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More from @PandemicTruther

America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jul 23

🧵

Why Russia Can’t Stop the War—Even If It Wanted To (Part I)

I/1

The brutality of the Ukraine war is not hidden—it’s broadcast to the world daily in countless frontline videos. In one, a Russian soldier is struck by a drone, writhes on the ground, and then turns his rifle on himself. In another, a man collapses mid-advance; his comrade doesn’t hesitate—he raises his weapon and delivers a final shot. Sometimes, an armored vehicle speeds to the front, unloads its human cargo, then reverses and disappears. The soldiers left behind scatter under drone fire, encircled by artillery, like prey abandoned in open ground.

The war has morphed into a meat grinder of history. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Russian casualties have now exceeded one million.

Approximately 11.4 soldiers—Russian and Ukrainian—have been killed for every square kilometer of Ukrainian territory currently under Russian control. Measured in blood per square kilometer, the Ukraine war is the deadliest territorial war of the 21st century—and one of the most expensive in human life since World War I.

It is a war of drones and trenches, of staggering attrition and static front lines. The land gained is real, but the cost—11 men dead for every square kilometer—recalls the meat grinders of Verdun and the Some of WWI far more than the sweeping tank advances of 20th century blitzkrieg.

The question now is no longer why Moscow entered the war. The real question is: why can’t it leave?

Back in February, the Trump administration floated a proposal. Recognize Crimea as Russian. Prevent Ukraine from ever joining NATO. Lift all sanctions imposed since 2014. By April, the offer expanded: a ceasefire along the current line of contact, essentially conceding Russia's grip on four Eastern Ukrainian regions. A pragmatic power would have seized such an offer. But Russia didn’t.

This isn’t about reason anymore. This is gambler’s logic. A war, once started, is no longer a question of whether to stop—but when it becomes too late to stop without losing everything.

Had these terms been available in early 2022, Putin would have taken them. At that time, they would have seemed like a strategic coup. But the war has changed shape. What was once a “special operation” is now a national commitment. Russia today controls around 114,000 square kilometers of Ukraine. But according to the Kiel Institute, the price of war has climbed to $873 billion—while the total annual GDP of these occupied regions amounts to just $28 billion. Even by the cold logic of profit and loss, Russia would need to control these areas for 31 years just to break even.

And that’s just the money. Over a million casualties later, the war has rewritten Russia’s political calculus. To retreat now would be to betray the blood already spilled. It would provoke fury from nationalist factions and from within the ranks of the military. On June 20, Putin gave a revealing speech in St. Petersburg: “The Russian and Ukrainian peoples are one and the same. In this sense, all of Ukraine should belong to Russia.”

That was no mere rhetoric. It was the clearest signal yet that Russia's war aims have shifted—from securing the Donbas to absorbing the whole of Ukraine.

History repeats itself. In the early 1700s, Peter the Great launched the Great Northern War seeking only access to the Baltic Sea. But after suffering early defeats and investing more deeply, he didn’t stop at one port—he broke Swedish dominance in all of Eastern Europe. When sunk costs accumulate, so do ambitions.

I/2

There’s another reason Moscow won’t back down. This war has shattered Russia’s claim to be the world’s second military power. In 2022, its General Staff expected Kyiv to fall in three days. That war is now in its third year—and has become the most brutal attritional conflict of the 21st century.

Elsewhere, the world has moved on. In May 2025, a brief border clash between India and Pakistan ended in 72 hours with Pakistani victory—powered by Chinese system warfare. That same month, U.S. B-2 bombers flew 20,000 kilometers to hit Iranian nuclear bunkers with pinpoint precision. Both events reminded the world what modern warfare looks like. Meanwhile, Russia leans on Soviet-era tanks and North Korean artillery, waging a war that resembles 1943 more than 2025. The result? Moscow’s military brand is in tatters—even among its own allies.

This is why the Kremlin needs victory—not in symbolic terms, but in real, territorial gains. Without them, Russia’s influence across the Middle East, Africa, and the Caucasus could collapse. That partially explains the latest escalation: three massive aerial strikes on Ukraine in July 2025, the largest since the war began.

For Russia, the war has become inescapable. But history teaches that long wars rarely end well. The longer the conflict, the higher the price, and the greater the political impossibility of ending it. Ceasefire becomes synonymous with defeat. The Soviet disaster in Afghanistan looms large: a war planned to last seven days, meant to stabilize a friendly regime, dragged on for a decade—and accelerated the collapse of the USSR.

Today’s war is walking a similar path. Each new month brings fresh losses. And to justify them, the Kremlin must raise the stakes. This is the inertia of war. It does not stop when logic says stop. It stops only when something breaks.

As Kissinger once warned, “In war, the most dangerous moment is not when the fighting starts, but when neither side can win, and neither side can afford to quit.” That moment, it seems, is now.

Why Russia Cannot Afford to Stop the War: The War Economy Machine That Keeps the State Afloat (Part II)

II/1

Once a war economy is set in motion, stopping it is not a matter of diplomacy—it’s a matter of survival. For Russia, the war has ceased to be a temporary military engagement. It has become the organizing logic of the state, the engine of industrial revival, and, ironically, a guarantor of social stability.

This is not merely about Putin’s pride or military objectives in Ukraine. It’s about a structural transformation of the Russian economy—one that has tethered its internal stability to a perpetual state of mobilization.

As of 2024, Russia’s military-industrial complex has expanded to a scale not seen since the Cold War. Military-related production now accounts for at least 6.7% of GDP according to Russian economists—not counting secondary and tertiary industries supporting the arms sector. Nearly one-third of Russia’s federal budget is now directed toward defense and security.

This surge in military spending has triggered a sweeping reindustrialization of Russia’s economy, particularly in heavy industry and metallurgy. Munitions factories are running around the clock, and cities that were once considered industrial relics of the Soviet past—like Tula, Izhevsk, and Nizhny Tagil—are booming with activity. Tank production, drone manufacturing, and artillery shell output have all reached Cold War levels or beyond.

