you want to try me? So it's the Chinese trying to play like that diplomatic angle going. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is ours. You can't take our water and the Indians went, what if I bought a gun? Yeah.

All right. That changes everything. So my question, I guess, is like the proof is given that China pursues policy for a long period of time of buying up, you know, land in a mineral rich land in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, partially to starve Taiwan, but also to ensure that it has resource control abroad to defeat its own industries. And colonization efforts in Africa to build a controlled foreign production base for its own internal needs. Given that, why have they suddenly switched to this four year timeline? Right. So they're all the estimates basically say that China is going to go into Taiwan in the near future.

Why do they want to wait? So let it just, Taiwan got the way of the Dutterbird. Very nice. In this fight, just be my own personal experience talking, but nothing happened from 2016 to 2020. And then as soon as the American president trips up a flight of stairs, Taiwan has 35 flyovers and the Ukrainian build up starts. So, and then the Americans botched the exodus of Afghanistan, the Americans, the Brits, all of NATO, they start fighting amongst each other as widely televised. They left makes the Chinese and the Russians go, Oh, they don't like each other and they don't like to talk in the same terms. So if the United States comes out of nowhere and goes, Yeah, we're going to build our own chip manufacturing plant in Arizona.

The Chinese go, they don't want to fight. They're gassed after 20 years of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they're still in Iraq. And that's still not going anywhere. So I think the Chinese are a pressed economically because we can get there here soon. Their housing markets going to crash. They have had COVID restrictions for two plus years where they have people just stored in skyscrapers and they're just like, you can't leave and they're taking their animals and they're taking their cats and they're dehumanizing their own population. And three, they're just going like, Hey, we just had this snap reaction. We cannot invade Taiwan right now.

We have to start right now to invade next year. So it's, it took the Russians a year to build up on their border of Ukraine, and they still botched it going in. So the Chinese might go, Hmm, we need to take some time to do this one. So, I mean, I don't know what everyone else is thinking, but that's just, you know, off the cuff, firing from the hip here. Strategically, like as a whole country of China, they're regarding India. They're playing a really tight, in my opinion, balancing act because with India, they are competitors. As you said, Croton, the, but they're also part of bricks, the economic alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. And at the same time, the biggest customer, if you want to call that for the built in road initiative is Pakistan.

So although they are economic allies, but they are competing in the Himalayas over access to resources. At the same time, they have this huge leverage over Pakistan, where although they don't necessarily directly need to say, hey, we're going to beat you with sticks and stones on the mountain somewhere in a far away land. But at the same time, I don't know if this is like an open end question. I wonder what the appetite is for the Chinese military or government to leverage that heavy economic pressure on Pakistan to do something for them. You know, it's like, hey, the Hindu Kush, that's an issue, right? Do that because they're picking it up, pissing us off. So I think the big thing and, you know, cognitive marine, you could probably elaborate on this, but the US left Afghanistan, the Taliban got pretty strong, pretty fast. And they border the Chinese Uyghur population who are widely known to be in prison and thrown in cages and just going, hey, renounce Islam, you're Chinese. What's the stop a couple of Taliban fighters to walk across the border going, we beat the Soviets, we beat the Americans, we can beat the Chinese.

So the last thing the Chinese population and the government needs is an Islamic insurrection out east after a undefeated champion from the last 35 years. Yeah, no doubt. I think those are all kind of valid points and to kind of respond to your Muslim issue. What we're seeing there is a probably a social re-engineering, a religious re-engineering and a cultural re-engineering, unlike, you know, that would have made what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany. I wouldn't say pale in comparison, but certainly at least match or exceed what happened then. And for the large part, I'm not going to say that what they've done in Northwestern China has been successful, but I will say that it's generated results that the leadership of China, basically, or leadership of the CCP is basically saying, yeah, this is going as about as good as we had hoped.

