Mercantilism: China and Beyond

something to consider.  Mercantalism and central governance are natural bedvfellows and ultimately induce stagflation once the labor pool has been fully engaged. 

This tells me that Chinas so called poor simply do not exist and are counted only to pad the population.

India may avoid this trap.

Mercantilism: China and Beyond

May 8, 2026

https://www.activistpost.com/mercantilism-china-and-beyond/

The self-liquidating nature of the mercantilist model cannot be reversed, it can only be managed as stagnation.

Everyone is an expert now on China. Which to say, everyone has an opinion about China, and the majority of those opinions fall into simplistic Bull or Bear camps.

As someone who has been a student of China for over 50 years, my sense is every claim of expertise has its limits. The more substantial the expertise, the greater the willingness of the expert to confirm the limits of their expertise. The more you know, the sharper your awareness of what you don’t know.

Being embedded in a culture makes it difficult to be objective. As an American, I don’t claim to be an expert on America; we only learn about being American by going elsewhere and observing, listening and learning from those raised in other cultures.

So rather than discuss China per se, let’s discuss the dynamics of mercantilism that play out not just in China but beyond, as they play out in every nation with mercantilist policies.

Mercantilism is rooted in a basic question facing every society: what is the primary source of our prosperity? For nations rich in natural resources, the answer is extracting and exporting these resources to those who lack them. For nations with fertile land, it’s growing and exporting grains and other foodstuffs. For nations poor in natural resources, value-adding manufacturing/crafts are an answer.

Every nation manages the balance between investing and consuming the surplus generated by the economy. Every dollar of surplus that’s funneled into investing in expanding production of exports is a dollar that isn’t spent in the domestic economy. It’s a tradeoff: we accept being poor now in order to become rich as exports expand.

Mercantilism is the political-economic-social policy that seeks to increase prosperity by focusing on optimizing profitable exports at the expense of domestic consumption. Rather than consume the surplus, the surplus is invested to increase exports. Wages are kept low to subsidize capital investment.

Mercantilism relies on manipulation of market forces. Mercantilist policy recognizes that the way to reap the biggest gains is to corner the market for whatever is being exported. The ideal way to accomplish this is to sell your exported goods at a loss, making them so cheap that the importer’s domestic producers cannot compete on price, so they close down.

Once the domestic producers have been wiped out or marginalized, the mercantilist nation’s producers can jack up prices because the importing nation is now dependent on the mercantilist nation’s exports. At the same time, the mercantilist nation establishes trade barriers to imports, making them so expensive that they cannot compete with domestic producers.

Mercantilism rigs trade on both sides of the coin to benefit the mercantilist nation at the expense of other nations. The mercantilist nation protects its domestic producers from overseas competition while flooding the targeted importing nations markets with cheap goods, driving their domestic production out of business.

Japan demonstrated how to optimize mercantilist policies in the period 1949 to 1989. Domestic consumption was limited as the necessary tradeoff to invest heavily in production of exports. This required tight coordination of the government and private industry, who worked hand in hand to finance and favor export production.

Currency, labor costs and state subsidies are all core to optimizing exports. The weak yen and initially lower labor costs meant that Japanese goods were cheap in the US. So mercantilism favors weak currencies, ample government subsidies of favored export industries and policies that cap or suppress labor costs.

The problem with mercantilist optimization is the targeted importing nations eventually wake up to the dire consequences of their dependence on mercantilist exporters. The downstream costs of losing domestic production and jobs become apparent, and the power that was transferred to the mercantilist nation without anyone noticing is now a visible threat.

This threat becomes even more apparent when the mercantilist nation deploys its vast trade surpluses to buy up companies, farmland and other assets in the importing nations. Alarm bells go off as the importing nation awakens to their future as a dependent peasantry working for industries owned by the mercantilist nations.

In other words, mercantilism is self-liquidating, because it’s fundamentally a one-sided manipulation of markets that impoverishes the importing nations. Self-preservation forces the importing nations to finally push back against the mercantilist manipulations by protecting what’s left of domestic production, limiting imports and demanding equal trade access to the mercantilist’s domestic market.

The unrecognized problem is the very success of the mercantilist model leads to the mercantilist nation becoming dependent on that model, which is inherently centralized and tightly controlled–the opposite of a free market. Since decentralized, open-market forces have been limited to low-level consumption, the mercantilist economy has lost the capacity to adapt as an emergent system, i.e. self-organizing based on a churn of low-level, localized experiments and enterprises.

The limits of the centralized, tightly controlled mercantilist model only become apparent when it starts failing, at which point the model becomes a trap. Since the state-corporate partnership limits localized, uncontrolled open-market forces, this capacity is too constrained to replace mercantilism. In the the mercantilist model, the “solution” is always centralized: increase subsidies for export industries, strip-mining the economy and society to benefit whatever export industries the leadership has chosen to favor.

Since domestic consumption has been limited to boost investment in export capacity, the domestic economy cannot replace faltering export growth. What the mercantilist model optimized was investment, and as centralized control has throttled adaptive forces, the investments in more export capacity are now mal-investments, as the world has changed. Dumping the economy’s surplus into expanding export capacity is no longer a golden road to wealth, it’s a catastrophic mis-use of capital.

The grand irony in becoming dependent on the mercantilist model is that there is no way out of its self-liquidating limits. The centralized planners–so accustomed to the successes of manipulating trade and currency markets to their exclusive advantage–have no adaptive means left, as that would require dismantling the centralized control that is the heart of the mercantilist model.

So they do more of what’s failing: weakening their currency, over-investing in export capacity, and maintaining a tight grip on the levers of control, as if doing more of what cannot possibly work like it did in the past will magically work because it was so successful in the past.

The story of China is the leadership has chosen export industries to conquer the world, but the world has changed. Importers have awakened to the consequence of becoming dependent on mercantilist nation’s exports: national impoverishment and the loss of control of the nation’s future.

Japan has managed a controlled stagnation of the mercantilist model in these ways:

1. Japan adapted the mercantilist model by moving auto production to the importing nation’s domestic economy. Profits still flow back to Japan but the jobs and parts now benefit the importing nations’ domestic economies.

