Discussion
@quixoticgeek Consider that the fall of Russia is largely down to economic mismanagement—they failed to transition from a resource extraction economy to a skills economy, and they're losing the war because resource export chokepoints are vulnerable to air attacks—and the AI bubble is due to investors seeking shelter for their capital.
I don't understand it but these look like huge pieces of a 21st century jigsaw puzzle (energy transition from oil to renewables, end of Moore's Law hitting tech).
@cstross @oldladyplays I really hope what was laid out here is actually gonna be the case. Let us hope that the Ukrainians com out of this victorious. One thing is for sure, this will all end up in textbooks in the future for sure, no doubt about it.
@cstross The author is mixing desirable ending with realistic. And not providing sources for the most egregious claims.
Anyway, this quote especially got me "The Russian troops are facing an oncoming winter without fuel to keep them from freezing, or food to keep them from starving, without reinforcements that aren’t coming, without ammunition or armoured vehicles"
Every point made here is MUCH more applicable to Ukraine unfortunately.
@cstross I don't see it as clearly as it presented in that post.
There are positive (for the Ukraine) indicators especially in the economic area.
But even broken countries can fight for a very long time if the will is there. And the will of the general population is hard to judge and there are very few indicators pointing to any breaking points soon.
That said: it would be very rational for Russia to make peace. But rationality is at least not their forté at the moment.
@cstross It really looks like we're at an inflection point. Financially, demographically, and even with the physical equipment the war is being fought.
Perun did a very interesting assessment of the untenable burn-rate of Russian use of old Soviet-legacy mothballed equipment to enable the invasion.
Long story short; the enormous Soviet-era stores are almost barren, and Russia can't manufacture close to current loss rates.
A Russian crunch is coming.
@cstross The problem is Russia will buy fuel, weapons and so on from Iran, North Korea and China
@cstross I want to believe. I hope it is not only wishful thinking, and I find the idea of nuclear weapons in the hands of post-Russia warlords quite scary
@fdr Bear in mind that nuclear weapons require frequent maintenance or they stop working reliably, fizzle instead of detonate, or just won't go bang *at all*. And frequent means every year or three: they don't have a multi-decade shelf life.
@cstross
I don't think a genocide in the US will prove to be a sideshow.
@cstross This is a really optimistic post about the Ukraine war. I sincerely hope it's correct.
The AI bubble collapse is definitely coming, and pessimism is warranted there.
Beware of wishful thinking.
The reference to past examples of military defeat on Russian soil caused by overstretched supply lines is certainly interesting. But I'm skeptical how much we really know about the impact on Russian capabilities on the front lines by the sometimes spectacular deep strikes by Ukraine.
@6d03 The UKR deep strikes are economic warfare: by hitting refineries they're denting Russia's export earnings hence ability to finance the war. The Russian front-line military will still get fuel even if civilians are freezing in the dark—but the Russian govt. may run out of money with which to buy Bayraktar drones or foreign-manufactured missile guidance systems.
I hope Turkey isn't selling Bayraktar to Russia 🤔
Do we have a utopian/dystopian description of what the collapse of the AI bubble will actually mean in terms of fallout? I've just watched a 60 Minutes bit about the current bubble and a comparison to 1929. And there the CEO of Blackrock states that US pension funds should invest people's 401 pension money in AI. That would ruin a whole generation.
Not that much housing fallout as 2008, but what else except OpenAI going belly-up, which I'd very much appreciate?
@cstross It's possible, of course. But he doesn't present sources and I've not seen any evidence that the Russian economy is on the verge of collapse. From what I've seen Russia has been successfully increasing the number of troops on the ground and their airstrike capabilities. And far from stalling their rate of advance has been accelerating.
It's important for Ukrainian morale to have these, "one more heave" narratives but we should demand evidence. It's our inflation paying to lose this war
@cstross and markets are emergent phenomena around what a group of capitalists believe about the future, so once the belief goes unstructured at all (Russian collapse/loss of oil supply/AI bubble/loss of financial services, any will do) it all goes unstructured.
Plus the cold fact that your military is what you can pay for and the US is ALSO in for economic collapse (everyone is; the question is when the agricultural collapse bites hard enough, not if) and things start to get interesting.
@cstross Software, notionally much of the North Atlantic economy, is by and large and on the whole not robust at all.
(The rental model means everyone's stuff can just stop working because some key server somewhere has a problem. Leave that aside.)
Hardware lifetime trends down as component sizes shrink; single digit nanometre chips aren't going to last ten years. The fabs to make those chips need the entire working global economy, which includes the financial services part AI is immolating.
@cstross ooh. I hadn't even thought about the possibility of juxtaposing the fall of Russia and the ai bubble collapsing the US economy. That's gonna make for some extremely interesting times.
@quixoticgeek Consider that the fall of Russia is largely down to economic mismanagement—they failed to transition from a resource extraction economy to a skills economy, and they're losing the war because resource export chokepoints are vulnerable to air attacks—and the AI bubble is due to investors seeking shelter for their capital.
I don't understand it but these look like huge pieces of a 21st century jigsaw puzzle (energy transition from oil to renewables, end of Moore's Law hitting tech).
@cstross @quixoticgeek OK but in the short term Trump or china may still bail out Putin. UKR is bleeding and is running out of soldiers too. It’s still very tight.
Biden was an asshole for stopping UKR hit oil infra in case it drove up oil prices…
Everyone forgets #India. There's a plausible case to be made that India just waits out the now inevitable demographic timebomb that has been ticking away for years in the Russian Federation, and just takes over the Russian Far East by dint of being the majority people left there.
I first came across this idea via a random recommendation of #ElviraBary, but xe is not the only person talking about this.
@cstross they didnt fail, a corrupt mafia state simply is systemically unable to develop a skills economy.
@cstross I felt the need to elaborate a bit.
It’s not „failed transition“ - its working exactly as designed. A kleptocracy can’t build a knowledge economy because the same power structures that extract resource rents actively suppress the property rights, competition, and rule of law that innovation needs.
Russia has the 5th largest pool of university graduates globally but produces 0.3% of US patents. That’s not failure to transition. That’s a system optimized for extraction, not innovation.
@cstross @quixoticgeek : AI bubble popping up will take with him the SP500 which will take with him the crypto world thanks to the Strategy Company (which is the weak link of the whole crypto bubble).
But crypto and AI will let behind them huge unusable datacenters with their power source. Suddenly unused.
Electricity will become as cheap as air or even have negative prices on some highly congested network.
Burned fuel electricity will be stopped but renewable can’t be stopped…
@cstross @quixoticgeek : with so much free electricity, oil price will fall. The whole energy sector will be IBMified: old giants doing some consultancy work.
Russia will have nothing left but to become China’s slave. Some petro-dollar countries will be smart enough to become China’s best friend to help sink the dollar (dollar debacle has already started). And, yes, bitcoins will probably stay in the game after a huge crash…
@cstross @quixoticgeek : We will then enter in a decade of all the world trying to get product from China will, at the same time, trying to build back their own industry.
That’s for the smart countries.
Europa may stay in the idiotic position of buying all hardware from China and all software from the US.
But, in the meantime, this may make EU the new Switzerland of the world by being the neutral place where people goes on holliday and keep their money. € surprizing strenght might be that.
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