News comes at us fast, like the pitcher’s ball. We take them one by one, defence and deflection. We’re not looking to knock them out of the park. Survival is the game.
Crises in food and fertiliser, transportation and fuel, jobs and AI, internet and cyber attacks, lack of chemicals bringing industries to a halt. What’s going on?
A Great Shutdown is underway and it was already a much bigger deal than Covid when I wrote about it in 2023. From energy prices that shutter industry, to brands that “go woke and go broke” — why burn it down unless that’s not where your wealth lies.
The continuation of war despite the mounting loss of energy, the impact on food and essential inputs for industry, from pipes to metals, confirms my analysis.
The gas and oil spigot is being turned off.
I called out the Great Shutdown back in 2023 when it was not fit for polite conversation. Like the Great Replacement is still not fit today.
At a certain time, late in the day, everyone will agree that they knew all along.
So let us examine this criss.
The announcer over the speaker system tells us, during half time, that there will be a fly past.
We look up, and see black swans incoming.
CASCADING CRISES
We find, in no particular order, a growing number of crises affecting industry and society.
Jobs are layoffs accelerate. Microsoft is offering redundancy to more than one quarter of its workforce, offering buyouts to 60,000 staff. Barclays bank is cutting five per cent of its staff, mainly in support functions. Groupon is going from human “digital native” to “AI native”, cutting a quarter of its jobs. It’s a broad trend, across many industries.
Internet insecurity is no longer a bug, it’s a feature. We see a global equivalent of Stuxnet (the virus that was used to break Iran’s nuclear centrifuges in 2010) and this time the target is whole-of-society. Cyber attacks and Internet outages shuttered banks last week. AI agents probed companies’ code. French supermarkets saw their fridge freezers hacked, temperatures cranked up to spoil food. If their SMART fridges then why not yours, or any device that’s hooked up, like the SMART meter that controls your electricity?
This was the scenario of the Obama-produced “Leave the World Behind” (2023) in which a broad and rolling cyber attack exposes the fragility of its middle class characters.
Western newspapers are reporting on the vulnerability of Internet cables that pass under the Strait of Hormuz. Recall how the same politicians and media lamented Europe’s reliance on Russian gas shortly before the detonation of the North Stream pipeline under the Baltic Sea.
Food prices rise. Don’t believe the official inflation numbers which are manipulated. Watch your shopping bill and the hidden shrink-flation of smaller packet sizes and cheaper ingredients.
U.S. wheat production is down 23 per cent on the year, to its lowest level since 1970. The reduction is caused partly by drought, El Niño and tired soils affecting yields, but also by a shift to higher-subsidised crops like corn and soybean. The rising cost of fertiliser and diesel is another burden. Disruption to Ukraine exports through the Black Sea also pushed up grain prices.
The Quaker Oats factory in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, suffered an explosion and fire, five floors up in an area where the product moves, rather than where people work. No one was hurt but the the building and its machinery were put out of action. It is the worlds largest oat milling facility that processes over 2 million pounds of oats daily.
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