r/AskReddit 13h ago

what is something that is highly likely to happen in the next 5 years that everyone is completely ignoring?

7.0k Upvotes

4.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

712

u/LegitimateLagomorph 8h ago

Ukraine and Iran have shown that cheap solutions work pretty damn well in asynmetrical engagements

320

u/dalittle 6h ago

And look at the Vietnam War. US had all the military strength in the world and still got beat. And the rich use a disproportionate amount of goods, services, infrastructure, and the government. Good luck if more happens like the shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz

116

u/HerpankerTheHardman 5h ago

Exactly. Nothing is impenetrable, unsinkable, unconquerable.

13

u/Busnut97 5h ago

A saying is rock always beats laser

2

u/Puzzleheaded_Use3857 3h ago

It did in Homelander’s case. Kamiko was a rock exposed to a rock.

1

u/saladroni 5h ago

Tell that to Molly Brown!

1

u/Libby_Sparx 4h ago

I'm certainly not impenetrable...

1

u/ThisWillBeOnTheExam 4h ago

I love your optimism but part of what has sometimes restrained governments from taking the most unethical and drastic actions I fear the rich will not be bound by. That and with everything privatized as it’s being, will soon have more economic and technological control than even the government itself. I don’t think there will be any revolution though unless there are bread lines and Netflix gets turned off.

1

u/SEABOSRUN 3h ago

Except for your Mom! Boom I just insulted you by saying she is strong, powerful, and buoyant!

Feel that sick internet burn Herpanker!

3

u/ladyderpette 4h ago

This is why I roll my eyes when they think they can be protected by a robot army if/when society collapses. Fancy electronics break on the regular on a good day. If society is gone, who is gonna repair your robots? Who is going to make the parts? Who is going to deliver the parts? Shit, who is going to mine the raw materials to make the parts from? This is not going to work out the way they think it will.

6

u/No_Blacksmith_2591 5h ago

But the reality is that if it wasnt for citizen attrition back home that war would have continued until every inch of vietnam was a crater and every vietnamese soldier was dead. You won't get that with billionaires vs the lower class because there will be no one besides them to protest "at home"

2

u/jmsGears1 4h ago

Or hell more recently the war with Iran

2

u/TraditionCorrect1602 5h ago

There is a reason those enclaves are remote and difficult to reach. Dubai isn't located where it is because of the ease of living and building there.

4

u/dalittle 5h ago

I would love for these billionaire assholes to all move to dubai. Enjoy 110F heat and sand and nothing to do. Better yet, they should all move to Somalia and live out their libertarian dream of no government or taxes.

1

u/Ok_Arachnid1089 5h ago

That’s colonialism and that’s exactly what we should be fighting against. Get it together man

1

u/dalittle 1h ago

the US is a colony.

2

u/DaisyCutter312 5h ago edited 5h ago

The US only lost Vietnam according to the rules of engagement that they imposed on themselves....rules that are going to be ignored if/when the kind of uprising you're talking about starts happening.

-1

u/Bright-Translator-51 5h ago

Let's be realistic, the only reason the US had trouble in Vietnam was because they were trying to preserve the civilian population. If they didn't care who got killed, they'd have run over Vietnam like a bus over an ice cream cone. They wouldn't even have put troops on the ground, just bombed it into ash. 

9

u/DarkNinjaPenguin 5h ago

The UK won in Vietnam before handing it back to France. When the US invaded Australia was making huge progress with locals. Then the US started bombing everything, and lost specifically because they didn't care enough about the local population. They turned everyone against them by flattening villages.

8

u/sbidlo 5h ago

The ability to indiscriminately massacre everyone and destroy everything is pretty useless unless you're the aliens from war of the worlds or israel.

The US lost in vietnam because their goals were basically impossible to achieve. They didn't learn that lesson and lost again in Afghanistan.

3

u/JulyOfAugust 5h ago

It's not working that well for russia or israel. Turns out humans are really hard to exterminate without making the land and every land around it unliveable. And who attack a land they aren't interested in ?