This war economy creates jobs, lots of them. Workers are being recruited in droves to man the plants, assemble drones, operate logistics chains. Defense firms like Uralvagonzavod are employing tens of thousands. The unemployment rate in Russia is currently below 3%, a historic low. This is not the result of market liberalism—it is war mobilization, disguised as growth.

And it goes deeper. Recruitment for frontline combat is not just a military function—it is a socioeconomic policy. Poor regions in the Russian Federation—places like Buryatia, Tuva, Dagestan—are aggressively targeted for conscription. For every new recruit, the Russian state pays a signing bonus of approximately 3 million rubles (roughly $29,000). In addition, a Russian soldier on active duty earns approximately 2.5 times the national average salary, amounting to around $2,200 per month. In regions where average annual income barely touches $5,000, this is a life-changing sum.

The impact is immediate. Local families use the money to buy cars, build homes, pay off debts. Real estate in these impoverished regions is booming—not due to organic development, but because of the artificial lifeline of war bonuses and compensations. Entire micro-economies are thriving off military remittances.

And then there is death—militarized death.

When a soldier dies in combat, the state grants the family a death compensation of around 5 million rubles, or over $50,000. Add on municipal grants and local perks, and the total may exceed $70,000. In poor provinces, this is more money than a family could hope to earn in two decades.

What’s the consequence? A perverse culture of economic fatalism. Families—desperate and rational—push their sons to enlist, not out of patriotism, but survival. A dead son brings prosperity. And a living soldier? He becomes a prize on the marriage market. Young women are eager to marry enlisted men, drawn not only by the generous paychecks, but the death insurance that shadows them. War, in this context, is not only national policy—it is domestic security.

This perverse incentive structure means that war cessation is not simply a matter of diplomatic negotiation. If Russia stops the war abruptly, the military-industrial machine crashes. Factories shut down. Workers are laid off. The newly reindustrialized towns return to decay. Millions of soldiers return home, unemployed, traumatized, and demanding reintegration.

Read 8 tweets

America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jul 22

🧵Operation Red Wedding: Inside Israel’s AI-Assisted Strike on Tehran

The nature of war has fundamentally changed — and Iran would do well to understand it and adapt

In mid-June 2025, a cataclysmic operation shook the heart of Iran's defense establishment. Code-named "Operation Red Wedding," the Israeli strike targeted a hardened underground command bunker in Tehran, killing approximately 30 senior Iranian generals in a single, surgical blow. The name, drawn from the infamous massacre scene in Game of Thrones, was not chosen lightly—it captured the betrayal, the timing, and the brutality of the assault.

Carried out on June 13, the operation was part of a larger campaign—Operation Rising Lion—aimed at systematically dismantling Iran’s strategic deterrence capabilities. Just two days later, a follow-up strike on June 15 targeted key logistics hubs, delivering an operational and psychological shock to Tehran’s command structure.

But the power of "Red Wedding" lay not just in its destruction, but in its orchestration. The operation was the product of a years-long intelligence campaign involving Mossad, Unit 8200, and Unit 9900. Mossad deployed modular espionage—each agent a cog in a machine they couldn’t see. One gathered building schematics (to understand the structure of the target facility—its layout, weak points, and escape routes). Another planted a signal beacon (a hidden transmitter that would guide the incoming strike to the exact underground location, ensuring precision). A third slipped in false timetables (to mislead Iranian defenses about who would be present and when, so the strike would hit key commanders when they were most exposed). No single individual understood the entire design, but the whole moved as one. This is Mossad’s doctrine: to build a symphony from disconnected notes.

When the strike came, it was apocalyptic. Over 200 Israeli aircraft, including stealth F-35Is and electronic warfare platforms, sliced through Iranian airspace under a veil of jamming clouds. In minutes, hundreds of smart munitions collapsed multiple layers of reinforced concrete. Satellite feeds and encrypted Mossad field reports streamed in real time. It was as if the entire strike was choreographed by an invisible master—because it was.

Behind that hand was not just human cunning—but artificial intelligence.

The Invisible Engine: Israel’s AI-Assisted Kill Chain

At the heart of Operation Red Wedding was a closed-loop intelligence engine powered by human intuition and algorithmic precision. Three entities—Mossad, Unit 8200, and Unit 9900—formed the triad of destruction. Each brought a unique discipline: human intelligence, signal capture, and visual verification. Together, they formed a cycle: intercept → identify → verify → strike → assess.

II/

Unit 8200—Israel’s legendary SIGINT division—listens to the world. It harvests the electromagnetic ether, intercepts WhatsApp chats, decrypts Farsi chatter, and implants malware into hostile networks. The unit manages one of the world's largest listening posts, sweeping across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. It can schedule reconnaissance passes by Ofek-class spy satellites (Israel’s space-based surveillance platforms capable of capturing high-resolution imagery and intercepting signals from orbit) or quietly eavesdrop on unsecured smartphones. In other words, Unit 8200 doesn’t just hack—it commands orbital eyes, directing satellites to observe specific locations at specific times to complement its digital infiltration.

Then comes Unit 9900—the eye in the sky, and arguably the most visually literate division of Israeli intelligence. Specializing in geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), they process drone and satellite imagery with surgical precision. This isn’t just about reading maps—it’s about interpreting the invisible details that betray secrets.

A blurred shadow next to a bunker vent might signal recent movement. A changed tire track near a launch silo might suggest fuel resupply. The orientation of parked vehicles can reveal an imminent deployment. Unit 9900’s analysts are trained to notice what others overlook.

They map terrain down to the : every ridge, every heat vent, even centimeterry hidden trail. License plates from speeding cars are read mid-frame from 40,000 feet. Convoy compositions are broken down by axle count, fuel tanker type, and even canopy shape—so they can tell if a vehicle is carrying food, rockets, or human cargo.

