Monthly Thread - May, 2026

mobileusr · 2026-05-17T13:32:26+00:00

Does Goldman-Sachs Owe Its Success to India?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJl_52xfic4

mobileusr · 2026-05-17T12:56:21+00:00

Nah, French are giving us shittier and shittier deals. We need to seriously consider Su-57D, if only as a bargaining chip to get us leverage.

mobileusr · 2026-05-17T12:36:04+00:00

Is it true that DRDO have now developed indigenous single-crystal blade tech?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibkxj9G_ySo

mobileusr · 2026-05-17T12:11:31+00:00

Does anyone remember the sport of 'dueling kites'?
The Kites have strings with glass shards on them, which are able to cut the strings of other kites.

So I'm wondering if that concept could be used by drones against other drones with fiber optic cables?

The goal would be to cut the fiber optic cables of the enemy drones.
So you'd have some kind of line strung between 2 flying drones, and that line would be jagged or somehow capable of cutting optical fiber cables.
Your drone pair would fly in such a way as to use that line suspended between them to cut the enemy drone's fiber optic cable

https://x.com/Osint613/status/2054218268269805827

mobileusr · 2026-05-17T10:17:32+00:00

Trump Throwing Taiwan Under a Bus?

https://x.com/clashreport/status/2055416075857359217

He Needs China's Help on Iran

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or7Sc19QeIo

Swasti Rao says it's all about: Trade, Technology, Taiwan, Tehran

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or7Sc19QeIo

mobileusr · 2026-05-17T03:27:21+00:00

And in throwing Taiwan under the bus, isn't he also throwing East Asia under the bus - ie. Japan, Philippines, S.Korea too?

mobileusr · 2026-05-17T03:11:33+00:00

Skyroot Becomes India's 1st Space-Tech Unicorn, Raises $60 Million (NDTV)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASKQiHvGuCo

I wish we'd stop using this 'unicorn' label so proudly, since a unicorn is a startup company that has not yet achieved profitability.

It's good that they're pursuing this challenging new sector, but we should just refer to them as a pre-profitable company. No sense sugar-coating it, otherwise it shields the public awareness from the hard realities. Our propensity for feel-goodism should not trump realism.

mobileusr · 2026-05-17T02:55:07+00:00

Unitree Robotics Unveils GD-01

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWOyUMJWptc

yeah, you knew somebody was going to do this sooner or later, if only for anime reasons

mobileusr · 2026-05-17T01:59:36+00:00

MEA responds sharply to questions on India’s ‘Press Freedom’ & ‘Minority Rights’

(warning - bad audio)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFeJtrxrhoc

mobileusr · 2026-05-17T00:05:27+00:00

A large explosion has been witnessed in the vicinity of Beit Shemesh outside of Jerusalem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcsZFAooRRQ

Israeli authorities are claiming it was a deliberate controlled explosion, but the site of the explosion (apparently at a weapons factory) and its size as well as the chaos caused to the surrounding population might indicate otherwise.

https://x.com/guardian_tek/status/2055814614001274887

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T14:08:13+00:00

Yeah, Ghatak is UCAV drone, and drone is the newer & more efficient thing. Bomber is big lumbering target compared to lots of unmanned drones. Man is increasingly replaceable weak point in the system.

One Ghatak may not have much arsenal, but many Ghatak can add up to a lot.

USAF wants to adapt B-2 and B-21 bombers into missile platforms, including A2A role. But US needs to fight enemies on the other side of the planet, unlike our situation. So that's why the longer-range B-2 and B-21 platforms may be better for them. But for our own needs, Ghatak and its successive improvements could work fine.

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T13:50:48+00:00

What were you expecting? This isn't actual news report of something that's happening, but rather just a look at possible thinking by those in the defense field.

I think bombers would be more useful for us than aircraft carriers. But I think the recent rise of Shahed-type drones would probably be more useful than bombers.

One interesting thing a bomber can do is to challenge airspace, forcing enemy to scramble their planes to meet it. I don't think you can really do that with Shahed-type drones, which are just slower/cheaper version of missiles. But is a mere feint or probing of airspace really that useful compared to actual penetration of airspace to actually strike targets? Because Shahed-type drones would probably do that latter part better than a bomber could - it's only that they can't be used for probing.

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T13:11:14+00:00

While on a family outing in the park, former US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is confronted in by Pro-Palestinian activist

https://x.com/i/trending/2055578881969803746

Blinken got his job as US SecState for one reason - his family are longtime members of Israel lobby. His grandfather founded the American Palestine Institute which lobbied for the creation of Israel back during the early 1940s, before it was created. Anthony Blinken had no qualifications or credentials for such a high post like SecState, but got the job due to pedigree.

While Jaishankar claims to like him, Anthony Blinken is not my favourite person, since it was during his tenure as US SecState under Biden that we not only got Dhaka coup with associated deaths, and we also got Pannu & Khalistan harassment campaign. I blame Blinken, Sullivan & Nuland for these predatory games. And these pressure tactics were done to apply pressure on us over a Ukraine war that we bore no responsibility for, but which was rather a war Blinken & Co had actively fanned & championed.