2. Japan bought up enormous quantities of overseas assets in the go-go bubble decade of the 1980s, assets that generate income denominated in other currencies, enabling currency arbitrage, a.k.a. the yen carry trade.

3. Japan benefited from the deflationary boom generated by China: Japan moved a substantial portion of its production to China, along with other developed nations.

4. Japan has managed the debts left by the collapse of its gigantic asset bubbles in 1990 by keeping the non-performing loans on the books. Rather than writing off all the bad debt, Japan has chosen to bleed it off over decades of stagnation.

5. Japan’s cultural unity and stability enabled the continuation of the mechanisms of the mercantilist model even as the model generated stagnation. The workforce continues to accept long work hours and other sacrifices jettisoned by other developed nations, centralized planning from the 1960s that forces needless domestic consumption, and the general stagnation of the purchasing power of wages evident in many nations: the number of young people who cannot afford to buy a home or start a family is now a consequential demographic factor.

To summarize: the self-liquidating nature of the mercantilist model cannot be reversed, it can only be managed as stagnation—and only if specific conditions apply. Absent those conditions, stagnation is not stable, it generates instability.

What’s playing out in China is mercantilism with Chinese characteristics, just as mercantilism with Japanese characteristics has been playing out in Japan over the past 36 years. If the income generated by overseas assets replaces the stagnating income from exports, the decay of living standards can be masked by the continuation of a stable social order: the trains still run on time, everyone can get by on their salaries, etc.

But to say this is the same as the go-go euphoria of mercantilism’s glory days–no. The self-liquidation can be slowed, not reversed, for the world has changed. This is not isolated to any one nation, it’s inherent to mercantilism.

Cameco Sees As Many As 20 AP1000 Nuclear Reactors On The Horizon

For those who do not know ,Cameco owns the single richest uranium deposit in the world at a grade of twenty percent. I was in the midst of it back in the mid 70's when four pounds per ton was real economics.  then Key Leke happened and the game completely changed.

today, if you have plans to build a reactor you need to contract for supply and Comeco is it.

This tells us that the plans afoot are over twenty and they will know.

Cameco Sees As Many As 20 AP1000 Nuclear Reactors On The Horizon

Saturday, May 09, 2026 - 06:35 PM

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/cameco-sees-many-20-ap1000s-horizon

Cameco leadership recently made announcements during their 2026Q1 earnings call regarding an expectation that as many as 20 AP1000 reactors will be announced for construction with support from the Department of Commerce (DOC) and the Department of Energy (DOE).

Grant Isaac, the Chief Operating Officer and President of Cameco, provided some color on the call for the difference between the different department efforts and the stages of discussions under each.

We covered the announcement from the DOC at length last fall, providing details on the $80 billion agreement between the US government, Brookfield and Cameco to deploy up to 10 AP1000 reactors across the US.

Few updates have been given to this program so far. But Isaac comments that the “project continues to move along”. The efforts under the DOC contract appear to be focused on “long lead items that are required in order to stand” up a fleet of large reactors.

Considering the domestic and global supply chain outside of China and Russia has been more focused on sustainment and decommissioning, there is currently a lack of capacity across all the involved companies to build multiple reactors a year.

The sole-producer of the reactor cooling pumps for Westinghouse AP1000 reactor plants, Curtiss-Wright, recently remarked that they only have capacity to produce enough pumps for three to four reactors per year. Significant expansion efforts will be required to remove deployment roadblocks for multiple different systems and components.

Another question trying to be answered under the DOC program is under what model the reactors could be built. Isaac says. Isaac said, “those models could be a range of things from a federal build, own and operate to a federal build-own transfer model all the way to perhaps a financing of an existing nuclear operator who simply is just looking for financing.”

But the ten large reactors being pursued under the DOC plan are apparently completely separate from as many as ten reactors that are being pursued under the DOE.

There are a number of utilities progressing towards the construction of pairs of AP1000 reactors, with “five or six of them in very advanced stages”. These utilities are coordinating with the DOE and the Office of Energy Dominance Financing to secure loans for the projects, as well as potentially ordering long lead items ahead of time.

“So when you step back and look at it, the U.S. isn't just talking about potentially 10 reactors under the DOC program. They’re potentially telling about another 10 under the DOE more traditional approach.”

When The Persian Gulf Supply Shock Meets The Warsh Fed: Stagflation & The Coming AI Bubble Bust

This shock  impacts China and Southeast Asia.  The rest is disturbed but not quite like that.  understand we are tslking about 20.000,000 barrels equivalent per day here or a third of global flows

Least impacted will be north America.  Notwithstanding Trump meddling.

Constrained throughput can be handled in vehicle fuel by swift switch to evs.  

that is already happening

When The Persian Gulf Supply Shock Meets The Warsh Fed: Stagflation & The Coming AI Bubble Bust

Saturday, May 09, 2026 - 03:40 PM

Authored by David Stockman via InternationalMan.com,

Here is a salient place to start regarding the economic impact of the Donald’s misbegotten war on Iran: To wit, approximately 7 billion ton-miles of freight moves by truck each and every day in the USA, which heavy truck fleet consumes upwards of 2.9 million barrels per day (mb/d) of diesel fuel.

Alas, the price of diesel fuel was about $3.55/gallon both a year ago and as of early January 2026, but has since soared by more than+$2.00 per gallon to around $5.60 recently. That’s a 56% rise in the cost of pumping goods and commodities through the arteries of the US economy. On an annualized basis, the diesel fuel bill for the US truck fleet went from $155 billion per year to $250 billion per year at current oil prices.

The big question, of course, is through which channel these drastically higher fuel acquisition costs will be absorbed—in higher prices or reduced output?

And that pertains not just to the microcosm of the trucking sector, but the entire GDP now being battered by the Donald’s elective war-based dislocation of the world’s 175 million BOE/day oil and natural gas markets.

We’d bet it will be a combination of both inflation and deflation, otherwise known as stagflation. The mix of these outcomes depends upon supply and demand conditions in individual sectors of the economy in part, but also, and ultimately and more importantly, on the Fed.