There's some kind of side effects here, but no one is holding us to account at the end of the day, right? Tesla is still building the largest factor in the world in China. So, you know, all the Hollywood is still there, all of American industry is still there, so they're not losing anything. And kind of just to throw it out there, one of the reasons why I think the timeline is moved up from, especially in my own kind of circle of people I talk to, is there's a couple of things. One is that President Xi is not getting any younger. And the guy is 69 years old, he turns 70 soon. And the reality is, is that there is pro and he's going to this this year alone, he's going to cross a threshold of which no leader in China has ever crossed in the last 50 years since Mao Mao Zedong,

Mao Zedong, which is he's going to be the he's going to break the term limits that was constantly mandated, and he's going to be the longest serving leader of all time. But he's got his liver on a whole host of things that he has promised, or, or the CCP starts changing over another thing that's also happening in the next over the next year. And has been happening 85% of all the party leadership in the CCP is changing over. So they serve on these five year terms, and a whole new set is all rolling in over the next couple of months, actually time now. So he's got a new party leadership that is there. This party leadership is going to elect new senior military leaders, it's going to elect new party leadership, it's going to elect new representatives in the party. So that's all happening now. And he's still kind of the lone guy hanging on.

Now, there's good assessments from people out there that are that believe there's a window of time, he's got to make his move. He gets older, you know, four years now five years now he's 75 year old man. The party maybe that this new group that's rolling in may say, hey, this dude is kind of getting old here. How do we force this guy out? How do we send this guy packing, you know, stage left here without a overthrow or anything to that effect. And all these new military leaders are basically itching to use what what has been a multi trillion dollar investment by the Chinese. I mean, you got a hammer, you're going to want to use it. And then now what you're seeing is greater and greater political recognition of Taiwan.

You got more countries today recognize Taiwan than ever has been. And China, the CCP understands this. They also understand that the window under which 304060 countries starts recognizing Taiwan, the game has changed. And so given all of those factors, the economic issue someone brought up, I mean, that's exactly right. The gig is going to be up here soon. Well, one of the interesting things and not to belabor the point I'll show up here in a second is the one Belt One Road Initiative, which is really unbelievable. If you really dive in is they used all Chinese labor, all the material materials came from China. So and, you know, I think some people who look at the one Belt One Road Initiative kind of laugh because all that was is as domestic demand in China died.

They needed to send this capability to capacity somewhere and they basically said, let's pour a trillion dollars out of thin air and create this one Belt One Road Initiative. The Belt One Road Initiative is not only curry favor and buy people by countries and ports and airports and trail lines. But we got this industrial capacity has got to be at work on Monday, and we need to send this for somewhere. So that's a long way of saying, given all those factors, you're going to see, you know, America is a much more diminished country politically overseas than has ever been before. And, you know, do do the Chinese gamble that in five years this thing changes. And it's also based off of administration. I think the Chinese are recognizing that most Americans could not find Taiwan on a map, and the day they get smart or new president gets elected. Maybe this thing changes thoughts. So I think we've all heard the term ghost cities.

Yeah, yeah. That's basically the same thing, right? The Chinese economy. And again, we talk about, you know, we're going to go back to the Soviets for a second. The Great Leap Forward, the five to 10 year plans. These are all sort of communist ideas about how to get to a place of high economic productivity, right? But just because the Chinese are getting into capitalism over the last 30 years doesn't mean they have abandoned that sort of structured thinking. And, you know, Plan 2049 is just another Great Leap Forward, right? The fully reintegrate Taiwan will have rebuilt the Belt and Road. We will be the preeminent power in the Pacific.

That's a Great Leap Forward type of plan. And to get there, they're artificially creating economic activity to sort of bring their economy along so that by the time they're done, that natural economic growth will have caught up to their artificial rate of growth. The problem is we started to see in 2015 that that wasn't going to be true, right? We saw Chinese people weren't moving to these cities. They were staying at home. Crotones talked about the issues of apartments where Chinese people are allowed to own one apartment. So instead of getting married, they just live, partners would live together and keep both apartments and they'll rent one, right? On that real quick, it's so it's pretty easy.

