[phtrivier]

My biggest fear at the moment is robot armies and police forces.

Case in point : we're all expecting China needs to invade Taiwan soon, or they will run out of soldiers because of the one child policies of the 70s/80s.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding up against a "modern" army with quickly assembled drones.

So it all seems a bit like "they'll never put tanks through the Ardennes", sort of ?

Where and when will the first invasion of a country by a purely remote controlled, AI assisted army take place ?

Will robot battalions embed civilians to act as human shields ? Will the AI learn to mistreat the locals to maintain fear, or will they see it as a needless distraction and rush to the center of powers ?

If war is mostly played out from a disrance, will years of playing RTS give South Korea an edge ?

[cik]

> If war is mostly played out from a disrance

I left a company because they pivoted to exactly this. There are so many companies in this space today, testing what they call "physical AI autonomy" today, and we have to recognize that this is our today.

There are entire marketplace options for buying the pretrained, supported, private models, or the datasets if you have your own goals. If you're interested purely in ditzing around with GPS denied, or communications lost, you can do that today.

I watched a demo video, in March where a company was sharing their remote instructed (note, not controlled) multiple format (spider, dog) robot swarm. The company claimed to be 35km away from where the drones dropped off the payloads, and the mission was engaged. Lightweight explosives were used to toss off a car.

This is our present.

[matwood]

People saw Black Mirror and made a business plan out of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror)

[mywacaday]

Also this shortfilm SlaughterBots from 2019 https://youtu.be/O-2tpwW0kmU?is=F7RNLXcVuLA5A_lA

[mc32]

It’s been a part of sci-fi for a long time.

[rich_sasha]

It's going to happen and at some level I'd rather war casualties were measured in robots rather than people.

My concern is the cottage industry of integrating guns with half baked AI at the lowest cost. And probably vibe coded too.

The companies don't care - a sale is a sale. MoD maybe doesn't care - 90% accuracy and less human casualties on their own side are a win. Governments want to save money and by the time they find out the robots go rogue, it will be too late to do anything about it.

[spwa4]

The problem is always the same. It's not just MoD (is it MoW now?) that will have access to this.

YoloV8 + optical flow works fine on an esp32. You want to give a drone rough coordinates for a refinery and hit something in it, like a storage tank? That'll work. This means, give it 5 years, relatively small groups will have access to it. This cannot be stopped.

The only real answer is to work to have groups that you can trust to have access to this first.

[rich_sasha]

Sadly, building an AI that analyses camera imagery and aims at humans, from scratch, is these days almost an intern project. It's not really something you can control or ban, the way you can control, dunno, uranium enrichment.

Integrating it with a robot and sticking a gun on it, thankfully, requires a bit more know-how.

[squigz]

> The only real answer is to work to have groups that you can trust to have access to this first.

How will this help exactly?

[spwa4]

1) they'll know it exists in the first place

2) they can figure out a plan for when it happens

3) they can see if any countermeasures would be effective

4) they can figure out what to look for and find those weapons before they're fired

cfr. nuclear deterrence, right. There is "nothing" the US can do about other nations enriching uranium and making bombs, other than bombing those countries. The US can't change the laws of physics, follow the right formula and it'll work. However the US can figure out exactly what to look for to either prevent it from happening through intervention or at the very least get some warning before it's used ...

[galkk]

Don you know?

The world peace and harmony will be achieved when all the good guys will gather together and kill all the bad guys.

[IX-103]

I can't wait for the day that killing a human-any human-is considered a war crime.

[0xdeadbeefbabe]

I can't wait for the adds for war crime defense attorneys.

[phtrivier]

And then it will be just another war crime committed daily conflicts, and nothing will happen because there is no world police ?

Ask Ukrainians, Lebanese, Gazaoui, Somalilanders, or even Iranians for that matters - that may not make a big difference to today...

What I would love to see is a local government suing an arms producer for the efficacy of their weapons. (Or even funnier, the owner of a home destroyed by a drone, suiving the GPS company.)