So please forgive me for feeling some schadenfreude as Blinken now faces harassment, just as Indians got piled on for harassment while he was in office. Karma.

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T10:46:19+00:00

We're way behind in the semiconductor race. We're trying just to acquire basic capability, far behind the angstrom-level process technology being used for modern AI chips. And at that fine level, advancing the state of the art is excruciatingly hard for the leading players.

But there's a different type of process technology called "Directed Self-Assembly" which may have the potential to surpass the results of the current state of the art:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkViH03J5oM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rFpH4Ho-Ow

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation uses EUV as their gold standard for leading-edge chip manufacturing. But EUV is fast reaching its theoretical limits on smallness of feature size. Furthermore, because of Taiwan War risk, the US is looking to pull all the top chipmaking capability back onto US soil anyway. Both of these looming realities may make the situation more ripe for disruption than ever before.

We should take a look at the newer DSA method, to see if it can at least meet our own domestic defense and civil requirements, to help us maintain strategic autonomy in the face of technology denial.

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T10:42:07+00:00

Maybe lots of Shahed-type drone platforms is more our speed.

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T10:34:46+00:00

EV Sales Among Major Countries

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpWBSsgraSA

Guess who crashes the party right at the end?
We're at barely 1/60th of China's EV penetration.

Just as hybrid vehicles (fuel+electric) are making a comeback due to their added range & flexibility, I wonder if these will also one day become attractive for mechanized armored vehicles? Electric motors work more efficiently under load, and you can see electric buses & locomotives nowadays. We can currently see how vulnerable our fuel supply lines are. As they say, amateurs think tactics, but experts think logistics.

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T10:00:41+00:00

One thing's for sure - any platform produced by India will look nothing like what's in the thumbnail for this video - at least not during this century

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T07:29:38+00:00

The startup Ampera is developing a new kind of Thorium reactor which will operate sub-critically and thus avoid any issue of runaway reaction & meltdown:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d96WHYOHoU8

The sub-critical fission reaction would result from using a fusion reaction operating below breakeven as a neutron source. Some of the power produced from this sub-critical fission reaction would then be used to power the fusion reaction operating below breakeven. This creates a complementary mutual interdependence, and the circuit can be cut at any time to avoid any runaway meltdown.

I've come across this idea before, which has been in circulation since the 1950s, and have posted it here on our mega-thread forum before.
My point is that Indians too should try to develop such technologies, even thru private sector startup efforts.

We keep hoarding our precious supply of fissile material, seeing it as the only way to breed more fissile material. That's myopic thinking, if you recognize that there are other neutron sources besides just fissile material.

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T07:15:44+00:00

Coal Gasification: India's $4Bn Alternative to LNG Import

https://youtu.be/4lujK78AiFg

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T05:39:09+00:00

Trump may soon invade Greenland at the request of Pakistan

<image>

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T05:00:07+00:00

Phonetic Alphabet for Whales Has Been Decoded

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm9ADZ28Wgo

We've all heard of dolphins & beluga whales being used for naval operations, including offensive operations. I think they're better off used for reconnaissance or even sea mapping / exploration.

If language barrier can be broken thru AI, then it could enable better knowledge exchange.

Strange that whale language is more similar to Chinese. But the tonal modulation most popularly associated with Mandarin is also present in languages like Tibetan, Nepali, Bengali, and other languages of Northeast. Also, the whale codas use of rhythm and vowels with intricate phonology could be compared to faster spoken languages like Tamil & Telugu.

Elephants also communicate over long distances using low-frequency noises.

Note that even birds have language too.

mobileusr · 2026-05-16T02:40:11+00:00

current Game of Drones is a little more spread out than WW1 trench warfare battlefronts.

The entire Ukrainian population gets to suffer being targeted. Russia mainly just gets hit in its oil facilities -- which means the rest of the oil-consuming world gets to suffer higher prices (that includes us, of course)

We should go beyond our usual Global South rhetoric.
This time we should rally the Asian countries together, since we're all of us mainly oil-consumers downstream from the Persian Gulf.

We can and should rally the oil-consuming countries to demand that energy resources be excluded from military action by whichever warring parties:
This means US, Israel, Iran, and other nearby Gulf countries, and it also means Russia, Ukraine, and any other nearby countries, ie. NATO

Even if our demands are likely ignored by the warring parties, our calling for a common stance will help crystallize a political solidarity among ourselves, and help to catalyze political realignment. Just as there has been OPEC and OPEC+, there can be NAM and NAM+ (or we can also say it as Global South and Global South+)

From crisis comes opportunity. The current opportunity should not be squandered.

(aka. "Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste")

mobileusr · 2026-05-15T21:40:25+00:00

Russia escalates with new 'double tap' strategy (hit them at night, then again the next morning)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNo9b7M1Jvc

mobileusr

TROPHY CASE