In not a Chinese shill but realistically modern war is a competition of industrialized might. China would whoop the US in a slugfest (i.e. not nuclear exchange. Nobody wins that) because the US can’t produce at the rate the Chinese can.

China can mass produce sophisticated weapons… The US’ military industrial complex and incentive structures (cost + % billing) has created a giant cancerous tumor of an arm’s industry. It’s currently tooled for bullying and murdering brown people for profit, not fighting a near peer nation and changing that system takes years.

It won’t change as long as cost + % and corruption continue, which they will. If the US finds itself in a war with China it’ll have entirely the wrong arm’s industry for fighting them and they won’t have the grace of 1939-1941 to scale their domestic arms industry prior to a major conflict… There’s also the fact that the US is heavily deindustrialized now too compared to WWII… China is closer to the industrial heavyweight the US once was in 1941-45, but they have technological sophistication and a knowledge economy now too…

Patriot interceptor missiles are a decent example of what I mean. They cost millions to produce and take forever to make which is by design. They could be made faster and cheaper but that’s less profit. If the arm’s industry in the US were paid a lump sum and not “pump your costs as high as possible to get the highest cost+% you can” things would be different.

Also a lot of universities have encouraged AI use and adoption…

Yeah I agree with you there. It’s going to be a free for all once that happens…

Oh hi Freagle! And yeah you’re exactly right!

If the petrodollar fails that’s exactly what’s going to happen. The rest of the world won’t miss the opportunity to hamstring the US during their moment of weakness and ensure they turn into an insular, regional isolationist power. It’ll be well deserved too…

The founding myth of your nation is violence. I think it’s like asking if there will be snow in February (I’m Canadian btw)

Well when it hits 7 I mean they literally have no spare energy for anyone or anything else.

The death of the petrodollar will do a lot to encourage renewables. When you don’t have the US breathing down your neck to buy oil in USD to support their empire you can buy it with whatever currency you want and decarbonize. The current world order and its financial system is what’s kept us on fossil fuels for so long. You literally couldn’t get off of them meaningfully or you would piss off the US. Any attempt to change that system was met with arrest, revolution, or death for those who suggested it.

Specifically I’ve heard that about the Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) which is the oil and gas industry’s equivalent to Levellized Cost Of Electricity (LCOE)

for reference the spindle top formation in Texas (that started the oil boom and kicked industrialization into high gear) was an EROEI of 100:1. You burn a barrel of energy, get 100 barrels.

Nowadays things are far more bleak… Our average EROEI is around 12-14 as a global average. Tar sands is 2-4. Shale oil (fracking) isn’t much better at around 4-6, sometimes less.

As an aside on why fracking is so low: you put a loooot of energy into drilling and banging, and then you lose 70% of your flow after a year. 2 years after drilling the well is dead and you need to do it all over again.

A lot of economists (and other experts) have placed a point of no return for the world economy around an EROEI of 7, which we should reach in roughly 10-15 years.

Once energy returns get that low the oil industry exists to support the oil industry. There isn’t enough surplus energy to run a complex globalized nation. It’s a bit like starvation when all we’ve known is a surplus of calories for 200 years.