We all know that the only things people in suits are really afraid of, more than hell, is a bad Q4 report and an expensive lawsuit.

[danny_codes]

Friendly fire is going to get crazy. Can’t trust an LLM on its own for more than a few iterations..

[dyauspitr]

Don’t worry, it will auto compact its context.

[TheScaryOne]

I can't wait for the Faro Plague and the robot dinosaurs.

[kibwen]

Marching humanoid terminator robots will never be as cheap as a drone. Autonomous suicide drone swarms are what should terrify you.

[throw4847285]

You say that now, but once we perfect AMBAC technology and accidentally release large numbers of Minovsky particles, we will need humanoid combat vehicles to fight our battles!

[antonvs]

> Minovsky particles

I love the way these things always have to have names that sound exotic or menacing to English speakers. Where are the Smith particles or the Jim particles?

[throw4847285]

Well in this case it was made by and for Japanese speakers.

[antonvs]

I guess Russians are scary for everyone. Including Russians, I assume.

[throw4847285]

All of my Russian friends briefly become terrified when they pass by a mirror, and have to regain their composure.

[trhway]

Autonomous suicide drone swarms are easily countered by autonomous interceptor swarms.

>Marching humanoid terminator robots

ground bots, not necessarily marching, do have their value. They can have bulletproof armor, while still be relatively lightweight and small and fast. They can easily carry even 20-25mm autocannon - very destructive weapon, sometimes can even succeed against a real tank.

And imagine when a swarm of drones lifts a ground bot, brings and drops it right into the needed point and protects it from the enemy drones while the ground bot just destructs the things around. Synergy between different weapons system has always been the super-weapon.

[DennisP]

They can also sit in one spot guarding a position without using much battery. Ukraine recently took territory from Russian forces using ground bots, the first time it's been done without using soldiers on the ground. Now they're starting to scale the bots up to mass production.

[trhway]

the issue is remote control. Ground position means a lot of obstacles in addition to the widespread jamming. One can try to control the bot from the fiber-optic controlled drone hanging over, yet such complication has its own drawbacks. That means that ground bots are in real need of making them autonomous.

[Gud]

They don’t need to be remotely controlled anymore! Autonomous!

[fhub]

Not marching, but Ukraine uses continuous track machine gun robots seemingly very effectively. They aren’t suicide ones.

https://archive.is/dpNsN

[rustyhancock]

They are an interesting prospect but their use isn't quite as claimed.

They are extremely vulnerable to the same drones humans are.

It's more along the lines of this is a patch were not expecting active fighting this robot can act as a deterrent and surveillance.

Cheaper and simpler than a loitering IRS drone. But more concentrated in domain.

I believe for a while Samsung developed similar drones for the demilitarised zone in Korea. Those could be static as they were hard wired in.

[andriy_koval]

> They are extremely vulnerable to the same drones humans are.

I am not confident about this. Human gets disabled by few small shrapnel projectiles into soft tissue. It is possible to build way more protected robot, for which you need some direct hit to disable it. That robot could also be very agile: e.g. do some evading jump at the last moment before being hit.

[rustyhancock]

I think you just pitched a Robot Wars revival for 2026.

[fhub]

This article shows them being used for offense.

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/20/europe/robots-ukraine-bat...

[SecretDreams]

> Marching humanoid terminator robots will never be as cheap as a drone. Autonomous suicide drone swarms are what should terrify you.

If money or economics were relevant in these decisions, most wars would probably not play out in the first place. Tesla probably wouldn't be worth 1.2T. And we certainly wouldn't see AI buildouts happening at their current rates.

Economics and costs only matter for normal humans, small countries, and efforts that might actually help humanity. They're not seemingly considerations in nefarious applications.

[DennisP]

It matters quite a bit. If your drone costs $1000, you can build a thousand times more of them than if a drone costs $1M. As the saying goes, quantity has a quality all its own.

