The Real Reason Trump has Blockaded Iranian Ports.

Ok, bear with me. This will take some explaining. 

The media is pecking away at the shallow assessment of the Trump actions with Iran. Basically they are saying he is blockading ports in retaliation at Iran charging a toll for ships to pass though the straight of Hormuz. 

And looked in isolation, that's exactly what it would look like. 

However, if you look globally, things start to piece together. One of Iran's biggest customers for oil is China. China takes over 80% of Iranian oil exports and has been building up war reserves of fuel for a couple of years now. 

Intelligence assessments put a date for China maxing it's reserves and therefore it's capability to invade Taiwan at either late 2026 or some time in 2027. It's reserves of war fuels like diesel were working up to such a high level just prior to that. 

Trump could be blockading Iran with the cover that he is dealing with Iran, but simultaneously he is dealing with the problem of China and Taiwan. With no oil from Iran, China will be forced to use it's reserves to supply it's everyday requirements. It will have to draw down on those war reserves, making an invasion of Taiwan less likely.

Yes, the lack of supply from Iran could force China to jump now and use what reserves it has now to instigate the invasion of Taiwan. But China will be hamstrung, because it won't be able to import more oil to refine and use during the invasion. All it would have are it's reserves and what's in the ships already loaded and bound for China. 

And those ships crossing the Indian Ocean from the Gulf are very vulnerable, just like the Iranian warship that was sunk by an American sub. 25 miles off the coast of Sri Lanka. Did you miss that was a message of intent to China as well? 

The danger with Trump's strategy is that China could just lash out now, but how long could it last? Would it escalate to nukes, or an attack on Diego Garcia? Is this a repeat of Pearl Harbour? Could they, would they supply nukes to Iran to allow them to defend themselves? Not without America knowing. 

Who knows. If the Trump administration plays it smart, it can involve China in talks with the Iranians, to persuade them to negotiate in good faith with the Americans. But being Islamists, in my experience good faith is not something they ever negotiate with

Time will tell if this is a huge bit of 4D chess by the Trump administration, or if it's the precursor to World War 3. Lets hope they know how to play chess eh?

American UFOs: North Korean?

It seems after the huge Chinese spy balloon, America is having to content with smaller devices entering their airspace.

These have been dealt with in a quick manner, being shot down relatively quickly after detection.

Now these later balloons don't appear to have the same sophistication as the earlier, larger balloon, so I just wonder if they are North Korean. Taking advantage of the same Jetstream. 

The North Koreans are mad enough to send devices with dangerous payloads to America. A relatively small balloon could carry a biological weapon, for instance.

These secondary devices don't appear to be large enough to be spies, but are big enough to deliver a payload. 

Just a thought exercise.

And why would the Americans be so keen to shoot this wave down in the frozen North? What intelligence do they have on this new wave of devices?

Europe Moving to War Footing on Energy.

 There are many stories coming out of Europe on how they hope to get through the winter without Russian Gas. A lot of it is reading like Europe is slipping into some sort of emergency war footing.

Switzerland is making it an offence to have your thermostat above 19 degrees, Germany have halted the destruction of coal fired power stations, the French are un-mothballing their nuclear reactors. 

The EU seems hell bent on doing some destructive taxation for some reason, rather than helping the situation. They want to cap the profits of renewable and nuclear producers whilst simultaneously doing a windfall tax-grab on  fossil fuelled energy providers. I'm not sure how that helps exactly. But I suppose it is doing something about the situation.

I have sneaking suspicion the near future is a dark place. Big wars have started over less. The fight for resources whether it's energy, oil, gas, diamonds, minerals, has always ended in war.

If Putin keeps the taps turned off, then how desperate could Europe get? Could Europe make a land-grab for the Russian gas fields so they control the energy for themselves? Well, the gas fields of Russia are thousands of miles behind the Russian border. So safe for now. 

Except, there's a left-field option: what about China?

