A Chinese naval build-up that deeply impresses me

NYT story on Chinese making substantial if beginning effort on deep-sea exploration--naturally for mineral resources.

Seabed control!

It'll be interesting to see how hard the Chinese go after this in coming years.  I would expect a pretty strong push given the volume requirements.

As for military conflicts stemming from this?  Let's just say disrupting seabed control is probably a lot easier and cheaper than you think, so let's remember which economy in this equation is becoming the most resource-dependent on the planet.

Because it ain't America.

A general on this would seem to be:  the deeper you go, the more you rely on a peaceful international security environment.