This is a lesson the US has yet to learn, and its military drones are really expensive. Ukraine learned it by necessity, and now it's building millions of drones annually.

[boothby]

On the other hand, if Musk really flips his lid, he's one OTA away from a network of ground-delivered lithium bombs. The fear of humanoid bots is their banality: if a government or private company has a reason to build them, then the world is full of hardware with terrifying capability and questionable security.

[andyjohnson0]

I think what your parent commenter means is that, if the application is warlike or nefarious, them the money will be found. If, on the other hand, it is humanitarian, then every penny will be counted.

[phtrivier]

I disagree. If your charitable application is profitable, it will get funded.

Now, people will hate you for doing a "good" thing for money (exhibit A : name any pharma company selling the drugs that keep people alive ; that company is going to get called a "cynical shill" given enough profit.)

It just happens that the bad things are often highly profitable, so the investors will pour the pensioners money in (because the pension money must flow.)

That being said, the best way to get funded is not for your app to be good or bad, but to be massively fun. Sell tulips, video games and Céline Dion tickets. Find a way to divert 10% of the benefits to a charity.

[DennisP]

Yes, I get that, but for whatever amount of money is found, you're better off using it more effectively. The cost of things still matters, if you want to win wars against serious adversaries.

One problem the US has had in its Iran adventure is that they're shooting down $30K drones with million dollar missiles, often several of them. Now the missile stockpiles have been depleted by 30% to 50%, depending on missile type, and they're not all that quick to replace.

[kruffalon]

> If money or economics were relevant in these decisions, most wars would probably not play out in the first place.

I don't understand what you mean here.

Aren't wars fought over natural resources or the political power over natural resources.

Obviously people sometimes miscalculate but in principle I mean.

[antonvs]

> Aren't wars fought over natural resources or the political power over natural resources.

Not really. They’re fought over fear of the future, desire for control and power over other people. “It’s us or them” captures one of the core calculi of war. It’s not rational, it’s just an expression of evolutionary imperatives.

[imtringued]

Most military grade drones cost $10k or more and they can only be used once.

An optimized quadruped could probably be built for the same price and have an integrated 60mm mortar instead. The front legs act as the bipod and the rear legs would be designed to dig into the ground for stabilization. The only problem here is reloading the mortar, which could be done using a revolver style magazine. That's 5 shots per robot vs 1 per drone.

[fragmede]

Which of those is opening doors?

[4gotunameagain]

Two drones. One to blast the door open, the next goes through.

Still more cost effective than a humanoid robot, even in the presence of hundreds of doors.

[fragmede]

That breaks the building. If you want to destroy the whole thing, conventional weapons has that covered. Drones can't get through nets and doors. Though, have you considered packs of robot dogs with machine guns and one arm/hand? Cheaper than a fully bipedal humanoid robot.

[vasco]

One thing exists and is known to work and be cheap. The other it's you musing about what will be possible. So they need to be judged differently. No land robot can move through a war environment in any effective way at the moment and also "open doors" etc. They are too slow. Not drones.

[fc417fc802]

> have you considered packs of robot dogs with machine guns

I don't have it to hand but already a few years ago a defense contractor had attached quite a heavy rifle on some sort of articulable mount to the top of something that looked exactly like Boston Dynamic's Spot. I'm not sure how much ammo it was capable of carrying or what it's range was but it's definitely a concerning development. I think I might become an enthusiastic custom anti-materiel rifle collector in the near future.

[philwelch]

The Marines did it with a rocket launcher. https://www.twz.com/marines-test-fire-robot-dog-armed-with-r...

[plaguuuuuu]

I'll carry an ammo belt of little EMP devices.

[Terr_]

Or they might decide to, er, pre-deliver the payloads.

"Citizen, congratulations on reaching your age of majority. Report for your Patriotic Assurance Implant at surgical bay 43B."

[DrScientist]

Not sure China actually needs to invade Taiwan - it just needs to be patient. cf Hong Kong.

Totally agree with you about the dangers of autonomous killing machines - I think the two key problems here are.

