https://www.k2think.ai/

"Before LLMs your computer did not prove theorems at all. Now it can prove a lot of them correctly."

Actually that was a bit of hype stemming from one success. The hallucinations and high error rates we see in other types of content have been show to still be present in gpt5 proofs.

The thing still doesn't think, reason, or walk through anything... it still just mindlessly spits out a search engine result listing using a statistics based algorithm. The only reason it looks like reasoned output is because the listing is composed of the reasoned contents it was trained on.

You've been drinking authoritarian koolaid. We've just started using our Constitution again here in the states and we tossed the authoritarians. We seem to be making some inroads in helping the UK and Canada ditch their authoritarians as well.

"If armed foes with functional and strong economies were so easy to knock over, Japan would have lost the Pacific in "18 months".
It didn't last 18 months. It lasted 48 months."

We started the conflict with Japan from the position of having virtually our entire pacific fleet wiped out. We begin a naval struggle with China having them massively outgunned. We also don't have to topple them, simply overcome their naval resistance, bomb a couple pipelines, and implement a blockade. Once that occurs ALL the opposition is in starvation mode on oil and at that point everything but small arms becomes useless to them and their positions weaken while the US position only continues to strengthen.

"Russia nearly matches the US in oil production"

That isn't even close to accurate with current US production more than 30% higher than Russia and Europe is a non-entity in a global war because they lack the capacity to project force [in fact their military assets are highly dependent on US infrastructure that gets shut off if they for some reason opposed the US. China is the only other significant entity in the conflict and they depend on oil from the middle east.

"And ultimately- I'm pretty confident we'd lose to ground invasion."

You must be kidding. Who is launching this ground invasion? How do you imagine them arriving? And once they've arrived how long do you really think they last against the millions of heavily armed veterans from the last 70 years of continuous war the US has engaged in?

There is also the simple fact that the US is the third most populous nation in the world and the entire military is essentially a veteran professional volunteer military. Russia definitely doesn't have the numbers vs us and China has untested soldiers who are pressed into service. Chinese equipment has failed where tested in battle and the last time our troops clashed the US averaged a better than 10:1 kill ratio on the ground.

Nobody is fielding better air defenses than Russia and Russia doesn't have substantially better air defenses than Iraq did.

"Stealth is not some magical cloaking device. It simply reduces your cross-section."

Which drastically reduces the probability of detecting it in the first place. The F-117 had a radar cross section of 0.003m. Sure, toss enough missiles at it and they eventually got it but that is old tech now and they first had to know it was there. Note, that F-117 is the ONLY US "Stealth" capable craft ever shot down. The F22 is 0.0001 m and 0.001m is insect territory. The new F-47 can stealth WHILE going supersonic, so good luck hitting that thing even after you know it's there.

You are also failing to account for our vastly more advanced jamming, radar, and electronic warfare capabilities and our large and only recently revealed naval drone manufacturing.

"However, it'd be a closer fight than any of them would like, because even all combined- they only outproduce us by about 33%"

I suppose it depends on how you measure it. After we shut down oil to China the war is lost for 'the world' and it's just a mop up operation but I'll grant that becomes an issue of 'how you measure victory' but at that point the US grows stronger and continues to produce more bombs and drops strategic targets while others can't harm the US or build momentum. As for manufacturing capacity, currently the US outspends the globe with only ~3% of it's GDP, in WW2 we ramped up to 40% of our GDP so even if we were only half as serious we'd very quickly crush a 33% edge.

Sure, of course we didn't all know about the genocide at the time. We did know about them hawking their domestic information control technology [the wraps around the genocide was likely part of the sales pitch]. I think the bigger issue would be the wealthy socialists buying the organs and the population control tech.

"but also provides a tangible example of how AI can be both powerful and privacy-respecting"

If it were especially powerful you'd think we'd have seen indications of how it compares to flagship commercial AIs.

And this all dates back to at least 1995. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"I think any Nivenesque mass-executions-for-petty-crimes-to-fill-the-organ-banks thing will be a limited problem."

You mean like the ongoing mass genocide going on in China? Remember a few years back when they dissected a bunch of still living prisoners and plasticized their parted out corpses and then sent them on global tour to let everyone know they had labor camps full of genetically undesirable people and were highly skilled at harvesting their fresh organs for anyone with the cash?

I think they should be growing beef, pork [hopefully korean style because the American way is a stench nobody needs], chicken, or quail and the feed for the same. Plenty of market for meat and far better for everyone as well. Well, there is a limited market for the quail meat now but if you do dense vertical you can grow so much of it for so little that if you replace soybean crops with quail and feed, taking advantage of all the you could literally solve world hunger.

