Zelensky Grabs Whatever Office Supplies He Can Get Hands On In Capitol, Saying He Needs It For War

People got really mad on twitter over this one lmao

SMIC Well on Its Way to 5-nm Breakthrough, Observers Say

In summation:

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) is likely to, in the next few years, again defy the U.S. government by manufacturing chips with feature sizes as small as 5 nm, industry insiders told EE Times.

The production of 7-nm silicon by China’s largest chipmaker just days ago has crossed a red line set by the U.S. government to keep its rival nation stalled at the 14-nm node. SMIC’s widely reported breakthrough erodes the U.S. strategy to use export controls and blacklists to halt China’s technological progress, according to Dick Thurston, former chief legal counsel for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).

“I never had any doubt that they would be doing 7 [nm], and I still don’t have any doubt that they’ll do 5 nm without the EUV tools,” he told EE Times.

The number of new phones suggests the yield at SMIC for the new process node is much higher than the 10% that some have suggested, according to Paul Triolo, who advises tech clients at Albright Stonebridge Group.

“Industry sources within China suggest that the yield is in the 70% range and getting better, which is usually the case with these types of efforts to push existing equipment beyond what it was intended for,” he told EE Times.

There is a limited roadmap for SMIC/Huawei to reach advanced nodes beyond some layers at 5 nm, Triolo added.

Given that SMIC has figured out multi-patterning for 7 nm, they can likely figure it out for 5 nm, Semiconductor Advisers President Robert Maire said in a newsletter provided to EE Times.

“SMIC has clearly proven it can get around the EUV ban,” Maire told EE Times. “Applied Materials, Lam, KLA and others are still shipping tons of tools to China, which is their largest market by far and growing.”

The only source interviewed by EE Times last week who would hazard a guess about how soon SMIC might have a 5-nm chip was Maire.

Maire’s estimate? “Likely somewhere between one and three years,” he said. “If SMIC is keeping pace, probably about two years.”

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) controls on SMIC have been ineffective, he added. “European, , various companies are not 100% following what the U.S. has asked them to do.”

While it is likely that U.S. officials will consider some further measures against both SMIC and Huawei, both are already on the Entity List and subject to the FDPR provision, leaving the “nuclear option” of Treasury Department sanctions, Triolo said.

“Any move in this direction would have a major negative impact on U.S.-China relations, which have seen some minor improvement after four Cabinet-level visits of U.S. officials to Beijing,” he added.

Whether DoC restrictions can successfully inhibit China, “my answer is no,” Thurston said.

“We’ve let the cat out of the bag. We’ve opened up competition to countries that can access all these tools. All this can be replicated.”

China’s chipmaking capabilities are not well-understood in Washington, Thurston said. “How do you actually estimate China’s technological capability? We don’t really understand. U.S. companies have done a poor job. I’m sure TSMC understands much better than others.”

The “high walls, small yard” strategy of U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to keep China behind the U.S. as many technology generations as possible faces a challenge.

“While U.S. officials have stressed that export controls are narrowly tailored to national security-related issues, no U.S. official has clearly explained how a consumer smartphone like the Mate 60 rises to the level of a national security concern,” Triolo said. “It remains unclear whether extraterritorial export controls like the FDPR, which would restrict one Chinese company from selling to another Chinese company, would stand up to serious scrutiny in terms of international law.”

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-military-unequipped-high-intensity-combat-206817 (archived, is anyone else having trouble with archive.is / archive.ph? they seem to just not load at all for me)

The U.S. Military is Unequipped for High-Intensity Combat

The U.S. military’s system was for uncontested logistics, with the ability to conduct depot-level maintenance after evacuating vehicles from the front lines and heavy reliance on a contractor workforce for highly technical repairs. It also relies upon air superiority on the battlefield, which is not a given in combat against a peer competitor.

Former Commandant Gen. David Berger stated that in a great power war in the Pacific, “It’s just fuel and bullets, that’s what I’m going to resupply. The rest you’re going to have to forage.” These logistical limitations will be acute when repairing damaged military equipment. Absent repairs, it may be impossible for Marines to get back into the fight.

Besides the astronomical costs of many of America’s boutique and exquisite systems, the trade-off between the price of these systems and the systems that can kill them is becoming unsustainable

U.S. adversaries will not allow it to build up the proverbial iron mountain of logistics, nor will it be easy to evacuate vehicles or bring forward parts via “just in time” (JIT) delivery by ship or aircraft.

