When the USSR fell, there were (and still are) those who believed that the Soviet Union's wounds were not as grave as they let on, and that they could be growing in power, unseen and unopposed. It's only fair that someone suggest the same for the USA now.

I won't attempt to fully develop the theory in my OP- if I try it is likely that I will end the night with an addition to my "Thread Aborted" thread in BTS rather than posting the topic I wanted to start. So I'll stick to a rough outline for starters.

Put yourself at the table with George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, et al. You've committed to a very long and very broad war to cement America's super power status for the next hundred years, but the military has refused to fully embrace your strategy, the opening phase has started to go sideways on you, and it's becoming clear that the nation's will to fight could evaporate almost overnight. To most at the table, it seems possible that their bid for control of the 21st century could end abruptly with the election of an anti-war internationalist in '08, and that such a swift failure could seriously curb America's global influence. How do you gracefully fall back to Plan B and save the "New American Century"?

What you need is a crash program to develop an overwhelming economic, diplomatic, and military advantage. Military means are already out. There isn't enough time, political capital, or money to build it up the old fashioned way with consistent direction and sound policy. Most of the world has just about had enough of you, so an international solution doesn't seem likely. You need MASSIVE amounts of money, material, and manpower to allow you to pursue multiple options as quickly as possible, and it needs to go unnoticed. In fact, everyone else should be lulled into slowing down while you are speeding up.

So you let a few of the banking elite in on the scheme and let them get out of harms way- then throw a monkey wrench into the economy. The chosen banks dodge the bullet, but they make a good show of crying so that you can say the trillions you are spending in secret were given to them. Then they turn around a few months later and loan you even more under the guise that they are paying you back. Of course you'd have to hand out a few big bonuses to keep the right people quiet, and people would wonder how the banks went from the brink of collapse one year to doing gangbusters the next without actually increasing the availability of credit, but you can count on that being spun and lied about all over the world and the media until nobody can put two and two together.

Meanwhile the creditors who were only in it for the money or the influence over you will back away, leaving you to work more with those with whom your fate is intertwined and those who are really your allies, the global economy will slow and spending goes down for everyone who doesn't have a multi-trillion dollar black budget. Also as a result of the slow down, your increased demand for labor and materials will be less conspicuous, as demand from others will be going down.

And if you pull all that off, what exactly will you be creating that will give you dominance of the next century? I barely know what to do with my meager paychecks now that I'm earning them again, much less trillions of dollars, so you'll have to ask somebody else. But it does appear that Uncle Sam might have recently made a few improvements to his weather and earthquake machines (assuming he even has those to begin with).


and yeah I know, not my best post, but I got it done before I lost interest for a change so I'm posting it.

Well... It's possible I suppose. It would defintley be a good way to push everyone down while you secretely rise. Of course if they ever got caught in the act everyone would want us dead. That's why it's so, hush...hush

What about China, India and Brazil? They are rising powers even with the global slow down. This didn't stop them... So are they in on it with us... or what?

S/F

America will not be able to fake it's own downfall as long as military bases remain in Europe and around the world. No other military in the world will buy it.

I suspect you may be taking the "faking its own death" thing a bit too literally. I'm not suggesting that the US is attempting to appear completely broken. That would be a very dangerous ploy;
If the authority of the federal government, the prestige of the nation, and our standard of living all fall too far, then our political situation would be radically destabilized in mere months. Within a year there could be deep regional hatreds in America that could plague a whole generation. Within 5 years I would expect widespread violence and rampant crime. Sometime after 10 years, America would try to rip itself into somewhere between 3 and 8 separate nations. Not a good strategy.

What I'm suggesting here could be working on an incredibly short timetable. I could imagine it being as short as what follows:
2008-2009 they take the money, 2010 they plan and prepare and screw up and delay as is their custom, 2011-2012 real work is underway on "project x" whatever it might be, and we appear to have bottomed out and leveled off and a really good plan to get us going up again is finally announced. Obama is narrowly reelected in 2012, possibly due to above average turnout among voters age 120-200 in Florida and Ohio. 2018 word is slowly getting out about what we're up to, but it's too late for anyone to catch up in whatever area we've been trying to leap ahead in.
2020- we have whatever it is first and we enjoy a commanding lead for several years, during which we can get to work on the next step.