I can't argue with soybean as a rotator. I'm not a farmer but I am from the rural midwest, smack in the middle of corn country and where soybeans used to be an uncommon site when I was a kid they are the most common sight now whereas the feed corn I used to see everywhere is now a distant second. The farmers I know indicate the price due to subsidies as the reason.

Which is why they don't matter at all; there is no plausible scenario where anyone uses them or responds in kind. Wiping out the human race or effectively destroying the habitability of the world doesn't benefit anyone, even if they themselves are going to lose a war.

"However, the number and capability of US shipyards to either build or maintain ships has significantly atrophied. This is something that even our own military has unfortunately acknowledged."

Compared to when? The latest Ford class was just released and manufactured 2 years faster at a fraction of the cost and modernized tech vs the predecessor. We haven't lost capability we are just building bigger and more advanced ships technology.

"There's perhaps an argument that US ships have better quality"

Argument? You must be kidding. They aren't even close. They have no stealth in air or sea vs US technology and no ability to see our own equipment. They can't jam us, we can jam them. They can't reach us with missiles and we can reach them. The chinese vessels might be numerous but they represent no threat to US naval forces.

"If a war broke out and the US had to mount a WWII-like effort to make produce ships, high quality or otherwise, it would take a long time to ramp up that capability."

And this is where you are misinformed my friend. There is no scenario in which the United globe, let alone a divided one, is able to fight off the US long enough for either side to produce even one ship.

China is the only modern naval resistance. I haven't seen any estimate that gives them more than 4 months against the US military.

It boils down to the simple reality that only Russia and China have the ability to project force globally so there is no direct threat to the US. The rest of the world gets something like 80% of it's oil from the middle east and most of the rest from the US and canada whereas the US can sustain it's own oil needs in war indefinitely. Shutting down [or even destroying] the oil in the middle east is something the US easily accomplishes within 6 months... after that it doesn't matter how much weaponry anyone else has because any force large enough to resist the US on land or sea would burn up their reserves almost immediately and the equipment would become useless junk. They certainly would have no time or ability to manufacture something to resist the US before the US uses it's now completely uncontested [and frankly undetectable anyway] air superiority to cripple every major strategic target.

Of course, in real life it wouldn't be the US vs the world because like I said, nobody sane chooses the losing side if they have a choice.

"The first is with the madness of exploding nuclear weapons. In that scenario, everyone loses, including the US."

Not really, this is a false scenario. Even if nuked nobody would actually push the button and wipe out their own species just for spite.

"In terms of weapons and supplies counts, the US doesn't not overwhelming have more than the rest of the world."

Yes, the US definitely DOES have the weapons and counts which matter and easily matches the rest of the globe. However, weapons which can't project power globally are irrelevant in warfare vs a power on the other side of the world and when that filter is applied the globe is basically reduced to Russia and China. Unless of course you are counting the fake reporting out of North Korea but at this point so many North Korean defectors have revealed that 80% of their troop counts are false and they can't even arm the other 20% with side arms let alone imaginary submarines and ships. Only the dictators personal guard even all have small arms.

"It could be argued that the quality of US weapons gives it superiority, but that is an assumption that can only be verified during wartime."

Yes, and it has, most recently in Ukraine where Russian weapons have failed pitifully vs outdated US weapons. Current Chinese and Russian air defenses were tested against US aircraft a couple generations behind in Iran and failed to take down a single craft.

"The third view looks at manufacturing capabilities, one of the crowning jewels of historical US military superiority."

Not really, first the claim China is ahead is highly debatable but also because China isn't producing anything that remotely compares with modern US weaponry. But even if they were there is no scenario projected to last long enough for manufacturing to come into play.

Even the most optimistic scenario I've seen has the Chinese navy defeated within 3-4 months. Within that time or very shortly after the US shuts down ALL supply of oil from the middle east to the rest of the world [and is well positioned to do it at all times] while the US is able to supply itself and isn't vulnerable to invasion or direct attack. With more than 80% of it's oil cut off [more when you account for the US and Canada as suppliers] the world quickly burns off their reserves and can't mount much of a defense let alone an offense.

A single month isn't an indicator of much of anything. But yes, the economy has been trash for at least a couple years and Biden/Dems invested in masking the issue by attacking metrics and indicators instead of doing anything to stimulate economic activity.

Under Trump we've had positive indicators that show things moving in the right direction, inflation has slowed, lots of investment, energy costs are down, growth is WAY ABOVE expectation, wage growth is finally happening, and the combination of growth, wage growth, deporting illegal/unneeded immigrant workers and upcoming h1b/tech reform will eventually add up to a positive outcome, especially with inbound rate cuts fanning growth flames. Still, it takes time to overcome the inertia of dems shutting down the economy for covid, rampant spending in congress, and then Bidenomics.

Nobody is really being hit by tariffs in the US. Everyone was already charging what the market will bear and they can't afford to not sell to the market, so they have to eat the tariffs for the most part.