One of the reasons that the Afghan air force collapsed was the withdrawal of U.S. contractors. With the air force collapsing, ground units also gave up as they were no longer assured of resupply, medevac, or close air support. The U.S. military made the situation worse by having the Afghans move away from Soviet-era helicopters such as the Mi-17 and transition to the more technical and maintenance-heavy U.S. airframes. The U.S. military may face its own issues in high-intensity conflict, as defense contractors have withheld the intellectual property behind some of the newest systems, such as the F-35, effectively turning them into black boxes that only the contractors themselves can fully understand. American farmers can tell horror stories of the problems encountered with high-tech tractors and their fights with manufacturers such as John Deere over the “right to repair.”

that bit about the Afghan Air Force was something I hadn't heard before, absolutely amazing imagine having all of your military equipment be dependent on maintenance by foreign private contractors

> I storm into the room, flinging the doors open

> "The Poles! They've stopped sending weapons to Ukraine because of their stupid little trade war over grain; the cracks are forming, the united coalition is splintering! How long can this last? Once the spigot dries up, how fast will Ukraine fold? What new horrors will be wrought in this new multipolar world?"

> my gf turns to me," what the fuck are you talking about, go make some tea"

> I go stare at a screen for eight hours pretending to care about "action items" as I mutter on about Lviv/Lwów

> Work Slack Channel: "Has anybody heard about this really old documentary called 'Tiger King'?"

Pondering the orb of global misery with y'all is fine but god damn do I sometimes feel insane.

Communists and conservatives coincidentally not supporting Ukraine (nominally for the latter): proof that communism and fascism are the same

Liberals and conservatives systemically and deliberately supporting and funding every war, invasion, and occupation by domestic forces: mature, bipartisan, proof that democracy works

So it's confirmed that the "WW2 Ukrainian freedom fighter" that got a standing ovation in Canadian parlaiment yesterday was in fact part of the 14th Division of the Waffen-SS (aka 1st Galician Division). Who do I need to talk to to get the Canadian Polish and Jewish communities on the cuck rankings?

Canadian Parliament gives a standing ovation to a literal nazi soldier

I hate losers so much, there's huge ass thread on republicans holding up pentagon funding (why are they actually able to damage/slow down the US war machine more than the US left y'all this is so fucking embarrasing...) and the comments saying that's a good thing are downvoted to the bottom of the thread. Blue maga never changes I guess

Brazilian Pres. Lula, a former lathe operator, and former Volkswagen assembly line worker/Labor Minister Luiz Marinho met with UAW leaders in New York yesterday, with a delegation of Brazilian union leaders. There, they announced solidarity actions with striking US autoworkers.

China’s healthcare tycoons lose US$17 billion as crackdown spreads

The combined fortune of the top 15 Chinese healthcare billionaires has fallen 17 per cent to US$84.1 billion from US$101.4 billion at the end of last year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The drop comes as the country’s top regulators started a sweeping anti-corruption campaign across the nation’s healthcare sector about two months ago. It has resulted in hundreds of hospital chiefs and pharmaceutical executives being probed, sparking a sectorwide share slump as investors chose to sell instead of guessing which companies will be hit by the clampdown.

$84 billion left to go

Haven't seen many people talking about the new Hersh article, he has some interesting claims:

Major portions of the Ukrainian army have stopped going on the offensive at all

The CIA is becoming very skeptical of the possibility of a Ukrainian victory, and a significant rift between intelligence agencies is forming

Quote from an intelligence official: “The war is over. Russia has won. There is no Ukrainian offensive anymore, but the White House and the American media have to keep the lie going. The truth is if the Ukrainian army is ordered to continue the offensive, the army would mutiny. The soldiers aren’t willing to die any more, but this doesn’t fit the B.S. that is being authored by the Biden White House.”

https://archive.is/2023.09.21-111210/https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/zelenskys-bad-moment

Anyone have a link to the article a month ago when zelensky warned europe what would happen if they lose, basically that the neo nazis would be let loose on them?

omg,.. this Poland ukraine Diva fight has extrem potential .. both nations have the same national victimhood psychosis and they are now locked into an escalation spiral their national psychosis prevents them from getting out from..

poland apperently will Deny all benefits to Ukraine refugees from 2024 onward..

literally the land next to you , at war , at full mobilization .. and you try to use those under your protection as a kollectiv Punshball because what ... Ukraine has sued you in a non functioning court.. ? ...

