Generic Working Class Citizen

It's kinda weird that manipulating oil prices and emptying the SPR just like completely worked with no visible downside whatsoever.

Because memory is short these days, a recap: June 2025 - The USA bombs Iran because Israel demanded it. The justification was to destroy nuclear weapon capability. It was fed to the public as necessary, but also limited. The bombing would happen, and that would be that. The end. Overall, this was accepted. Feb 2026 - What appears to be aggressive CIA/Israeli instigated civil unrest in Iran fails to produce meaningful results. An extensive campaign pushed for this across the MSM and social media, but it did not take. Thus, Operation Epic Fury begins. Supreme Leader and other senior leaders are bombed to death. Iran's military retaliates with tremendous effect. March 2026 - As of this point, bombs have been going off all over the middle east. Tel Aviv was hit multiple times. The SOH is now compromised. Oil shipping disrupted. US military bases are also hit, and Lebanon is now in conflict. April to June - No real progress is made. Missiles and drones strikes are constant, and though there are many talks of "peace" with papers signed, this is no actual peace. Ships are blowing up. US naval carriers are reporting mysterious accidents, "laundry" fires, "plumbing" issues, and suddenly repositioning outside of presumed drone ranges. It is worth reiterating: There is a very real possibility US carriers were hit by Iranian drones or missiles and were forced to retreat. But the US military would never admit this. Not even as casualty numbers are rising. Additionally, many US bases are hit and their stationed troops are withdrawn from several in what can be politely described as an organized retreat. In Saudi Arabia and UAE, there have been dozens of reported strikes on oil fields, oil refineries, and even civilian infrastructure in the region. Massive reductions in production of oil, refined or otherwise. Houthis begin what will be a very successful campaign to take control of Saudi territory. April to October 27th - Present day: Global crude oil reserves are draining. The SOH is still a warzone. The alternative shipping lanes in the Bab al-Mandab Strait is contested by the Houthis. The Saudi pipelines are offline and their pumping stations are blown to hell. The US Strategic Petroleum Reserves are lower than they have ever been since the reserves were initially filled. They are below 1980s levels. On record, there are only 282 million barrels left in the reserve. On October 2, the G7 agreed to a coordinated release of 100 million barrels of diesel and crude over the next four months. This was all but forced on them by the US and not done willingly. Meanwhile, Ukraine has been targeting Russian oil storage and refineries with drone strikes. Between April 1 and August 31, 2026, at least two-thirds of 36 major Russian refineries were hit. Worldwide there have also been multiple "accidents" for oil refineries. As of October 27th 2026, it is safe to say, with clarity of the events listed above, that we are witnessing the worst energy crisis in human history. Especially, when taken from the perspective of refined product. Global reserves are being emptied, and peace does not appear to be on the table without dramatic shifts in who controls the shipping lanes and the Middle East as a whole. Something the US and Israel are clearly not willing to budge on. What does this mean? For Civilians this means at current demand levels we will be facing shortages of refined oil. And depending on where you are in the world, that could mean tomorrow. Malaysia is already in this exact situation. But for more powerful and connected countries, this will mean higher prices to reduce demand. Possibly mixed with hard ration limits for purchasing. It will also mean shipping/trucking/farming margins no longer make economic sense without much higher prices, which pass downstream to consumers. It might even mean some form of lockdowns or remote work will be enforced to cut demand. In addition to energy, we already see shortages in fertilizer, as well as sulfuric acid, helium, and various chemical byproducts. The 2nd and 3rd order effects here will results in far more damage than just "higher prices" but the exact specifics of these supply chain shortages can only be summarized currently as "Some products won't be on the shelves and people from countries that rely on foreign aid or heavily import food might starve to death" For World Order, though? This means much more abstract changes. Cost effectiveness of military forces are to be considered. What has been considered stronger, force projection-wise, might no longer be. Being able to simply park a carrier near a threat and scare/bomb the shit out of them, might no longer work. What has been standard military doctrine, might well be proven obsolete. Additionally, the US control over oil sales with the Petrodollar system might be crumbling, and while there's a chance is can reform in the western hemisphere with diminished capacity, it will need to compete with whatever takes its place in the middle east, which in turn will mean dramatic impacts on the global bond market. And perhaps some serious questions on what to do about the US federal debt and money printing. All of this seems very abstract to those who have not been paying attention to these events. And as the midterm elections approach, it is mired in politics and misinformation. As the SPR can still be squeezed, and there are still some global reserves to draw down from, we can continue to pretend there might be some healthy resolution to this conflict. But in truth, we have very little runway left. We have not meaningfully reduced demand for what can only be interpreted as political reasons, and are thus locked into a very "all gas no breaks situation" towards the cliff in which we run out. Each month this goes on, we draw down more and more from global storage, and are unable to refill in meaningful quantities anytime soon. And everyday we pretend everything is normal, and thus refuse to react, we make the situation worse. While there is still some open debate about what happens to crude prices and availability if more refineries are destroyed, ultimately those market dynamics will not help consumers who need to purchase the refined products- regardless of if they allow for unrefined crude purchases for global reserves. So, at best, we are in for a very rough couple of years. As people like to say, you can print more money, but you can't print oil. And as people also love to say "This is all just a conspiracy theory" so I guess don't worry about it. Nothing to see here.

Software is insane because for thousands of years problems related to work were fairly straight forward. You made bricks or something. But no brickmaker in history has ever been confronted with a batch of bricks that turn invisible on monday if the observer throws a ball at them

"A Christian man does not feed his balance sheet on the ashes of his own countrymen."

The USA has a quirk where our military does not capitalize on a massive advantage because it would be "wrong." It mostly comes from Christian morality. We could win. Easily. But we don't, because it would be wrong. We had nukes before everyone. We could have wiped the board. We didn't. I am uncertain this would be true if another country had gotten there first. Now, AI is likely the next "nuke" level threat, and the entire world has access. So, we are counting on the entire world not to wipe the board. That is a big ask.

November into 2028 is going to be insane.

Hmmm.

Consider what the world looks like when this technology leaks out into modern 'safe' countries. Pandora's box is open. There is no cost-effective way to defend against this.

There was once a point where this wasn't true, but we have passed it. This is now difficult to argue against.

It seems like the recipe for success is a very stubborn/autistic engineer who is in charge of a large pool of capital with little to no government red tape beyond basic safety regulations. Please stop trying to change this recipe.