They go further. Analysts cross-reference thermal signatures to detect body heat in underground tunnels, observe vehicle movement patterns to estimate sleep cycles of enemy units, and analyze weather conditions—cloud cover, wind drift, soil moisture—to determine not only where a target is, but when it’s most vulnerable. For instance, if a missile battery is usually camouflaged but must be uncovered to cool down under certain heat conditions, Unit 9900 knows when that moment will occur.

They even assess troop morale through satellite footage: are soldiers walking upright with discipline, or slouched with fatigue? Are training formations tight or sloppy? These visual micro-indicators are catalogued, timestamped, and overlaid on long-term behavioral models to predict operational shifts. If all this had to be done by human analysts alone, the workload would be astronomical. But now, much of this analytical burden has shifted to AI—giving Unit 9900 an almost unlimited capacity to process, compare, and detect patterns across vast datasets in real time.

In essence, Unit 9900 sees what no one else sees—not just with satellites, but with trained human eyes augmented by AI. If Unit 8200 hears the world and Mossad recruits the actors, Unit 9900 watches the entire stage.

Legacy Mossad

Legacy Mossad, meanwhile, orchestrates the human dimension. It runs an AI-powered system called HADS—Human Asset Development System—capable of managing the entire lifecycle of spycraft: from recruiting a janitor near a missile base (someone with physical access to sensitive areas but who draws no attention) to activating encrypted communication channels deep inside hostile territory.

In the past, Mossad case officers had to do this manually—combing through dossiers, observing behavior, assessing risk, and nurturing assets slowly, one by one. It was a slow and resource-heavy process. But now, HADS does this at machine scale. It uses advanced algorithms to sift through millions of digital profiles, analyzing people’s political views, grudges, family trauma, career frustrations, or ideological leanings—anything that could signal a motive to betray, collaborate, or sabotage.

III/

Imagine a young Iranian woman who watched in horror as a girl set herself on fire as a protest against possible jail sentence just for trying to attend a football match. That kind of trauma and rage leaves digital traces—tweets, posts, even encrypted messages, deleted browser history. HADS picks it up. It flags her as emotionally primed, politically aware, and ideologically aligned with Mossad’s objectives. She becomes a potential asset. Unfortunately, in Iran, people bearing deep grievances against the regime abound—making the country a tragically fertile ground for Mossad to identify and recruit human assets.

HADS mines gigatons of digital exhaust: social media histories, leaked databases, mobile metadata, and behavioral patterns. Much of this raw data likely comes from global surveillance networks—particularly from the NSA, the American equivalent of Unit 8200—whose bulk collection programs were revealed by Edward Snowden. What once took years of legwork and intuition is now accomplished at machine speed.

If Andy Byron, the CEO of Astronomer, were having an affair with the company’s HR officer, Kristin Cabot, you can be certain Israeli intelligence would know. They’d log it, file it, and quietly earmark it—just in case it ever proved useful. That’s how this game works. Nothing personal. Just leverage.

Each agent recruited becomes a node in a vast web, compartmentalized and anonymized. No one sees the full picture. If one falls, the machine continues. This is no longer traditional spycraft—it’s industrial-scale human intelligence

Read 7 tweets

America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jul 17

🧵 Israel strikes its rebellious puppet in Syria - dark days ahead

Jolani’s Delusion: The Man Who Sold Syria to Israel for Nothing

July 9th. The US and 19 allies are conducting a live military drill near Australia with a view of a coordinated attack against China our — but forget that for now. Something bigger exploded this morning (July 16th 2025).

Israel launched a decapitation strike against Syria’s de facto ruler, Jolani.
Yes — that Jolani, the man who had bent over backwards to please Israel, the one who handed over the Golan Heights with a smile, promising “permanent peace.”
And yet? They still came for him.

Let’s rewind.

When Assad’s regime collapsed back in December 2024, the whole of Syria fell into chaos. Jolani, a former terrorist with deep roots in al-Qaeda and Issis, seized Damascus within a week. But taking the capital didn’t mean owning the country. Syria became a jungle of warlords.

In the southwest, Israel moved fast. Armored brigades swept in and annexed the eastern Golan Heights, calling it a “buffer zone” — as if the whole world hadn’t seen this playbook before.

To understand why Israel will never let go of the Golan Heights, you have to understand what the Golan is. It is not just a piece of land. It is a perch, a watchtower, a faucet, a promise. From those heights, you can see half of Syria. Before 1967, Syrian artillery rained down on Israeli farms from that high ground. After 1967, Israeli tanks dug in and never left. And why would they? The Golan is water. It feeds the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and the underground aquifers that keep Israel alive. Some say nearly half of Israel’s fresh water still trickles down from those slopes. In a region where rain is rare and rivers dry, that makes the Golan as precious as oil.

But there’s something deeper still. The Golan is theology. The Golan is destiny. For the religious wing of Likud, for those who still read maps with the Book of Genesis in one hand, the Golan is part of the inheritance God gave Abraham — “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.” This land was promised. And what is promised cannot be returned. Not to Assad. Not to Jolani. Not to anyone.

So now that Syria lies broken, now that Jolani begs and grovels, now that the widow has no protector — Israel sees its chance. And it will not look away.

By January 205, Jolani tried to claw some legitimacy back. He had personal reasons — he was born in the Golan Heights — but also national ones. A president who gives up sovereign territory and says nothing? That’s not a leader.

So he went to the UN.

Israel scoffed.

He proposed a “land-for-legitimacy” deal — asking to get back a third of the Golan Heights, lease another third, and in return recognize Israeli sovereignty over the rest. A humiliating offer for Syria — and Israel still slapped him across the face.

“How dare you propose such a deal? You? You’re nothing. All of Golan Heights is ours. Try take it back if you can. To hell with UN and international law”

The same man who had once survived the Abu Ghraib black prison walked out of that hell with a bruised face — and a boiling mind. But he is eerily tame in front of the Israelis. Not characteristic of a brutal terrorist.