F-35 fighter jets can only fly 55% of time, US watchdog says

The fleet’s mission-capable rate — or the percentage of time a plane can perform one of its assigned missions — was 55 per cent as of March 2023, far below the Pentagon’s goal of 85 per cent to 90 per cent, the Government Accountability Office said on Thursday.

...

The F-35’s share of the US’s overall tactical aviation fleet is expected to keep growing, providing a boon to its manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Each of the fighter jets costs the government about $160mn.

There are 450 F-35s in the US military’s arsenal — variants are used by the air force, navy and Marine Corps — and the Pentagon plans to buy roughly 2,000 more by the mid-2040s, costing $1.7tn over the programme’s life cycle, including $1.3tn for maintaining the aircraft.

...

The Pentagon is years behind in establishing enough maintenance depot capacity, resulting in repair delays and a 10 per cent reduction in the jet’s mission-capable rate. Part of the challenges stem from a heavy reliance on contractors for maintenance that limits the Pentagon’s ability to control depot maintenance decisions. Delays also arise from spare parts shortages, inadequate maintenance training, insufficient support equipment, and a lack of technical data needed to make repairs.

Ukraine’s worst enemies are those who demand Russia’s strategic defeat

The article covers the counteroffensive and why it failed, which we largely already know about. There's an interesting section on Ukrainian mobilization that I actually wasn't aware of, in the spoiler tags below.

But the main point is here:

Ukraine’s situation has become so dire that former British Army Colonel Richard Kemp—previously one of Ukraine’s most vociferous boosters—recently authored an op-ed in The Telegraph in which he warned that the West “must prepare for humiliation.”

With all due respect to Mr. Kemp, this is not the time for Western leaders to worry about humiliation. Ukrainian solders are dying on an industrial scale. We must do all we can to stop the killing. Western leaders can massage their bruised egos later.

At this stage, the humane and rational thing to do is to oppose the escalation of this war, and to advocate for reasonable, mutual compromises to achieve a lasting peace. This is a war that Ukraine cannot win in any meaningful sense of the word. The best that Ukraine can hope for is a bloody, horrific stalemate that will gradually sap the state’s remaining lifeblood.

With each passing minute, more Ukrainians become permanently disabled. More become displaced. More Ukrainian children become fatherless. More Ukrainian infrastructure is destroyed. More landmines, other unexploded munitions and long-lasting contaminants proliferate among Ukraine’s rich agricultural lands, and more towns and cities become uninhabitable.

The hole out of which Ukraine must eventually dig itself is becoming only deeper. At some point, that hole will become so deep that Ukraine will never come out of it. We are rapidly approaching that point, if we have not passed it already.

By insisting upon Russia’s strategic defeat and excluding any possibility of meaningful compromise with Russia, we doom Ukraine to destruction. To save Ukraine, we must stop this war.

“I guess we’ve got a pilot in our house, and he says he got ejected.”

That was the 911 call received in Charleston County, South Carolina, after an F-35B Lightning II fighter jet's pilot ejected Sunday, parachuting into a home's backyard, according to audio released by the county government.

In the 911 call, the dispatcher at first appears surprised by the caller: "I'm sorry — what happened?"

"We've got a pilot in the house, and I guess he landed in my backyard, and we're trying to see if we could get an ambulance to the house, please," the caller responds.

The pilot gets on the call a short time later and says he is 47 years old, that he ejected at around 2,000 feet after "an aircraft failure" and had some back pain.

"We have a military jet crash. I’m the pilot. We need to get rescue rolling. I’m not sure where the airplane is," the pilot tells the dispatcher. "It would have crash-landed somewhere. I ejected."

The Indian government seems very inclined to break down relations with Canada for a pathetic separatist movement which has near zero support in India itself.

America Can’t Stop China’s Rise - And it should stop trying.

...

All these actions confirm that the American government is trying to stop China’s growth. Yet, the big question is whether America can succeed in this campaign—and the answer is probably not. Fortunately, it is not too late for the United States to reorient its China policy toward an approach that would better serve Americans—and the rest of the world.

America’s decision to slow China’s technological development is akin to the folly revealed by the old cliché: closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. Modern China has shown many times that China’s technological development can’t be halted.

Since the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, several efforts have been made to limit China’s access to or stop its development in various critical technologies, including nuclear weapons, space, satellite communication, GPS, semiconductors, supercomputers, and artificial intelligence. The United States has also tried to curb China’s market dominance in 5G, commercial drones, and electric vehicles (EVs). Throughout history, unilateral or extraterritorial enforcement efforts to curtail China’s technological rise have failed and, in the current context, are creating irreparable damage to long-standing U.S. geopolitical partnerships. In 1993 the Clinton administration tried to restrict China’s access to satellite technology. Today, China has some 540 satellites in space and is launching a competitor to Starlink.