Let's surmise the crash of the West due to energy supply causes the impending crash of China too. If people in the West are paying all their disposable cash to energy suppliers, then there's nothing left for the producers of tat in China.

China could be looking at a black economic hole and the shock of Covid has been bad enough. 

China may think it has the resources and manpower to slice Russia in two and push from Mongolia to the gas fields of Siberia. It's a straight run. albeit around 1500 miles, which is half the distance from Ukraine. 

They have the technological upper hand over Russia, they have vastly more numbers in manpower, they have parity in the numbers of aircraft but importantly have a better technological edge over Russia and have better drone and stealth technology (stolen from the Americans).

These are delicate times at the moment and all bets are off regarding if and where full-scale war may break out. 

If Putin were smart, he'd pull back to pre-war lines or at least offer to do so as some sort of peace deal. Because at the end of this winter Russia and the rest of the world may not exist as it does today.

Retirement and Systemic Fragility

 Well, I've come to that point in my life where I'm starting to sort out pensions and stuff. Yeah, I'm THAT old.

One of the many deferred pensions I have is from ICL (Now Fujitsu) when I worked for them back in the 80s/90s.

Maybe there's an amount of Rose tinting going on, but looking back they were pretty good times. I gave ICL 8 years of my life and despite not being rewarded in monetary terms (I was one of the Mid-80s intake that replaced high paid engineers with young, willing but lower paid staff) the crack at work was always good amongst the ordinary workers. Management was another thing entirely, the company mired in office politics. That's partly what killed them as a manufacturer. I saw the writing on the wall and left a couple of years before the manufacturing facility in the UK was sold off and closed down.

And that's what brings me on to systemic fragility. Because ICL eventually became Fujitsu and now only focuses on software and services. It doesn't make anything any more. Even the arm of ICL in India, ICIM (International Computers India Manufacturing) eventually became Zensar Technologies and only deals in software and services.

The hardware is now all made in Taiwan or China. Or the components that make the systems are made there. 

Which is a problem. A bloody big problem, strategically. 

Because if ever China decided it would like to have a pop at invading and occupying Taiwan, the supply of chips for computer systems would dry up overnight. We've all seen the issues with car manufacturing with shortages of certain chips halting production and that was just because the chip makers had to ramp up production after the lull from Covid. 

Just think what the impact would be if we couldn't get ANY chips from Taiwan. Where else would we get them from? China? Er, I don't think so if they're the one invading Taiwan.

Just think what the effect would be globally if the West went to war with China. What would happen if the global supply of things China makes (virtually bloody everything) stops. 

In fact would we be able to manufacture the weapons needed to attack China? Because even though the technologically advanced chips for the weapons systems might be made in the West for security reasons, the ancillary chips, the ones that don't require high-level security are supplied from Taiwan.

Transistors, capacitors, resistors, all the high-quality (not the cheap Chinese crap) are mostly made in Taiwan. 

I hope weapon manufacturers are looking at their supply chain, or have already looked at it and started to use robust and secure methods of supply from inside their own country.

It doesn't have to be Taiwan. Russia has signed a pact with China, so if it kicks off over Ukraine, we could see China invading Taiwan at the same time to produce a two-front conflict thereby making it more difficult for the West to commit serious numbers into the fight. China could instead just stop exports to Western countries in solidarity with their Russian friends. 

We really as a country need to look more seriously at security of supply. Not just for goods that require security of supply, but also energy. We need to have an independent energy supply because the Russians could turn the gas tap off any time they like and we would be absolutely fucked.

America Use Strategic Fuel Reserves.

Following on from the post about China, I see the US is now dipping into it's strategic fuel reserves in order to lower the price of fuel at the pumps. Reserves that are held for contingencies like war or disasters.

If I was a betting man, I'd put money on China invading Taiwan in the next 28 days. 

