How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

I'm saying "may" because while Russia clearly has the ability to make Nukes, and ICBMs, that would have required constant heavy, maintained, spending on their military that they clearly didn't do for, oh, tanks, air defense, aircraft, new aircraft designs ... At best their Nuclear arsenal is one generation ahead of what the Soviets had, whilst the West's defenses have advanced 5 generations in the same time. I get that's a gamble, but ... Nuclear weapons require constant re-enriching of the warheads fissile material, and maintaining 7000 warheads requires running tens of gigawatts of nuclear power plants without getting any electricity or heating out of them. Not to mention: you need tens of thousands of highly qualified engineers to do it. Are they doing that, not just lying about it? I mean, I get that they're hiding this, but one reason we don't hear much of it could be that it simply doesn't exist anymore. I've never once read an explanation of how this infrastructure survived the fall of the Soviet Union.

Russia is vastly overplaying their hand. We can be sure of that, given the facts.

Second, the Russian economy will die faster than the European or Ukrainian economy over time. Time is not on their side. Russia is slowly losing the ability to attack even without any war, without anyone destroying them. Europe, and European states will gain more and more ability to attack over time. I'm saying whatever their reason was to attack in 2014 and 2022, they will have more reasons to attack as time goes on. This war won't end just because we force it to, it will simply move.

And all of that is assuming we DON'T move away from fossil fuels. If by some miracle we move either transportation or heating of of fossil fuels, then Russia is done for 10 years before such a move is complete. That will definitely kill their ability to support their military. I mean what do you expect Russia to do? Attack France when ITER declares success? Because ITER, and 100 other similar efforts, also are existential threats to Russia.

Russia has "lost", the empire doesn't exist anymore, and the conflict in Ukraine, even if they 100% win, doesn't change that. If their perception is such that if they lose they will use nuclear weapons, then it's unavoidable, and the conclusion is just the opposite of what you suggest.

The correct course of action if Russia will truly will chose to go out in a nuclear "blaze of glory" or if Putin has the ability to "commit suicide by World War 3", then the only option is for NATO to attack Russia, ASAP. For the simple reason that Russia, the empire, is done for.

> If technology itself were like a stock portfolio (to a degree it is), what we are building is heavily skewed to junk status.

Posit a distribution, while providing no measure.

This argument cannot stand until it can answer the question: why are corporations all of a sudden greedy now, and not before? If they could raise prices 20% at any time, they would. They don't, because the market won't bear it. It's nonsensical to suggest otherwise.

Pemex, the Mexican state-owned oil company, made $6B in the first quarter of 2022, but lost money every single year for more than a decade before that. Why didn't they jack up prices sooner to make a profit?

Delta Airlines lost a lot of money after Covid, and has yet to neither reach pre-pandemic profitability levels nor recoup the money lost during the pandemic. Are you saying if they were only greedier, they wouldn't be in this situation?

Even the great devil Exxon Mobil itself had ever-shrinking margins leading into 2020 before losing money for four quarters in a row before coming back into the black. Again, is your explanation that they just forgot how to be greedy for a while?