Standard JD here... based on the fact there is imperfect knowledge he fills the gaps with what he wants to be true.

BTW..."The historical examples you cite (Six Day War, Desert Storm) actually underline the same point: US success...".

The US wasn't in the Six Day War. But it was, in part, a contest between the second best aircraft the US had to offer (Israel) and the best aircraft the Russians had to offer(Egypt and Syria), and the Russian systems were badly outclassed. Its funny when people have such a paucity of information but remain confident in their views.

mhaze,

That’s not a substantive response to the point I made.

Yes, the US wasn’t a belligerent in the Six Day War. The relevance of the example isn’t US participation, it’s that Western aircraft, doctrine, training, and integration decisively outperformed Soviet-supplied systems when tested in combat. That actually reinforces my point: outcomes reflected doctrine, integration, and operational execution, not a sudden revelation that one side’s technology was intrinsically “exposed.”

But more importantly, none of this addresses the core issue I raised.

Your linked article describes impressive US institutional capabilities that long predate Trump. It does not establish that Venezuela’s export systems were representative of Chinese or Russian homeland defenses, nor that a single special operation rewrites the military equation around Taiwan.

Calling that “filling gaps with what I want to be true” is just a way of avoiding the inference problem. If you think the conclusions do follow, spell out the causal chain. If not, the personal jab is just noise.

"In those examples, we are always informed by the partisans that it wasn't really the technology that failed but the operators. I see some of the less informed here repeat that assertion."

Trump administration admitted there were CIA assets in Venezuela before the Maduro kidnapping.
You bankrupt a nation with sanctions and then buy off the poorly paid and now corrupt military.
Give them a offer they can't refuse.
'Take the bitcoin and the citizenship, you wouldn't want anything to happen to your wife and children would you?
You d on't have any choice, stand down when we tell you to or we'll put it out there you are spying for us.
Don't feel bad you're not the only one.'

Are you saying U.S. stealth and intelligence was too good
Russian and Chinese radar (if applicable) and air defense was too poor.
Or that all the radar and air defense assets failed at the same time

"Are you saying U.S. stealth and intelligence was too good
Russian and Chinese radar (if applicable) and air defense was too poor.
Or that all the radar and air defense assets failed at the same time"

I'll reiterate.
* The US stealth, intelligence, multiple force coordination, and leadership was too good.
* The Chinese radar, that was proclaimed as being able to defeat stealth technology, utterly failed.
* Russia anti-aircraft missile systems, utterly failed, although to be fair to the Russians it probably partially failed because it relied on the failed Chinese radar.

All of that means that the Chinese confidence that their technology would protect the homeland in the event of a shooting war around Taiwan, is shattered. And therefore there probably won't be a shooting war around Taiwan in the near future.

Two more interesting bits of news out of China over the weekend.

* Xi Jinping has arrested (or, according to some reports, has unsuccessfully tried to arrest) one of the top generals in the PLA. When a nation's military fails this badly (ie in Venezuela), the generals are on the chopping block. This is especially so when the civilian leaderships relies utterly on the army to keep them in power. Mayhem within the military/civilian leadership usually means that external adventures are put on hold.

OTOH, when a government is under pressure and is loosing the faith of the people, a time-honoured solution is to create foreign crises to distract the people and generate national unity.

* The CCP has now admitted that the Chinese population is in decline with the numbers of births in free-fall. Given that the numbers out of the CCP are usually made rosier than the truth, it means that China has now become one of the few nations on earth with a fertility rate below 1. ie one birth per woman. That translate to each generation being half the size of the previous one, and therefore a rapidly aging demographic.
Unless the situation is reversed, its projected the Chinese population will be down to around 300 million by 2100.

In foreign policy terms, this means that China's race to become the world's hegemon has a time limit on it ie achieve it before the population declines so much that it can't ever be achieved.

mhaze,

You're reiterating conclusions, not addressing the inference problem that's been raised repeatedly.

No one is denying that US stealth, ISR, cyber, space integration, and force coordination were decisive in the operation. What's being questioned is the leap from that fact to claims about Chinese homeland vulnerability and Taiwan's near-term safety.

You keep asserting that Chinese "anti-stealth" radar and Russian SAMs "utterly failed," but you still haven't shown that:

- Venezuelan export systems were representative of Chinese homeland IADS
- they were fully operational, integrated, and free of prior compromise
- non-engagement, corruption, or pre-positioned intelligence assets can be ruled out
- a SOF raid against a sanctioned client state maps onto a cross-strait war scenario

Those aren't excuses. They're basic requirements for the conclusion you're drawing.

Adding PLA personnel issues or demographic decline doesn't fix that gap. It just widens the story. None of it establishes that a single operation in Caracas "shattered" Chinese confidence or meaningfully altered Beijing's Taiwan calculus, which has assumed US penetration capability for decades.

If you think the Venezuelan operation does justify that conclusion, the argument still needs to show how. Repeating the conclusion isn't a substitute for that step.