The same principle played out with GPS. When America restricted China’s access to its geospatial data system in 1999, China simply built its own parallel BeiDou Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) system in one of the first waves of major technological decoupling. In some measures, BeiDou is today better than GPS. It is the largest GNSS in the world, with 45 satellites to GPS’s 31, and is thus able to provide more signals in most global capitals. It is supported by 120 ground stations, resulting in greater accuracy, and has more advanced signal features, such as two-way messaging. Other nations have also previously tried and failed to block China’s technical rise. In the 1950s and 1960s, when the USSR withheld nuclear weapons technology from China, China launched its own “Manhattan Project” in the early 1960s and succeeded in testing its first nuclear weapon by 1964. Russian nuclear leverage over China ended that day.

Many of the measures taken by the Biden administration against China were also executed without factoring in China’s capacity to retaliate. While China does not physically construct many truly irreplaceable components of the American technology stack, they are keenly aware of the importance of their raw materials inputs (rare earths) and demand (revenue generation) in fueling the American innovation ecosystem and are now using them as leverage. In the current tit-for-tat dynamic, China will start squeezing these two critical ends of the value chain in response to American technology and capital export restrictions. China’s July ban of the gallium and germanium exports was merely an opening shot across the bow to remind America (and its aligned allies) of China’s dominance in the rare earths and critical metals space. The country has a near monopoly in the processing of magnesium, bismuth, tungsten, graphite, silicon, vanadium, fluorspar, tellurium, indium, antimony, barite, zinc, and tin. China also dominates in midstream processing for materials essential to most of America’s current and future technology aspirations such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, and copper, which are critical for the rapidly developing EV industry globally.

The article continues, talking about mineral supply chains, semiconductors, Huawei etc, then:

This is why the time has come for America to do a major reevaluation of the methods it uses to secure foreign policy goals. Its go-to tactic of imposing sanctions has failed to either halt China’s technological development or influence China’s behavior in any significant way, and most countries do not find that it is in their interests to go along with them. Are there more effective alternatives to sanctions?

In a statement explaining the Biden administration’s approach to China, Anthony Blinken said in May 2022: “we’ll compete with confidence; we’ll cooperate wherever we can; we’ll contest where we must.” We agree with this approach. Rather than undermining its own interests and fortifying a geopolitical and economic competitor, America should practice a more enlightened technology policy. The focus must be placed on initiatives that sustainably support and extend America’s innovation leadership, while surgically removing specific national security threats.

...

Initially, this great power collaboration could be focused on areas where both sides have common long-term interests (like climate change, pandemic preparedness, global economic stability, education). When basic levels of trust are established, dialogue and cooperation can be expanded step by step. None of these moves will result in a diminution of American power and standing in the world. Indeed, America’s prestige and standing could well rise as the rest of the world sees America pursuing reasonable policies that are serving both American and global interests. America will remain the most admired country in the world, if it pursues a wiser course with China.

CTRL-F "profit" - 0 results. Foreign Policy can write all the articles in the world about being nicer to China, but so long as the American oligarchy fears the fall in profits that China's supremacy in markets will bring, this war must continue.

Western monopolies MUST remain unchallenged. Luckily, the dipshits in charge have no idea how to make this happen.

Canada's house speaker apologizes for honoring a fucking nazi, as if he wasn't aware. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/anthony-rota-ukrainian-veteran-apology-1.6977117

The recent Insurgents podcast episode is a good update about the UAW strike.

This could have been such a fucking layup for Democrats (Biden). Just show up to the damn picket line, shake hands, yada yada. But in reality, as we all know, he's more indebted to management and doesn't want to offend them by supporting Labour too aggressively. How are you going to let fucking Donald Trump, run to the left of you on Labour issues. Jesus. Paid to fail

Biden Told Zelensky U.S. Is Willing to Provide Long-Range ATACMS Missiles

It will be interesting to see what happens when these and the F-16s arrive in Ukraine. The F-16s can be seen as nuclear-capable (Lavrov has made a big point of this), and ATACMS would be almost indistinguishable from a nuclear missile launch.