By March, Jolani pivoted. If Israel wouldn’t listen, maybe Turkey would.

Jolani made his pitch with eloquent urgency — the kind of urgency a man uses when he knows the fire is already at his doorstep. “Syria,” he told the Turks, “isn’t just a country. It’s a buffer. Between you and Israel. And once we’re gone, the buffer is gone. Then it’s just you and them, staring across a line drawn in sand.” He leaned in. “You think Israel won’t come for you? Maybe not today. But one day, they will. And your pipelines, your ports, your Black Sea dreams — all of it will be within range.”

II/

He paused, knowing how absurd it sounded. After all, Israel attacking a NATO country? That triggers Article 5 — the mutual defense clause. The sacred vow. An attack on one is an attack on all. It would mean France, Germany, even the United States would have to come to Ankara’s defense — against Tel Aviv. Unthinkable. And yet… the clause says what it says. The ink is still there.

And Jolani knew how Europe viewed Turkey: not quite friend, not quite enemy. The West brought Turkey into NATO not out of love, but out of fear. To have a lever on the Middle East. To keep Ankara leashed, not embraced. But leashed or not, Turkey was still in the pact. And now, Jolani whispered, Israel was becoming your problem too.

And what of ideology? The same religious Likud that cites Genesis 15:18 to claim the Golan as a birthright — “from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates” — may yet find a new cloth in scripture. If the Promised Land includes the Heights for their water, why not the harbors and pipelines of Anatolia? Why not the mountains and minerals of Turkey?

Syria was only the beginning. Turkey is more lucrative, more resourceful, more strategic. Greater Israel may yet grow greater still.

“Help me,” he said. “Fortify this buffer. Because if I fall, your border becomes the front line.”

And Turkey did.

What followed wasn’t yet a formal alliance, but something close — secret negotiations on a joint defense pact. Turkish military teams inspected Syria’s Tiyas and Palmyra airbases, eyeing them for future deployment. There was talk of allowing Turkish aircraft to operate over Syrian skies, and even whispered proposals to bring in Russian-made S‑400 missile systems — pointed, unmistakably, toward Israel. No final agreement was signed. But the message was clear: Jolani was handing over his skies to Erdoğan, inviting the Turkish wolf into the ruins of Syria.

As I said before, Syria has been reduced to a helpless Indian widow — abandoned, dishonored, and left to fend for herself. Anyone can abuse her, bully her, stone her. So bringing in one more predator changes nothing.

Jolani had nothing to lose because he had nothing — no planes, no radar — so he handed his skies to Erdoğan.

Call it what it is: “Inviting the tiger to devour the wolf.”

But that wasn’t enough. Jolani also funneled support to Hamas, allowing weapons to move through southern Syria, while Turkey funded them via encrypted transfers.

In April, Israel found out.

As retaliation, the T-4 airbase was hit. Runways destroyed. Bunkers leveled.

Israel deployed Iron Dome and Jericho missiles across the Golan.

Tensions soared.

But facing Turkey — a NATO state — Israel had to tread carefully.

Then came June 12.
Five Hamas operatives were caught with equipments to produce rockets.

III/

Mossad interrogated them — and everything spilled out. The weapons, the smuggling routes, the payments from Turkey — even a $500,000 transfer allegedly earmarked for drone technology support. True or not, it gave Israel the perfect pretext. They marched straight to the UN, waving a transfer slip that blatantly listed “drone technology support” as the purpose. It looked almost too convenient. Who writes that? Turkey might as well have scribbled ‘for terrorist attacks against Israel’ in the memo line.

On July 9, Jolani tried one last time to achieve permanent peace with Israel.

He met Israel’s National Security Advisor in Abu Dhabi.

He renounced all claims to the Golan Heights. Asked for nothing more than diplomatic recognition.

Israel said: fine.

Then Jolani got “greedy”. He tentatively proposed with meekness:

“Support me to take Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley,” he asked. “And give me $1 billion to rebuild Syria.”

Israel laughed in his face.
You see, they never cared who ruled Syria — Jolani or Assad, secular or Islamist, pro-US or pro-Iran — it’s all the same.
What they want is no Syria at all.
A shattered land. A broken mosaic of factions. A failed state permanently disabled.

Jolani left that meeting seething. He drank half a bottle of whiskey. Slammed the glass down.
“I’ll show them I’m still a man,” he shouted.
“Mobilize the armored divisions. We march on Suweida.”

Mid July. He sent nine divisions, supported by Turkish drones, to crush the Druze militias Israel had been cultivating in the south.

They call themselves Druze, but outsiders rarely understand what that means. They follow a version of Islam so strange, so veiled, that even Muslims call them heretics.

They do not fast during Ramadan. They do not pray five times a day. They don’t make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Some say they worship wisdom, others say they worship silence. Their books are hidden, their rituals secret, and their loyalties — practical.

In southern Syria, nestled near Suweida, the Druze were never many, but they were fierce and proud. When the Syrian state collapsed, it was Israel who reached out with arms. Guns, funding, quiet alliances. Why? Because the Druze were a wall — not Arab, not Sunni, not easily swayed by Islamist dreams. They hated ISIS. They distrusted Assad. They remembered the massacres, the betrayals, the years of being called unbelievers. Israel, to them, was not a savior — just the one neighbor who didn’t want to convert them, didn’t want to erase them. And so a pact was born. In the shadow of Golan, the Druze militias became Israel’s eyes and ears in Syria — loyal not out of love, but out of survival.

But Israel saw it coming. F-16s roared in.

Dozens of T-72s destroyed.

Advance halted.

Turkey retaliated with mercenaries.
Israel exposed them in the media.
Then came whispers: Turkey was secretly talking to Israel too — trying to secure drilling rights in Cyprus in exchange for curbing Jolani’s anti-Israel actions.
A chessboard of betrayals.
---
And then, the decapitation strike.

Early morning, July 16.

Israeli jets leveled Jolani’s presidential compound with bunker busters.

