Things are getting hot again in the Middle East. As missiles arc between Iran, her proxies, and the US-Israel-Gulf coalition, the battlefield has expanded into terrifying new territory. Critical water infrastructure is now a primary target. In a region defined by deserts, water conflict rapidly approaches the existential level. It is a geopolitical reality straight out of the death duels of Dune, and as a water resources engineer, endlessly fascinating.

Mapping Global and Regional Water Stress

Water stress measures the the ratio between human water consumption (demand) and the amount of available renewable water resources (supply) in a specific area. Here’s a map showing where this is most relevant for freshwater resources. In the link in caption there is an interactive version where you can mouse over each country to see their %.

What this means in our context is that there is a concentration of water stress in the middle eastern and north African countries (though also surprisingly South Korea). This should be news to no one and fits nicely into the narrative once considering that these countries also tend to excel at desalination. But why does this matter right now?

The March 2026 Escalation

The theoretical risk of water warfare became a stark reality this month. On March 7, a precision strike hit a desalination facility on Qeshm Island, an Iranian territory in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, completely disrupting the freshwater supply for approximately 30 surrounding villages.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused the United States of the attack, calling it “a blatant and desperate crime” and warning that “the US set this precedent, not Iran.”

The retaliation was immediate. Just 24 hours later, Bahrain reported that an Iranian drone had targeted and damaged one of its major coastal desalination plants. Bahrain’s interior ministry accused Tehran of “indiscriminately” attacking civilian targets.

While the taboo against targeting civilian infrastructure indispensable to survival is enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, this norm is eroding rapidly. Striking a Bahraini plant was a crystal clear message from Tehran: Iran is perfectly willing and capable of plunging the wealthy Arab Gulf states into a devastating humanitarian disaster.

As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists grimly noted, this is not even the first time water infrastructure has been deliberately destroyed in the region. During the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq intentionally destroyed most of Kuwait’s desalination capacity. Saudi and Yemeni plants were targeted in 2016-2017. Israel damaged much of Gaza’s water system after October 2023. The pattern is accelerating.

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The Desalination Lifeline in the Arabian Gulf

To understand the gravity of these strikes, you need to understand how absurdly dependent the Gulf states are on a single technology. Remember that map from the section above? The Middle East accounts for nearly 42 percent of operational global desalination capacity. For the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, desalination isn’t a supplementary utility. It is the literal lifeblood of the state.

Here’s how dependent each country is:

• Kuwait: ~90% of drinking water from desalination

• Oman: ~86%

• Saudi Arabia: ~70%

• Israel: ~50% (across five major coastal plants)

• UAE: ~42%

(Source: Arab Center Washington DC and Al Jazeera reporting)

The Gulf’s survival relies on massive, centralized industrial technology. In my recent piece for Works in Progress, I explored the engineering physics that make these plants function. Historically, the Gulf relied on thermal desalination methods like flash evaporation, essentially boiling seawater to capture pure steam. Today, the industry has shifted toward Seawater Reverse Osmosis (SWRO): an intense, membrane-based filtration process where massive high-pressure pumps force cold seawater against highly specialized synthetic membranes with molecular level pores that allow water to pass while blocking dissolved salt ions.

These megaprojects are genuine triumphs of modern engineering, here are a few of the major ones in the region and their cost:

But this reliance on centralized infrastructure creates a terrifying strategic vulnerability. A leaked 2008 US diplomatic cable warned that if the massive Jubail desalination plant in Saudi Arabia were severely damaged, the capital city of Riyadh would have to be evacuated within a single week. These facilities are unarmored, often under high internal pressure (like a balloon!) and sitting directly on the coast.

Beyond direct missile strikes, they are highly susceptible to asymmetric warfare. A deliberate oil spill in the Persian Gulf could coat and foul the highly sensitive RO membranes, forcing plants offline for months. Cyber warfare is equally dangerous; Israel’s massive Sorek plant operates on a private, air-gapped server specifically to defend against Iranian state-sponsored hackers attempting to shut down the high-pressure pumps.

