Twilight 2025

[Heffe3737]

I don't want to get into this; I have STRONG feelings about current US government and I'll get too political and inadvertently start a flame war. The thread will end up locked, and I think it's too important to be put off limits.

I tried to walk that line somewhat delicately in my post, as I too have some pretty strong feelings on the current administration.

Most of this is essentially possible, and I'll admit I don't know enough about the geopolitics of these parts of the world to contribute much. (For now. I am studying.)

I'm not as familiar with some of these areas as well, so tried to keep the reasoning fairly open and generic.

I have often talked on this board and others about a "bump in the road;" if we don't get over it, we'll either go to the edge, with essentially a non-nuclear World War 3, or we'll take it to oblivion. This "bump" will happen somewhere between 2025 and 2035. If we get over it, mankind has a bright future for at least the next 100 years. Just my opinion.

Agreed completely.

[Heffe3737]

when did this become how Trump causes the end of western civilization as we know it thread

Did I miss something, you give the man too much credit sir

Definitely not trying to imply anything about the current administration regardless of my personal political leanings. With that said, there have been certain chilling effects on international diplomacy that is leading to a more isolated US in geopolitics, and I attempted (perhaps in vain) to capture those in my post. Regardless of political leanings of forum-goers, I think that's probably something everyone can agree on

In any case, I'm also definitely not trying to hijack this thread with political stuff - just trying to write out what I believe to be a somewhat plausible lead up to a potential Twilight 2025 situation.

[.45cultist]

Trump aside, Europe must now choose between social spending and defense. China is 6-8 years past the point of peacefully leaving the South China sea, and faces a currency crisis. Actually most of the world has kicked various cans down the road, choose who trips while kicking. Mexico's cartel problem can easily turn to a Columbian style military action as well. The diplomats snoozed or hoped it wouldn't be their problem when things came to a head.

[Raellus]

Twilight 2021

Headline: Russian Armor Floods Toward Border With Ukraine Amid Fears Of An "Imminent Crisis"

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40016/russian-armor-floods-toward-border-with-ukraine-amid-fears-of-an-imminent-crisis

In a sign of the changing times, it appears that a lot of the intel supporting these reports are images pulled from Russian social media (as opposed to the Cold War staples of ELINT, HUMINT, and satellite images).

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I recall reading an article a few years or more back where Russian military authorities were telling their troops not to post information about where they were involved in military operations to their social media accounts.
Not specifically because of the intel that could be farmed by Western agencies but because there were concerns that terrorist groups like Islamic State could use the information to target those soldiers (e.g. learn who they are, where their family is and then threaten their family) and force them to aid the terrorists.

[Raellus]

Interesting. That reminds me of the big to-do about Tik-Tok a year or two ago. US military personnel were ordered not to download/use it because, as a Chinese-made app, the PLA has access to all of the data. I haven't heard anything about it since, and I doubt military personnel aren't using it now.

[LoneCollector1987]

pmulcahy11b
I think that NATO will lose Turkey, possibly as early as late this year. They been going over more to the Islamic sphere, and the Turkish people are increasingly alarmed by the growing defense budget in Turkey.

As long as the Generals were some sort of control rod, Turkey stayed more or less democratic. But then somebody (whistling EU) decided the generals must be defanged. And nobody thought of the consequences.

.45cultist
Trump aside, Europe must now choose between social spending and defense. China is 6-8 years past the point of peacefully leaving the South China sea, and faces a currency crisis. Actually most of the world has kicked various cans down the road, choose who trips while kicking. Mexico's cartel problem can easily turn to a Columbian style military action as well. The diplomats snoozed or hoped it wouldn't be their problem when things came to a head.

Germany will spend all its money on refugees. To the cartels see my next comment.

swaghauler
Then there are the added "unknowns" to consider. What role would organizations such as ANTIFA (who are just as "Fascist" as the "Fascists" they purport to oppose) play on US (and European) soil How would minorities feel about a "draft"

I remember the 2005 riots in France. And that the area around Marseilles is in the hand of criminal gangs from the arabic area and they are shooting each other with AKs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_riots

So, what if someone uses this to start some sort of civil war in France Just imagine there would be a threatening situation between Russia and the EU and Putin / successor would try to stir up trouble in the EU. I would see four countries that would be used for this because of the high number of muslims in them: France, Germany, Belgium and England.
Yes, I too remember the visits of Erdogan to Germany where he was more then welcome by turkish citizens in Germany in soccer stadiums. Those were filled to the brim.