It's when it comes to the apartment situation, it's insane because almost capitalism has destroyed this communist utopia because, number one, China didn't make any money until Macau, my mistake, and Hong Kong were incorporated in 1997. After that, they were like, yeah, we have money now, we can do shit, which is, you know, Hong Kong was called the New York of the Pacific. What is the New York of the Pacific? It's a highlighted city, but then the Chinese were going like, hey, two parties, one system, hey, we're on the same page, you make money, I get the paycheck, you kick it up, very mafia style. Then 2019, they went, yeah, you can't do that. No, you have to stop waving pictures of the queen and say you want to go back there. And then when it comes to apartments, it's so the average Chinese individual can own one apartment. And if you get married and say, say your man and your wife has an apartment, if you get married, you have to move into his place and your next or her apartment goes to the state. So they were going, oh, what if for a few extra dollars, I never get married, I'm a life partner, I know him with this guy forever.

I give my apartment to somebody rented out, make some extra cash, I hang out with this guy, and we live our life forever. So that whole platform of capitalism was destroying the entire Chinese economy, where it's not based on personal equity. It was based on the government saying, no, you have a house. Why do you need to? So that was almost the start of the entire economic situation we're in today, where Evergreen, the Chinese, excuse me, the Chinese real estate agency was going like, yeah, we have more houses than we have people. And so the other thing is very, very 2008 United States situation going like, you know, there, there are make believe monies being thrown around. And the other issue is that Evergreen was the primary one and it's considered for the primary real estate owned apartments. It's one of the ways they generated capital. So yes, the Chinese people aren't buying homes.

China was just building lots of homes to create artificial incentive. They were subsidizing that with rent money. Well, and here's something else that's crazy. They were building those ghost towns out East, where those weird populations are in cages. They're like, Oh, no, they live in houses. You see, they have apartments or a hundred stories tall. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, they're not living in cages.

And this was 10 years ago. And so today, all this footage is coming out of the CCP putting people in cages and just blasting the little red book, you know, in their face every single day. And the local Chinese are going, yeah, checks out. Yeah, makes sense. But anyone who's in the West is going, that sounds very Holocaust to me. That does not seem like a anyone's living in that city and be these people are being treated appropriately. So there's a lot, like I said at the beginning of this, there's a lot going on in China right now that no one really wants to address from Hollywood going. Let's make the set of Mulan on a Uyghur camp to if you don't release your movie, Top Gun in the China, you're not going to break a billion dollars.

And it's broken like 1.5. So it's there's a lot going on here right now. Yeah, I think we're actually, and I'm going to put my tinfoil hat on for a minute. I personally believe that the incentive behind the invasion of Taiwan is Chinese need a functional economy. Basically a functional market that would allow them to get on the world stage that is completely organic. They need to control something that would generate real money consistently and naturally. Right. Whatever like that.

It's we need Taiwan because otherwise they're economy. So with that S2, were you ever in Okie? Did you spend time in Japan? No, not yet. Soon though, and like, eventually. Hell yeah. So when it comes to Japan, there's two things when it comes to Okie or not Okie, but like China, it's China's economy is based around like toothpaste lid production. Like, who wants to make a toothpaste lid in the US?

If you're from Pennsylvania, is your dream to make toothpaste lids? No, like, yeah, I make some Chinese guy do it. It's crazy, it's whatever. But when it comes down to it, like, if the entire world just goes, hey, let's move all the production of clothes and toothpaste lids back to Italy like it was in the 80s, China is destroyed. Their entire market is ruined. And I think that the CCP these days are going, yeah, I think that the world's waking up to our quote unquote bullshit. So they need to, A, make the promise to the people to go right back into Taiwan, because Taiwan's military policy is retake the mainland. It's been like that since 1949.

But the CCP is take Taiwan, not because, you know, they're a rogue state, but because they're ours and they're being a problem child. So it's nothing different, big picture than Russia looking at Crimea going, no, that's ours. Like, you can't take that from us. And so, you know, we're 53 minutes into this. And just looking at the China situation, there's so many ways to look at this. It's, you can look at economic where they're struggling population, they're top heavy. It's no different than the Russians or the Japanese. And then the B or C, they are like, we need to step out and A, keep those Muslims in line because we don't need the Taliban.