Now again, what is "it". What would possibly be our goal if we were doing something so elaborate? It would have to be a generational advance in technology I think. Anything from A.I. to Zero Point Energy- that makes it impossible for the competition to catch up once you get there first.
Tale AI for example. If you create a programmable super-human intelligence before anyone else, then it is unlikely that anybody can catch up to you (unless their late-arrival version is vastly superior to yours) until you reach the limits of that technology, because while they have to train computer scientists still to work on their own AI so they can catch up, you can now simply copy and paste all of the computer scientists you want to help you improve further and widen the gap.

I like to look at the big picture, and the endgame is ALMOST in sight. At some point there is a race to the technological singularity, and whoever wins it controls the fate of the world, because as exponential increases in our capabilities come faster and faster together, the gap between the leader and the runner up gets wider. You can do the math for yourself.

2 squared is 4, 3 squared is 9, the difference is 5. Next advancement: 4 quared is 16, 9 squared is 81. The difference is 65.

So what are we squaring? It could be energy production, it could be computer power, it could be the number of shots a military weapon fires per minute. It doesn't matter. The point is that at some point in the future, being 5 years ahead in technology will be the equivalent of being ahead 50 years today. (ie: the difference between 2100 technology and 2110 technology could be greater than the difference between the technology of 1960 and that of 2010.)

That is a pretty decent motive to take a certain degree of risk in order to increase your black budget, and not only does it not require, but it does not really allow us to appear helpless- it simply requires that a whole lot of money and other resources go missing for a while.

well, I really like your out of the box thinking on this one,
such an idea way against the general arguing and thought-lines
out there in the mainstream and general discussion,
star and flag from me,
I am interested in the discussion to come in this thread
and also in contemplating and contributing in the future when
my brain cells are recharged with some sleep.

What with all the doom internet economists saying all will hit the fan soon for the last 3 years, and still the world careers drunkenly along without a 1930's style crash , I've been wondering when will it ever happen, this controlled implosion, now you could have hit on the reason why it hasn't here.
And now that we are all becoming conditioned, even the suspicious and paranoid amongst us giving up waiting ,(time moves on and it starts to resemble a norm) ,when then will the play their Ace Card,
and how?

hmmmm. Later gator

I think the US is dying for real. You may want to speak to some of the millions of people in long-term unemployment.

interesting theory. I like it. It's pretty close the the ideas I have been pondering. The key is power. Basic human nature. The strong want to rule. Democratic and representative philosophies are an opiate to the masses to let them think they have a say, but in reality, they don't function without corruption on a large scale. Your average human is still pretty narcicistic and won't get involved in something that doesn't directly affect his day to day life in the near future.

That being said, I don't think this has anything to do with technology or widgets. I think this is a game that has been played across the generations. The point of the game is control and influence. We, the general public, are the pawns of the game. They manipulate entire cultures to serve their needs. What they did not count on was the information age and the ability of the average human to collaborate through the internet to dechiper what would normally be a cryptic set of clues.

I believe there to be three "teams":

1. The Humanists -- They try to play with the human game pieces directly, changing social views, inciting "cultural revolutions".
   
2. The Economists -- They play with corporations (artificial entities of various types) and economies. They don't care about the fate of the game pieces, because it is understood that they can always make more.
   
3. The Religioso's -- They, like humanists, utilize the game pieces directly, but by playing more on fear and religion than humanist concepts.
   

These teams have been going at it for ages.

This is all supposition, of course. Just stuff I like to ponder as what ifs.

Originally posted by The Vagabond
I suspect you may be taking the "faking its own death" thing a bit too literally. I'm not suggesting that the US is attempting to appear completely broken. That would be a very dangerous ploy;
If the authority of the federal government, the prestige of the nation, and our standard of living all fall too far, then our political situation would be radically destabilized in mere months. Within a year there could be deep regional hatreds in America that could plague a whole generation. Within 5 years I would expect widespread violence and rampant crime. Sometime after 10 years, America would try to rip itself into somewhere between 3 and 8 separate nations. Not a good strategy.

