And I'm saying they're already well past parity. I do not think the us military in 2026, with all its fancy toys, would necessarily beat the us military of the 1950s.

I absolutely think the Chinese military in 2026 would turn the Chinese military of immediately-post-civil-war to a fine red mist.

The level of both command and doctrinal dysfunction in the american military system, to say nothing of capitalist appropriation, has left it almost entirely a machine for bluster and bravado. They're raiding literal god damn fishing boats to feel like big men, for fuck's sake!

I'll spare you the particulars, but even before the trump officer purges and general 'anti woke' policies, the politics of the pentagon have not been meritocratic for decades, and even before the 'anti woke' recruitment policies they were not picking the cream of the crop in any respect. Even then they weren't meeting replacement quotas. It's worse now; I can't imagine by how much.

Stories I've heard leave me with a sliver of hope that if the us attempts to deploy nuclear weapons; few or none of them will have been adequately maintained for both the missile and the warhead to function.