CanadaPlus

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's it - it is the same little swirly thing, just coloured differently and mirrored. I've seen worse.

At least OP knows it, I guess.

Sure, and that accounts for the first decade, however questionably.

Nah Americans don’t go to war over anything but self interest. That might be on the right side of history but there must be a gain to be made.

Disagree. There was nothing to gain in Afghanistan, especially during the second half after Bin Laden went down. It was an ideological war. That's a major reason why they didn't make more progress, actually; they could barely leave their own bases for fear of taking domestically unpopular losses.

However… wars start over perceived future weakness in comparison. If thinks war with is inevitable, and adversary will grow stronger over time, the best moment for war is… Now… or at some close future date. If the country thinks their adversary will grow comparatively weaker over time, war waits.

Neglecting domestic politics, yes. Not neglecting domestic politics, Americans are not psychologically ready for total war - they don't even understand what that means - and would need to be ideologically massaged into thinking military world domination is cool again. Right now, there's a powerful faction that wants to go back to straight-up isolationism, and the rest of the American political mainstream is for a rough continuation of the status quo, with the Western agenda being advanced through economic policies and (military or civilian) aid.

War has very high costs. The US knows what most of their costs are… since they have been at war for most of the last 100 years. But a first strike on china makes no sense… not militarily Nor economically. They need their allies in the fight… and that will not “just” happen.

Russia just found out the hard way how long a 600 whoops… 300 billion warchest lasts… or does not last. We’re down to ~50 billion now.

China however has no clue what the costs will be… just prognoses and projections.

That could be, although it's obviously not public. Conquest still happens, though, because people want to build an empire, for money, ideology or just a place in history.

Это означает ли ты Русский? Всегда интересный слушаю людеи из других стран.

It sounds like even a little more mobility into the senate would have made a difference. Would the future barracks emperors have revolted if they were allowed a say in the next emperor, anyway? We'll never know.

Or maybe you're talking about Saturninus. Was that an actual significant challenge to the Empire? It sounds like it was put down pretty easily.

Shoot, it did occur to me that might not technically be the right word.

Still, even if you're an engineer in the late 80's, it seems like it would be obvious you need a way for disks to announce themselves in O(1) time. Was it just a limitation of interoperability between vendors or something?

Depends on the trade. If they sell before a stock collapses, that's true. They better do it before all the other insiders do, though - and you better be first too. Like, microseconds quick, if your strategy is just to copy them 1:1. If they're doing something multi-step it becomes a game where they have to be careful to preserve their information advantage, or it becomes worthless.

Ah shite, I should have looked at the domain. Sorry!

Yeah, the West pushing the first strike and anti-second-strike envelope is a real problem, but that's not a good example.

If the US thought they could attack China and get away with it they wouldn't at first, but ten years in? You bet there'd be people questioning why the US is allowing [insert real or imagined Chinese human rights violation] on their watch. Is [current administration] really American enough?

That's my assessment as a Canadian. You average CCP guy probably thinks it would be immediate, and would involve Han Chinese being treated the way their regime treats minorities.

MAD only works because it's a Nash equilibrium not requiring good faith.

Edit: But yes, this specifically is not a good example of a MAD-threatening technology.

Honestly, just a political system that's more stable would have gotten them most of the way.

You don't even hear about this shit anymore, at least in Canada, because everyone just expects insane stupidity from him.