This shows that the way to get rid of landmines is not to have countries sign a piece of paper. It’s to give them a better alternative, whether it’s literally peace, or another dirt-cheap area denial defensive weapon that isn’t indiscriminate. Because the paper is worthless once real stakes are on the line.

I think autonomous drones will eventually supplant landmines. Whether that’s better or worse, I don’t know.

“If you won’t let us have Ukraine, let us have the Baltic states instead! 😡😭”

They’re…asking a country about this? What, do they expect China to say “we’re preparing to invade Taiwan in 2026”? This is just fishing for bullshit answers so politicians can pretend like they buy it and ignore actually dealing with the military buildup by taking action.

Yep

China is preparing for real war against Taiwan, hoping that restricting these minerals will prevent Taiwan backers from replenishing their militaries in a war of attrition within a meaningful timeftame after invasion.

Boycott America? Sure. Buy British? Nice sounding sentiment, but don’t fall for the trap. There are some resources we’ve got. Some we don’t. Maximize our strengths, work with our friends.

Frankly, she’s right. What you see countries like Canada doing is just as nationalist as what the US is doing, and the UK would be wise to stay out of it.

We need to stop this cascade of nationalism. Nationalism only leads to war. When countries are interdependent, they lose more than they gain through bloodshed. This is the only reason the past eighty years have been relatively calm, with wars only concentrated in places with little economic interdependence between aggressors.

Globalism, despite its faults, is the only true force for peace.

It’s perfectly possible to do in the US, just costs a bit more. So, capitalism being what it is, that work got outsourced so the vultures could see higher numbers.

They’re called “rare earth elements”, but they’re extremely common. They’re just in trace amounts…everywhere in the Earth’s crust. China stopping exports just means everyone else will have a reason to extract them, when before China was just a path of least resistance. Will take a bit of time to re-establish industry though.

It’s not that they’re doing something special, it’s a cultual attitude thing. Finns feel content that they have enough, and aren’t upset they don’t have more. They consider that to mean “happy” for the purpose of these kinds of surveys.

I’d rather the war go on until Russia runs out of their remaining money, and then collapses again like in 91.

My point is that regardless of whether investigators say “this ship tore cables intentionally” or “oops, they screwed up”, penalties need to apply so that:

A) Insurance rates reflect these risks

B) Operators are incentivized to care about not damaging undersea cables

C) Intentional damage will be more obvious, because shipping companies won’t want to risk getting dropped from their insurance for repeat expensive cable cut offenses. (This kind of insurance is mandatory for major shipping ports to allow those ships to dock.) Bad actors will have to use other means to destroy these cables that cannot be easily blamed on negligence.

Intentional or not is irrelevant. Damaging critical national infrastructure through negligence should still be considered a criminal act with mandatory prison time for the negligent captain and navigator(s), and a heavy fine assessed against the shipping company.

What kinds of repercussions do these cases have right now?

Uhh…its not peace talks if one of the warring sides is not present. It’s just the US talking to Russia about some deal to stop supporting Ukraine.

Uhh…Israel was attacked by every single neighbor in both the Yom Kippur War and the Six Day War. Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and others with expeditionary forces too. What neighbors do you think are Israel’s allies exactly?

To not have a country controlled by Hamas