Tag
17 articles tagged “conflict”.
History
The historical thread from grain and oil to rare earths and fresh water.
A survey of how competition over scarce material inputs has driven interstate conflict, and how abundance reframes the underlying logic.
Continue reading6 min
Concept
When the material rationale for conquest weakens, what happens to the war budget?
The economic argument that abundance weakens the material rationale for conquest, together with the structural critiques of that view.
Continue reading6 min
Theory
The classic tradeoff and what happens when the marginal costs of both collapse.
The classic production-possibilities tradeoff between military and civilian goods, reframed for a near-zero-marginal-cost economy.
Continue reading5 min
History
Lithium, cobalt, neodymium, gallium — the supply chains that replace oil as conflict surfaces.
The mineral chokepoints of the electrified economy, their role as conflict surfaces, and how atoms abundance could defuse or displace them.
Continue reading6 min
History
From Gulf tankers to European pipelines — and why distributed solar changes the map.
How control of energy production and transit has shaped conflict, and how distributed solar-plus-storage alters the strategic map.
Continue reading6 min
Doctrine
Eisenhower's warning and how abundance-era production reshapes procurement lock-in.
Eisenhower's warning and the institutional lock-in of wartime procurement, reshaped but not dissolved by abundance-era production.
Continue reading6 min
Theory
Why war is not economic stimulus, and why the abundance-era opportunity cost is larger than ever.
Bastiat's parable of the broken window applied to war-as-stimulus, and why abundance makes the opportunity cost of destruction larger than ever.
Continue reading5 min
Theory
Does climbing the energy ladder correlate with leaving violence behind?
Whether civilizational energy tiers correlate with reduced violence, examining Pinker's long-peace thesis and its serious counterarguments.
Continue reading7 min
Contemporary
Abundance and scarcity dynamics in 2020s warfare and coercion.
Framework article introducing the 2020s conflicts batch through the abundance/scarcity lens.
Continue reading5 min
Conflict
The Ukraine–Russia war as the laboratory of abundant, disposable airpower.
FPV and loitering-munition drones have made airpower cheap, abundant, and disposable, reshaping battlefield economics.
Continue reading5 min
Geopolitics
Private satellite internet as strategic wartime infrastructure.
Starlink in Ukraine illustrates how abundant private satellite connectivity can become strategic wartime infrastructure.
Continue reading5 min
Geopolitics
Leading-edge chips as contested strategic resource.
Advanced chips have become the contested chokepoint of the 2020s, driving export controls, reshoring, and a new industrial politics of compute.
Continue reading6 min
Conflict
When compute abundance becomes a weapon aimed at shared reality.
Cheap generative models and global reach have scaled influence operations, stressing the trust infrastructure abundance depends on.
Continue reading5 min
Geopolitics
Gas leverage, pipeline sabotage, and the accelerated European abundance response.
Post-2022 European energy politics — gas leverage, pipeline sabotage, accelerated renewables — as an abundance response to a scarcity shock.
Continue reading5 min
Conflict
Ransomware on hospitals and utilities, and what abundance-era defense looks like.
Critical-infrastructure intrusions have turned cybersecurity into a civil-defense problem requiring public investment proportional to societal dependence.
Continue reading5 min
Geopolitics
ASAT tests, Kessler risk, and why LEO access is a shared infrastructure problem.
Orbital debris, ASAT tests, and LEO crowding make space a contested commons whose governance is load-bearing for the abundance agenda.
Continue reading5 min
Contemporary
Water stress, migration, and feedback loops stress-testing the international order.
Climate change as conflict force multiplier, and the abundance tools that partially shape the stress curve.
Continue reading5 min