Because by using strategic reserves, the US limits its ability to wage war. Maybe by a small amount, but an amount that could be crucial is a shooting war. After all, ships need oil to get to Taiwan, planes need fuel to fly, tanks need fuel to fight....

Curtail that ability by any amount and your adversary will see it as a weakness. 

Weakening an already weak American military thanks to wokeism, vaccine mandates, military malfeasance and general political interference is not a good idea just as your primary adversary gains strategic parity. Plus Christmas and New Year are the ideal times to attack while the USA military stands down for the holidays and lets servicemen away on leave. 

I assume that Mark Milley will be on the phone to China letting them know that " this really, in no substantial way affects our ability to wage war, so don't you guys go invading Taiwan now y'hear?". Of course giving the exact opposite message to the Chinese.

America: Second Rate Military Power?

 I have been watching with increasing alarm the rise of China's military power. 

From buying arms from Russia, to making copies of Russian arms, to now surpassing Russia and taking on the might of America, given China's record of use of indiscriminate force, it is very concerning.

From not being a threat a decade ago, China has now become the de facto adversary to American forces. They are the military power America needs to beat.

China now have the weapons like stealth aircraft and hypersonic missiles. Now given the quality of Chinese industry, they may not be up to the standards of American arms, but China have the ability to project force in numbers and depth, such that they would very quickly overwhelm Western Forces if it ever came to it.

But the rise of China was entirely predictable given that the whole of the Western World is giving them funds by way of moving their manufacturing bases there. 

What do you thing would happen when massive amounts of global funds are being diverted to a totalitarian regime? And who thought it was a good idea? 

The elites of the world, that's who. The people that make billions from global trade and handily have a nuclear bunker under their mansion. Talk about hedging your bets.

The rest of us are no better, suckered into low price consumer goods bought by low wages so that the elites that employ us shuffling the meagre money round western retail-based economies can keep a semblance of normality, structure and control.

The real money is going East. Either to Russia and the Middle east for energy, or the Far East for consumer goods.

The West is being drained monetarily and you can see that the established institutions, the elite are being propped up by fake money. Money that is made out of thin air and printed. Quite apt considering the "Climate Crisis" is just another way to make money for the Elites out of thin air. 

The West is quite literally a house of sand. Fake money propping up fake industries based on fake science.

Whereas the East is receiving hard currency and building it's economy and military power on firm foundations. 

Despite the West's ingenuity, the East and especially China have spent their way to military equality, because they can afford to. The West's reliance on technology as "Force Multipliers" can only go so far. Eventually the reduction in force projection weakens the amount of force. An adversary that can overwhelm a Force Multiplier only has to overwhelm a smaller number of targets to achieve their objective. We are now at that point with regard to America and China. China have sufficient numbers with sufficient quality to pose a real threat to American forces if it came to a shooting war. 

The only arm of the military where China really lags behind is with submarines. But again with China's espionage efforts and their ability to spend hard currency, it will be less than a decade before they equal American submarines in both capability and quality. 

Trump and Steve Bannon had it partially right: America are not in a war with China, but in a race. Just as with the Space race with Russia, America is in a military an economic race with China. America and the West in General need to understand that they need to claw back some of that currency flowing East. You can't keep printing money. Eventually the house of sand will crumbles and China will become the dominant power.

Of course the elites don't care, they're insulated from the vagaries of the world. They'll just continue to buy influence with whoever is at the top of the tree power-wise.

Don't get me started about the infiltration of Elite Educational and Research institutions by the Chinese, buying information.  They know exactly who to influence and how in order to obtain information useful to their military and industrial complex.

Not only that, but the immense industrial espionage effort by the Chinese to illicitly obtain industrial secrets is something that needs to be stamped out as well. Not just the infiltration of internet-connected computers that is reported on a regular basis, but also the human intelligence. Buying information from workers only to happy to top up their relatively meagre earnings but there's the question of Chinese nationals being employed in high-tech companies after studying at American universities, learning as much as they can about the company (business secrets, employee names, etc) before leaving America to report their findings back to their true leaders in China.