That is, whether the nation’s central bank pumps incremental demand into the economy via credit expansion with a view to “accommodating” the soaring price of energy today, and, soon, food and other commodity inputs to GDP, too; or holds firm on the printing press dials and allows the now cresting energy and commodity shocks to work their way through the interstices of the $30 trillion US economy.

Of course, during the previous comparable petroleum supply disruption of the 1970s, the Fed made the huge mistake of printing the money to counteract what was a “supply shock” in the form of soaring petroleum prices. But that led—just as sound money advocates had always held—to double digit increases in the general price level by the end of the decade, and thereafter the trauma of the Volcker administered application of the monetary brakes.

With the Fed fixing to welcome a new Chairman, as recent congressional hearings remind, it is therefore a question of whether or not the Kevin Warsh Fed will want to take its place in the monetary policy villains gallery along with Arthur Burns and the hapless William G. Miller.

We think not. We actually believe that for the first time since Volcker we are about to get a Fed chairman who understands the requisites of sound money and noninflationary finance, as well as the profound error of Keynesian demand management at the central bank.

And not only that. As far as we can tell, he also has the experience from his prior service on the Fed during the so-called Great Financial Crisis and the cajones to lean heavily against the supply shock now emanating from the Persian Gulf.

Of course, in a perfect world of honest money and free markets—including in the production of money and credit—there wouldn’t be any central bank “leaning” to do. Under an honest gold standard, for instance, the impending petroleum supply shock would cause relative price changes, thereby generating a sharp curtailment of activity in petroleum intensive sectors and the reallocation of activity, output, jobs and capital to less petroleum intensive sectors. That’s what the miracle of free markets do when they are allowed by the state to operate.

We obviously do not have anything close to free money and capital markets today. Yet we may be lucking out with the arrival of a new Fed Chairman who might well attempt to stand up a sound money proxy—at least in part—to simulate the deflationary and re-allocative impulses that would otherwise arise in the face of a world scale supply shock.

That is to say, Warsh may permit the incoming Persian Gulf supply shock to curtail output in heavily impacted sectors rather than monetize it, as did his failed predecessors during the 1970s.

Moreover, one thing which may help Walsh lean in this anti-Keynesian direction is the the need to avoid the tattered legacy of the private equity deal lawyer who proceeded him. As it happened, Powell had no clue that the blue suits who soon surrounded him at the Eccles Building were wrong-headed Keynesian monetary statists through and though.

Accordingly, when the far smaller supply shock from the Black Sea dislocation at the on-set of the Russia-Ukraine War came cascading through the global energy and food commodity markets, Powell joined the Burns/Miller brigade and kept on “accommodating”.

That’s evident in the graph below, which depicts the domestic services inflation rate excluding energy.

This is the Fed’s go to inflation metric because it arguably measures a subset of prices in the US economy that are mainly driven by so-called domestic “demand”, which is the very thing the Fed claims to be expert at calibrating.

We think Fed “demand management” is pretty much mischievous nonsense.

The fact is, however, when the Ukraine War incepted in February 2022 the domestic services less energy index was already rising at a 4.1% Y/Y rate. So there was no room for “accommodation” at all.

In fact, the Ukraine War supply shock had caught the Fed with its monetary pants down. The Fed funds rate was effectively zero in nominal terms at the time (February 2022) and had been pinned to the zero bound for the previous 22 months. Thereafter Powell and his merry band of money printers kept kidding themselves into believing that the Ukrainian War inflation surge was “transitory” and that a Volcker style slamming of the monetary brakes was unnecessary.

As it evident in the chart, however, the Fed tepid 25 basis point increases month after month in its target funds rate was blatantly too little and way too late. By February 2023, the very inflation metric that the Keynesian central bankers claim to heavily influence—-domestic services less energy services—was leaping higher at a +7.3% Y/Y rate.

By then, of course, and with double digit energy and food inflation layered on top, headline inflation was running at 40-year highs and knocking on the door of 1970s style double digit inflation.

We think this history is profoundly relevant to where a Kevin Warsh-led Fed may come out because it just so happens that the the Y/Y rate on this key metric stood at +3.05% in March 2026 or about where it had been in October 2021 on the eve of the “Powell Inflation”.

Needless to say, we don’t think Kevin Warsh, who is a real student of money and economics, wishes to be placed next in line in the Burns/Miller/Powell gallery of monetary villains.

CPI For Services Less Energy Services, June 2021 to March 2026

That’s especially the case when you look at the history of the Fed’s so-called monetary target adjusted for the prevailing (Y/Y) inflation rate. To wit, there is no logical or sustainable world in which the inflation-adjusted or “real” cost of overnight money can be negative for any even limited period of time.

That’s because negative cost overnight money in real terms is truly the mother’s milk of speculation—especially on Wall Street among the hedge funds and fast money operators, but on the main street economy, too.

Stated differently, cheap money everywhere and always causes excessive speculation, imprudent leverage, debt accumulation, financial asset bubbles, malinvestment of capital and economic waste. But above all else, it also fuels an inflationary rise in the general price level owing to artificial credit-fueled demand uncoupled from any prior and corresponding increase in supply.

In this context, the chart below tells you all you need to know about what the Warsh Fed will be up against, and also the lessons of the 2022-2023 error committed by the Fed in its delayed and languid reaction to the Black Sea commodity shock. To wit, the inflation-adjusted Fed funds rate in Q2 2022 when measured by the inflation metric the Fed swears by—the domestic services CPI less energy services—was negative -4.4%.

Surely that was a signal that the money-printers were way over the end of their skis. That’s especially because the Fed funds rate had been negative in real terms for 57 quarters running, going all the way back to Q1 2008, when the real funds rate had last been slightly positive.

But here’s where the inflationary gale force was gestated. It actually took the Fed more than three years—until Q2 2025—to get the Fed funds rate positive in real terms, and then only marginally so at just +0.75%. Indeed, it is nothing less than the big pool of negative real cost credit enabled by the Fed during those three years that rocked the US economy with an inflationary outbreak that is still not fully extinguished.