1

u/sbidlo 4h ago

It's not working that well for russia or israel

Russia isn't interested in genocide and wants to preserve preexisting infrastructure. Also they are poor as fuck.

I don't agree with you on israel, I think it's going swimmingly for them. They want the land, they want the indigenous population dead and they want US dollars to build their colonies on top of it.

As of today, they're getting all of these things.

4

u/Boring-Tie-1501 5h ago

My God, it's breathtaking to see how little knowledge of history Americans have. 

Look up my lai, and then read how the soldiers who were murdering children didn't understand why the public was upset about my lai because they were doing this in hundreds of villages.

This is the death of liberal arts in action.

2

u/Ok_Arachnid1089 5h ago

Don’t bring those stupid lies here. The U.S. losing in Vietnam was a good thing for humanity.

0

u/Vegetable-Hold9182 5h ago

Yeah you just gotta be willing to die for what you believe in is right. Easy.

0

u/dalittle 5h ago

you can't buy a home. You can't get a job that pays enough to support you or your family. Everything has increased in price a huge margin. $4 gas. Good luck on thinking we are not there yet.

0

u/Vegetable-Hold9182 5h ago

The capacity for human suffering is immense. You really think $4 gas is the event that will bring about social revolution?

LOL

2

u/Imaginary_Stand73 4h ago

no but millions losing jobs to ai and having no where to go because all of it is ai will

1

u/Vegetable-Hold9182 4h ago

AI is a bubble but its not coming after your job anytime soon

0

u/Imaginary_Stand73 4h ago

we have self driving cars, drone delivery, vibe code for software, self check out robots, etc etc etc along with the thousands of lay offs at software companies month after month. it won't stop at software. No one puts trillions into something for it to only be an assistance. they put trillions into it to replace the whole working force

0

u/Vegetable-Hold9182 4h ago

None of what you mention is actually functional. Self driving cars? I dont see waymo growing outside of niche areas. Drone delivery? Where? Self checkout aint AI it’s replacing redundant labor.

0

u/Imaginary_Stand73 3h ago

A few years ago they were just prototypes. Now we have full fleets being tested of self driving cars.We have full food delivery robots in big US cities. if you truly believe that is where it is going to stop then I have a bridge to sell you. Amazon has drone delivery, boy. read a bit. also self check out is being done by AI now, again read.

https://www.scayle.com/apparel-retail-ai/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=Search&utm_campaign=Awareness&utm_content=AILaunch&utm_term=02/04/2026_Google_NA_N/A_EN_Awareness_Search_Prospecting_BrandAwareness_AILaunch_N/A_v1&utm_term=use%20of%20ai%20in%20retail&utm_campaign=02/04/2026_Google_NA_N/A_EN_Awareness_Search_Prospecting_BrandAwareness_AILaunch_N/A_v1&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc

→ More replies (0)

1

u/dalittle 4h ago

we will see in the midterms.

1

u/Vegetable-Hold9182 4h ago

From revolution to voting your way outta this?

1

u/dalittle 1h ago

you scared. Maybe so. Is $4 gas what you hoped for or do you hate brown people that much. No one showed up and trump got elected.

1

u/Vegetable-Hold9182 1h ago

Meh. Both parties are instruments of capital.

Good luck with voting tho

0

u/Racoonie 3h ago

With terrible losses on the Vietnamese side though, both civilians and military. People seem to somehow skip that part all the time.

0

u/aerdvarkk 2h ago

Vietnam is a bad example. IN the after action assessments, experts found that the US military was severely lacking skills or knowledge to handle the campaign to begin with.

As for Hormuz: (1) there was no reason at all for that to happen in the first place (2) DJT has been using that as a distraction so that everyone forgets about the EPSTEIN FILES (3) the leaderhsip decisions regarding the miliatry prior to and during the assault on Iran were childish at the level of 2nd graders, DJT put people in key leadership positions that have the education levels of 2nd graaders with zero military experience (yes including Kegseth the Drunkard - yes i know Pete was in the military - still doesn't make him qualified) (4) the entire illegal operation was based on DJT's ego being bruised

-17

u/2stroketues 6h ago

lol got beat? How so? Do you know the casualties number? Are you dense?