Looking over and instigating a revolution in the East, because do you think China can sustain the uncertainty? I don't think so. That's just me. But then they also had their Belt and Road Initiative in the Horn of Africa, where I've talked to like Nigerians and Central Africans. They've hit me up saying the Chinese have showed up and they're just racist and they're bullies and they don't play nice with anybody. And the local government is going, no, we need to stop talking to China. So that's why China is migrating to Central and South America, which is on their part, very smart. But on our part, like in the West, it's just we're fighting like on one leg back diplomatically.

And we have been for like, since she became the president of China. Any thoughts? I agreed on all parts, especially about South America in regards to like actually like doing kinetic actions in Taiwan. I think I spoke about this lightly the last time we all talked. But the a lot of people in, I mean, I know my audience for sure. I don't know about y'alls, but Taiwan completely isn't like far away from China to conduct like military operations. Kinmen County and a couple other like sparse islands across within the Taiwan Strait or Kinmen County specifically, who's just about 10 clicks off mainland China. They can easily just use the rocket forces to attack or aerial insert or conduct those amphibious hulls.

They've been practicing over the past five to 10 years and just do it there. And honestly, there really wouldn't be anything that Taiwan would be able to do about it because it's just so close to China. They could easily protect forces. And the, I think one of the biggest indicators of a full scale invasion of Taiwan would be an attack against Kinmen County or any other smaller uninhabited, hardly inhabited islands. As more of a, we did the thing that we're going to say we are going to attack Taiwan to quell any sort of insurrectionist like we've been talking about this whole entire time. And the, as a political move to show their willingness to like back to their people say, hey, we are willing to thump down any sort of insurrections. We are willing to use military force to show not only the Chinese people, but the international stage, which they'll probably have backlash, which I think is tinfoil hot theories why they're investing and cooperating so hard in bricks. So they can bypass any sort of international sanctions that we saw imposed on Russia, so they can use the brick system to keep their economy somewhat stable.

And as to just to go off of one of the points you made, we've seen recently that the PLA rocket forces are building around 100 new missile silos in eastern China, which are, you know, well within range of hitting Taiwan. So I think Taiwan is very vulnerable from those sort of precision fires from China. They have some air defense right they have like lab batteries I think and those kind of things but I just don't think they have enough to defend from the plethora of precision fires that China can levy against them. So I think that they really rely on the US's ability to double down on their statement that they will defend Taiwan, where last year, the Chinese sent their Leo Liang aircraft carrier through the streets of Taiwan, and we sent one destroyer which say, nothing like aircraft carrier would destroy that thing, but it's, they're really leaning on the fact that the US will help them. And this Nancy Pelosi visit is really reinforcing the idea that Taiwan will survive and let's look back six months. There was the Olympics. Lithuania of all people said Taiwan's real. And it was insane like this little Baltic nation, start up against China. And it was a domino effect of African and South American and Middle Eastern all these countries going, Yeah, I think Taiwan is real.

So I think that's also accelerating the CCP's agenda of we need to take Taiwan of, like, you know, it's like David and Glythe is like this tiny little rock is thrown and you're like, Oh, hold on this guy can do that. All right, yeah, I believe in that. Yeah, not even when you look at the sort of recognition of Taiwan that we're seeing across, you know, the international stage, particularly in Europe, like with little Lithuania, excuse me that you're saying, we're even seeing rhetoric like that at the local level, like in Prague, for example, obviously, it's a pretty big city, right, but it's one thing to have a central government speak for its citizens on issues of Taiwan and China, it's something else to have a government at the city level. Use that same rhetoric, right. Yeah, it also, I mean, the foreign minister from Lithuania also called the Chinese ambassador, who, by the way, was trying to get money out of Lithuania, which is also part of how why the foreign minister called the ambassador a fat loser during the speech, which is just true, delightfully casually disrespectful. I throw this out there the best delightfully hilarious.

