This applies to businesses too, not just the armed forces. Here in the US, I'd bet you many businesses, even those that have some measure of emergency disaster preparedness, had not made any plans around a plague disrupting their China-originated supply lines, much less that same plague hitting this continent. But some had. I can't find the link ATM, but a month or so ago, there was an article here on HN, about how a grocery chain in Texas had managed to keep their stores stocked and their supply chains running, in part because they had gamed out a pandemic scenario and made plans accordingly. Some businesses in my have area managed to become (more-fully) operational sooner than others as local COVID-related restrictions have been eased. And others are still completely shut down, even though they could start operating partially again under the current restrictions. Dollars to donuts, I'll bet the many of former had gamed out pandemic or similar scenarios, and planned accordingly, while many of the latter had not.
To be fair, Americans and/or pro-US Texans and/or pro-US “filibusters” fought wars in and opposite one or another Mexican regime (sometimes alongside a competing Mexican regime, as in a war between the Mexican Republic and the Empire of Mexico) in the 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1900s, and 1910s.
So, having military contingency plans for invading Mexico in the 1930s wasn't unreasonable, and not just as some kind of abstract exercise.
[EDIT] specifically I think the prompt was something like "It's 10 years in the future, such-and-such party has control of government and can be assumed to hold policy positions basically the same as they do now. General world situation is X. The government has just violently put down mass protests over [something]. Craft a statement for the prime minister defending these actions as necessary for the preservation of the government and protection of general welfare." Which is a completely normal—if simple—sort of poli-sci exercise.
[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/cfbgj1/actual_air_fo...
On the other hand, games are never just games there’s always a point.
> The Pentagon war game documents ... revealed after ... Representative ... called for the government to "freeze" the money of demonstrators after country-wide protests
> "One of the most important tools in the authoritarian toolkit is the ability to freeze the funding of legitimate political dissent,"
> By separating the infrastructure of money from the infrastructure of state power, bitcoin makes it that much harder for this type of politically motivated confiscation.
People have been using bitcoin to donate to Snowden or get money to people in place like Venezuela. Cyprus happened. Now it might happen that anyone who protests might lose their ability to access banking services.
Yet somehow many here think this is just a scenario.
What? Why? How? Did you just make that up? Beyond that, if you lose access to banking services then bitcoin isn't going to help you since you need banking services to turn bitcoin into usable money.
That happens. Most of the non-drug and non-porn sections on dark net marketplaces are about tools for doing this specific thing, and creating completely parallel identities for bank accounts and investing.
Illicit funds in, get crypto, leave crypto into fake/real/not-you person bank account.
They even have entire marketplaces for compromised windows computers, so that you can find a computer near the address of someone's compromised visa card, so that it is more likely your transactions will not get blocked because it looks to be in the same area.
It's more lucrative and much safer to be a criminal in a stable, advanced society with lots of laws and regulation and little social mobility than being a criminal in Somalia. Successful criminals don't want to see society end or even change massively, they are doing fine.
Which is a shame. I'd really like to read about how well blockchain technology -- which is based on very transparent p2p communication -- would fare against the NSA or the Great Chinese Firewall if the US or China actually wanted to stop it.
And as for p2p communication, again, easy to find and charge anybody participating in the network.
Alternatively, don't make bitcoin illegal, just heavily use it to track and arrest people using it for already illegal things, preferably in a shock and awe way where you make a big show of arresting a bunch of criminals at once and then brag in the media about how bitcoin made it all possible.
Bitcoin is terrible at privacy unless you're trying really hard to conceal your identity.
(Some would say this has already happened.)
The other miners are surely free not to accept blocks with double spends, no?