This, you see, is the fate of the Indian widow.

She can be loyal. She can be silent.
She can throw herself on the pyre, beg for approval, betray her own kin.
None of it matters.
Because once she’s abandoned, she is no longer a person.
She’s a symbol — of weakness, of shame, of nothingness.
This is Syria.

And Jolani?

He was never meant to rule.
Whether he kneeled or resisted no longer matters—he will be crushed so that Israel can seize the land and the resources. There is no law. It's a jungle, and for now, Israel is the supreme warlord.

What this event signals is simple: Jolani has fallen out with Israel.

That may not sit well with Washington, which still dreams of pivoting to the Asia-Pacific. But Israel never lets it.

Read 4 tweets

America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jul 15

🧵
Why China Does Not Want War With the United States—Even If It Has Military Supremacy

It is becoming increasingly clear that China now holds a decisive military edge in many areas over the United States. It has built a war machine optimized for network-centric warfare, outpacing the U.S. in electronic jamming, long-range missile precision, radar integration, and regional air dominance. It can deny access, blind satellites, and overwhelm fleets.

But military supremacy doesn’t mean recklessness. China has the ability to win battles. But it has no interest in starting a war—because it understands the cost of victory might be national suicide.

Let us begin with a basic truth. China is not self-sufficient when it comes to economic demand. Its internal market is still maturing.

Who feeds the Chinese people economically? The answer is: the world—especially the rich, Western world.

China’s total foreign trade in 2024 hit 43.85 trillion yuan (~US$6 trillion), with exports accounting for 25.45 trillion yuan (~US$3.47 trillion). This figure is often downplayed by critics who claim “exports only represent around 18–30% of China’s GDP.” But such figures miss the structural importance of exports: they power the coastal provinces, which in turn power the entire nation.

The bulk of China’s industrial and export muscle is concentrated in six coastal provinces:

1. Guangdong (~US$888 billion exports)
2. Zhejiang (~US$532 billion)
3. Jiangsu (~US$518 billion)
4. Shandong (~US$272 billion)
5. Shanghai (~US$255 billion)
6. Fujian (~US$167 billion)

Together, these provinces account for the majority of China's exports. They are also home to China’s largest ports—Shenzhen, Shanghai, Ningbo, Qingdao—which function as lifelines for both imports and exports.

Once war breaks out, these ports will shut down—either by enemy blockade, missile strikes, or insurance collapse. That means factories stop, logistics freeze, and tens of millions are thrown into unemployment.

Some believe China can pivot to trade with the Global South—BRICS, Belt and Road nations, Africa, Latin America. It’s a comforting illusion.

Here’s the problem: China mainly imports resources from the Global South—oil, gas, lithium, bauxite, copper, iron ore—not finished goods. It uses these to manufacture high-end products.
But who consumes these products? The West.

In 2024:

Exports to the United States totaled 3.73 trillion yuan (approx. 514 billion USD)
Exports to the European Union: 3.68 trillion yuan (approx. 508 billion USD)
Exports to Japan and South Korea: over 1.5 trillion yuan combined (approx. 207 billion USD)

- ASEAN nations were the top partner bloc, but much of this was processing trade with end-markets in the West

This adds up to nearly half of China's total exports going to Western or high-income markets.

These are the only markets with the income level and consumer appetite to absorb the full output of Chinese industry.

Remove them from the equation—and the entire chain collapses.
Here’s how a war, or even a serious blockade, would detonate the economy:

1. Western demand disappears

2. China stops exporting to Europe, the U.S., Japan, South Korea.

3. China no longer needs to import energy, iron ore, or copper from BRICS and the Global South

4. Global South trade drastically drops—because there’s no downstream use

5. Coastal factories go silent

6. Wealth stops flowing inland

7. Domestic consumption drops

8. Local governments collapse under fiscal pressure

9. Unemployment skyrockets

10. Social unrest erupts

That’s the chain reaction. It would a few months, not years.

Despite all efforts to de-dollarize, to promote RMB trade, to build an alternative system—this is still a Western-centric global economy.

Even in 2024, over 59% of Chinese exports were mechanical and electrical products—designed for Western consumers, not subsistence economies.

👇

II/

A war with the United States means the immediate blockade of China, financial decoupling, shipping paralysis, and global panic. And not just for China.
If China’s factories go dark, the global supply chain collapses with them:
- No iPhones No smartphones
- No electric vehicles
- No solar panels
- No semiconductors
- No rare earth magnets for Western industries
- Inflation spirals in the West
- BRICS economies lose their largest industrial client

This is not just China’s economic collapse. It’s a global economic meltdown—a modern Lehman Brothers moment, multiplied by 100.

China understands clearly: starting a war with the United States is national suicide. But the same truth applies in reverse—only more so. For the United States, launching a war with China would be a deeper, faster death, economically and strategically. Yet Washington’s political class is far more reckless, more prone to delusions of dominance. So every argument I make here about restraint, calculation, and national survival applies equally—if not more urgently—to the United States.

Please don’t give me that tired line about decoupling from China and collapsing its economy. The West has tried—again and again—to kick China out of the global supply chain, to shift manufacturing to India, Vietnam, Mexico, wherever. It's been over a decade, and it still doesn't work. There is no alternative to China’s manufacturing base. Once production moves to China, it’s like a black hole—it never comes out. That’s the brutal truth. Nearly all of China’s manufacturing, like its rare earth supply, is irreplaceable. And if you try to replicate it elsewhere, be ready to pay 30% to 10 times more. Tariffs didn’t stop the West from importing Chinese goods. Because if the West doesn’t import from China, inflation will explode—and their own economies will crumble.

China is patient, sees far and wide when it comes to strategy. It knows it can dominate regionally. It knows it can win militarily. But it also knows that war, at this moment, would be suicidal—not just for itself, but for the world economy.

So China continues to build strength, reshape alliances, and rewrite trade architecture.