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Weaponized Rivers and Iran’s Internal Collapse

While the Arab Gulf states depend on high-tech desalination, Iran and its immediate neighbors also fight bitter battles over dwindling river flows. As I discussed regarding Himalayan Hydro-Hegemony here on the blog, the nation that controls the headwaters of a river system controls the destiny of populations downstream.

Iraq is a great case study for this. As a lower riparian state who has recently been through a period of weakness, many of it’s neighbors have seized on the opportunity to build dams upstream of the country’s riparian resources and cities. This fuels a sort of arms race where when the up-streamers build their dams, you must build your own dam to create a basin which can act as a battery and help insulate you from your upstream neighbors control of the flow.

To comprehend the fragility of Iran’s water infrastructure, you have to understand its anthropogenic hydro-political collapse. As a largely upper riparian state thanks to it’s elevation, Iran has constructed over 600 dams in recent decades, driven by an opaque network of government officials and engineering contractors known as the “water mafia.”

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls this sector through its massive construction conglomerate, Khatam al-Anbiya, reaping immense profits from state contracts regardless of ecological utility.

The projects can be ambitious and remeniscient of Li Ling and Guo Kai’s plans. One excerpt reads:

The water projects continue to this day and there are currently plans to dig a system of tunnels to transfer water from the Karun basin to the central Iranian plateau, where water is scarce. This is itself partially due to the Islamic Republic’s own water management policies, which have drained the aquifers in an effort to realize the dream of Iranian self-sufficiency espoused by its leaders. As a result, many experts now see the IRGC as an environmental menace willing to destroy Iran’s water resources just to line its own pockets.

The most damning indictment of this corrupt system is the Gotvand Dam on the Karun River. Built by IRGC-affiliated firms against the explicit warnings of independent geologists, the dam sits directly on top of the Gachsaran salt formation. The reservoir has become a permanent, state-sponsored brine factory, continuously dissolving thousands of tons of salt. This has increased the salinity of the Karun River by an estimated 35 percent, poisoning agricultural land and destroying roughly 400,000 date palms in Khuzestan province. The project ballooned from $1.5 billion to $3.3 billion, and nobody even dared to ask where the money went. In 2021, Khuzestan erupted in protests, residents shouted “I am thirsty!” while security forces cracked down with lethal force. That’s what happens when a water mafia runs your hydrology.

Because of these internal failures, Iran operates under a strict interpretation of absolute territorial sovereignty, weaponizing its rivers against its neighbors. The Daryan Dam, built between 2009 and 2018 just 28.5 kilometers from the Iraqi border, diverts up to 60 percent of the water from the Sirvan River away from Iraq, rerouting it via the 48-kilometer Nowsud tunnel to southwestern Iran. Iraq opposed the construction but lacked the diplomatic leverage to do anything about it. If the regional war escalates further, desperate Iraqi militias could easily decide that diplomacy has failed and target the Daryan Dam.

But Iran does face some upstream vulnerabilities. On its eastern flank, Afghanistan controls the headwaters of the Helmand River, a vital lifeline for Iran’s arid Sistan-Baluchestan province. And the Afghani’s are thirsty.

The Taliban government has aggressively accelerated construction of the Kamal Khan Dam and expanded the Kajaki Dam, drastically reducing the volume of water reaching Iran.

In May 2023, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi issued a public ultimatum demanding Iran’s water rights, leading to heavy armed clashes between Iranian border guards and Taliban forces. For the Taliban, upstream water infrastructure is a fortified strategic position. For Iran, it’s an existential vulnerability they can do nothing about short of invasion.

Hardening the Grid: Aquifer Storage and Recovery

Faced with the existential vulnerability of coastal mega-plants and failing river systems, forward-thinking governments realize they cannot simply rely on air defense umbrellas. They must build deep structural resilience into their water networks. The most highly engineered way to accomplish this is through Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR).

The concept is elegant: coastal desalination plants often produce a massive surplus of freshwater during the winter months when regional demand decreases. Instead of dumping this excess, engineers pump the desalinated water deep underground into natural geological aquifers. This creates a massive subterranean bubble of clean freshwater stored safely within the rock formations. The best part? It’s completely insulated from enemy missiles, cyberattacks, and coastal contamination, and can be withdrawn from by any well with access to the aquifer. No central targets to hit.