In fact, as the US economy now begins to absorb the far more powerful supply shock waves from the Persian Gulf supply shock, we think the incoming Warsh Fed is not about to run a repeat of 2021-2022.

The more likely course is actually suggested by the left-hand side of the graph, which shows that the real funds rate measured with this metric hovered in the +2.5% range or higher during the salad days of non-inflationary growth of the 1980s and 1990s.

That is to say, Kevin Warsh is likely to prove to be more of a Volcker/Reagan sound money central banker than we have experienced since Alan Greenspan sold his gold standard bona fides for a stint as the world’s most famous money-printer after the dotcom crash.

Inflation-Adjusted Fed Funds Rate, 1982 to 2026

So the question recurs. What is likely to happen to the alleged Trumpian Golden Age when the Persian Gulf Supply shock smacks up against the incoming sounder money Fed under Kevin Warsh?

In a word, we think the US economy is already teetering on the edge of recession, waiting for the proverbial wing-flap to tip it over into contraction. After all, it’s already evident that the one bright spot in the US economy during the Donald’s second go round—capital spending—is purely an artifact of the stock market bubble in AI.

For want of doubt, the table below shows Capex spending for AI and data centers and compares it to the second column, which is the standard measure of business fixed investment in structures, equipment and intellectual capital as reported in the income and product accounts. It is notable that the former accounted for just 2.5% of business capital investment in 2020, but grew by $188 billion in 2025 versus prior year.

At the same time, total business investment rose by just $228 billion in 2025, meaning that the AI/data center boom accounted for fully 82% of total business investment spending growth in the US economy during 2025.

The final two columns show the same data in constant dollar terms. Whereas the reported data shows that real nonresidential fixed investment investment (fifth column) rose by a seemingly robust 4.1% during Trump’s first year, capital spending excluding the AI bubble actually shrank at a -0.4% annual rate.

As it happened, the latter had actually grown by 6.7% per annum during the time of Sleepy Joe (2020-2024) owing to the unsustainable stimulus of borrow, spend and print after the pandemic collapse in the spring of 2020.

So “Joe Biden” therefore gets no plaudits for the artificially bloated economy he inherited from Trump 45 and the money-printing excesses of the Powell Fed. Still, it can be well and truly said that the US economy was already positioned on a banana peel when the Donald elected to blow up the Persian Gulf for no good reason of homeland security.

Business CapEx With And Without The AI/Data Center Boom, 2020 to 2025

In short, the Persian Gulf supply shock is about to monkey-hammer the US economy good and hard. And then the AI bubble in the stock market will bust—even as this time there will be no money-printers at the central bank waiting to bailout the mess.

* * *

The Persian Gulf supply shock may prove to be only one part of a much larger economic reckoning. If confidence in the US dollar continues to erode, the consequences could go far beyond higher prices, tighter credit, and recession. At some point, desperate governments often reach for desperate measures—including capital controls, restrictions on movement, retirement account grabs, and other forms of wealth confiscation.

That’s why it’s critical to consider your options before the window to act narrows. To help, we’ve prepared a special report, Guide to Surviving and Thriving During an Economic Collapse. It explains practical steps you can take now to better protect your money, freedom, and future.

New technique radically boosts biogas yields from sewage sludge

This is interesting but heating it all makes it seem unikely.  The biological process is effective enough but also slo mo.  

Early days really but does focus on something important.  All feed stock can be fine chopped and dried out.  Then turning it all into biochar is attractive.

All good.

New technique radically boosts biogas yields from sewage sludge

By Etiido Uko

May 09, 2026

https://newatlas.com/energy/biogas-boost-sewage-sludge/

A newly developed process allows up to 83% of sewage sludge to be converted into biogas

Could one man's trash truly be another's treasure? Well, scientists have unveiled a technique that dramatically increases fuel extraction from one of humanity's most abundant byproducts – sewage sludge, a.k.a. poop – while cutting disposal costs.

The researchers from Washington State University say they have developed a pretreatment step and a novel bacterial strain that together can triple the amount of extracted biogas from biowaste water, while slashing disposal costs by half.

According to the study published in the Chemical Engineering Journal, wastewater treatment facilities account for 3% to 4% of total electricity consumption in the United States. For context, the US Energy Information Administration reports that electric vehicle charging accounted for roughly 0.5% of total US electricity consumption in 2025! Conventional treatment processes also add about 21 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere annually.

The study notes that roughly half of the United States' nearly 15,000 wastewater treatment facilities use anaerobic digestion, a process in which microbes break down sewage sludge in oxygen-free conditions to reduce waste volume while producing biogas. Some facilities use this biogas to offset part of their electricity demand, helping lower the massive energy consumption associated with wastewater treatment.

However, conventional anaerobic digestion remains relatively inefficient, with the process typically converting less than 40% of the sludge's carbon into usable gas. Large amounts of carbon-rich residual sludge, known as biosolids, remain after digestion and often end up in landfills, where they can generate additional greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the biogas itself contains large amounts of carbon dioxide – often around 35% to 40% – reducing its direct usefulness as a fuel and requiring additional upgrading before it can be injected into natural gas infrastructure as renewable natural gas.

To address these limitations, the researchers developed a two-stage system called the Advanced Pretreatment and Anaerobic Digestion (APAD) process. Rather than discarding the residual sludge left behind after conventional anaerobic digestion, the system subjects it to an additional treatment stage known as Advanced Wet Oxidation and Steam Explosion (AWOEx).

During this process, the digested sludge is exposed to high temperatures, pressure, and controlled amounts of oxygen, helping to break apart resistant organic compounds that conventional digestion struggles to fully decompose. The treated sludge is then fed into a secondary anaerobic digestion stage, allowing microbes to extract additional biogas from material that would otherwise remain as waste.

In a separate downstream stage, the resulting biogas is upgraded into higher-purity renewable natural gas using a trickle-bed bioreactor containing a novel methanogenic bacteria strain, Methanothermobacter wolfeii BSEL (we know you didn't pronounce that). Fed with hydrogen, the microorganism biologically converts carbon dioxide in the biogas into additional methane, increasing the fuel quality of the final gas stream.

