> Navy's reputation has been squandered in the last year
I don't understand how anything that has occurred in the last year would make a Somali pirate think it's less likely they would be killed if they chose to resist an American boarding party. If anything, they would think it's more likely they'd be killed and that there might be unpredictably severe reprisals against their clan, supporters, etc.
On the other hand, Somali pirates have attacked fully loaded warships dozens of times, apparently not realizing that small arms and a dinghy can't take down a goddamn battleship
Until the cost of local production (union labor, environmental regulations, etc.) meets the increasing costs of imports during said shortfall. Then we'll just make it here. The shortfall goes away but the price would admittedly be higher.
I think you misunderstand. I'm not arguing that the US will face a shortfall. The data above show that the US imports less than 25% of its bromine, but are redacted to prevent the public knowing the real amount. Factories in America are unlikely to face shortfalls of bromine.
But unless we have an extra 250 million tonnes of production capacity sitting on the sidelines, which would probably mean more than doubling our total output, we're not going to make up the shortfall for anyone else. We're talking about the majority of (disclosed) global production going offline if Iran could manage it (though again it is not clear that they can or will). China will also probably be using everything that they produce. Europe and the rest of Asia will be left high and dry. It's a win for the US strategy of critical minerals resilience, in some sense, but it's still a problem.
The linked article from USGS says nothing about semiconductor-grade purity bromine, but only about ordinary bromine that is used in the chemical industry.
Semiconductor-grade purity bromine is orders of magnitude more expensive than ordinary bromine and the vast majority of bromine producers do not make it.
The USGS article provides no evidence that such bromine is made in USA. I would rather expect Japan to be a producer, not USA, because for many semiconductor-grade purity chemical substances there are major producers in Japan.
Korea does not like to depend on imports from Japan, so I would not be surprised if there was a Japanese source of pure bromine but Korea prefers to import it from Israel. If this were true, they could still switch suppliers in case of a shortage.
The issue is chip production in Korea and possibly Taiwan. And that's where vast amounts of US chip inventory comes from. How to buildout AI capacity if can't source memory chips? This exposes another risk to the high AI valuations which are underpinning market valuations.
The article is timely as it suggests yet another unconsidered risk factor of this war - USA could destroy its own stock market. Or Iran could accelerate that with one missile. I like to think the US military know this hence obsession with missile destruction but it is reasonable based on recent behaviour to assume that the MAGA overlords can't even spell bromine nevermind understand the risk.
That was the point of Horizon Worlds. They were trying a (very expensive) social play for VR.
The problem is that the intersection/suitability of VR and social media is rather low, while as a counterexample the intersection of mobile and social media is very large. I have no desire to chat with old classmates when I "suit up" with VR goggles, I'm there to game.
I work on products that feature live monitoring capabilities. There's no connection to the monitoring side's microphone (or camera) — why would there be? I'm not sure why there would be for their products.
Whatever the cause, it sure sounds like it was a strange and unnerving experience.
Some are installed by private entities. Home Depot installs Flock cameras in their parking lots.
I assume their primary use case is combating organized retail theft rings, as companies like Target spend a great deal on this problem (to include famously having their own accredited crime lab).
I don't understand how anything that has occurred in the last year would make a Somali pirate think it's less likely they would be killed if they chose to resist an American boarding party. If anything, they would think it's more likely they'd be killed and that there might be unpredictably severe reprisals against their clan, supporters, etc.
What events were you thinking of?
reply