The absolute crown jewel of this technology is the Liwa Strategic Water Reserve in Abu Dhabi. Completed at a cost of roughly $450 million after over 15 years of continuous work, it is the largest reserve of artificially desalinated water in the world. Engineers constructed a 160-kilometer pipeline to transport high-quality reverse osmosis water from the coast deep into the harsh Liwa Desert. The water percolates slowly through engineered infiltration basins into an aquifer 80 meters below the surface.

Today, the Liwa reserve holds over 26 million cubic meters of high-quality water. The extraction system features a dispersed network of 315 distinct recovery wells, making it virtually impossible for an enemy to destroy the capability with a single strike. In the event of a catastrophic failure at the coastal plants, the Liwa reserve can instantly pump 100 million gallons of water per day back to the capital. This guarantees Abu Dhabi 90 days of continuous water supply, an absolute eternity in the realm of military logistics.

ASR transforms a potential knockout blow into a survivable hit. This is infrastructure as defense-in-depth, and it’s brilliant.

Decentralization and the Rise of Mini-Membrane Systems

While ASR provides a massive strategic buffer, true infrastructure hardening requires fundamentally rethinking the physical architecture of production. As I frequently advocate when discussing housing abundance, we must move away from highly brittle hub-and-spoke models. If a central plant is damaged or a main trunk pipeline is severed, the entire downstream network collapses.

The future of resilient water security may lie in aggressive decentralization. Instead of building one massive plant that produces 600,000 cubic meters a day, engineers can deploy dozens of small, modular plants directly at specific points of demand. The key is containerized Reverse Osmosis technology. Modern membrane science has miniaturized the process to the point where fully functional desalination plants fit inside standard shipping containers.

These modular units incorporate ultrafiltration pre-treatment, high-pressure membrane racks, and highly efficient energy recovery devices into a tiny footprint. They are plug-and-play: transport the container to a coastal inlet or wellhead, connect it to an off-grid solar array paired with battery storage, and it begins producing high-quality drinking water almost immediately.

This modular approach provides game-changing advantages for national security:

• Ultimate redundancy. If a drone strikes a decentralized unit, only a single local neighborhood is affected, neighboring units can ramp up output to compensate. A distributed mesh network of water production is mathematically much harder for an enemy to defeat than a single centralized target.

• Rapid deployment. In the aftermath of a devastating attack, governments could fly hundreds of modular units into a stricken region on military cargo planes to rapidly restore localized water access. The US military already relies extensively on Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Units (ROWPUs) to provide self-sufficiency for troops in austere environments.

• Graceful degradation. Unlike a centralized system where one failure cascades into total collapse, a mesh network degrades gracefully, you lose capacity proportionally to the number of nodes destroyed, not all at once.

If you’ve read my previous work on infrastructure resilience, this logic should feel familiar.

Centralization is cheap in peacetime and expensive in wartime.

Decentralization is the opposite.

The countries that survive the next round of water warfare will be the ones that figured this out first.

Conclusion: Engineering Survival

The weaponization of water in the Middle East is no longer a theoretical war game scenario. As Iran and the Gulf states trade strikes on their coastal desalination plants, the international taboo against targeting civilian water supplies is degraded. Iran doesn’t need nukes to pose an existential threat to many of it’s neighbors. By building non-resilient systems, they have bared their necks to the Islamic Republic’s sword.

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Technology created this terrifying strategic vulnerability, but it also provides the solution. If the Middle East is to avoid the dystopian water wars of science fiction, political leaders must recognize that security is not guaranteed by bigger upstream dams or more centralized coastal targets. Survival requires burying critical reserves deep underground and aggressively scaling decentralized, solar-powered membrane networks.

He who controls the water controls the universe. The spice must flow.

Thank you for reading.

-Connor, OfAllTrades.

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I think about this joke constantly in relation to water and sanitation infrastructure in the developing world. The bill on the sidewalk is worth trillions, and nobody seems to be picking it up. Does this mean it isn’t real?