Yeah, I mean, I think people are starting to catch on, like everyone's been saying, to the fact that China is a bad actor. And I think it was S2 posted that they're like, they've been no money down 27% APR loan for our company of countries. Right, where they're the guy that's going to loan you money, and they're going to take your whole house by the time you're done paying back. And I think people are starting to see that. So gentlemen, I have a question for you. And this one's literally the most difficult to address. But China has historically been a warlord kingdom, like a coalition of the willing of independent states. What happens if China goes full Soviet Union, they break up.

We got the Xinjiang province, you know, we have all these guys. What's going on? Temple had three legs straight up. I think the, oh, man, the Manchuria population would attempt to, I don't know, make their own more North Korea. That makes any sense. I don't know what they call it. Maybe actually Manchuria. But maybe Manchuria is what's strange is Puyi was the last imperial leader of China before the Japanese emancipated,

and or a quote unquote taken over Manchuria, where he was like, Oh, no, I'm the last imperial Japanese leader. And so Manchuria historically has an imperialistic ideology. And that's why the Russians, the North Koreans and the Chinese watch them. They're like, these guys are very deep state, like almost like deep state, like tea party Republicans, like they're going to do something before anyone else. So I'll have another tinfoil hat there that the, with the Uighur population out West. It's a whole overlap of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, like who owned what, when, simply because they're just in. But I think those countries would fight over that part of Western, not fight, maybe like diplomatically, but you know what I mean, which, which area would be seated to them. If something were to break up if they don't become their own independent nation or satellite state of whoever.

Yeah, it's a kind of, it's a kind of answer your question. I think it's possible that we could see something reminiscent of Balkanization, I guess for lack of a better term in China, right? You have the Uighurs, who at least a certain portion of them want to, they want self determination, I guess, is one way I could put it. You also have the Tibetans in the South and which pulling India into the mix. There's a lot of Tibetans in India that want to go back to their ancestral homeland, right? And they'll take it by force if they have to. So I think there's going to be, well, there could be widespread fighting and pretty much all the ethnic regions of China at the very least. I feel like it'll be a return to the warlord phase of China.

I feel like it'll just, excluding external influence, I feel like it'll sort of go back to how it was for the whole communist uprising and stuff like that. But I feel like there's going to be a lot of external influence if that does happen. I feel like there's probably going to be some imperialism for sure, maybe even outsourcing a slave labor if it comes down to that. So for me right now, I'm thinking like it's 1936. There's warlord China, there's civil war in Spain, there's multiple powers fighting for dominance. It's literally 1936 and 2022 where there's all of these countries sitting down going, oh, we're trying to get in charge. And there's, which is A, you could look at it as a prelude to a world war, go without a civil. And then number B, you go, yeah, China is always just going to be that pain in the ass, like in the corner of the world going, yeah, they supply good labor, but we can't trust them.

I think we're more likely to be in a warring states period for China should China collapse. Certainly China spends most of its time in pieces, right? That's why we have the dentists, right? So there's a government that works for like a couple hundred years, China falls apart, about 500 years. And China fixes itself, falls apart, fixes itself, falls apart, fixes itself, falls apart. Every time it falls apart, it tends to fall into like four to seven pieces. And that's like leader China in the east or the west, Canton China in the south, the fall, central China usually breaks up in one or two pieces. And then Mongolia, Nigeria in the north, right?

That's sort of how China breaks up. And I think we'd end up with something like that. I think any international interference in China would be a lot more 55 days in decay, right? An international coalition of willing partners moving into China to seize nuclear weapons to prevent genocide, et cetera, et cetera. I can't see us returning to the battle days of colonials. I just can't. With the international power stepping in. I wonder, and this is just me thinking out loud, if China were to break up, if there'd be like a Hong Kong version two or three with Shanghai or Beijing or other major cities that are important to global economy.

And Hong Kong being back to prior to the incorporation of Hong Kong into China. I wonder if we'd see like any of that. Yeah, to that point, actually, Hong Kong and I think Shanghai's a little bit outside if it's close enough. Hong Kong and Shanghai are Hong Kong is definitely within Shanghai is close to the Cantonese region of China. There's a different dialect. Second largest Chinese I figure. Excuse me. We could see Taiwan reunite with West Taiwan, which is just hands on China.