1. Reduces the political cost of going to war. Though as Iran has shown, there are other ways to exert political pressure even if the other military can hit you with almost impunity.

2. This is really a follow on from the first - low cost ( in all meanings of the word ) weapons makes asymmetric warfare available to all - and this won't be limited to governments.

On the positive side one of the potential outcomes of 2. is that countries and the world will need to operate on the principle of consent, as force will be nigh on impossible.

[tasuki]

> Not sure China actually needs to invade Taiwan - it just needs to be patient.

An interesting point. China has historically been good at being patient.

[dyauspitr]

We are less than 5 years from robot armies. I mean if you put a person behind a Unitree robot, we have robot armies now. Those things run pretty fast and are quite good at obstacle clearance. They also cost $20,000 per unit which is throwaway money by any metric. Full autonomy is real close though.

[Morromist]

China had more births in 2025 than all of europe and russia combined so I don't think they're going to run out of soldiers.

[marcus_holmes]

The more important fact is that China makes all the drones

[LanceJones]

But also more deaths. It's the delta that's important.

[vasco]

Old people don't go to war, how is that important. All that matters is who has the most 20 year olds they don't care about killing.

[phtrivier]

The births of 2025 will be the warriors of 2050. By then, a bunch of those will be needed to, you know, run things around the country. It's clear that China is going to use tech (as in, artificial wombs, neural implants for optimized beaurocracy, and plenty of robots.)

My big question is:

- will they keep the human bodies warm to care for the elderly, and send robots to war ?

- will they keep the robots to take care of the elderly, and send the young's to war ?

- will they dispose f the elderly to keep their edge ?

- will they play long and wait things out ?

[AlecSchueler]

> China needs to invade Taiwan

> It's clear that China is going to use tech

I hear this all the time but the invasion never seems to come. Is it just western projection at this point?

[phtrivier]

It's not "western projection" to say that China _wants_ to get Taiwan at some point.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj94y87k2ljo

Given how the "peaceful" way failed in the last few decades, it's not insane to assume they might try a good old fashion invasion at some point.

From what I understand (as in "from what William Spaniel says"), given the weather constraints, it's something to look at closely every April and October. Seems like we're good for this April (which was not a given - attacking while the US is wasting ammunition in the Middle-East must surely have been tempting..)

[AlecSchueler]

What do you want me to take from your BBC article? Their mutual and explicit commitments to peace?

> it's something to look at closely every April and October. Seems like we're good for this April

So the rationale for the belief is that a specific American scholar says it. And what he says is "it could happen any time but so far we've always been lucky."

Honestly without any actual reasoning or evidence to back that up it's difficult to take it any more seriously than a tarot reading.

The invasion of Greenland seems much more likely.

[mjcohen]

If you believe them.

[hatthew]

> If war is mostly played out from a disrance, will years of playing RTS give South Korea an edge ?

Not sure if this is serious, but RTS skills are different from real-world battlefield skills. Macro is completely different, and while micro skills might be slightly transferrable, computers are so much better that no human will ever be microing real units on a real battlefield.

[phtrivier]

This was tongue in cheek, yes.

That being said, "the Russian army will be driven to a virtual stalemate by a former comedian leading a decentralized group of startups remote-controlling handmade Wall-E clones equiped with machine guns, while the former real tv anchor leading the US army helps the Russian side to distract people from the pedophile ring he did _not_ take part in" would have sound very tongue on cheek, too.

[hatthew]

haha agreed

[watwut]

> Case in point : we're all expecting China needs to invade Taiwan soon, or they will run out of soldiers because of the one child policies of the 70s/80s.

I expect China to invade Taiwan, because they now know they likely can. I do not expect them to "run out of soldiers".

[munksbeer]

Silly Devil's Advocate argument:

What if there are no human soldiers or fighters at all? No-one needs to die in a war again, but wars are won by the side with the stronger tech.

