A Revolution In The Way Wars Are Fought

I have for a long time thought the UN one of the world’s more useless organisations. The only people the soldiers engage with are local women, usually by raping them. All the soldiers should be sent home or incarcerated in local prisons, and the UN should have one job – appraisal.

Countries that are failing their local communities on every level should be declared failed states. An international task force should be sent in, all the leaders tried and executed (this could be done quickly with a Russian judge in charge), and a foreign administrator appointed to sort the place out.

Countries crying out for this treatment are Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, Honduras, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, (dare I say it, Palestine) and probably others. The problem is that the UN, like all international organisations, is so woke and useless that it would probably declare the USA a failed state.

The ideal people to run these failed states would be the British because they have done it before, when it was called the British Empire. The slight problem here is that Britain is itself on a slippery path to becoming a failed state (OK, not really). What we need is to bring back the Victorians and send them out around the globe on their mission.

Rudyard Kipling describes what I have in mind in one of his poems, although he could have expressed himself more tactfully.

Take up the White Man’s burden— Send forth the best ye breed— Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child.

Rudyard Kipling, 1899

It’s not going to happen. International organisations are caught in a catch-22. If the votes are weighted for, say, GDP, all the decisions are made in the West. If it is one country, one vote, the whole thing spirals into anti-Americanism and rampant corruption. It comes back to the core problem that homo sapiens sapiens is a complex mixture of good and evil and ain’t nothing going to change that so we have to work with it and muddle through as best we can.

Meanwhile, one thing which is happening is a revolution in the way countries wage war. Technology has always played a key role. The Egyptians had no chance when the Assyrians arrived with their horse-drawn chariots. Nobody could withstand the professionalism of Alexander the Great’s armies, and for centuries, the Roman legions were invincible. In the early Middle Ages, Genghis Khan’s mobile armies and a system which made every tribesman a soldier made them unbeatable until they encountered the thick forests of northern Europe. Machine guns and dreadnoughts helped the British conquer a large chunk of the globe, and the German tanks with blitzkrieg rapidly overwhelmed continental Europe.

After a nuclear stalemate between the great powers which has dominated my lifetime, I suspect we are on the brink of a new order. The problem with the nuclear deterrent is that to use it is to commit suicide, so its deterrence value is heavily qualified. It doesn’t stop the Russians from attacking Ukraine because a First Strike is unthinkable in any circumstances.

This emphasises a more flexible response, great intelligence (as in CIA, MI5), and the ability, if needed, to manufacture munitions in quantities that the enemy cannot match. This, in turn, means flexible manufacturing, the ability to switch from making cars to armoured vehicles, drones or whatever at the stroke of a key, which in turn requires unbelievable compute power, an avalanche of data, great software and deep pockets.

What Trump has done, which has changed everything, is show that America is prepared to use its overwhelming power in pursuit of foreign policy objectives. It resembles the famous gunboat diplomacy of the British in the 19th century. Trump is telling his enemies that if they don’t negotiate, he will use America’s vastly superior military capability to achieve his objectives.

This is a stunning development that will only work if America possesses overwhelming military superiority. Bottom line, we are entering an era when new age defence contractors could experience staggering growth, especially as America exports its new capabilities to its allies around the globe.

Several years ago, Alphabet/ Google, persuaded by its happy clappy California peace and love employees, refused to help the American military achieve its goals. Palantir stepped in to pick up the challenge with a transformational impact on its business.

Now the mood is changing, and the guys at Google have become gung-ho patriots swearing death and violence to America’s enemies just like Alex Karp at Palantir. I guess that all the mega caps are going to line up behind Trump in helping America wield a big stick. This is not necessarily because they have suddenly become warmongers. They may have realised that true deterrence comes from military superiority, not from impotence in the face of the bad guys.

We enjoy peace and freedom in the West because we, and in particular, America, excel at all levels of warfare and have an unrivalled ability to strike our enemies. They are not standing still, as we can see from Iran’s ability to penetrate Israel’s Iron Dome with its missiles, Russia’s growing effectiveness in the war with Ukraine and the certainty that China is pursuing its military ambitions as aggressively as it can.

In a rumbling under the surface sense, the world is at war, and this will present massive investment opportunities to alert investors. These will come in the form of exciting shares like Palantir, IPOs of defence contractors like Anduril, which are surely coming, and, I suspect, the emergence of military capabilities as significant new businesses for the Mega Caps.

Meanwhile, the US stock market, the only one that matters in the 21st century because of its firm belief in Adam Smith and shareholder capitalism and the incredible dynamism of Americans in advancing the technology revolution, is simmering nicely.

I am watching the chart above closely, although I am already bullish and keen on all my Terrible Thirteen stocks, which are leading the market higher. The chart of the Nasdaq 100 Technology Sector index looks similar to the Nvidia chart, which is not surprising given that Nvidia IS the technology revolution.

What I might do since I am superstitious is immediately make my list the Fabulous Fourteen by adding QQQ3, it’s an ETF, but it is also a share, and the chart looks promising.

QQQ3 would be a good choice for my daily $-cost-averaging strategy. It frequently falls, and it frequently doubles, so plenty of opportunities for buying and selling. The drawback is that you have to buy the shares without additional leverage in a share account, so profits would be taxable.

Intriguingly, some of my favourite shares, Nvidia, Palantir, Coreweave and Sezzle have similar share prices, broadly around $150, so it will be easy to see who is outperforming who. No harm in owning all of them to enjoy the race even more.

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