What I'm suggesting here could be working on an incredibly short timetable. I could imagine it being as short as what follows:
2008-2009 they take the money, 2010 they plan and prepare and screw up and delay as is their custom, 2011-2012 real work is underway on "project x" whatever it might be, and we appear to have bottomed out and leveled off and a really good plan to get us going up again is finally announced. Obama is narrowly reelected in 2012, possibly due to above average turnout among voters age 120-200 in Florida and Ohio. 2018 word is slowly getting out about what we're up to, but it's too late for anyone to catch up in whatever area we've been trying to leap ahead in.
2020- we have whatever it is first and we enjoy a commanding lead for several years, during which we can get to work on the next step.

Now again, what is "it". What would possibly be our goal if we were doing something so elaborate? It would have to be a generational advance in technology I think. Anything from A.I. to Zero Point Energy- that makes it impossible for the competition to catch up once you get there first.
Tale AI for example. If you create a programmable super-human intelligence before anyone else, then it is unlikely that anybody can catch up to you (unless their late-arrival version is vastly superior to yours) until you reach the limits of that technology, because while they have to train computer scientists still to work on their own AI so they can catch up, you can now simply copy and paste all of the computer scientists you want to help you improve further and widen the gap.

I like to look at the big picture, and the endgame is ALMOST in sight. At some point there is a race to the technological singularity, and whoever wins it controls the fate of the world, because as exponential increases in our capabilities come faster and faster together, the gap between the leader and the runner up gets wider. You can do the math for yourself.

2 squared is 4, 3 squared is 9, the difference is 5. Next advancement: 4 quared is 16, 9 squared is 81. The difference is 65.

So what are we squaring? It could be energy production, it could be computer power, it could be the number of shots a military weapon fires per minute. It doesn't matter. The point is that at some point in the future, being 5 years ahead in technology will be the equivalent of being ahead 50 years today. (ie: the difference between 2100 technology and 2110 technology could be greater than the difference between the technology of 1960 and that of 2010.)

That is a pretty decent motive to take a certain degree of risk in order to increase your black budget, and not only does it not require, but it does not really allow us to appear helpless- it simply requires that a whole lot of money and other resources go missing for a while.

good analysis , but you fail to aanalyse few factors :

1)who controls USA
2)why nation states are obsolete
2)elites prefer supra national power and corporate ability


corporate ability enables supra national power

forget zero point ,soviets were far superior in this field , but yes AI is possible

secondly zero point would make it impossible for elites to control economies and humanity in general

[edit on 3-3-2010 by sadchild01]

You will know for sure that America has died as a world power when Obama declares martial law.

The entire economy, infrastructure, and law and order will break down.

Nobody is coming to help you.

And in a few years time, when America is a desolate smoking ruin, ruled by street gangs, some Americans will still be saying, this is all part of our master plan for world domination.

Originally posted by The VagabondUSA faking its own death?

No its not faking, the U.S., as you know it, is really in its final death throes.

This has been done throughout all of history starting in antiquity and continued through with the Babylonians, Mayans, Incas, Romans, Greeks, Persians, etc. All committed the same type of 'National Suicide' you see now. Have you ever wondered why EVERY empire throughout “History” ends of falling apart and self-destructing for 'no reason'? It’s all a very detailed planned occurrence and it goes a lot deeper than your peasant-sheeple-slave brain could ever understand.

Make no mistake; the United States of America is a sinking ship. If you are currently onboard at the moment I strongly suggest jumping overboard while you still can. It is better to take your chances swiming in the ocean than to go down with the ship. But if you choose not to, do not blame anyone but yourself when the boat finally submerges and chaos reigns.

And for you 'Survivalists' who think backpacking into the woods with your BOB,K-BAR Knife and 9MM pistol or going into your basement or 'safe' house thats stockpiled with food when TSHTF is going to save your stupid sorry irresponsible ass, think again. You will have doomed yourself.

All is going according to Operation New World Order...but it's not like you haven't been warned.

Originally posted by Silver Shadow
Nobody is coming to help you.

And in a few years time, when America is a desolate smoking ruin, ruled by street gangs, some Americans will still be saying, this is all part of our master plan for world domination.

Thats right tell them brother!

'We' will win.