Technically, according to launch on warning doctrine, Russia has to launch its own nukes while the enemy's missiles are still in the air - before they can be known to be nuclear or not. Now, for numerous reasons, I don't think Russia or Ukraine is going to nuke anybody, but Russia's nuclear deterrence might be weakened if they let it slide. Though I guess Ukraine has already used potentially nuclear-capable weapons (Tochka-U and cruise missiles come to mind).

Zelensky Hillary 2024

It's Zillary's turn

There is a lot to like about America and Americans. But the sheer waste of resources on show everywhere was pretty shocking. In Europe we absolutely aren’t doing enough to protect the environment and avert the impending climate catastrophe [...] In Florida they don’t appear to be even trying.

I posted an article about a vacationer's observation of the shocking amount of waste of resources in Florida in c/earth.

https://hexbear.net/post/652997

Canada is having a normal one

Brazil's Indigenous peoples celebrate massive land rights victory

A lopsided majority of Brazil's Supreme Court ruled Thursday against an effort to restrict native peoples' rights to protected reservations on their ancestral lands, in a win for Indigenous activists and climate campaigners.

Indigenous leaders in bright feather headdresses and body paint exploded in celebration outside the high court building in Brasilia as Justice Luiz Fux became the sixth on the 11-member court to side with the native plaintiffs in the landmark case, giving them victory.

will become ?

Our brick houses and walls are so poorly built in South Africa that just a strong wind was seemingly enough to knock down half of them in the Pretoria area. Okay that's a exaggeration, but seriously, there is no way a 114kph / 70mph strong wind should cause that much damage. It wasn't even a rain storm, it was what meteorologists call a "dry microburst"! What the hell is even going on over there in Pretoria? Did they get the three little piggies from the fairytale to build everything?

Honestly, I gotta hand it to elon mungus. Before I used to read the replies and try to dunk on people or annoy some dumbass or look at other profiles for funny posts. But now I just look at the linked post, and close the tab. 10 seconds max. It’s been great. I’m still wasting time, but at least it’s not soul sucking.

https://twitter.com/DD_Geopolitics/status/1706077564249477280

A member of Zelensky’s security detail got inebriated in a NY bar, and demanded that Americans shout “glory to Ukraine” when they didn’t comply they acted in typical fashion and started a fight inside the establishment.

Lol lmao

Pentagon Exempts Ukraine Operations from Potential Government Shutdown

The Pentagon will exempt its operations supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia from a government shutdown that will happen if Congress fails to pass a funding bill by September 30.

During government shutdowns, the US military typically suspends activities that are deemed not vital to US national security. But Pentagon spokesman Chris Sherwood told POLITICO on Thursday that US support for Ukraine would not be suspended.

“Operation Atlantic Resolve is an excepted activity under a government lapse in appropriations,” Sherwood said, using the name for US military activities in Europe that have come in response to events in Ukraine since 2014, the year a US-backed coup in Kyiv led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the civil war in Ukraine’s Donbas region.

US support for Ukraine includes training of Ukrainian forces in the US and in Europe, arms shipments, and providing targeting intelligence. Just two days earlier, Sherwood told POLITICO that US support for Ukraine might be hindered by a shutdown.

The POLITICO report on the Pentagon’s decision to exempt the Ukraine operations came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Washington. The Pentagon said Austin met with Zelensky “to reaffirm the steadfast US support for Ukraine.”

The exemption demonstrates the importance the Biden administration has placed on fueling the proxy war in Ukraine. While being done in the name of national security, the policy makes the US much less safe by risking a direct war with Russia, which possesses the world’s largest nuclear arsenal.

Libs continue to learn nothing. Also it was clearly stated this guy fought against the Russians during WWII. I swear to god these losers would fail an elementary school level listening comprehension test.

UK public support for ‘big government’ hits record high

Some 68 per cent of taxpayers thought government should definitely “be responsible for keeping prices under control”, the annual British Social Attitudes survey found, up from 29 per cent when the question was last asked in 2016 and the highest since records began in 1985.

The large study — conducted between September 7 and October 30 last year, during which time Liz Truss was UK prime minister — found that a record 53 per cent of people thought the government should also definitely “be responsible for reducing income differences between the rich and poor”.

Sir John Curtice, senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research, which runs the poll, said: “Both Conservative and Labour voters have changed their minds about the role of government and about taxation and spending over the years.”

smdh my dick head, the virus of authoritarianism has come to the UK, whose citizens now desire the brutal tankie policy of "wanting the government to do literally anything to improve their lives". damn you, Putler!