The World Bank estimates that every dollar spent on water supply and sanitation in Africa yields up to seven dollars in return. Some analyses put it at $21. If a hedge fund offered you those numbers, you would think about putting a reverse mortgage on your house. Today, somewhere between 2.2 and 4.4 billion people still lack reliably clean water and sanitation.

If returns are so high, why do we not see more investment? Answering this question is critical right now. With USAID cut and Chinese loans to Africa falling off from their 2016 peak, two of the biggest external funding pipelines into African infrastructure are simultaneously collapsing.

The Double Withdrawal

Between 2018 and 2022 Chinese foreign direct investment in Africa plummeted by 66.7 percent. New annual loan commitments cratered from a high of $28.5 billion in 2016 to under $1 billion by 2022. Investments in Africa’s resource-intensive sectors have declined roughly 40 percent since their 2015 peak. The infrastructure boom is over.

Concurrently, the United States Agency for International Development was effectively dismantled globally. In fiscal year 2023 USAID spent nearly $1.2 billion on water-related programs. By mid 2025 the agency laid off 94 percent of its staff. Projects mid construction were abandoned. Globalwaters.org, which hosted the agency’s entire water portfolio, went dark. In the Democratic Republic of Congo the cuts contributed to a massive cholera outbreak. Cholera cases rose 5 fold year over year.

Hundreds of billions of dollars flowed through these channels over the past two decades. If the returns on water infrastructure are so high, we have to ask why these flows stopped, and why they largely failed to leave self sufficient systems behind.

Is the developing world just too poor to build infrastructure?

The conventional explanation claims these countries are too poor to afford the infrastructure they need.

Mohenjo-Daro was a city in the Indus Valley that flourished around 2500 BCE. The settlement had over 700 wells and a dedicated sewerage system. The city featured covered drains running beneath the streets of residential neighborhoods. No one in Mohenjo-Daro had electricity or any idea what a germ was. Many of them enjoyed sanitation infrastructure that modern residents of Lagos or Karachi can only dream of.

Every single country on Earth today is wealthier than Mohenjo-daro was. Pipes, pumps, gravity, and sand filtration are tools that ancient civilizations mastered independently. I have written about many of these systems on this blog before, including Venice’s ingenious cisterns, Archimedes’ screws and Persian wheels, and China’s Grand Canal. These civilizations solved water distribution under far more severe constraints than any modern government faces.

So that’s the conventional explanation out the window, but what about one degree of well informed past that? Many point to Africa’s high disease burden, but disease burdens in Africa don’t really compare to those of say, Victorian London.

People on the ground seem to think that the locals have neglected what European investments were left behind. As Bruce Gilley has written, the colonial apparatus, driven by the absolute necessity of keeping its extractive logistics running, possessed a rigorous technocratic and administrative capacity capable of managing large-scale public works, a vital bureaucratic discipline that was tragically lost or deliberately dismantled in the tumultuous transition to independence.

Today, the surviving remnants of this colonial infrastructure hold immense replacement value, easily numbering in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Yet, the systemic, chronic failure of post-colonial states to maintain these inherited assets has triggered a compounding, multi-generational economic crisis. The "build-neglect-rebuild" paradigm has caused vital national logistical arteries to physically collapse.

The underlying issue is rooted in mechanism design. The incentive structures surrounding the pipes are broken in specific and identifiable ways. Private capital cannot capture the vast positive externalities of public health interventions without the presence of a highly capable state, a state capable of enforcing tariffs, executing eminent domain, maintaining complex assets over decades, and ensuring macroeconomic stability. In what ways do states fail to provide this environment?

Mechanism Failure 1: The Ribbon Cutting Paradox

Working as an engineer, I learned that infrastructure depends heavily on sustained maintenance. A water treatment plant that costs $10 million to build might cost $500,000 a year to run properly. Skipping maintenance for two years effectively wastes the original $10 million.

This creates a nasty incentive problem for politicians. Building a new dam provides a great photo opportunity. A president can cut a ribbon and make a speech. Replacing corroded underground pipes offers no ceremony.