But it will avoid war—not out of fear, but out of understanding.
Because in this system, the first nation to pull the trigger also pulls the plug.

III/

Why the U.S. Wants a War with China—And Why China Refuses to Give It

The country most eager to provoke China into war is the United States. Not because it thinks it can win—but because it knows it’s running out of time.

Let’s be clear: China doesn’t fear a war with the United States. It never has. When the People's Republic was still dirt-poor and broken, it marched north to face the U.S. military head-on in Korea.

Today, with its full industrial might and cutting-edge arsenal, China is far stronger. It is not fear that keeps Beijing from firing the first shot. It’s the knowledge that war, at this moment, would cost too much.

Let me repeat the statistics. By 2024, China’s GDP had soared to 134.9 trillion yuan (approx. 18.6 trillion USD). Roughly 30% of that came from exports. Last year, China’s total import-export volume surpassed 43 trillion yuan (approx. 5.9 trillion USD). Behind those numbers are real people—hundreds of millions of livelihoods, hundreds of millions of jobs.

And capital, as everyone knows, is a coward. The moment war begins, global capital will flee. Factories will fall silent. Export orders will vanish—even if the fighting is far from China's heartland. The shockwave will hit first in trade and manufacturing, but it will not stop there. It will ripple into every corner of the economy. And for a country that must feed and employ 1.4 billion people, that collapse is not something to gamble with.

That is why China is not rushing to war. Not because it can’t win, but because it understands the cost of victory without stability.

China absolutely does not want to find itself in the same predicament as Russia—trapped in a drawn-out war with no clear exit, no defined endgame, and no timeline for de-escalation. From the outset, Russia never articulated when or how the war would end, and that’s precisely the kind of strategic quagmire China is determined to avoid.

But what about the United States?

Why is Washington so eager?

The answer is simple: the war won’t be fought on American soil. It will be fought in East Asia—at China’s doorstep, not theirs. If Taiwan burns, if Japan bleeds, if Australia suffers—it will not touch the U.S. homeland. American corporations will keep operating. Wall Street will keep trading. Capital has no reason to flee. Even if American aircraft carriers are sunk and jets are shot down, the U.S. itself won’t be hurt. Its body will remain intact. Only the fingers get bruised.

And in the short term, a war could be a financial windfall. The moment the U.S. is involved, defense stocks will surge. Capital will pour into military contractors. After all, the US Republican Party—the party of war—is backed by the arms industry.

The moment a war breaks out, capital will flee China and Southeast Asia, rushing back to the United States—triggering a wave of capital flight and, possibly, some partial reshoring of manufacturing to American soil.
A foreign war is a rallying cry, a profit engine, and a political distraction all at once.

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America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jul 13

🧵on China's export control of Rare Earth

Will there be a World War III?

Rest assured—there won’t be one. Not because of diplomacy, and certainly not because of US/Western restraint, but thanks to the ultimate deterrent, more powerful than any nuclear weapon: China’s stranglehold on rare earths and other critical minerals, all effectively controlled under what the world now simply calls “rare earth.”

I have argued that China has already achieved military supremacy over the United States. Many readers were skeptical. So today, I approach this claim from a different angle: rare earths. Specifically, how China’s control over rare earth exports allows it to dictate the pace and ceiling of U.S. weapons development.

In modern warfare, radar is the key. The side that sees first, strikes first. The one that detects first, locks the target first. And once that lock is achieved, the enemy is pulled into a no-escape zone. Rare earths—refined to near-perfect purity—determine how powerful, how far-seeing, and how jam-resistant those radars are. Which means, simply, China has the superior weapons.
Some ask, can the U.S. replicate China’s network-centric warfighting doctrine? The answer is no. Because without the materials—and the mastery behind them—doctrine is just theory.

Military purity High grade Rare Earth : Achilles' heel of the US military industrial complex

It’s July 13, 2025. The time: 3:56 PM. The place: London. And the silence at the negotiation table is thick enough to bend steel. American officials are still talking—still pleading—for China to ease its grip on rare earth exports. But in truth, they already know the answer. Because Beijing is not negotiating; it is calibrating.

Rare earths are no longer just about supply and demand. They are about velocity, purity, supremacy. In the defense world, purity is king. And here, China reigns.

There’s a difference between rare earths and military-grade rare earths. A difference of six zeros. Commercial uses may tolerate 99.99% purity—4N in technical parlance. But advanced radar systems, missile guidance units, directed energy weapons—they demand 6N, 7N, even 8N purity: 99.999999%. At that level, one particle out of a hundred million can change the performance of a phased-array radar. The reach of a sensor. The jam-resistance of an aircraft. The visibility of an F-35.

And that’s where China’s mastery begins. Their engineers—trained through decades of closed-loop industrial knowledge—have cracked the 9.999999 benchmark with consistency. In contrast, the best the U.S., Australia, and Malaysia have achieved is 9.999 purity—5N—and even that, only with engineers poached from Chinese firms. In other words: without China, the West can barely replicate >6N standards. 👇

II/

Mountain Pass cannot refine. Australia cannot separate. Malaysia can process, but only at levels suited for iPhones—not F35s.

This is the true meaning of strategic vulnerability.

Take the F-35. Each unit—every jet—consumes around 420 kilograms of rare earth materials, primarily neodymium, praseodymium, terbium, and dysprosium. The magnets in the radar, the powertrain, the guidance system—all depend on high-purity inputs. Without them, production slows. With lower grades, performance drops. There’s no bypass.

And as for next-generation fighters—the U.S. can forget them. The F-47, the NGAD—they aren’t even off the PPT stage. Without ultra-pure rare earths, they can’t be built. Meanwhile, China’s sixth-generation fighters—the J-36 and J-50—are already flying. Quietly. With mass production assured by China’s own supply of high-grade magnetic materials.