A bioreactor that was utilized in the study

Washington State University

“This (bacterial strain) bug doesn't need anything – it is a workhorse,” says Birgitte Ahring, WSU professor and corresponding author on the paper. “It doesn't need organic additives or a lot of nursing. It does well with water and a vitamin pill.”

The researchers report substantial gains from the system. By extracting far more usable material from sludge that would normally remain as waste and by converting much of the carbon dioxide in the resulting biogas into additional methane, the integrated process increased renewable natural gas output by 200% compared to conventional anaerobic digestion alone.

The system also achieved an overall carbon conversion efficiency of 83%, meaning a much larger portion of the sludge's carbon was converted into usable fuel rather than remaining trapped in residual waste. The researchers additionally report that the pretreatment stage reduced sludge treatment costs from $494 to $253 per dry ton by significantly lowering the volume of leftover biosolids requiring disposal. Smells like money.

“This technology basically converts up to 80% of the sewage sludge into something valuable. If we can replicate this work on other organic materials, we'll have a waste treatment technology that is world-class when it comes to efficiency,” says Ahring.

The team has patented the bacteria strain and is now looking to develop a larger-scale version of the project with an industrial partner.

Technically speaking, if successfully scaled nationally and if the underlying economics hold up in real-world deployment – among many other “ifs” – the researchers' modeling suggests the pretreatment portion of the system could potentially translate into billions of dollars in annual savings across US sewage sludge treatment operations. The work was funded by the US Department of Energy Bioenergy Technologies Office, a clear indication that the researchers are definitely onto something.

The Day Civilization Runs Out Of Bread Will Not Feel Like Fiction

I am not convinced that nuclear war is as damaging as made out by alarmists ,not least because of a real lack of fuel.

I am convinced though that mother nature is capable of knocking us out in terms of northern agricultural production for several years as happened in 1159 BC.

I also think that agriculture can handle this through tropical cassava production in particular.  This allows for a the long northern recovery cycle.  My point is that globally we can fix the worst scenario.

The Day Civilization Runs Out Of Bread Will Not Feel Like Fiction

Friday, May 08, 2026 - 08:25 PM

Authored by Madge Waggy,

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/day-civilization-runs-out-bread-will-not-feel-fiction

For nearly three decades, much of the modern world behaved as though the nuclear age had quietly expired sometime in the early 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Union created the comforting illusion that humanity had stepped away from the edge permanently, as if the terrifying balance that defined the Cold War had dissolved together with old political maps. Younger generations grew up hearing about nuclear drills, fallout shelters, and atomic panic the same way they heard about trench warfare or medieval plagues: as distant historical experiences disconnected from ordinary life. Governments gradually shifted public attention toward terrorism, economic globalization, artificial intelligence, and climate policy, while nuclear annihilation faded into the background of public consciousness.

Yet history has a dangerous habit of returning precisely when societies become convinced they have outgrown it.

Throughout 2025 and the opening months of 2026, the international system entered one of its most unstable periods since the twentieth century. Military analysts began warning openly about simultaneous geopolitical flashpoints involving several nuclear powers at once. Russian officials intensified references to strategic deterrence during ongoing confrontations connected to Eastern Europe, while NATO expanded military exercises across regions Moscow considers existentially sensitive. At the same time, China accelerated modernization of its nuclear arsenal and long-range missile systems at a pace that alarmed Western intelligence agencies. North Korea continued demonstrating increasingly advanced delivery capabilities, and tensions surrounding Taiwan, cyber warfare, and contested maritime territories pushed diplomatic relations into progressively uncertain territory.

Most citizens observed these developments from a psychological distance shaped by modern media exhaustion. Continuous exposure to crisis has transformed public attention into something fragmented and temporary. Economic anxiety, inflation, political polarization, housing instability, technological disruption, and endless digital noise have conditioned people to process existential threats as short-lived headlines rather than historical warnings. This emotional fatigue may partially explain why recent discussions surrounding nuclear risk have failed to produce widespread public alarm despite the seriousness of the underlying situation.

What many people still fail to understand is that contemporary fears surrounding nuclear war extend far beyond the immediate destruction caused by the weapons themselves.

The dominant concern among climate scientists, food security experts, and strategic analysts is no longer limited to blast zones or radiation exposure.

The larger fear involves what happens afterward, when the environmental consequences of large-scale firestorms begin altering the planet’s atmosphere and destabilizing the systems that sustain modern civilization.

Civilization Does Not Collapse In One Afternoon

During the Cold War, researchers studying atmospheric science reached conclusions that many policymakers initially struggled to accept. Their models suggested that nuclear detonations targeting cities and industrial infrastructure would ignite massive firestorms capable of releasing extraordinary amounts of soot and smoke into the upper atmosphere. Unlike ordinary pollution, these particles could remain suspended in the stratosphere for extended periods, blocking significant portions of sunlight from reaching the Earth’s surface. The phenomenon eventually became known as “nuclear winter,” though the phrase itself almost sounds too simple for the scale of devastation being described.

The consequences outlined in scientific simulations were extraordinary. Temperatures across major agricultural regions could fall dramatically within weeks. Growing seasons would shorten or disappear entirely in some parts of the world. Rainfall patterns could become severely disrupted, while frost conditions might appear during periods traditionally associated with crop growth. Wheat, corn, rice, and soy production would decline simultaneously across multiple continents, creating a synchronized collapse unlike anything modern economies were designed to survive.

What makes this possibility especially catastrophic in 2026 is the structure of contemporary civilization itself. Modern societies are built upon tightly interconnected supply chains operating with remarkable efficiency but very little redundancy. Large urban populations depend on continuous transportation networks, imported food, fuel distribution systems, refrigeration infrastructure, and stable international trade routes to maintain ordinary daily life. The abundance visible inside supermarkets creates the illusion of permanent security, yet many cities possess only limited food reserves capable of supporting their populations for short periods without resupply.

