Doesn’t even take a hypersonic nuclear payload to send this country back to the Stone Age.
Dirty bomb in or near the largest 1-3 shipping ports (LA, Long Beach, NY/NJ) and sabotage the electrical grid via nuking a couple key plants or even just knocking out substations/ natural gas lines in a coordinated manner.
County descends into chaos. No power means no gas pumps, no gas pumps means no goods move. People begin to die from starvation, exposure within 3 months, in the meantime people will be killing each other over food, fuel and water by day 12. Troops go awol for fear of their own families safety
The first Chinese troops land 3 months in to face a semi coordinated militia style defense after they roll right over the west coast ( lack of guns, too many people without resources).
End result, everyone west of the Mississippi is speaking Chinese by 2023. East of the Mississippi tens of millions dead from famine, exposure, tribal violence. Chinese setup factories in west coast conquered Territory paying slave wages of just enough bread/rice to survive and the west coast people who survive the initial event will be happy to work for their new overlords.
Chinese KIA will measure in the thousands but do they really care?
If I can plan this out then surely the Chinese are contemplating it, late fall October-December is perhaps our most vulnerable time as a country from a coordinated attack on infrastructure.
This is all fine and good but also missing the more insidious means.
What do I mean by that? Systems designed to fail with growth.
Take our infrastructure as a prime example. With a calculator and a pen you can easily figure out what is and isn't necessary for the future based on construction, population, and increasing electrical demands. But things aren't being built with any of that in mind. Instead we're relying on collapsing junk infrastructure to saddle up a load 10x+ what it was ever designed for.
Instead of spinning up new nuclear power plants or infrastructure to handle these increasing demands, they install a few windmills and solar panels that require endless government subsidies to be kept running because they're not only not making money but costing them a fortune.
Take our oil infrastructure for example. We finally reach a point of being a major oil exporter and had energy independence. Within a year that is sabotaged and we're back to some of the most dire straits we've ever been in for oil. And who eats those costs? Not the hyper wealthy, but the poor.
China played the long game with this and sacrificed their population's comfort to become the chief manufacturing nation on the planet. Now that they have successfully won that game, they're changing legislation to bring back comfort to their working class and trying to build a functional family life as a matter of state policy.
I don't personally think the chinese are interested in making everyone in Mississippi speak chinese. That's not been the case with any nations they've effectively "took over." They just want to be like they were during the silk road days. They want to be the favored nation for international trade, with control sufficient to ensure they remain the favored nation for international trade. Blowing up your customers isn't good for business, and wouldn't help build a better future for them back home.
This is why things get complicated.
With the globalist you have a group of people who want to put you in chains and slaughter you. With the chinese we have cut throat business practices aimed at monopolizing global trade. And we're stuck here in the middle just wanting to be left alone.