POV: I’m a HIMARS. I’m still on land, crates open, paperwork unfinished — yet behind the Great Firewall, I’ve already been intercepted.
China runs a drill, prints a poster, and the exercise turns into “news.”
No ship stopped. No cargo seized. No alarms triggered.
But the story travels faster than reality.
Patriots celebrate. Comment sections erupt. A blockade is imagined into existence. Surely, they can’t be serious? Is the Great Firewall so effective?
That’s the playbook: China do some drills, present it as fact on national TV, and then they win, twice. While the rest of us laughs.
This is the point where we know the drills are mostly performed to distract domestic resentments.