Cable Cuttin'

A worrying "less than war" sabotage trend.

More on Russia’s sabotage of submarine cables in the Baltic, this time from WSJ. You should read Playing Jenga With Shipping for background.

We’re in the Fuck Around phase here, the Find Out will involved a dramatic degradation of the freedom of the seas that has been the norm since the end of World War II. We’ve snorted so much free market fairy dust the last eighty years that we’ve forgotten what it means to not be able to get key raw materials or finished products.

Everything is more intertwined than it was before - if you want a new phone you might be getting a Japanese design on silicon that originated in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, which was etched in Taiwan using lithography systems built in the Netherlands, and there will be some slave labor coltan metals in the mix.

The U.S. can mostly feed itself. China, on the other hand, needs to import 75% of its agricultural inputs. Their fixation on Taiwan could lead to a quarter billion dead of starvation, and if they take the island they won’t get anything that matters from TSMC, the exit plan is already well established.