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Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

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Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#41

Has the rest of the democratic world been making plans to reduce reliance on the US since the first Trump administration? Will this term be the end of the craziness or is this the end of the US as a super power?

I actually have been speculating since Trump 1 on whether Europe would eventually join the Chinese block.

On the one side, we (now) have Trump both threatening Europe with the potential of an invasion of Groenland, and explicitly telling Russia that it won't intervene if Putin bombs Europe, so if I were a European leader, I'd be looking for allies.

On the other side, we have China and Europe being the two powers who actually pay a little bit more than lip service to long-term thinking, in particular the future of the planet, while Trump is explicitly saying f*ck to the environment.

Yes, there are countless divergences between China and Europe, in addition to competiton. But we've seen stranger bedfellows.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#42
post #37

Has the rest of the democratic world been making plans to reduce reliance on the US since the first Trump administration? Will this term be the end of the craziness or is this the end of the US as a super power?

> Has the rest of the democratic world been making plans to reduce reliance on the US since the first Trump administration? Plans were already being drafted before Trump won the election, given his strong polling, but bureaucracy makes things move a little slow. I think it has united EU countries who understand that this over-reliance on the US can be problematic given how quickly policies can shift, and will lead to…

My fear is not that Russia and allies will fight a giant land war with all of Europe. It is that Putin will continue moving his lukachenko and viktor orban pieces and acquire new ones through out Europe that will effectively make Europe reliant on russia and in some ways controlled by Russia. They don’t need to own everything to control everything.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#43
post #17

Great news for Iran, which might not need to assemble its own nuclear warheads and instead could buy them off some shady salesperson in Bulgaria once they've been pilfered from the US.

I don't know. Has DOGE accessed the nuclear codes yet for a first strike offensive towards Iran yet?

I don't think there are any "nuclear codes". I think they might have been a thing at some point in history since the idea is so pervasive, but in a crisis you'd not want someone to have to figure out some non-trivial password before MAD doctrine can be applied.

Maybe I'm wrong, I know more about field tactics and guerilla warfare than grand strategy.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#44
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I would love to hear your understanding of French military history. Genuinely curious to know what year you would choose to begin with.

Americans vaguely know from war movies that they capitulated to the Nazis and then the US (and the US alone, of course) had to come rescue them, and that they refused to participate in the US's illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, which then led to a propaganda campaign against France, including Freedom Fries and other nonsense. (France absolutely did partake in the war in Afghanistan, deploying several thousand troops in 2001, so nobody can say they didn't come to aid when requested.)

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has spent half a century being like “Look at me, I can offer nuclear umbrella, and also sell modern weapons, who need the crazy US when you can have me ”, and is finally hoping to score !

[flagged]

Here you go: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Franc...

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#46
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. Has DOGE accessed the nuclear codes yet for a first strike offensive towards Iran yet?

I don't think there are any "nuclear codes". I think they might have been a thing at some point in history since the idea is so pervasive, but in a crisis you'd not want someone to have to figure out some non-trivial password before MAD doctrine can be applied. Maybe I'm wrong, I know more about field tactics and guerilla warfare than grand strategy.

I remember reading somewhere (atlas obscura, maybe?) that the US military was much more scared of a rogue general launching a nuclear strike than of the USSR starting the war.

So I'm going to assume that there is _some_ kind of code.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#47
post #14

Has the rest of the democratic world been making plans to reduce reliance on the US since the first Trump administration? Will this term be the end of the craziness or is this the end of the US as a super power?

It really does feel like this is the end of the US as the dominating super power and world police. Who wants to buy weapons from the US when you won't get permission to use them to defend themselves? Who wants to make deals with the US when they will just get torn up and the US will even threaten their allies with economic sanctions and even invasion? Who in their right mind will lean on the US to protect them, when…

They'll transition to be an even bigger bully.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#48
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Basically that and the president being the executor of laws and having a standing army that he is chief of … effectively makes him a king. Especially since Congress is bought and paid for and won’t impeach him.

I'm putting this one on the voter, not Congress. As dumb as it is, Trump ran on these policies and is delivering.

No electoral mandate can make illegal actions legal, or abrogate the law. The refusal of the congressional majority to enforce their authority under article 1 is what is causing this constitutional crisis.

(Also, Trump did not run on these policies -- he's implementing policies he explicitly repudiated when he lied about not being affiliated with the Project 2025 manifesto.)

I don't want to let the voters off the hook, but continuous, ongoing responsibility for this unfolding economic and political disaster lies with the people who hold institutional authority, and are refusing to use it to comply with the law as it stands.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#49
> Nuclear security is highly specialized, high-pressure work, but it's not particularly well paid, one employee told NPR. Given what's unfolded over the past 24 hours, "why would anybody want to take these jobs?" they asked.

The people who will be hired in those jobs in the future are the ones who can't find any other job, and don't care one way or another. It will be a catastrophe of epic proportions, but hard to notice at first because it happens so slowly. Which makes it all the more dangerous.

Re: Managers given 200 characters to justify not firing nuclear regulators

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any great money savings isn’t going to come from getting rid of personnel. Spending on government employees is only 6.8% of the budget. If they reach their goal of cutting 10%, that’s still less than 1% of the budget. They are going to have to cut Medicare, Social Security and military spending to make a dent.

If you believe Musk wont reach it you are dreaming. Just cutting all funding to all those NGO and those foreign news institutions will do it. In many countries a big chunk of governments workers are bs jobs and are just there to maintain an aging machine look like its working while helping reducing unemployment rate by financing useless jobs.

In the game Civilization, there are different ways to achieve victory, one of which is a Cultural Victory.

A lot of the foreign aid the US does is kind of like this, where we're attempting to shift other countries to our way of life through a mix of direct aid, loans, news, and other methods.

There's a real long term ROI on these things where it's inarguably to the US' benefit that other countries want to speak English, use USD, operate businesses similarly to how we do, etc.

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