China, like Russia put a lot of emphasis on HUMINT (Human Intelligence) whereas the West rely more on technology. Technology that our adversaries most likely know about and know how to counter thanks to their HUMINT.

This is not an existential threat. This is a very real threat to life in the West. The deterioration of society in the West is not a natural phenomenon. This is a deliberate strategy to undermine the security of Western Ideology and society, whilst simultaneously stealing military and industrial secrets in order to gain the upper hand. 

And strangely our Political Leaders don't seem to care. But then they are part of the Elite that are insulated from the consequences created by their reluctance to act in the interest of their various Western countries.

American Internal security on the Move.

Lately I've been reading interesting reports from over in America. The Trumpites seem to think that the FBI is on manoeuvres to "drain the swamp" and incarcerate those in the elite that are working against American freedoms and the little man.

My take on it is somewhat less delusional. I think it's pointed at espionage both industrial, economic and political.

For instance there are reports of 5000 sealed indictments a month being bandied about in the "drain the swamp" circles. Te conspiracists maintain this is a growing list of elite actors that conspire with foreign powers to subvert the power of the USA.

I personally think that the indictments are a list of domestic and foreign personnel that are working to bleed America of it's technolgical, industrial and military supremacy. For decades China for instance has been syphoning industrial and military information away from US companies for decades. The latest batch of high-tech aircraft are one example, spearheaded by the latest revelation of the Hong-20 stealth bomber, purported to be a rip-off of the B-2 stealth bomber.

The case of Su Bin, a Chinese spy in Canada who was caught by the FBI identifying targets for Chinese state hackers and then validating information found by them is a classic instance of what I'm talking about where I think the FBI are going with these thousands of indictments.

One of the main failings of Western governments is dealing with people within their borders who act privately and publicly against the very countries they live in.

Whether it's Chinese industrial espionage, people traffiking, drug importation or Muslim Jihadis, all are acting against the countries they live in.

America has subtly changed the legal rules regarding those people so they can be tried in military rather than civillian courts. The swamp drainers think that means a French Revolution purging of the elites, but I think it's aimed at these foreign actors.

The recent closing of the Sunspot Solar Observatory is most likely related to this wide-ranging and on-going investigation. Its position oversees the White Sands missile testing range and it would be quite easy for a spy to insstall some covert device there to do some serious signals intelligence and thereby find out the frequencies and waveforms that US missiles use to locate and lock onto targets. It may be that hackers used existing equipment to  do the spying. Quite handy for anyone wanting to jam such signals.

Another link in the chain are the latest revelations (currently being denied all over) that a Chinese actor planted devices in servers that allowed a back door to Chinese hackers. It's possible the report is factually inaccurate, but the substance of devices planted into everyday network products may not be far of the mark. I've always wondered at the intelligence of companies that allow their hi-tech equipment to be made in a country that will aggressively interrogate, reverse-engineer and if necessary infiltrate them.

A small and probably unknown factor is the flow of money to radical Muslim organisations via the Halal meat trade. Stemming the flow of money would cut off the money supply to extremists within and without America, as would the sequestration of the funds held by those wealthy Muslims sponsoring extremists and money coming in from Gulf states to Salafist Mosques.

Clearing out the rats nest infesting the USA and directly syphoning technology to China would be the biggest blow to the Chinese economy.

Putting an end to the flow of money to Jihadis from wealthy Muslim sympathisers in America would deal them a blow too.

Closing down people traffickers on Americas Southern border and the associated drug industry and the money they make is another step the FBI I'm sure are looking into.

The rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration points to all of this and not before time.

However, if I were a Western person living in China, the Gulf States or South America, I would be considering my options to return home.

Hopefully the Mid-Term elections will give the Trump administration the boost and the personnel in place needed to implement the end game.