Japan tried to build an operating system for the world, the US intervened

You raise some good points, but I don’t think the idea of moats from the 80s really holds up. None of the obvious moats in the mid-80s are still dominant players. In the mid-80s the PC market was still pretty new. Business was still run on IBM mainframes, DEC VAX, and other systems that were overtaken by forces in the late-80s and early 90s. These seemed unstoppable until they weren’t.

I think the strongest counter example, though, is probably Linux. If your thesis was correct, an early-90s hobby operating system by some kid at a uni in Finland would never be dominant in cloud server spaces by the 2000s.

> Amiga couldn't over come the PC.

This is probably your best example. I would add BeOS to this.

On the other hand, Apple managed to attract a core audience and stay alive (even if barely) through the 90s. Sometimes you don’t have to overtake; you just need to have a solid niche.

> IBM couldn't over come the moat of Windows with OS2.

OS/2 originally lost to Windows as a successor to DOS due to execution, not because Windows had a huge moat. OS/2 Warp was a bit later.

The story of OS/2 failing is sad and as much about IBM internal politics as about Microsoft succeeding.

> Intel couldn't overcome x86 with the i432 or Itanium.

Intel bet on compilers being far smarter than they were in the 2000s (and possibly today) and didn’t seem to understand that most business applications at the time were limited by branching and integer computations. That stuff doesn’t vectorize well. The arch might be better-received today, although moving pipeline concerns to the compiler still seems like a bad choice to me.

As a counterpoint, consider the rise of ARM in the 2010s. An arch known mostly in the embedded world has become a real player in the desktop and server environment. All because of the rise of phones, reasonable licensing, and better perf/watt at low power than x86.

This hasn't been my experience for the last 5 years or so. Obscure old printers and scanners, Bluetooth headphones with modern codecs like LDAC and SBC-XQ, RGB gaming mice all "just work" on Linux, where on Windows I have to install an app from the Microsoft Store to get functionality.

I think this was probably pretty accurate in the early 2010s and before.

Obviously, but hence the other things I put in the comment.

> The US is and was the only party that made any logical sense,

I aver none make sense, including the USA. The USA has limited capacity to transport LNG, most already being in use. Not really a growth opportunity.

Also, whoever does this, US or otherwise, runs the risk of getting caught; if it was the USA, the scandal of it would likely push Europe much closer to China.

So far as I can tell, the only apparently-involved nation who wouldn't care about the political fallout of getting caught would be Russia, but it was their gas so why would they attack it?

> to say nothing of also being one of only a handful of nations with the technical expertise to do so as well.

I find that many people over-estimate what can be done by a small motivated team. I understand it is well accepted that human divers capable of this are relatively rare, and there wasn't e.g. really enough time for the accused Ukrainian team to have done so, and the ship they were known to be on was very poorly suited to such a task.

However, the Ukrainians have demonstrated significant skill with remote control vehicles. Hell, the only reason I'd rule out anyone like say Greenpeace is that they didn't claim responsibility, such groups would be whom I'd say have the smallest required dose of sudden insanity to mistake this for a good idea.

> and of course Biden publicly alluded to threats of blowing it up: "If Russia invades ... then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it." "How will you do that, since the project is under Germany's control?" "We will, uh, I promise you, we will, uh, be able to do that smirking."

The problem with this, is that Germany had already brought an end to it, before it was blown up. One thing Germany is very skilled at, putting red tape around things.

The explosion turned an indefinite suspension into a kinetic suspension.

> Europe would be about setting aside their own self interests for the sake of US geopolitics. It also helps ensure less chance of a reconciliation between Russia and Europe which is probably seen as a reasonable way of weakening both.

If the US sees the European reaction this way, then the US has misunderstood the European thought process.

It was, and is, in the self-interest of Europe to end the threat posed by Russia.

> And one thing we obsess over is/was the prevention of the emergence of new superpowers. This is even mentioned quite explicitly in the text, "[Deploying US forces to Europe] is especially important in light of the nascent European moves toward an independent defense "identity" and policy; it is important that NATO not be replaced by the European Union, leaving the United States without a voice in European security affairs."

That is indeed something I have heard from other sources.

Unrelated to Ukraine, it is interesting to see how Trump is doing the exact opposite of US interests in this regard.