What are the possible outcomes of this? Technologically superior countries start a race to acquire more territory, so large blocks expand and absorb other countries? More wars? Fewer wars? More suffering? Less suffering?

Disclaimer: I'm not imagining this is really possible. As long as some humans from group A don't want to be under the rule of group B, humans will resist and fight. But it is just a thought experiement.

[watwut]

> What if there are no human soldiers or fighters at all? No-one needs to die in a war again, but wars are won by the side with the stronger tech.

Ultimately, the side with more arms will be killing humans, soldiers and citizens of the other side. They simply wont stop at destruction of machines.

Look at Iran war - USA can bomb them without threatening themselves. Or Lebanon - Israel can bomb them with no repercussions. In both cases, weaker side has people killed. In the second one, in an astonishing rate.

[grey-area]

All war tends toward total war, so that will never happen no. The incentive to break any such agreements is too strong.

[kjkjadksj]

One outcome is to just sacrifice your human population as meat shield or bait. Only thing you need to maintain your control on your corner of the world is the robots, not meatbag humans with all the liability inherent to that.

[phtrivier]

This. I'm pretty sure any sufficiently autonomous / AI driven / remote control battalion will embed some "volontary" humans, so that "nuking the robots from orbit" is at least politically unpopular.

Though, given what we've used bombs and drones to do to unarmed civilians in the last century, that might done make military planner budge...

[justacrow]

Philip K Dick wrote a short story similar to this, "The Defenders".

[altmanaltman]

I mean if a technological superior country start a race for more territory, we will have another world war and nuclear weapons fired. No robots matter in that scenario.

[lern_too_spel]

It becomes nearly impossible for citizens to overthrow dictatorships, and countries with weak democracies will quickly be overpowered by the oligarchs living there, who can now impose their will on the larger population of poor citizens with impunity without worrying about being overthrown by overwhelming numbers. Having an electorate that is so misinformed that it can elect Trump becomes a much more dangerous liability.

[kjkjadksj]

Makes me think with the whole zuck ai at these ideas are ultimately immortal. Which is terrifying. Kill zuck the man, but with this you don’t kill zuck the idea which is what you wanted to kill in the first place. That zuck ai will be around 1000 years from now in control of vast planetary resources. The real zuck long since discarded with the rest of the human population.

[thatguy0900]

To some extent it already has, Ukraine had a press release a few days ago stating they had attacked and taken a position using only robots and drones for the first time

https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-russia-position-take...

[kjkjadksj]

People were making jokes about the recent chinese robot marathon saying this is how it will be when they get drafted to defend taiwan from chinese invasion. Just running from these robots that can full sprint as fast as a tiger with no lactic acid build up. They were hot swapping batteries during the race so these things really have no down time.

[mghackerlady]

Is it possible South Koreans edge in RTS games is from their compulsory military service?

Also, China is not likely to invade Taiwan any time soon. It'd be geopolitical suicide and they're currently in a very good spot geopolitically. Invading the country with the rest of the worlds chip fabs is the quickest way to lose that

[ishouldbework]

> Is it possible South Koreans edge in RTS games is from their compulsory military service?

Unlikely, most players postpone their service as long as possible, and majority does not play professionally again after completing it.

[kjkjadksj]

People said that about iran if they closed the strait, and here we are week number what now with them being seemingly little worse for the wear. Maybe these predictions are too pessimistic.

[f6v]

> we're all expecting China needs to invade Taiwan soon

Ah yes, China has a track record of invading countries.

> or they will run out of soldiers because of the one child policies of the 70s/80s

As opposed to NATO countries who have a steady increase in the number of young conscripts.

> Meanwhile, Ukraine is holding up against a "modern" army with quickly assembled drones.

I don't know why you put modern in parentheses. Russia did make a mistake of not adopting cheap drones earlier in the war. But Russians were the first to use optic fiber drones resistant to electronic warfare which gave them an edge during Summer offensive last year. Ukrainians have since caught up and their allies were able to supply them with large number of drones. But both Ukraine and Russia rely primarily on drone warfare and artillery becomes less important for both sides. Which all explains the static state of this war.

