The thing I find the most interesting is how many would still vote republican.
Aside from MrDibble (I’m confident that, to him, the US is still the man ‘adversary nation’ and will always be so), I wonder if anyone in this thread has had a change of heart after a year.
Still hard for me to grasp this overwhelming fear of Russia. They are a second-tier power, militarily, and a 3rd tier economically these days. The biggest threat they pose is to Europe, mainly because the Europeans have foolishly allowed them into a position where the Russians can hurt them by controlling the flow of natural gas into Europe. Other than that, they aren’t a major threat, except for one thing…they have more nuclear weapons than any other power, but that’s the kind of thing you can’t use. As the junior partner, they have tied themselves to the Chinese, which should say all you need to about who is the biggest threat.
Russia is an extant threat to destabilization of governments around the world not due to their nuclear arsenal, but due to their far more successful efforts in weaponizing cyber attacks and social media disinformation campaigns that serve to undermine elections and social stability of nations around the world. They have proven that they are not afraid to attack vulnerabilities in various infrastructures thereby causing disruption of services across various public and economic service sectors.
China has been arguably slightly more restrained in this regard, but is not far behind and probably no less capable.
I know that you know this, but a significant number of people believe, at least on a gut level, that Russia is responsible for making the Trump administration happen. And those people also think or fear that 2016-2020 was literally the end of American democracy. Surely that counts as majorly threatening.
As to the OP’s question, I have never really thought of any other nation during my lifetime as being an adversary, really in any way, I guess. Maybe Lithuania when they were almost as good as the USA in Olympic basketball.
Yeah I agree. I think the US is in a low level civil war, and large swaths of the country want to harm the other half and are happy to make their own lives worse to do it.
As far as foreign adversary, I’d say Russia in the short term & China in the long term.
I know people believe that, and I’ll go further to say they had a non-zero impact on the election in Trump’s favor (or against Hillary in many cases). But, a couple of things. First, though many don’t seem to realize it, China was also extensively involved in attempts to subvert the election both times. The media focused on Russia, but China did its fair share too. Secondly, while I think both had an impact, I think that it’s dwarfed by our own media and the two political parties wrt influencing the election. YMMV, and I agree that any foreign power meddling in US politics is bad…I just think that China’s own meddling goes much deeper not just in the US but in many countries than just elections and certainly than Russia’s does.
See, with China the destabilization is much more naked and out in the open. They force their narrative through a combination of naked threat (do X or we will cut off our markets to you) and the corruption of our own elites and our media to self-censor or toe the parties line, especially our social media that still dreams of breaking into the China market. Hell, this year, Bing and Microsoft, through ‘automation issues’ censored the Tiananmen Square remembrance day (which was canceled in Hong Kong for obvious reasons). And this is far from the only example of this sort of thing happening.
To me, that is MUCH more of a threat at a fundamental level than what Russia does. This isn’t to say Russia is no threat, but they are pretty far down my own list.
More naked than this?:
Sure. Here is an article and this is not exactly an exhaustive list, just a few things that happened this year (and I didn’t include the Microsoft hack or some of the others…you can look those up yourself if you like):
The latest China cyber attacks
- APT41’s three month attack on Air India
- HAFNIUM attacks on Microsoft Exchange servers
- A new sophisticated backdoor targeting Linux endpoints and servers
- APT31 replicates and uses an NSA Windows-hacking tool known as EpMe
- APT10 conducts sophisticated campaign, known as A41APT, aimed at exfiltrating information from a number of Japan-linked companies in different industry sectors across the world
Over the past two decades, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has capitalized on the global connectivity of the internet age in ways no other nation has. Once regarded as a “second-tier” cyber power, China has aggressively and consistently built its national cyber program to the point where it is now considered one of the world’s preeminent cyber players. A recent study ranked China as a “Most Comprehensive Cyber Power,” second only to the United States. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used a multi-pronged strategy to achieve this remarkable ascent, prioritizing computer science and technology education within China and creating a pipeline of talent for cyber military operations.
While a lot of western media focus on Russian hacks, they tend to ignore the vast amount of Chinese hacking going on every day…probably because the Chinese are more interested in hacking and exfiltrating the data to either use as leverage or to steal than they are in embarrassing the US Government, which seems to be what a lot of the official or state-run Russian hacking goes for. Of course, the other reason western media talks about Russia a lot but not a lot about China is because Russia is a safe target for them, while China…isn’t. Not if they want to avoid backlash from the CCP and hits to their pocketbooks.
The big difference is the Russian cyberattacks are more focused on making headlines and embarrassing their opponents, while Chinese attacks are geared either towards intelligence and blackmail or theft. But China is considered the largest cyber threat out there today, not just by the US government but by many governments and many cyber organizations.