So the islands of Taiwan, southernmost China, right? Where Hong Kong is that's tripping. And then Shanghai and you have the wealthiest station in Asia, which is just the most important cities in China plus Taiwan. I'm glad you brought up the scenario of Taiwan reunifies with China. It's I don't know, maybe it's like a crazy scenario probably would never happen. But let's say Taiwan and China did reunite under a democracy similar to what Taiwan currently has or maybe even the same exact government. I think a lot of people don't realize that Taiwan claims the same exact borders that China does. I'm talking nine dashed line, the territories in India, Jinjiang, Tibet, like all of it the same exact borders.

And I think, again, if that situation did happen, probably won't. But if it did by some off chance, I don't think our country in specific is ready to deal with that reality diplomatically. Do we not think that a country like let's say if we're talking about, you know, a reunification of China and in Taiwan's favor, right? I think was analyzed the scenario there. Do we not think that Taiwan to get to that place might say, All right, look, we're going to recognize a bunch of international borders and territory we don't really care about. And in return, we're going to get X, Y, and Z treaty guarantees X, Y, and Z international support X, Y, and Z ensure that we never have to run the risk of Mandarin and Chinese aggression. Isn't that possible? Yeah, I know now that you say that I think it is possible.

I guess I personally don't know enough about the dynamics of Taiwanese politics or or their society to really make a judgment on that. But I mean, I guess it would be in their best interest, at least from what I see. All right, everyone, I think we're going to close out here. I think it's been about an hour plus. So, you know, analyze, educate comms, leaf of minds, everyone just sit down and plug our pages because this Instagram community that is growing is legitimate. So, you know, it's a podcast right now, but you know, here next month, it could be something bigger. So everyone go right ahead. Okay, well, you guys could find me at analyze educate on Instagram, Twitter, you could look up analyze and educate wherever you find podcasts on there.

Very happy to be working with the lethal minds journal and working with all these guys. Yeah, super, super excited to be writing for the bulletin and. Yeah, just very thankful for the opportunity and all the support everyone's given. Let the minds are next issue of the bulletin borderlands page description intelligence summary that goes out every two weeks goes out on 15 to five days. You want to catch that that's going to be through the work as to forward analyze educated just joined our team pro tone report, good political just joined our team, all kinds to northern provisions. And ready a news, you know, we think it's a fantastic product. We think if you're interested in the world around you, you should be reading it. Our main publication the lethal minds journal is free on our sub stack. We've a lot of stuff in the works. A lot of stuff involving gentlemen on this podcast right now.

Lots to be excited about. And we look forward to being your inbox on 15. This is as to forward. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter and my backup account tactical site exploitation. I post news regarding Europe, Middle East and the Pacific, primarily focusing on the Taiwan situation. I'm a contributor to the bulletins with borderland and working with the minds. I spoke, I'm a news aggregator OSAN analyst. I'm the only admin run a discord open on either end. Yeah, and I'm comms logistics. You can find me on Instagram at comms and logistics. I'm basically just working on some products here and for communications and key loading and and secure communications in general.

And that's basically I'm making some new videos coming up here soon about programming and and stuff like that. And I know I couldn't add a whole lot to the conversation today, but I'm I'd be extremely thankful to be on this podcast here today. All right, everyone, real quick before we dip. How do we feel about Steven Seagal hanging out in Mary Oval? I think it's hilarious. Honestly, his crack pipe must be hot. I mean, that guy, that guy is the biggest fucking goober, excuse my language, goober ridiculous, man. He's a straight up goober. I remember like my, you know, my mom would like show me his movies and I was a kid. And I didn't think anything of it, right? He's just like another 80s actor. But like now seeing him, it's like, what, what the hell happened to this guy? He's he's ridiculous, man.