Developing economies face extreme budget volatility. In a flush year a government builds infrastructure. In a lean year maintenance is the first thing cut. In the next flush year they rebuild the thing they let fall apart. The money is there and is systematically misallocated toward the visible and away from the essential.

Mechanism Failure 2: The Attribution Problem

A politician faces a brutal attribution problem when investing in infrastructure. These projects take years to bear fruit. By the time clean water flows voters may have forgotten who authorized the project. A rival may be in office to take credit.

Politicians get a much higher return by spending on easily attributed goods like bags of rice or targeted jobs programs. With clientelism the attribution is instant. With a pipe replacement project two years from completion the attribution is diffuse and delayed.

Mechanism Failure 3: Rent seekers and the Tanker Mafia

In Karachi the municipal water utility has been failing for decades. Large areas of the city get no formal water service at all. A network of private water tanker operators stepped into this vacuum. They have every incentive to keep the utility broken.

Tanker operators illegally siphon water from unmetered municipal taps and sell it to households at enormous markups. Utility water costs roughly $1 per 1,000 liters. Tanker water sells for $20 or more. The arbitrage is extraordinary. The profits flow upstream into a network of police and politicians who protect the scarcity that makes the business model work.

When tanker operators siphon water from unmetered taps they physically depressurize the distribution network. Low pressure means more leaks and more contamination from groundwater infiltration. The theft makes the utility fail harder and creates more demand for tankers. As we all know, once a rent seeking equilibrium is established, the parties benefiting from it will actively resist any reform.

Mechanism Failure 4: The Legal Wall

In most developing cities formal utility connections require legal title to your property. No deed means no water meter. In many African and South Asian cities up to 30 to 50 percent of the urban population lives in informal settlements. These people are legally invisible to the utility.

What they pay to informal vendors or tanker operators is typically 10 to 15 times more per liter than formally connected households pay. The poorest people in the city pay the most for the worst water.

The Money on the Table

Chinese Belt and Road funding and American USAID dollars together poured tens of billions into African infrastructure over the past two decades. The Chinese Africa Research Initiative estimates that between 2000 and 2019 Chinese financiers signed 1,141 loan commitments worth $153 billion with African governments. USAID was investing roughly $1 billion per year on water programs alone.

Chinese investment was heavily concentrated in large scale infrastructure. Much of this investment was structured as loans to sovereign governments. When China’s own economy slowed and the loans dried up there was no institutional capacity left behind to maintain what was built. Projects stalled, and African countries began suspending or abandoning many projects.

USAID’s approach was different, focused on community-level programs. But when the agency was dismantled in 2025 there was no handoff. Programs stopped overnight. More than 700,000 people lost access to clean water immediately.

How to do it right: Phnom Penh

In 1993, the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority was a catastrophe. The city was emerging from decades of war and genocide. Only 20 percent of the city had connections at all, and water flowed for just 10 hours a day. 72 percent of the water was non revenue water. It was lost to leaks or stolen through illegal connections.

Into this mess walked Ek Son Chan, a young Cambodian engineer appointed as Director General. Over the next two decades he executed an incredible institutional turnaround.

Chan replaced corrupt managers with qualified engineers. He got rid of unmetered taps. Every single connection received a meter and was billed. The old system of manual billing was replaced with a computerized system, which cut down on low level employees giving out free water and receiving kickbacks. Bill collection rates went from 48 percent to 99.9 percent. These changes were intensely unpopular, and Chan faced fierce resistance from rent seekers, from freeloading customers to his own employees. He established an incentive system based on bonuses among the workers, introduced an internal discipline system with a penalty for violators, and set up a discipline commission for all levels of the organization to deal with corruption

He divided the distribution network into pressure zones with flow monitoring. A 24 hour leak detection team walked the streets at night with listening bars to identify underground leaks.

The institutional change dwarfed the infrastructural change, but was absolutely necessary to make the infrastructure investment worthwhile. In fact, even back then, funders had an idea that this approach could work. A large portion of Chan’s funding and support came from the Institutional Capacity Building Project financed by UNDP (United Nations Development Program) and implemented by the World Bank. I would fund him too. Chan was absolutely committed to his approach in an intoxicating way, reminiscent of the “X factor” many founder-types reverently respect.