And what if the cartels would start and support riots in the southwest of the US

And then think of the other side of the coin: Matthew Bracken`s "When the music stops: How Americas cities may explode in violence".
Now add Neo-Nazis and Antifa and voila, Fireball.
Of course there are less guns in Europe then in the USA.

[Rainbow Six]

I remember watching a documentary on the BBC about the British Army relatively recently (i.e. within the last two to three years). One unit was being deployed to Estonia on exercise and there was a scene in the programme where the troops were explicitly told not to take their personal mobile phones as the Russians would try and hack into them.

Theres a story about it here (yeah, I know, its the Daily Mail so apologies in advance. Similar stories are in the Daily Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal but theyre behind pay walls)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4955836/Russians-hacking-NATO-soldiers-cellphones.html

[pmulcahy11b]

I remember watching a documentary on the BBC about the British Army relatively recently (i.e. within the last two to three years). One unit was being deployed to Estonia on exercise and there was a scene in the programme where the troops were explicitly told not to take their personal mobile phones as the Russians would try and hack into them.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ellphones.html

There was a similar article in the Army Times about NATO troops having their cell phones confiscated in Iraq because insurgents could zero in on them and the next thing you know, you're the target of a mortar shelling.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Easy enough to do if you control the phone network, but still able to be done even if you don't control the network because the mobile/cellular phone is just a different sort of radio transceiver.
At their most basic level of operation, phones ping the surrounding area to locate phone towers (to ensure they can get a signal) and they generally like to have access to two or more towers. So your phone is essentially a small radio device that is constantly sending a signal to check it has comms, no radio silence here!

[Legbreaker]

The danger of being located by the radio signals from your phone aside, I believe social media and the increasing habit of soldiers posting selfies and other images is perhaps a greater threat.
One photo alone may not be too much of a problem, but a photo every few days will allow an analyst to glean quite a bit of useful information. Multiply that by several dozen soldiers from the same unit and you very quickly get a detailed picture, even if each individual is taking care in their posts not to show anything sensitive - all put together....

For this (and other reasons) I'm a supporter of the idea soldiers should not have personal, "private" electronic communications systems - communication with family and friends should certainly be encouraged, but no pictures sent electronically, and video comms only from a dedicated location which has been screened off to prevent ANY information being unintentionally transmitted.

Basically take 1940's era mail censorship into the electronic age.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

And a perfect example of this was Western analysis of selfies and other social media posts by young Russian soldiers to build up data on Russian military deployments into Crimea several years back.
While the Russian government and military denied Russian involvement, claiming instead that it was rebel/separatist groups, the social media posts pretty much proved beyond doubt that Russian regular army units were being deployed into the contested area.

[Southernap]

The danger of being located by the radio signals from your phone aside, I believe social media and the increasing habit of soldiers posting selfies and other images is perhaps a greater threat.
One photo alone may not be too much of a problem, but a photo every few days will allow an analyst to glean quite a bit of useful information. Multiply that by several dozen soldiers from the same unit and you very quickly get a detailed picture, even if each individual is taking care in their posts not to show anything sensitive - all put together....

For this (and other reasons) I'm a supporter of the idea soldiers should not have personal, "private" electronic communications systems - communication with family and friends should certainly be encouraged, but no pictures sent electronically, and video comms only from a dedicated location which has been screened off to prevent ANY information being unintentionally transmitted.

Basically take 1940's era mail censorship into the electronic age.

So there was a row a while back about fitness apps within the US Military.

Data point 1 - Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases

Another article on the same topic

As we grow more and more dependent on electronics to do things like generate metrics on stuff like exercise. One has to ask, if we are paying attention to what is being harvested.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

So there was a row a while back about fitness apps within the US Military.

Data point 1 - Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases

Another article on the same topic

As we grow more and more dependent on electronics to do things like generate metrics on stuff like exercise. One has to ask, if we are paying attention to what is being harvested.

I think a parallel question to that is: Are we paying so much attention to gathering metrics about military training that we are forgetting the point of the training
It seems that in some organizations (military and civilian), there is more effort devoted to gathering metrics than there is devoted to the actual operations that are the whole point of the organization in the first place.

[Targan]

pmulcahy11bThen there are the added "unknowns" to consider. What role would organizations such as ANTIFA (who are just as "Fascist" as the "Fascists" they purport to oppose) play on US (and European) soil

If you continue to post statements like that you're going to kick off arguments that this forum really doesn't need.