That’s why China’s export controls are not just leverage. They are a quiet nuclear bomb—a non-kinetic weapon that can decide the generation gap in warfare. By modulating exports, China can delay U.S. weapons by five years, a decade, or more. Especially in radar technology, where materials determine how far you can see, how precisely you can lock on, and how well you can survive jamming.

Consider this: radar performance is a function of both software and substrate. If you use substandard rare earths—if your yttrium or gadolinium is 5N instead of 8N—your radar becomes fuzzy, slow, vulnerable. Your electronic warfare suite misreads the sky. Your missile lock fails. And you lose the first shot in combat.

All because of atoms.

The U.S. knows this. That’s why the Pentagon is pouring billions into “mine-to-magnet” programs. But ambition doesn’t equal capability. MP Materials received over $439 million for Mountain Pass and its joint venture with Australia’s Lynas in Texas. But full-spectrum refining remains years away. The January 2025 announcement of a 99.1% dysprosium oxide sample—by USA Rare Earths—was hailed as a breakthrough. But it remains a lab achievement, not a production standard. Scaling it up means duplicating Chinese expertise built over thirty years. That’s not something you hire for. That’s something you grow.

Worse, the U.S. supply chain is caught in a vicious loop.

Whenever China tightens its export controls, prices spike—and American rare earth firms breathe again. There is a window to operate, to profit, to expand. But then, as if on cue, China loosens controls. Prices crash. And the fragile U.S. supply chain collapses again. Investors flee. Mines go idle. Engineers are laid off. The survivors sell at a loss—many of them, ironically, to Chinese buyers.

And here lies the trap.

Whenever rare earth prices dip, Western buyers—especially in defense and automotive—stockpile like survivalists. They buy tons. They hoard, gambling on China’s next move. But this glut destroys demand for U.S. producers. And when China tightens again, it’s too late—the industrial infrastructure has already withered. A fledgling system, broken by price shocks and indecision.

The market itself is small—just $3.4 billion globally. China holds 70% of that value, 69% of production, and 90% of refining. But it is not the volume that matters. It is the precision. China dominates not because it mines more, but because it controls every layer: the metallurgy, the solvent systems, the purity benchmarks, and the geopolitical timing.

III/

Their export control strategy is not random. It is dialed, tuned like a radio, to hit exact pressure points in the Western military-industrial complex. When F-35 production ramps up, supply tightens. When prices need crashing, smuggled supply floods the market. And in the background, Chinese firms stockpile 6N and 7N materials for their own J-36 radar arrays and electromagnetic weapons.

Meanwhile, Australia’s Lynas and Canada’s Aclara inch forward. Brazil has reserves but no governance. The EU dreams of 40% domestic critical mineral capacity—by 2030. Maybe. Ukraine is a wild card. Vietnam offers promise. But everywhere the U.S. turns, it needs Chinese tech to move forward.

And China knows it.

The 2023 ban on exporting rare earth separation technology sealed the final gate. Even if new mines open in allied countries, they will be useless without refining capacity. The most advanced rare earth knowledge—the “recipes” of separation, the waste-handling protocols, the gradients of purity—are now a national security secret. Hidden behind a wall of state monitoring, passport controls, and academic blacklists.

All of this—every ounce of leverage—was learned the hard way. In 2010, after the Senkaku Islands standoff, China cut rare earth exports and watched the West spiral into panic. Prices soared. But when China eased restrictions under WTO pressure—after a complaint filed by Japan, the U.S., and the G7—the Western effort collapsed. Molycorp folded. The Phoenix Plan went up in smoke.

Today, China has perfected the game. And the U.S. is still learning the rules.

This is not a trade war. This is not about dollars.

This is about control.

The West talks of diversification. But diversification without mastery is theater. And China, with its 92% share of global rare earth magnets, is no longer just a supplier—it is an arbiter of what weapons the West can build.

Beijing holds the center of the board.

And Washington, for all its tough talk, is lost.

Read 6 tweets

America-China Watcher

@PandemicTruther

Jul 12

🧵

Can China’s J-10CE shoot down the French Rafale and US F-35?

The answer is a resounding Yes. And with disturbing ease.

Word has it that Tehran may have acquired 36 units of China's fighter jets J10CE . It may be a rumor — but if true, the implications are immense. With J-10CEs integrated into a real-time data-sharing system, F-35s could no longer roam freely.

But one thing is certain: aircraft alone are not enough.

What Iran needs — and what Pakistan already has — is the full package: early warning aircraft, satellite positioning with BeiDou, long-range PL-15 missiles, GY-27 tracking radar, electronic warfare pods, and data fusion capabilities. In short: not a jet, but a system.

Because that’s how China fights.

China's J10CE can shoot down very easily France's Rafale and the US F35s.

It seems absurd at first glance — that a fighter not even ranked in China’s top five could defeat the crown jewel of the West’s airpower portfolio. But this is not the age of Top Gun anymore. This is the age of systems, where victory belongs not to the pilot with the sharpest reflexes, but to the nation that sees first, decides fastest, and fires before the enemy even knows it’s in danger.

Once you understand this new paradigm, the question itself starts to change. It’s not whether the J-10CE, in isolation, can bring down an F-35 or a Rafale. It’s whether the F-35 and Rafale can survive a sky watched by a thousand Chinese eyes — satellites, radars, datalinks, and AI — all converging on a single target, feeding information into an invisible machine. And the answer is: they cannot.

After my last post — yes, the one where I declared China has already won the military contest against the United States — many readers pushed back in disbelief. I understand. It takes time for the brain to realign, to rewire its sense of strategic gravity. That’s why I let that article ferment before picking it up again. Truth doesn’t always strike like lightning. Sometimes, it seeps in. And once it takes root, it changes everything.

⬇️

II/

In the recent 12 day Indo-Pakistan combat, J10CE downed several Rafales like a child's game.

Pakistan could have destroyed the whole fleet of Rafales, 20 in all in the same way if not for the restraint not to escalate the war

Today, I want to walk you through this shocking shift — the day China’s ‘midweight’ J-10CE embarrassed France’s pride, the Rafale, in a direct air confrontation. It wasn’t a dogfight. It wasn’t even a fair fight. Rafale never even had the opportunity to engage. Not for a second.

