Is World War 3 About to Start?
China Reportedly Negotiating with Russia To Supply Kamikaze Drones
If China begins to supply drones and ammunition to Russia it could mark a dangerous escalation in the conflict that could begin World War III. And honestly if the U.S. and Europe is supplying Ukraine, why would Iran, China and North Korea not be doing the same for Russia?
This is what the East/West conflict is, it’s a lot bigger than Ukraine or Taiwan, they are just territory of the battle between these two powers.
I speculate that this could result in China and Russia literally merging into a potential United Eastern Front against the West. That would literally be their best bet to survive the chaos that could easily occur in the 2020s.
Military experts believe the ZT-180 is capable of carrying a 35- to 50-kilogram warhead. Sources believe that the design of the unmanned aerial vehicle could be similar to that of Iran’s Shahed 136 kamikaze drone. China’s drone companies are among the best in the world, DJI is easily dominating the market. In this age of killer robots and drones on the battlefield, it is a different kind of war from what we saw in World War II.
Automated swarms and killer drones are only going to get more sophisticated.
There’s a total misunderstanding about what’s coming to the global order of killer robots:
Uncrewed combat aerial vehicles, or attack drones, have become a common feature of the modern battlefield.
The next frontier of the AI-arms race is a cold-tech war over Space, robotics and automation. China is more sophisticated than the West is letting on, trying to isolate it geopolitically. But China has successfully befriended almost the entire developing world and Global South, even as the U.S. is seen by many as a would-be-benevolent bully.
According to the global press last week:
Russia is negotiating with Xi'an Bingo Intelligent Aviation Technology, a Chinese company that produces unmanned aerial vehicles, the purchase of kamikaze drones to be used in the war in Ukraine. This is what the weekly "Der Spiegel" reveals, adding that it should be about 100 drones of the ZT-180 prototype. Xi'an Bingo Intelligent Aviation Technology will produce and test these aircraft for delivery to the Russian Armed Forces in April.
The U.S. will try hard to press China with trade, bans and so forth, but even Russia’s economy has been less impacted by the sanctions due to its trading partners of India and China. In an East-West conflict India will simply go with whichever side it thinks will be the likely winner.
People in 2023, don’t realize the actual risk or probably of War War III starting soon. Ukrainians didn’t actually consider fully the risk that Putin would invade. There was a lot of skepticism about it even in Europe. One year later, this war is more likely to escallate than a peace treaty miraculously to form.
As the West sends Tanks to the Ukraine, why would China not get directly involved?
The German Der Spiegel reported about this with reference to anonymous sources.
The report mentioned that the Russian military is apparently negotiating mass production of drones as they engaged in talks with Chinese drone manufacturer Xi'an Bingo Intelligent Aviation Technology.
The negotiations will deepen the West's underlying concerns over the possibility of China supplying "lethal weapons" to Russia for the ongoing war.
The report also mentions that the tech firm has reportedly agreed to manufacture and test 100 ZT-180 prototype drones. It is believed that the company will deliver the drones to the Russian Defence Ministry by April. May, 2023 could be one of the most dangerous periods around global geopolitical conflict in the 21st century, if things go wrong it will mean World War 3 has begun.
Not all is well in the air in Kiev, Beijing or Moscow. Now that there is a verdict about the origins of the Pandemic, citizens all around the world will want some justice about the misery we’ve all experienced in some shape or form. Where is the accountability for the crimes against humanity? We are approaching 7 million deaths from Covid-19, the true number is much higher. Many deaths of despair and long-covid cases, millions remain unsolved. Many countries underreported or had no means of factual reporting. It’s likely closer to 30 million. So where is the justice if this came out of Wuhan?
The UN’s Xinjiang report accomplished nothing. China says it’s closer than ever with Russia. Russia has essentially erased Ukraine from the map, even if you think the country is still standing. Its economy is in ruins and it will require $Billions to re-build even if the war ended tomorrow. But it’s not going to end any time soon. Russia may even end up using Nuclear weapons. Sweden, Finland and Ukraine cannot join the NATO or the EU fast enough.
But this is how World Wars begin. All it takes is a trigger for two sides to stand up against each other and things to escallate. The U.S. pressing China on Taiwan is yet another trigger point later in the 2020s.
