Quantity has a Quality all of its Own
And nobody does quantity like the Chinese
Tomorrow, a new post for paying subscribers: Idiocracy, Here We Are. In the meantime, some food for thought.
When Josef Stalin said, “Quantity has a quality all of its own,” he was referring to industrial warfare. Russia recently demonstrated the truth of his observation in Ukraine, and our leaders would do well to remember that nobody understands quantity better than the Chinese.
When they get a revolutionary new hypersonic missile like this (developed by a university team for peanuts) that takes down planes 1200 miles away,
they turn it into this:
And mass produce the missiles in unmanned, automated factories running 24x7 producing 1,000 missiles a day. That’s 365,000 missiles a year. Per factory.
A Chinese engineer friend told me that, in a shooting war, China’s first salvo will be at least 30,000 missiles–enough to cripple every US base east of Guam–and more than America’s entire missile inventory.
Quantity indeed.
This is just one factory that we know of. Imagine the number of secret and underground facilities producing missiles. And we haven't even gotten into shell, bomb and drone production. Let alone all the millions of bombs and shells in storage since Mao's time.
And this is all during peacetime. Imagine a full scale war where hundreds of millions of patriotic Chinese mobilize for the war effort.
Yep, the US threw away its manufacturing industry and competence and has no ability to equal China. The British did the same, and Germany is now going down the same path. The production power of China, Russia and Iran combined easily overwhelm the much diminished West.