My father worked for NACA & NASA from the 1950s until retiring in the 1980’s. He did a lot of work on reactor powered electricity generation systems. In the late 1960s and 1970s things seem to be going off the rails a bit. He and I would watch Star Trek and reruns and then talk about the future through that fictional lens. His program eventually got canceled and he moved on to other things but he always saw hope for the future and their future was atomic powered. A few years ago Gordon McDowell did a video edit on this theme : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_83ms3Xmlc8.html
It looks like Ted Nordhaus has a grasp of geopolitics that I can only dream of. Finished watching this whole video. Extremely interesting. I wonder if the principles he was describing as egalitarianism and democrization coming from the development of industry versus what he was describing as 'eco neocolonialism' from wealthy white water rafters opposing development of large scale energy projects like dams is ultimately what leads to the rise and fall of civilizations. Was there an analogous mechanic at play with the Fall of Rome? I realize the purpose of this discussion was intended to be far more practical than the tenuous connections I'm trying to draw from it from my previous paragraph. I apologize for meandering off-topic. I, personally, am a very strong advocate for nuclear power development; I think that when the Carter Administration chose to put a hault on all enrichment in the US, he was making a mistake. If the joke about Russia is, "We 'ave de' bomb; we don't know where they all are! But we 'ave de' bomb!" Does it really make sense to give them a monopoly on enrichment?
Hearing an American speaking about forced labor does reek of hypocrisy, considering how the US constitution prohibits slave labor but explicitly makes exceptions for prisons. Especially considering how their prison industrial complex works. But the point about supply chain vulnerability is on point. Funnily enough, protectionism barely gets suggested, and state controlled industry outright dismissed.
@@gilian2587 A potential way to minimize supply chain vulnerability is by practicing protectionism, protecting your own industry by subsidies, import tariffs or even import bans. In theory frowned upon by proponents of free markets, in practice great powers practice it at least a little bit. For example, all weapons used by the US armed forces have to be manufactured in the US, with as much of the supply chain as possible on US soil. A concrete example is the US ordering M4's at FN, a Belgian company, but the manufacturing will happen at a US production site. State controlled industry is driven by politics rather than profit (for better or for worse), and as such is generally less likely to outsource much, resulting in a consolidated supply chain. Can be very useful to maintain tight control on strategic goods/commodities.
