Somehow I doubt that after a war with China, satellites would be high on the priority list of things that need rebuilding.

You'd probably start with rebuilding more basic manufacturing and refinery industry destroyed during the war.

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nickff 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Most of the planning for possible conflict between the USA and China is for a more limited conflict, such as an invasion of Taiwan.

	▲	chmod775 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The US absolutely should expect for their industry to get hit in a conflict like that. China knows that the general attitude towards war in the US population is strongly skewed by the fact that they haven't had to deal with the fallout of war on their home turf in recent memory. To the US, war is currently something that happens somewhere else, not at home. In a conflict, it would just be smart to correct that attitude immediately, and China has the means to do so. Many data centers, major refineries, large industrial targets, and important pieces of the US' supply chain I'd expect to not last the week. Also China is not going to sit there, taking a beating, and let the US keep the support base that allows them project power overseas (including attitude to war) when it is within China's means to severely cripple the US' ability to do so. China has the home-turf advantage, allowing them to fight the same war for cheaper, guaranteeing victory even if the US retaliates in kind. Will there be a conflict over Taiwan though? I strongly suspect that if China started blockading Taiwan tomorrow, no other power would do anything about it, because there's no realistic path to win that conflict. It might just get handed over with no shots fired. There'd be meetings, and negotiating tables, and strongly worded threats, and sanctions, but eventually some agreement would be signed for the transfer of Taiwan.
	▲	noir_lord 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Planning only/mostly for a limited conflict when both parties are well armed, large industrial powers is pretty short sighted (not to mention both nuclear powers). Conflicts escalate in unpredictable ways across history because once you start it's really hard to stop sometimes. The US has grown used to been able to enter a war on its terms and exit on its terms and against the people they've been fighting since Korea that's been entirely possible because they can just leave and the combatants on the other side couldn't really do a lot to the US once they'd gone. China isn't that.

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phkahler 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>> Somehow I doubt that after a war with China, satellites would be high on the priority list of things that need rebuilding.

If GPS goes down, most of our communications will go down. A lot of other stuff falls from there. I suspect we'd be OK after a brief adjustment, but it would be very disruptive.

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ButlerianJihad 2 days ago | parent [-]

Did you mean “transportation”? Communications networks are not reliant on GNSS.

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mattkrause a day ago | parent [-]

A lot of things rely on GNSS for time synchronization, even if they're not moving....

	▲	ButlerianJihad a day ago \| parent [-]
		These are bizarre assertions. GNSS is one way to navigate, and GNSS is one way to synchronize time-of-day. Communications networks are full of devices that don't have, or use, any GPS receivers at all. NTP, WiFi, DOCSIS, DSL, leased lines, servers, core routers, switches, desktops and laptops are all things that won't even notice that GPS was unavailable.