My favorite thing about Steven Seagal is he was seen training Belarusian soldiers and martial arts. Who knows before the Russians invaded. I was like, is this game literally going to be in the trenches here in Chernobyl? That's I was like, why is he there? And then you think, oh, yeah, he's a Serbian national and Russian self-proclaimed best friend. So it's like what's it's when, you know, I'm going to plug him. It's the filthy American post of that. I went, there's no way. There's no way Steven Seagal is there. It's, it's amazing, dude. If anyone knows who Andy Stumpf is, he's like a Navy Seal who has his own podcast. He was like this tactical advisor for Steven Seagal for a bit and he talks about his experience on one of his podcasts. You could probably look it up on YouTube and it is amazing. Like it is a straight up horror story.

Man, it's hilarious if anyone wants to look it up. Steven Seagal is one of those very, very strange guys. And like I put him in the same basket as like Sylvester Stallone, right? These action stars that think they can do the thing that they actually can't do. I'm going to put him in the same category as like Peter Cullen. Like, yeah, you're voicing the wrong character there, pal. Yeah. The only difference between Steven Seagal and like Chris Pratt and Sylvester Stallone is that Steven Seagal didn't have the charisma and to carry that through to a successful career, which is why he's in Russia now. Yeah, he's something else, man. He's kind of like the Dennis Rodman of these action stars.

No, it's insane. If you ever watched the the videos of him going to the Kremlin and he's like Putin's my best friend. And then Kremlin puts out an official press conference that are like Putin has seen his videos and he thinks he's OK. And then Steven Seagal is like, yeah, I'm training his boys in CQB. They're like, are you really? But the fact that he pulled up to a widely known execution chamber and was like, yeah, man, just give Crimea to Ukraine. You're like, what? That's a 180. What are you talking about? He also claimed that the Ukrainians attacked the site and it wasn't accurate. I'm pretty sure he said that the Ukrainians firebond their own school with wounded Ukrainians. I'm like, dude, it's.

I get it. You lived in Japan for 25 minutes back in the 80s, but it's cool. But all right, everyone. Yeah, this has been really fun. We're pushing like an hour, 75 minutes. So I'm going to over here, analyze and educate really good podcast. Leave for my journal, read it as to as to forward your rights for everybody and calm some logistics. If you want to talk about Russia invading Ukraine with open comms. Hey, man, I'm not saying they're stupid, but he's covered. So everyone, if you want to post something, go right ahead and then I'm going to cut out. But all right, everyone. Yeah, this has been really fun. We're pushing like an hour, 75 minutes.

So I'm going to over here, analyze and educate really good podcast. Leave for my journal, read it as to as to forward your rights for everybody and calm some logistics. If you want to talk about Russia invading Ukraine with open comms. Hey, man, I'm not saying they're stupid, but he's covered. So everyone, if you want to post something, go right ahead and then I'm going to cut out. No. All right. So yeah. All right. So everyone. Sorry, my network is dying. Yeah, I think it's just a little, I feel like it's just they are having to scrape the barrel in terms of their resources and just try to get communications and communications equipment out the door.

And I think I feel like the only way that they could economically do that was with bow things and stuff like that. And I feel like both sides are kind of going on that same path in terms of that conflict. So they just can't keep up and dump a lot of money to that communications when they've got to when they have to spend money on a bunch of other stuff. So yeah. Yeah, obviously, comms and logistics can talk about this more than me. But pretty, pretty crazy seeing quote unquote top of the line Spetsnaz units using balfangs. That's, I mean, that's something I could buy from Amazon for like 30 bucks. You know, I have a balfang. I'm not Spetsnaz. Yeah, it's just, it just goes to show that how far it's deteriorated in terms of their preparedness and their their capability in terms of waging war against a technologically.

I wouldn't say they're superior, but they're definitely sophisticated. I feel like they they can get away with using insecure analog radios, just just because, you know, both sides are kind of doing it sort of like, all right, you're doing I can do it too. But it's, I think I feel like there's just too much going on in order for their EWS has to actually, you know, have, you know, have enough time to figure out, you know, where this was what was said, you know, how can we react to it. I feel like that's just sort of an afterthought right now. It's just interesting to see how that played out. Yeah. Yeah.