Chapter 171: Being too calculating is not a good thing

The major affairs of the country are only sacrifice and military affairs.

As early as the Spring and Autumn Period more than 2,000 years ago, the Chinese chronological history book "Zuo Zhuan" gave a highly generalized explanation of the seriousness of war.

There is a similar statement in the History of the Peloponnesian War written by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides.

War is a very, very serious matter. Even if the two sides have extremely different strengths, the stronger side may not be able to achieve its strategic goals as predicted before the war.

In today's era of modern warfare and the prevalence of self-media, the party that starts the war is always facing moral tests and internal pressure.

Before the White House announced this decision, Jeffrey still wanted to make a last-ditch effort, because in his opinion, if he stayed alive, there might still be a chance of turning the situation around, but if he started a war now, there would be no chance anymore.

For this purpose, he found No.2, who was also his confidant.

"Sir, it is a wrong decision to start a war now. Regardless of whether the final result is victory or defeat, it will cause substantial losses to the Federation.

Victory will cause a huge economic burden. It is impossible for these two places to be completely conquered by us. On the contrary, the cohesion among their people will be increased because of the war.

The aftereffects of the war will create a permanent hatred of the Union between the two places.”

The other party asked: "Don't they hate the Federation now?"

"No, there are still friendly voices among the people towards the Federation. Once the war begins, these friendly voices will be annihilated."

“You can’t change the status quo by relying on public opinion.”

"What if it fails? If it fails, our global system will completely collapse, no one will pay for our national debt, and the entire capital market will collapse."

"It won't fail." The other party said in a cold tone.

Jeffrey was amazed at the other party's confidence. He couldn't imagine that the No. 2 in the federation was at this level.

The other party was already very annoying, and he was even more annoyed when he saw Jeffrey questioning him. Considering that both of them were senior members of the Donkey Party, he thought it was a bit ridiculous that Jeffrey still had a conscience:
"What I'm saying is that it won't fail this year, the federation can delay it until next year anyway."

"But what about next year?" asked Jeffrey.

"That's what the Elephant Party needs to consider." Jeffrey heard the words spoken right in front of him, but he felt as if they came from a long distance away, and he felt a chill.

"You mean" Jeffrey didn't finish.

The other party interrupted directly: “That’s right!
There is no way we can win this year's election. The huge baggage of the past four years has caused all Donald Trump supporters to choose not to vote. We can't win this one anyway.

So as long as we don’t fail this year, the Elephant Party will have to face all of this.”

Jeffrey thought of more: "We keep raising the federal funds rate, raising interest rates, and then going to war everywhere. What will the next White House do if it can't do anything about the current situation?"

There was dryness in his tone.

The other party said: "Yes, you have discovered that we have no chance of winning, so we need to consider the general election in four years.

The boss thinks that all this is being done now is for his election, but in fact it is for the parliamentary election two years later and the general election four years later. "

We are all veterans, so that’s enough for us to say.

Jeffrey fully understood what they wanted to do. They raised interest rates to the point where they could not raise them any further. The next person in office would not be able to raise interest rates to continue playing the numbers game. They would start wars everywhere and let the newcomers find a way to clean up the mess.

Going to war will lead to inflation, and raising interest rates now will cause them to no longer be able to control inflation by raising interest rates until there is no more room for further increases in the future.

That is to say, in these four years, although they were hit helplessly by China's breakthroughs in the technological field, they were able to maintain the prosperity of the U.S. stock market in the last year by raising interest rates and declaring war, and all the data were impressive.

It doesn't matter how people really feel.

After the election, when the Elephant Party enters the White House, it will face an unprecedented difficult situation. The collapse of the U.S. stock market, the financial crisis, and the aftermath of the war will all be dealt with by the Elephant Party. This is obviously not a situation they can handle.

The collapse of the U.S. stock market, soaring unemployment rate, and inflation will all explode in the next four years, and the Donor Party will make a comeback four years later.