[dyauspitr]

> Ah yes, China has a track record of invading countries.

Claims on Taiwan. Building fake islands in the South China Sea. Encroaching on the Siachen glacier. Attempting to rename Indian states. Port capture in poor nations through default. They have plenty of expansionist tendencies, it’s just early in the game…

[vachina]

Sounds benign compared the kind of shit the Americans do.

[dyauspitr]

China has been “advanced” for a handful of years now. It’s going to get a lot worse because conscience is a throwaway concept for them when it comes to achieving outcomes.

[vachina]

Not good to make assumptions of people you don't really know about.

[dyauspitr]

Russia is not a “modern” army. They are literally using low tech drones from Iran against Ukraine because they can’t come up with their own.

[NicoJuicy]

The answer is and always has been "nukes" unfortunately.

[theshrike79]

Remote controlled autonomous robots/drones can also be used for, say, elder care.

A nurse can log in to a HelperBot remotely, check up on the client, tidy up the house and maybe even give medication. Instead of having to drive around between clients, losing maybe hours a day just on transit, one person can manage more people per day.

...but the same system can be modified for KillerBot easily like we know from EVERY SCI-FI BOOK EVER.

We live in interesting times.

[AussieWog93]

Honestly that sounds dystopian even ignoring the killer robot aspect. Imagine the only "flesh and blood" human contact you have being optimised away to reduce cost by 10-20%.

[theshrike79]

Yes, in a perfect world we'd have infinite nurses who have infinite time to spend quality time with each client.

In the real world, right now, nurses have a set time in minutes to visit each client and if there's traffic or someone has fallen over and needs extra care, guess what? Someone else gets less time or the nurse has to work overtime, usually un(der)paid. (Sauce: have people in both sides of this equation in my immediate family)

This is why old people get shoved into care homes where they manage 20 clients with one nurse because the transit time is "across the hall". And that's how people get institutionalized, even the fit and healthy ones get demotivated, bored and stop trying. Saw this first hand when my grandmother couldn't live in the house she had lived in for half a century because she couldn't get enough support at home. It took her months to go from mostly alert and energetic to practically waiting to die.

I'd much rather have the daily care of my elder relatives managed by a remote operated bot than watch one more grandparent wither away slowly in an elderly care facility.

[AussieWog93]

>I'd much rather have the daily care of my elder relatives managed by a remote operated bot than watch one more grandparent wither away slowly in an elderly care facility.

Yeah shit, I don't know which is worse. My plan is just dying before I reach that stage.

[theshrike79]

I’m hoping self-administered euthanasia is more common when I get there.

Too many ways to wither away slowly in my genes. I’d rather have All The Fun and then go on my own terms.

[markus_zhang]

I don't think Russian army is very modern -- but maybe that's the reason of your quotation marks.

I kinda think that the competitions among the big dogs (US/Russia/China/etc.) would eventually green light ANY AI/Robots projects if they can justify tipping the scale somehow, and in the process completely destroys the last element of any political counter-weight. Because "fear gives men wings".

I would really hate to live in a dystopian world worse than what is described in the books/movies.

[Markoff]

Ah geez, again this China invading Taiwan nonsense, China ain't USA, Israel or Russia attacking sovereign countries, they just use money to take over, they will do exactly same with Taiwan. Eventually Taiwanese people will figure out that siding with agressive country run by crazy old men is worse option than siding with China.

China has all time in the world not being run by crazies with 5 year election terms rushing to keep their mark in the history, not necessarily positive...

[vachina]

Yeah pretty much Americans are projecting themselves when they talk about China invading other countries.

Who’s been invading and bombing other nations so far lol.

[samiv]

The Taiwanese while being proud Taiwanese (rather than Chinese) are culturally Chinese. After all they came from the mainland after having lost the civil war.

What you said about them siding with China against a common aggressor makes sense. In fact they already did this against the Japanese and took a pause from their onw conflict to fight the Japanese together during WW2.