Once agricultural output begins failing internationally, governments would almost certainly prioritize domestic survival over global cooperation. Export restrictions would emerge rapidly. Shipping routes could become militarized or inaccessible. Financial systems would destabilize under panic conditions, while fuel shortages would further damage transportation and farming operations. Nations heavily dependent on food imports would face immediate humanitarian crises, but even agricultural powers would struggle once climate disruption and supply chain fragmentation intensified simultaneously.

Several modern studies examining nuclear famine scenarios estimate that billions of people could face starvation following a large-scale nuclear exchange. Some projections, revisited in light of newer climate data and current population levels, suggest mortality rates so extreme that they challenge the imagination. This is partly why historical American government assessments discussing potential death tolls approaching ninety percent of humanity continue attracting renewed attention today. The figure sounds almost impossible to comprehend until one begins analyzing how dependent modern civilization truly is on environmental stability and uninterrupted agricultural production.

There is also a psychological dimension to these discussions that experts rarely address publicly in direct terms. Human beings often assume technological sophistication automatically guarantees resilience. The modern world appears powerful because it possesses satellites, artificial intelligence, advanced medicine, digital communication, and industrial automation. However, none of those systems can function normally without stable energy networks, functioning governments, predictable climates, and access to food. Civilization may appear technologically invincible while remaining biologically fragile underneath.

Historical examples repeatedly demonstrate that famine destabilizes societies faster than almost any other force. Political institutions that appear permanent during periods of abundance can deteriorate with astonishing speed once populations begin competing for survival. Social trust erodes rapidly under conditions of scarcity, and governments facing mass hunger frequently resort to emergency powers, censorship, militarized distribution systems, or violent repression in attempts to preserve order. The concern among researchers is not merely that people would suffer physically after a nuclear conflict, but that the organizational foundations of civilization itself could begin disintegrating under sustained environmental pressure.

The Most Dangerous Illusion Of The Twenty-First Century

Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the modern nuclear dilemma is the persistence of a belief that rational actors will always prevent ultimate catastrophe. Nuclear deterrence theory has long depended upon the assumption that political leaders understand the unacceptable consequences of escalation. For decades, this logic arguably prevented direct conflict between major powers. However, contemporary geopolitical conditions have introduced forms of instability far more unpredictable than those defining much of the Cold War.

Cyberattacks, artificial intelligence-assisted military systems, disinformation campaigns, autonomous weapons development, regional proxy wars, and instantaneous digital propaganda have dramatically accelerated the speed at which crises evolve. Decision-making environments have become saturated with uncertainty, misinformation, and political pressure. Under such conditions, the possibility of miscalculation increases substantially. Many historical catastrophes did not emerge because leaders consciously desired apocalypse; they unfolded because governments believed escalation remained controllable until events moved beyond anyone’s ability to contain them.

This fear now shapes many contemporary security discussions behind closed doors. Analysts increasingly worry less about intentional world-ending war and more about uncontrolled escalation arising from regional conflict, technological failure, accidental launch detection, or political desperation during moments of extreme instability. The existence of thousands of nuclear warheads means humanity continues living inside a system where a relatively small number of decisions made within minutes could alter the trajectory of civilization permanently.

The deeper tragedy is that modern society possesses enough scientific knowledge to understand these risks with remarkable clarity while simultaneously lacking the political unity necessary to eliminate them completely. Humanity has mapped the environmental consequences, modeled agricultural collapse scenarios, studied historical famines, and analyzed strategic escalation pathways extensively. The danger is not hidden ignorance. The danger is collective normalization.

For years, nuclear weapons survived in public imagination mostly as symbols rather than active threats. In 2026, that perception has begun changing again. What once felt theoretical now appears uncomfortably plausible to many researchers observing the deterioration of international stability. The silence surrounding these fears should not be mistaken for safety. In many ways, silence may simply reflect how acc

ustomed humanity has become to living beside mechanisms capable of ending the modern world.

The Hunger That Would Rewrite Human History

For most people living in industrialized nations, hunger exists as an abstract concept rather than an immediate fear. Supermarkets remain illuminated throughout the night, delivery systems function with mechanical precision, and food arrives so consistently that modern consumers rarely consider the extraordinary infrastructure required to sustain this daily normality. Entire generations have grown up inside societies where scarcity feels temporary and manageable, something associated with distant humanitarian crises rather than a condition capable of consuming advanced civilizations. This psychological distance from famine may explain why discussions surrounding nuclear conflict still focus overwhelmingly on explosions instead of agriculture.

Yet among climate scientists and food security researchers, the central nightmare has increasingly shifted away from the battlefield itself. The deeper fear concerns the months and years following the initial detonations, when collapsing harvests begin interacting with fragile political systems and overstretched global supply chains. In this scenario, the bombs become only the beginning of the disaster rather than its conclusion.

A Planet Running Out Of Sunlight

Recent studies examining large-scale nuclear conflict suggest that the atmospheric consequences could emerge faster than most populations would expect. Massive firestorms generated by burning urban centers, oil facilities, industrial complexes, and transportation infrastructure would inject soot into the upper atmosphere on a scale modern civilization has never experienced directly. Once suspended in the stratosphere, these particles could reduce the amount of sunlight reaching agricultural regions across the planet for extended periods of time.

Even relatively small temperature declines can devastate food production when they occur globally and simultaneously. Agriculture depends upon stability more than abundance. Crops evolve around predictable seasonal rhythms, specific rainfall patterns, and narrow temperature windows that determine germination, growth, and harvest cycles. Sudden climatic disruption affecting multiple breadbasket regions at once would trigger cascading failures impossible to offset through ordinary trade mechanisms.

Wheat production in North America, rice cultivation across Asia, corn yields in major exporting nations, and soybean harvests supporting livestock industries could all experience severe declines within the same agricultural cycle. Fisheries might collapse as ocean ecosystems react to cooling temperatures and contamination, while livestock production would suffer from both feed shortages and infrastructure breakdown. Nations that currently import large portions of their food supplies would face immediate humanitarian emergencies, but even countries traditionally considered agricultural powers would struggle to maintain internal stability under prolonged climate disruption.