This commitment would not be untested. When Chan tried to enforce bill payment on Cambodia’s elite, and sent his team out to install a water meter on the property of a high ranking general who had been freeloading. The general refused the installation of a meter, so the team attempted to disconnect the water. The general and his bodyguards ran them off the property. When Chan heard of this, he decided not to back down, and mobilized his own team to dig up the pipe and install the meter. Always a leader from the front, Chan jumped in the hole to take a shift at digging. When he looked up, his team had fled, and he was facing down the general himself, pointing a gun at his head. In Cambodia in the 90s, consequences for such a high ranking official were unlikely. CHan didn’t give up. He mobilized the local armed police and returned with 20 men to standoff against the general, disconnected him from service and left him out to dry. Chan said this about the dispute:

”He had no water. My office was on the second floor and the general came in with his ten bodyguards to look for me. I said, “ No. You can come here alone, but with an appointment”. He couldn’t do anything. He had to return. He said, “Okay”! At that time we had a telephone, a very big Motorola. He came in to make an appointment for tomorrow. I said, “ Okay, tomorrow you come alone”. So he comes alone, we talk. “Okay. I’ll reconnect on two conditions. The first condition is that you have to sign a commitment saying that you will respect the Water Supply Authority and second, you need to pay a penalty for your bad behavior and you must allow us to broadcast the situation to the public, or no way, no water in your house”. So he agreed. “

Others quickly fell in line. The utility reduced its non revenue water from 72 percent to 8.75 percent. When it started making profits instead of losses, Ek requested financial autonomy from the government to prevent the authority’s funds from seizure. In 1996, this was granted an PPWSA was the first government-owned org to get autonomy.

By 2010, coverItage in the city went from 25 percent to over 90 percent with 24 hour service. The utility became financially self sustaining and turned a profit. It was listed on the Cambodia Securities Exchange in 2012. Chan won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2006.

By separating the utility company from the low-capacity local government, Ek and PPWSA proved that:

• Functional infrastructure relies on institutional quality and mechanism design.

• State capacity need not exist within the state

The Opportunity

The pattern of aligning incentives and granting operational autonomy works widely when it is tried in earnest.

Senegal adopted an affermage model, a public private partnership where a private operator manages billing and operations. The operator’s revenue is tied to the amount of water delivered.

CityTaps, a startup operating in Niger and Kenya, deployed prepaid smart meters that let customers pay for water via mobile phone. This bypasses the corrupt bill collectors entirely.

Chinese and American money flowing into African infrastructure failed to fix the core mechanism design problems we discussed above. This is an unforced error. Large scale capital expenditure without institutional reform functions as a temporary fix at best, and provides little to no return.

The Atlantic Council projects that finance from China’s banks will continue to decline under any growth scenario. USAID is imperiled at best. But while the withdrawal of that funding creates a moment of genuine crisis, it is also an opportunity to restructure future funding more wisely. A shrewd lender could stand to prevent a lot of deaths and make a killing

The trillion dollar bill is still on the sidewalk. It’s up to us to pick it up!

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Connor Tabarrok is a Water & Wastewater engineering consultant at Kimley-Horn, working in Texas and the D.C. metro area.

Due to its elevation and glacial storage, Tibet acts as a water battery for places from Afghanistan to Zhejiang, and serves as the backbone of water supply for more than 2 billion people. When precipitation is high, the glaciers grow and store water for later, and in the dry season, the glacial melt becomes a large component of flow in the rivers just as it’s needed most.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. China has embarked on a major dam building project along many of the most important rivers flowing from the Tibetan Plateau.

There are many good reasons to build a dam, such as hydro-electricity or drinking water collection; and China is in need of both resources. But as China comes into its own, it is thirstiest for the true power of dams, which lays in the twin concepts of detention and diversion.

As I go over in the Works in Progress piece, (seriously, you should read it!) detention is when you hold back or store water for later, and diversion is when you alter its path so it ends up somewhere else.