And it's also true that this "China aggression" is pure Western propaganda.

Which country has been bombing and waging a war somewhere since the inauguration. The same country that has over 700 military bases over the world. (China has 0)

"...rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air.."

[philwelch]

The majority of Taiwanese are the descendants of the people who lived there before 1949, not the descendants of the Chinese Nationalists who fled there at the end of the civil war. In fact, the Taiwanese were, uniquely among East Asian nationalities, relatively happy being part of the Japanese Empire and have maintained good relations with Japan ever since.

[samiv]

You're correct. But in practice the native people have been assimilated and the predominant culture is that of "Chinese'

Taiwan was occupied by the Japanese during the WW2 and just like everywhere else the Japanese were hated for their criminal actions. Taiwan was no exception. Today there also disputes for example the Senkaku islands.

[philwelch]

It's a bit more complicated than I implied because many or most Taiwanese prior to the beginning of KMT rule were still ethnically Chinese; they just hadn't been part of "China" for 50 years (a period when there wasn't a stable, unified "China" anyway). "Occupation" is a controversial term for the period of Japanese rule and the Japanese weren't "hated" in Taiwan to the same degree they were in other occupied territories. The period of Japanese rule from 1895-1945 was a colonial government, but it was probably better than what was going on on the mainland at the time--domination by Western powers, the warlord era, the civil war, and a much more brutal Japanese occupation. The difference between Japan's treatment of Taiwan and mainland China is a big part of the difference in perspective towards the Japanese between the mainlanders and the Taiwanese.

Some of the main proponents of the "Japanese occupation" narrative are the KMT, who committed plenty of atrocities of their own after taking over Taiwan and, among many Taiwanese, ended up more hated than the Japanese. The KMT was also serious about their lost cause of retaking the mainland, at which point they expected Taiwan and China to remain unified under their rule, with the famous "One China Principle" representing not just the CCP's desire to control Taiwan, but the principle shared by the KMT that Taiwan is part of China and should be under the same government. In recent years, the KMT has pivoted towards cooperation with the CCP with an aim towards peaceful reunification, while the DPP favors explicit Taiwanese independence (Taiwan's official constitutional stance still being that it is the legitimate Republic of China).

To be fair to the KMT, they also ushered in Taiwanese democracy. When Chiang Kai-shek died, his son and successor Chiang Ching-kuo ended martial law, promised to be the last Chiang to rule Taiwan, and began the transition to democracy. His successor, Lee Teng-hui, was Taiwanese-born and finished the transition to democracy, winning the first democratic Taiwanese presidential election in 1996 before stepping down at the end of his term limit in 2000, at which point power transitioned to the DPP. Lee was also controversial with the hardliners in his own party for, among other things, his more sympathetic attitude towards Japan.

[phtrivier]

I suppose the Tibetan people would have a different opinion. But it's true that China has not fought as many war as the US, UK or France in the past decades.

Which is actually part of the enigma : if China decided to use a window of opportunity to invade a neighbor (and they have claims on Taiwan, they keep telling the world they have claims on Taiwan, and they keep preparing their navy to invade Taiwan, so it's not entirely unreasonable to expect that country would be Taiwan), would they have an inexperienced army making rookie mistakes and miscalculations, or would they catch everyone of guard with a a crazily autonomous army of robots that don't care about the weather or war crimes ?

I would not ask the same question about any other country in the world, but, if Russia and the US surprised us by failing at what they were supposed to be great at, and Ukraine surprised us by being good at one no one expected, I expect a surprise from china, but I don't know which one !!!

[Markoff]

Tibet is part of China for hundreds of years (1720–1912) with short period exemption (1912–1951), people who think China just suddenly invaded Tibet in 1951 out of blue are delusional or should learn history

btw. just because you hear loud minority (?) of Tibetan people unhappy with China's rule doesn't mean there is not big part of them who have no problem with benefitting from being part of China rather than let's say India/Nepal