In fact, everyone has been able to maintain a decent attitude. Except for the candidates, other stakeholders think it's a good thing that everyone takes turns to live in the White House.

However, the result in 16 was beyond everyone's expectations, and the successor's unconventional approach made most of the political animals in Washington disgusted.

Therefore, it is more important to discredit and bring him down rather than to rotate between the donkey and the elephant, so that future voters will see similar figures and their painful memories will be awakened, forming a certain degree of stress response.

A large number of military-industrial complex representatives on China’s self-media are the voices of die-hard supporters of the Elephant Party.

From the perspective of donations, the complex gives 45% to the donkey and 55% to the elephant, and the difference in proportion is not big.

I can be called a supporter, but I can’t be called a die-hard fan.

What the media won't tell you is that the donkey has started far more wars while in the White House, from Truman in 1950 to Kennedy in 1961 to Trump in 2011.

This is very counterintuitive because these we-media themselves don’t know.

When you insist on investigating the deeper reasons behind it, you will find more interesting things.

That is, many military-industrial complexes are listed companies. Take Lockheed Martin as an example. About 40 members of the American Congress hold its shares, with the Donald Trump Party and the Elephant Party holding a roughly - ratio.

If we rank these holders based on the market value of their stocks, four of the top five holders belong to the Donkey Party.

Therefore, the Democratic Party is highly tied to the military-industrial complex in terms of capital operations.

This is also why even if the Democratic Party does not receive enough support from the military-industrial complex in terms of political donations, they can still make up for this loss from the capital market, or even far exceed it.

The first person to mention the military-industrial complex was President Eisenhower, who defined it in his farewell address as president, warning people to be wary of the military-industrial complex.

However, he did not modify the speech until the last minute. The previous draft had always called it the military-industrial complex of Congress. In the speech, Eisenhower removed the word "Congress" which was originally placed first. If you experience it carefully, you will understand the secret.

Even Eisenhower did not want to offend this huge interest group.

When America announced that it would personally intervene, its capital market showed amazing enthusiasm. U.S. stocks rose across the board, the world was discussing the war, and room-temperature superconductors and topological semimetals seemed to have disappeared without a trace overnight.

"This is a very abnormal performance. The market has always hated uncertainty, and war is something that brings this uncertainty. In the past, when wars broke out, investors used to sell stocks sharply and turn to traditionally safer assets, such as gold, bonds and other safe-haven assets.

It is only over time that the stock market will show the resilience it deserves, and as the situation stabilizes or the scope of the conflict becomes clearer, the stock market will recover quickly.

This time the market performance was abnormal, and it began to rebound rapidly as soon as the war was announced. When talking about this, John Lynch, chief investment strategist of OPL Financial, believed that this was because the uncertainty brought about by China's technological breakthroughs was greater than the uncertainty brought about by the war.

He believes that over the past decade, people have become accustomed to the intensifying geopolitical conflicts, have become desensitized to the intensifying geopolitical tensions, and people's emotions have become weak. This is not uncertainty, but certainty.

More people believe that the future world will be like the last war, with the two giants of the East and the West forming two camps, which will make China's technological breakthroughs a limited threat." The Wall Street Journal 2024 special issue.

After the war broke out, the entire America was like a machine that was filled with gasoline and started running at full speed.

However, this machine is quite strange. Compared with ordinary machines, it is more like a patchwork. The military operates the slowest, while the financial and public opinion systems operate much faster.

"I think America has gone crazy."

"Looking at China's development in technology, it would be strange if they didn't go crazy."

“Not only that, it would be strange if they didn’t start a war.

They are accustomed to describing their opponents as easy to defeat in a short period of time. They view diplomacy and negotiation as signs of weakness, belittle advocates of peacemaking, and the environment naturally determines that they will go to war.

"It's just that they're a little too crazy to start a war in two regions at the same time."

Officials from the aerospace departments of South American countries were discussing the explosive news of the past two days, regarding America's personal involvement, while having a buffet breakfast at the hotel.

Everyone thought this was irrational behavior.