One of the most disturbing conclusions emerging from famine modeling is that modern civilization possesses remarkably little resilience once synchronized global shortages begin appearing. International trade networks function efficiently during normal conditions precisely because they rely on predictability. Under extreme pressure, however, governments tend to abandon cooperative frameworks rapidly in favor of domestic preservation. Export bans would likely emerge within days of confirmed agricultural collapse. Strategic grain reserves would become politically weaponized. Transportation systems already strained by fuel shortages and economic panic could deteriorate rapidly, preventing aid distribution even when supplies remain technically available.

History offers numerous examples of societies destabilized by food insecurity, but the modern world has never experienced simultaneous scarcity affecting billions of people across multiple continents. During previous famines, unaffected regions could still provide assistance or maintain economic stability. A nuclear-induced agricultural collapse would remove that possibility almost entirely because every major nation would confront variations of the same crisis at once.

The social consequences become difficult to calculate precisely because they extend beyond starvation itself. Large urban populations dependent on uninterrupted food deliveries would likely experience panic within weeks of sustained shortages. Financial systems could freeze as governments impose emergency controls. Mass migration, civil unrest, organized violence, and authoritarian crackdowns would become increasingly probable as political institutions struggle to preserve order. Under such conditions, mortality would rise not only from hunger but from disease outbreaks, collapsing medical systems, infrastructure failures, exposure during extreme winters, and violent conflict over remaining resources.

Why The Twenty-First Century Could Be Less Prepared Than The Cold War

There is an uncomfortable irony hidden within modern discussions about civilization and progress. Technologically, humanity has never appeared more advanced. Artificial intelligence systems can process extraordinary quantities of information, satellites monitor climate activity in real time, and global communication networks connect billions of people instantly. Yet beneath this technological sophistication lies a level of systemic dependency that may actually increase vulnerability during extreme crises.

Cold War societies, despite living under constant nuclear anxiety, often possessed stronger local manufacturing capabilities, larger strategic reserves, and populations more psychologically familiar with rationing or national emergency planning. In contrast, contemporary economies operate through highly optimized global supply chains designed for efficiency rather than resilience. Many industries maintain minimal redundancy because uninterrupted trade and stable geopolitical conditions became normalized assumptions after decades of globalization.

This efficiency creates enormous fragility. A disruption affecting fuel, transportation, fertilizer production, semiconductor manufacturing, or energy infrastructure can rapidly spread through multiple sectors simultaneously. Agriculture itself has become deeply industrialized and dependent on advanced logistics systems. Modern farming requires machinery, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, refrigeration networks, digital coordination systems, and stable access to fuel. Once several of these components begin failing together, food production declines far more dramatically than many people assume.

Another factor rarely discussed publicly involves population density. The global population now exceeds eight billion people, with massive concentrations living inside urban environments unable to sustain themselves independently for extended periods. Cities function because surrounding systems continuously move food inward and waste outward. Remove those systems long enough and urban civilization becomes extraordinarily difficult to maintain peacefully.

Researchers studying nuclear famine scenarios increasingly emphasize that the world entering such a crisis would already be politically and environmentally strained beforehand. Climate change has intensified droughts, floods, heatwaves, and agricultural unpredictability across several continents. Economic inequality has deepened social tensions within many nations, while migration pressures and regional conflicts continue destabilizing vulnerable areas. In this context, a large-scale nuclear exchange would not strike a healthy and stable international order. It would strike a world already showing signs of exhaustion.

Perhaps this is why certain historical government assessments produced mortality estimates that appear almost surreal to ordinary readers. The projections were not based solely on blast casualties. They reflected broader systemic collapse involving food insecurity, governance failure, economic fragmentation, environmental destabilization, and prolonged humanitarian breakdown. Once those variables interact globally, the number of potential deaths rises with terrifying speed.

The greatest misconception surrounding nuclear war may therefore be the belief that survival depends primarily on avoiding the initial explosions. In reality, the long-term environmental and societal consequences could determine humanity’s future far more decisively than the first hours of destruction. The bombs themselves would last minutes. The famine afterward could reshape civilization for generations.

When the world’s greatest power can’t win

hopefully China takes this to heart.  Yet china is an intact nation through internal coercion.  It needs to break into a confederation of equal provincespushing their internal welbeing.  At

 least state power handles this necessity in the USA and of course Europe is a working confederation as well.  what is emerging is a global confederation of working proto privinces each operating as best they can for their own.

all this means diplomacy between equals.  This is the american error.

It is still not the RULE of Twelve.  But much closer.    military mass is a suggestion and not even important.

When the world’s greatest power can’t win

American primacy ended not because US became weak but because the world changed faster than its strategic imagination

by M A Hossain

May 9, 2026

The Iran war has demonstrated the limits of US power for all to see. Image: X Screengrab

https://asiatimes.com/2026/05/when-the-worlds-greatest-power-cant-win/

For three decades after the Cold War, Washington operated under a dangerous assumption: that military supremacy could indefinitely compensate for diplomatic exhaustion.

The United States possessed the world’s most advanced armed forces, unmatched naval reach, and a financial system capable of weaponizing sanctions against adversaries thousands of miles away. From the Balkans to Baghdad, this power often created the appearance of control. But appearances in geopolitics have a short shelf life.

The latest confrontation with Iran has exposed something American policymakers have resisted admitting for years. The age of uncontested US primacy is ending — not because America has suddenly become weak, but because the structure of global power has changed faster than Washington’s strategic imagination.

What makes this realization especially painful is that the erosion of American leverage has not primarily been imposed by enemies. Rather, much of it has been self-inflicted. Great powers, history shows, rarely collapse from a single defeat.

They decline by confusing military capacity with strategic wisdom. Imperial Britain learned this after Suez in 1956. The Soviet Union learned it in Afghanistan. The US now risks learning the same lesson in the Persian Gulf.

The Iran confrontation is demonstrating a striking paradox. America can still inflict enormous damage, yet it struggles to achieve decisive political outcomes. That distinction matters because military victories are tactical events while political victories define history.