The most updated Chinese plan publicly available called for the installation of cascades of mega-dams on the largest rivers in the region. These dams would give them the power to detain or divert huge amounts of flow from Tibet’s rivers away from their downstream neighbors. The crown jewel in the mega dam series is the planed Yarlung Tsangpo damming project on the Brahmaputra, which will dwarf the famous Three Gorges power generation capacity by a factor of 3.

The proposed mega dam project and the host of projects that will follow it are part of the “Great Western Route” plan, which is an extension to the North-South Water Transfer Project that focuses on moving water from the Tibetan Plateau north to the dry region of Xinjiang and eventually to the thirsty cities of the northeast. The main difference is that China’s focus has now shifted from taming domestic river flows to meddling in the flows of transboundary rivers. If you’d like to know more and what we should do about it, stop here and read my new piece in Works in Progress. In this post, I’ll be profiling two of the champions of China’s quest for hydro-hegemony.

On the Roof of the World: Guo Kai, Li Ling, and China’s Grand Water Ambitions

Introduction: Two Visionaries and a Bold Idea

In a Beijing teahouse one winter in the early 2000s, a retired Chinese general named Guo Kai spread out a large, vividly colored map of Asia’s river systems. Dressed in layers of sweaters, Guo traced his finger along the Yarlung Tsangpo and lamented how its waters “ran south to India” instead of nourishing China’s parched north. Beside him sat Li Ling, a former military officer and longtime collaborator. Over cups of scalding green tea, the two men would outline an audacious proposal to “redraw the hydrology of Asia” by diverting Tibet’s rivers northward. It was a scheme first dreamed up decades earlier, at the twilight of the Maoist era, and one they had spent their lives championing.

Guo Kai and Li Ling are hardly household names, but their grand vision has cast a long shadow over China’s water policy discourse. Their work would culminate in a plan named “The Great Western Route” water transfer, which would come to serve as an ideological and technical foundation for some of China’s most ambitious dam-building and water diversion plans on the Tibetan Plateau.

In recent years, as Beijing trumpets new megaprojects, the influence of Guo and Li’s ideas can still be felt. This article profiles the two men and explores how their work informed China’s current drive to harness the waters of the Tibetan Plateau.

China’s Water Tower and the Western Route Dream

The Tibetan Plateau is often called the “Water Tower of Asia”. To Chinese leaders, this region’s runoff represents an immense strategic resource. Chairman Mao himself mused in 1952 that “the south has plenty of water, the north much less; if possible, the north should borrow a little”. Decades later, China would act on that idea, reviving the imperial age infrastructure of the Grand Canal to serve as the foundation of a new North-South Water Transfer Project.

This vast network of canals and tunnels to send water from the Yangtze Basin north to the dry North China Plain. Two routes (the Eastern and Central routes) are already operating, stretching thousands of kilometers to quench the thirst of cities like Beijing and Tianjin.

But it is the elusive Western Route that has always captured imaginations. This route would potentially cross the Himalaya and Tibetan Plateau, linking it’s basins together and diverting flow from China’s southern neighbors to it’s northern plains. Mao’s successors long deferred this plan due to its daunting logistic, engineering and environmental challenges. Yet the idea never died. In the 1980s, it found new life through Guo Kai: a man convinced that Tibet’s water could save China.

Guo Kai: From Exile to Engineer of a Grand Canal

Guo Kai’s journey to becoming China’s grand water schemer was anything but straightforward. Born in the 30s, Guo lived through turbulent times. During the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), he was imprisoned in a detention center. It was there, amid hardship, that he stumbled on an English-language book about Tibet by geologist Weng Wenhao (father of Chinese Geology) in the trash.

That chance discovery lit an idea. Guo, who had once audited hydrology courses at Tsinghua University, began pondering whether the plentiful waters of Tibet’s rivers (the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra), Nu (Salween), Lancang (Mekong), Jinsha (Upper Yangtze), Yalong, Dadu and more) could be diverted north and east to alleviate China’s water woes.

After his “political rehabilitation”, Guo Kai doggedly pursued this vision. He consulted experts at the Ministry of Water Resources and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and conducted on-the-ground surveys in Tibet’s river gorges. By the late 1980s, he had fleshed out a proposal for what he called the “Shuotian Canal”, an epic water transfer scheme. The name Shuotian was Guo’s portmanteau of Shuomatan (the Tsangpo river site in Tibet where the canal would start) and Tianjin, the northern coastal metropolis where it would end.