After breakfast, they came to the conference room. Zhou Danjin, dressed in a suit and tie, had been waiting for a long time.

"Everyone, since Mr. Wright is not in Shenhai, he cannot communicate with you in person, but he still values ​​the friendship between you and the countries behind you. He will communicate with you through remote connection."

After he finished speaking, Chen Yuanguang's face appeared behind him, filling the entire screen. Because the screen was so large, it gave people a sense of oppression.

Soon the picture was adjusted, and a complete face was really horrifying, even though Chen Yuanguang looked handsome. After the adjustment, he was sitting at the table, and there was nothing on the table except a computer monitor and a notebook.

"Hello everyone, I'm Wright Chen. I'm glad that our Trail Blazers Rockets have attracted so much attention. I'm glad to see you all here."

Representatives from various countries in the audience had all heard about Chen Yuanguang's deeds to some extent. In their perception, he should be an unruly and absolutely self-centered person. However, the impression Chen Yuanguang gave them was completely opposite to what the South American media told them.

"Guangjia Aerospace has always been committed to space mining. Reusable rockets are the only way to go in space mining. We hope to provide rocket launch services to organizations other than Guangjia Aerospace.

This will be beneficial to our technological iteration. The more rocket launches the better. It will also help us obtain a certain amount of cash flow. Any organization that wants to survive and live well needs as much cash flow as possible.

We only have these two main goals, and we will never ask for anything other than money."

Chen Yuanguang's words had a hidden meaning, but everyone had a blank expression on their faces. Even if they felt that Chen Yuanguang was right, they would not express it directly.

"If you are interested in our space projects, we can have some joint research and development projects. Unlike some institutions that only recruit local people, Guangjia Aerospace will try some international scientific research cooperation.

Of course, this kind of scientific research attempt requires participants to fully prove their strength and be able to provide support for our research and development projects. It is not unconditional. "

Ever since Liang Mengsong gave him valuable advice on topological semimetals, Chen Yuanguang realized that the top experts in any field have their own strengths and may be able to fill in the gaps in the areas that he is lacking.

After this was said, officials from various countries in the audience finally couldn't hold it anymore and started to communicate privately.

"The conditions offered by the Chinese are good. They are much more sincere than the Americans."

"They talk about cooperation, and you need to show your strength."

"What this means is that you can trade. Your ability is strength, and being able to come up with money is also strength."

"Is Em richer than the Chinese? Or in front of the richest Chinese in the world? Are you crazy like the Americans?"

Chen Yuanguang interrupted and said, "You are welcome to ask questions after I finish speaking."

After he finished speaking, the audience began to quiet down.

Chen Yuanguang continued: "You are here to see the latest sea launch of the Pioneer 2 rocket. Considering the upgrade and iteration of the core components of the Pioneer 2, this is our first launch.

The last time we launched it, it failed and it was beautiful, exploding into a firework in the air.”

All the officials present here are aware of this matter. Because of the rare failure of Guangjia Aerospace and Chen Yuanguang, it was hyped up by European and American media and was well known to everyone. During that period, related news could often be seen on social media.

Without exception, all of these news reports questioned the level of Light Armor Aerospace. Many American media also hinted that Light Armor Aerospace's technology came from SpaceX, and that the previous cooperation between Light Armor Aerospace and SpaceX allowed them to steal technical secrets.

The last failure was due to their technological updates and iterations, and the previous technical secrets could not guide subsequent updates and iterations.

Many people believe this, even in China. However, with the successful development of room-temperature superconductors and topological semimetals, fewer and fewer Chinese people believe this.

But the officials present had seen too many lies and deceptions from the European and American media, and everyone had become desensitized. In addition, Joseph's death made them extremely disgusted with America.

So they didn't believe it at all.

"Considering that we have adopted a lot of new technologies, I cannot guarantee that its launch will be 100% successful. I just hope that if it turns into a gorgeous firework in the sky, I hope everyone can give it some time and encouragement."

(End of this chapter)