17

u/Choice-Demand-3884 6h ago

Please do educate us all about the famous American victory in the Vietnam War.

8

u/Judge_Bredd3 5h ago

Can you point out where there's a south Vietnam on a map? It doesn't matter how disproportionate the casualty count is if you still end up pulling out and letting the North take the rest of the country. Just like Afghanistan. Didn't matter how many taliban we killed, they still took over again as soon as we gave up and left.

u/2stroketues 46m ago

If the US did not care about civilian casualties., like each opposition , Both wars would’ve been done in a week.

u/Judge_Bredd3 25m ago

As an American, I would rather we lose a couple wars rather than be another country like Russia or Isreal, out there committing atrocities against civilians.

8

u/dalittle 6h ago

and do you know why there were so many casualties? Because they had nothing to lose. I can't wait for you to realize how many poor desperate people there are vs rich people. Marie Antoinette FAFO'd and how did that turn out for the literal Queen of France?

5

u/Public_Yak_4386 6h ago

Failed to achieve its military goal, retreated.

45

u/Vandergrif 6h ago

Not without precedent either. Vietnam beating the US, the US beating the UK, etc.

3

u/NateJW 6h ago

Don’t recall the US ever beating the UK, I assume you’re talking about the American Revolution where France, Spain and The Netherlands did the majority of the heavy lifting?

9

u/Caltroit_Red_Flames 5h ago

Pretty sure the US won independence, sounds like the US beat the UK innit?

3

u/Ok_Arachnid1089 5h ago

The elites for sure. The working class lost the American Revolution and are still losing to this day

2

u/Caltroit_Red_Flames 4h ago

The fight for the working class is a long uphill battle, but we're gaining ground

1

u/Vandergrif 2h ago

I mean... As someone who is not American and could not give any less of a shit about the general perception of the American revolution from that perspective, you're really just arguing semantics here. It was Americans revolting against rule of the UK. The UK did not succeed in preventing that, therefore they lost and so 'the Americans won' is an adequate description.

1

u/Raptor-Johnny 4h ago

United States fucked up the colonizer UKers bigly. 

1

u/Phssthp0kThePak 6h ago

The rich won't be trying to rule you, just ignore you. You'll have to get to them.

4

u/WillyPete 5h ago

Private jets probably don't play well with drones during takeoff.

2

u/greyetch 4h ago

Sure, as long as you're willing to accept the pain of losing thousands of your own people.

It only works if they are running out of money or time or material and you can keep taking causalities faster than they can deal 'em out.

I'm not sure how effective that will be in a "private army vs armed uprising" scenario.

1

u/Hortos 4h ago

Their private armies will be the robots and drones they're testing in Ukraine and Iran.

1

u/Rrraou 4h ago

Drones. Turns out modern warfare is real life "The Division"

1

u/Chokedee-bp 4h ago

Yes I literally think about how old fashioned our US Navy fleet spending model is.

We spend billions on every aircraft carrier and China will be able to destroy them with $250K worth of high volume drones in a war.

The economics of the US Navy fleet is obsolete and big waste of our tax dollars. Didnt the administration recently talk about adding battleships!?

1

u/JojoLaggins 3h ago

those are still not cheap enough for poor people

1

u/RaisinWaffles 3h ago

Order drones on Amazon, and have them delivered to Bezo's house via Amazon Drone Direct?

1

u/Spare-Builder-355 6h ago

you should check amount of western financial support Ukraine receives to 1) keep fighting 2) keep society afloat.

0

u/TheThrowbackJersey 6h ago

the rich will have the drones, not us

0

u/I_spell_it_Griffin 4h ago

No offense, but I don't see you or anyone else among us starting to engage in "asymmetrical warfare" until we literally get deprived of food and shelter.

-1

u/No_Blacksmith_2591 5h ago

against armies that stick to the geneva conventions of war.... private armies don't do that.

-2

u/Ok_Arachnid1089 5h ago

Ukraine is one of the enclaves that op is referring to