Okay, but that doesn’t put Russia ‘far down the list’. Nothing about systematic attempts to destabilize governments and elections is far down the list of threats, IMO. Whether Russia is number one or number two from moment to moment is irrelevant.
I think Russia is currently ranked around 4th for hackers, but a lot of that isn’t state-sponsored…there is a huge criminal element in Russia and that drives a lot of their hackers. Also, for some reason, Ukrainian hackers are often lumped with Russia, even though Ukraine is a separate country. The difference is the types of hacks being done, and, frankly, the budget for cyber espionage. China spends the most on this, though the US has the largest cyber budget, though much of ours is more on defense (but not all).
Anyway, that’s what puts them ‘far down the list’…which is my own take on it. While they are ranked 4th for the sheer number of hackers, it’s the difference in what it is they do, how pervasive it is, and what its goals are that put it down my own list. I think from a threat perspective, China is definitely the number one on the list of threats wrt cyber. North Korea is a real threat too, though they basically punch outside their weight class so to speak, and they also are almost as interested in stealing money (hard currency) as they are in cyber espionage.
Just something to rock you off the sleep tonight, while Russia (well, a cyber group operating from Russia) makes a splash with the event you linked to (which was deliberate and very public), there is quite a bit of evidence that China has a lot of compromised systems and hacks in our various infrastructure systems (and in a lot of the worlds telecom systems especially) that they just let sleep there. They DON’T do splashy attacks that shut stuff down, instead, they either sit there and exfiltrate data or just wait there until the CCP really wants to do something nasty. We only know about the ones where they get caught by accident.
I’m quite certain this is true. I’m equally certain that the US cyber intelligence is at least equally adroit in this respect.
Oh, I agree. At least as adroit as either of these guys. I don’t know to what extent the US has hacked their (or other countries) infrastructure, but like the Chinese (and unlike the Russians in many regards) the US doesn’t want to advertise this, so you only hear about it when we screw up and get caught. even then, the US seems pretty good at deflecting to other countries or cyber groups.
They are a first-tier power electronically, which matters a lot more today.
And as for militarily? Tell that to Ukraine.
You say this like the government and the criminal element are easily distinguishable.
Still not as dangerous as America, though 
Tell what to Ukraine? They are a 3rd tier power, so of course, Russia is more powerful than they are. They probably are a first-tier for cyber warfare though. This still makes them a second to third-tier power overall, since the economy is what brings down their military potential.
Well, there are the state-run criminal element, then there are the more free-lance criminal elements in Russia. Certainly, if we were talking about China then it would be indistinguishable or such a small number of ‘criminal’ elements who aren’t controlled by the state (well, one faction or another) that it would be meaningless, but in Russia, things are a bit different.
True. 
I think China’s the biggest threat, mostly because China is our closest peer in pretty much every pertinent sense- economically and militarily for sure. Russia is economically and militarily not really a peer of the US anymore- they just have nuclear weapons and oil/gas. If not for the nukes, nobody would give half a shit about the Russians these days, and we’d just economically smack them around until they complied. I mean they have the same size economy as Australia, and spend somewhere between India and the Saudis on their military. Are we threatened in the least bit by any of those other countries, economically or militarily?
Both countries share a certain… assholish foreign policy that allows them to use state-sponsored resources to destabilize and meddle in the affairs of other countries, and they also basically push boundaries/break boundaries and dare other countries to go to war with them to stop them. They’re basically international bullies and thus far, nobody’s been willing to check either nation with enough economic or military force to prevent them from continuing along these lines.
With that in mind, I feel like China is a far larger threat, in that at some point, I think someone will call the Russians’ bluff and they won’t be willing to nuke anyone over it. But the Chinese may well feel like engaging in conventional war in the Pacific might be to their advantage at some point.
They also have space power, which while not the same as nukes, I would still class as a similar level of threat. But then the Chinese also have that.
They are definitely first-tier in space, but, again, it’s their economy that drags them down and limits them. In the case of space, it seems that the Chinese and Russians are going to do a lot of joint ventures, including a proposed Moon landing and base in the 2030s and possibly a joint space station orbiting the Moon (similar to what NASA and several other nations are thinking for the new international space station). I think the Chinese are going to be the senior partner, simply because they have the deeper pocketbooks, but they also need the Russian’s and the Russian’s experience and technology in space (just like they needed the Russian’s jet engines for their planes).
I lean strongly Dem, but chose neither. Right now, the US is it’s own worst enemy.
Oroville California has become an adversary nation, its city council having voted 6-1 to declare themselves sovereign. Which is genuinely emblematic of America being its own biggest enemy.
China of course.
A related question::
why does Putin pick fights with the west and ignore the far greater long term threat from China? Is he a stupid stooge or an actual puppet?