Shocking detail was that Rafale never saw it coming. French-built fighter took off from a forward airbase, unaware that it had already been locked by an inescapable kill chain:

Tagged by an over-the-horizon radar node (System A).

The data was instantly relayed to a high-altitude AWACS platform (System B)

— which began real-time tracking, fusing inputs from multiple radar bands and satellites. Without ever turning on its radar, a J-10CE (System C) was silently launched.

Both the fighter and its PL-15 missile maintained full radio silence, remaining completely undetected. Once the PL-15 missile was launched, the J10CE pilot went home. The missile flew without its radar turned on while receiving mid-course guidance through a secure datalink from China’s AWACS.

The Rafale’s own radar — advanced as it may be — picked up nothing. The most humiliating truth is that none of the Rafale’s €280 million-worth of advanced systems functioned when it mattered. A brand-new jet, never even in combat service, was shot down within 20 minutes.

Imagine the humiliation. France was stunned. The entire Rafale supply chain, employing over 10,000 people, was shaken to its core. In this war, France has become the biggest inadvertent victim.

The J-10CE was outside visual range, and the missile, already launched from 300 kilometers away, locking its target and gliding in without Rafale being aware of it.

By the time the Rafale registered that it was under attack, it was too late. Post-crash inspection of the wreckage showed that the missile pods had not even been opened — the pilot never got a shot off.

That is the essence of China’s new war doctrine: blind the enemy, strike before he knows he’s in danger—an inescapable prey and vanish.

It was a demonstration. A quiet unveiling of a new order in aerial warfare. Where the Rafale still dazzles on paper — better sensors, better agility, better marketing — it was still outmatched. Not because the J-10CE was stronger. But because it was not alone. It was part of something far larger: a warfighting organism made of data and silence.

It’s tempting to view modern combat as a contest of thrust-to-weight ratios and radar cross-sections. But that era is gone. You can pilot the most expensive stealth aircraft on Earth and still fall victim to a two-decade-old jet — if your enemy controls the nervous system of the sky.

The J-10CE isn’t about muscle. It’s about mind.
That was the quiet horror that unfolded in May, when China’s J-10CE — a sleek but unassuming platform — brought down a Rafale in full view of the world. The reaction? Shock. Denial. Has China really surpassed France? Has the J-10CE outflown the Rafale?

The answer is: it doesn’t matter. Because the comparison itself is outdated. The Rafale is still a formidable machine. But this isn’t about comparing fighters. It’s about comparing doctrines. China doesn’t build lone warriors. It builds nervous systems — where jets are no longer solo hunters, but synchronized sensors in a warfighting web.

Each J-10CE is a node in that neural lattice — supported by high-altitude AWACS, tethered to radar stations, guided by the BeiDou constellation, armed with PL-15s that think before they strike.

III/
Same fate awaits F35. The F-35, when entering China's aerial territory, will be flying blindfold. Its stealth skin, impressive though it may be, means nothing to China’s multilayered radar grid.

Low-frequency beams, passive sniffers, and long-range scanners light up the airspace like a lantern through fog. In that sky, the F-35 is naked.

China’s air defense doesn’t rely on a single radar. It uses layered detection:

- Low-frequency radars that detect even stealth shapes.

- Passive sensors that track electronic whispers.

- BeiDou satellites providing GPS-proof missile guidance.
F35s will be easily detected and downed. Because this wasn’t a revolution in platforms. It was a revolution in the concept of how wars are fought.

Currently, no western military analyst was able to explain the phenomenon. So I had to improvise "military expert"" and explain on X how J10CE downed the Rafales. And likewise how it will down F35s or F22s.

China's military edge today is not based solely on hardware — it is a byproduct of a networked doctrine powered by AI, proprietary materials, and end-to-end sovereignty.

Can the US/West replicate China's networked system warfare? The answer is a decisive NO.

The West cannot replicate this doctrine at the same level as China, not only because it lacks engineers, but because it lacks autonomy.

China’s BeiDou positioning system is not merely an alternative to GPS — it is anti-jammable, millimeter-precise, and fully integrated with its fire control architecture. Each AWACS node, including platforms like the 815A reconnaissance ship, processes real-time inputs from up to 100 targets simultaneously.

AI prioritizes threats, allocates engagement sequences, and issues optimized kill orders in milliseconds. The human pilot in the J-10CE doesn’t need to see the enemy with its radar and then think how to fight — the system, the AI will do it for him. You no longer need brilliant Top Gun style pilots. You need a powerful system pre-manufactured prior to a war.

Unlike US/NATO, where platform interoperability is throttled by legacy software, bureaucracy, and a shrinking industrial base, China’s integrated command chain fuses satellite data, radar sweeps, and signal intelligence into a single unified battlespace. The doctrine is not just a concept — it has been materialized and has gone into full operation mode.

More critically, export control on rare earth means China can control the level to which the US radar and comms gear can achieve.

Export controls on rare earths ensure no rival can imitate this leap. Even the U.S., the most advanced radar builder, is unable to upgrade without Chinese materials.

This is why the doctrine cannot be copied. The doctrine is not abstract — it is embodied in materials, full autonomous military-industrial supply chains and manufacturing capability.

The U.S. does not control its materials nor its military industrial supply chain.

China dominates the rare earth and semiconductor substrate supply chain — and the implications go far beyond economics. The performance ceiling of every radar, jammer, and communication system is determined not just by design, but by the materials that carry its heat, power, and signal fidelity.

Take the F-35, for example. Its radar uses gallium arsenide (GaAs) as its semiconductor base — a material that is already two to three generations behind. It suffers from lower thermal conductivity, weaker power handling, and limited frequency response. It’s fragile under heat. That means the radar must operate in short bursts or suffer performance drops. It must rest when it should be searching.

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