Why endless pressure produced diminishing returns

Washington’s Iran policy has oscillated between coercion and fantasy. One administration tears up agreements in pursuit of “maximum pressure.”

Another attempts partial diplomacy while maintaining the architecture of sanctions. Then comes another round of threats, military deployments, cyber operations and economic restrictions. But Washington’s underlying assumption never changes: eventually, Tehran will break under pressure.

Yet states under sustained pressure often adapt instead of surrender. Iran’s survival strategy resembles what smaller powers throughout history have done when confronting stronger adversaries. Vietnam did it against the US.

Hezbollah did it against Israel in 2006. Ukraine, despite vastly different circumstances, is using similar principles against Russia. The objective is not necessarily outright victory. It is denial, making the cost of domination too high for the stronger actor to sustain politically.

That is precisely where Washington appears trapped. Despite overwhelming military advantages, the US is discovering that geography, asymmetric tactics, regional alliances and domestic political outrage and fatigue can neutralize conventional superiority.

The Strait of Hormuz alone remains one of the world’s most critical economic chokepoints. Roughly one-fifth of global oil consumption passes through it. Even limited instability there can send shockwaves through global markets. This creates leverage for Tehran that no sanctions package can entirely erase.

American strategists often speak as though power flows only from aircraft carriers and GDP figures. But geopolitical leverage can emerge from disruption. A weaker actor capable of creating uncertainty inside the global economy possesses a form of deterrence of its own.

The uncomfortable reality is that Washington’s approach has often strengthened the very behavior it hoped to eliminate. Decades of sanctions did not produce regime collapse.

They incentivized Iran to deepen ties with China, expand regional proxy networks, and accelerate domestic military adaptation. Pressure became the engine of resistance.

Multipolarity is no longer theory

For years, discussions about a “multipolar world” sounded abstractly academic. Policymakers in Washington still behaved as though America could unilaterally organize global outcomes while competitors remained secondary players. That world, by all measures, no longer exists.

China’s rise is not merely the result of Beijing’s economic planning or industrial capacity. It has also been accelerated by persistent American strategic overreach. The Iraq war alone cost trillions of dollars while diverting attention from Asia during the very decades China was consolidating manufacturing dominance, technological growth and global infrastructure influence.

History offers a cruel irony here. The US won the Cold War partly because the Soviet Union exhausted itself in unsustainable geopolitical competition. Yet Washington increasingly risks reproducing the same mistake through perpetual military commitments and open-ended confrontations.

Meanwhile, other countries are adapting accordingly. Saudi Arabia now balances relations between Washington and Beijing. India buys Russian oil while deepening ties with the US.

Turkey pursues an aggressively independent regional policy despite NATO membership. Even longtime American allies increasingly hedge rather than align automatically. This is what declining primacy looks like in practice — not dramatic collapse, but gradual diversification.

The phrase “indispensable nation,” once popular in American foreign policy circles, now sounds less like confidence and more like nostalgia. Nations no longer assume Washington’s approval is necessary before pursuing their interests.

Iran understood this earlier than many in Washington did. Years of sanctions pushed Tehran eastward economically and strategically. China became a lifeline. Russia became a partner of convenience.

The BRICS bloc expanded. Dollar alternatives, while still limited, gained momentum. None of this means the US is about to be displaced as the world’s dominant power. But it does mean the costs of coercive unilateralism are rising rapidly.

The nuclear temptation and failure of deterrence theology

One of the most dangerous consequences of prolonged instability is the growing belief that nuclear weapons are the only reliable guarantee of sovereignty.

This argument has gained traction not just in Iran but globally. Nuclear North Korea’s regime has survived. Libya, on the other hand, disarmed and spectacularly collapsed. Ukraine surrendered Soviet-era nuclear capabilities decades ago and later faced invasion.

The lesson many states draw is brutally simple: weakness invites external intervention. But nuclear deterrence is not the universal insurance policy its growing number of advocates imagine.

Pakistan and India both possess nuclear arsenals, yet continue operating under chronic instability. Israel’s undeclared nuclear capability has not prevented repeated regional conflicts. Nuclear weapons may deter total invasion, but they do not eliminate insecurity, proxy warfare, economic stagnation or internal political dysfunction.

The deeper problem is psychological. Once enough states conclude that international law cannot guarantee sovereignty, nuclear proliferation becomes an increasingly rational response. That is not merely a Middle Eastern problem – it is a global one.

And coercive diplomacy accelerates this logic. When powerful states appear unwilling to negotiate in good faith, weaker states search for irreversible deterrents. The tragedy is that every new proliferation crisis then becomes justification for further militarization, creating a cycle with no stable endpoint.

Diplomacy requires humility, not slogans

The most striking weakness in modern American foreign policy is not military overstretch but diplomatic arrogance.

Too often, Washington approaches negotiations with adversaries as exercises in dictation rather than compromise. Yet durable agreements require mutual concessions, even between unequal powers.

The JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran succeeded precisely because it acknowledged this reality. It was imperfect, but it created verification mechanisms, reduced tensions and prevented immediate escalation.

Its collapse demonstrated something larger than partisan dysfunction. It revealed how fragile diplomacy becomes when domestic political theatrics override strategic continuity.

Sanctions relief, regional security guarantees and international enforcement mechanisms involving other major powers such as China and Russia are almost certainly required for any sustainable settlement with Iran.

That prospect will make many uncomfortable in Washington because it implies sharing responsibility in a world no longer organized around unilateral American command. But diplomacy in a multipolar era cannot function otherwise.

The US still possesses enormous advantages: military reach, technological innovation, cultural influence and financial power still unmatched by any rival coalition. Yet strength without restraint becomes self-defeating.

Empires often assume credibility depends on demonstrating force. In reality, credibility depends on demonstrating judgment. The lesson emerging from the Iran confrontation is therefore larger than the Middle East itself.

America’s greatest strategic challenge is no longer defeating enemies abroad. It is adjusting psychologically to a world where dominance has limits. History suggests that great powers that recognize those limits early adapt successfully. Those who deny them usually learn the hard way.

M A Hossain is a senior journalist and international affairs analyst, based in Bangladesh.