China said that it hopes to play a constructive role in resolving the issue between Ukraine and Russia, while likely already supporting Russia economically and in other ways which nobody knows. Lethal aid would be the obvious next step, given Europe and the U.S.’s insistence that the Spring of 2023 is pivotal in the war. Russia could even end up losing Crimea, that would anger it.
If China were to simultaneously invade Taiwan, that would trigger an all-out fight. The U.S. is already spread thin with Congress divided about how much to support Ukraine and for how long.
China aims to launch nearly 13,000 satellites to ‘suppress’ Elon Musk’s Starlink, researchers say.
This story by the SCMP actually means the “Space-Wars” have already begun. That’s one of the reason I’m getting ready to cover Space-tech and Space news also in the context of geopolitical struggles. As futurist, all of these things interest me.
Heck, I’m currently in Taiwan.
Drones of several varieties have been used on the battlefield during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including makes from DJI. Let’s face it, Russia has deployed them to terrorise civilians in Ukraine and disable essential infrastructure, and Ukraine has also relied heavily on drones for attack, reconnaissance and surveillance.
Drones and robotic swarms are like new weapons, and more deadly for civilian casualties. Russia is committing war crimes that will anger the international community. In the future Chinese citizens in other countries may not even be safe. The U.S. will start its own propaganda campaign against China if China is seen to be supplying military arms to Russia (but if Europe and America is doing it, why wouldn’t China or North Korea?).
This is a battle of ideology and we know from human history, those are the worst kinds. People feel they are fighting for a right to exist. Whether religious or political ideology, humans think these are causes worth dying for and worth killing for. This isn’t just about land or glory of fallen or future empires.
I’d conservatively say there’s a 15-20% chance of a world war in the next 15 years as things are today in 2023. That’s a lot higher than many military experts say of the chances that Russia will use Nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Russia and China don’t value human life including their own soldiers, they will go to any lengths to win their invasions.
Since the invasion of Ukraine is now a war of attribution it comes down to economy sustenance. The U.S. would likely not be able to afford to support Ukraine and Taiwan both in a significant and on-going way if there was a significant overlap between the invasions. China is pretending that it can mediate a peace treaty between the two sides but Ukraine, nor the U.S. are likely to accept its terms.
You could literally wake up one day in 2023, or 2024, and world war 3 would have begun.
Everything from killer robots to Quantum sensing and Quantum communications could give one side of advantage over the other. This includes even more deadly drone swarms that will be very difficult to defend against.
That China’s DJI is such a powerful in drone technology does not bode well for the Ukraine should China get more involved in the conflict.
The U.S. DoD and DARPA have been slipping behind China in military tech and A.I. in recent years. The U.S. might even want to have a conflict now, while they still have a reasonably good chance of defending Taiwan if conflict occurred before 2030, as opposed to after. China is playing a long-game of military and technological supremacy that it’s doubtful any country including the U.S. will be able to match as the 21st century unfolds.
The U.S. doesn’t want to lose its super empire status, and won’t likely let China supplant it (without a fight). Witness Congress wanting to ban TikTok, since TikTok has begun to disrupt Facebook and YouTube, some semblance of free market capitalism in that country. The Ukraine meanwhile is running out of ammunition. China is learning a valuable lesson that if quick strikes fail, a war of attrition favors the larger country, the bigger economy and the closer super-power.
As Japan and South Korea well know, if China wins the South China Sea and Taiwan, there’s nothing realistically to stop them from encroaching on more territory. America and the West may actually want to stop China before they are capable of escalating a World War 3 type scenario. If India decided to side with China and Russia, the West would have a serious problem.
Smaller countries like Australia, Canada and parts of Europe basically have no real impact on such a global conflict. Yet they are incredibly vulnerable to China’s meddling, importance in trade and own kind of foreign manipulation. The U.S. for its part is trying its best to pretend it’s not an empire in decline. If the U.S. lost the war ahead, it might never truly recover as the U.S. dollar becomes more and more likely to be replaced as the global reserve currency. Yet nobody sees any of this coming, people simply don’t write about it much.
History is prone to sudden reversals and outbreaks of momentum and pressure building over decades. China merging with Russia in a super-state is difficult to imagine in 2023, by 2033 it may be less difficult. Whatever happens in Ukraine or Taiwan, we are closer to War War 3 than any time before since World War 2 ended in September, 1945.