Guo’s plan was breathtaking in scope. It envisioned building a giant dam at Shuomatan on the Yarlung Tsangpo (near Tibet’s Great Bend) to raise water into a system of tunnels and channels that would flow northward. The “Great Western Route” (not Guo’s preferred term) would divert up to 200 billion cubic meters of water annually from Tibet (the equivalent of four Yellow Rivers!!) and deliver it across arid northwestern China.

According to Guo Kai, this water could replenish the Yellow River, green the deserts of Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, and halt the spread of deserts threatening northern China. He even argued it would mitigate floods in Bangladesh and India by siphoning off excess flow (a claim viewed skeptically outside China). He would spend more than a decade championing his plan to CCP and PLA officials.

By 1988, Guo’s crusade had caught the attention of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) top brass. That year, a senior general, Liu Shaoqing, and others began to push the Shuotian Canal concept, framing it as part of China’s strategic imperative to develop the resource-rich west. The following year, Zhang Jinong, then Vice Minister of Water Resources, established a Shuotian Canal Preparatory Committee, naming Guo Kai as a core member.

From the start, this committee was heavy with military influence – its successive chairs were all PLA generals (including Xu Guangyi, Gao Cunxin, and Wang Dinglie). The involvement of at least 118 generals and numerous military-affiliated delegates to China’s parliament underscored the project’s perceived strategic value. As one 88-year-old general nostalgically recalled, after trudging through waterless wastes during the Long March and serving in arid Xinjiang, he understood the “hardships of life caused by water shortage” in China’s west. The generals were determined to solve in peace what had plagued them in war.

Guo estimated his Great Western Route would cost around $25 billion (early 2000s USD). By the late 1990s, momentum was building. Surveys in 1999 led by teams of experts from various ministries concluded that 600 billion cubic meters of Tibet’s water was wasted each year (in this context, “wasted” means the water flowed to the oceans via India and Southeast Asia, rather than China). In August 2005, Guo Kai was reportedly invited to Beijing’s elite Zhongnanhai compound to present his plans to the Communist Party’s Central Policy Research Office – a sign that even top policymakers were taking note.

Guo and his cadre of retired generals were undeterred by the slow progress of his dream. “Even if we do not begin this water diversion project, the next generation will. Sooner or later it will be done,” declared General Zhao Nanqi in 2000.

To its supporters, the Great Western Route was a matter of national security and pride. It could be the ultimate solution to North China’s water scarcity, desertification, and even food security woes. But just as Guo’s dream seemed to be fading from the discourse, it gained a powerful boost from an unlikely source a book written by his comrade-in-arms, Li Ling.

Li Ling: Tibet’s Water Will Save China

In 2005, amid intensifying debates over China’s water future, Li Ling published a provocative book titled “Tibet’s Water Will Save China” (《西藏之水救中国》) Li Ling, born in 1940, was a former PLA officer (from the Second Artillery Corps, China’s strategic missile force) who had spent 17 years researching and drafting this book. Working closely with Guo Kai, Li inherited the role of chief evangelist of the Great Western Route idea, translating the complex engineering scheme into a nationalist narrative accessible to officials and the public.

Li’s book detailed Guo Kai’s “Shuotian Canal” plan as the key to solving China’s chronic water shortages. It boldly argued that diverting Tibet’s rivers to arid northern China would not only alleviate drought and boost agriculture, but even “save” the nation from looming crisis.

It could not have come at a better time. During the lead up to and around the time of Li’s 2005 publication, the groundwater table in Beijing had sunk by over 42 meters in some areas. Out of the nearly 900,000 groundwater wells in the Beijing Area, two thirds would run dry. China’s north was grappling with water scarcity; the Yellow River was running dry for 250 days a year. Each year brought news of shrinking aquifers, spreading deserts, and water rationing in cities. Li’s dramatic title “Tibet’s Water Will Save China” tapped into a popular anxiety and a hope that big, bold action could secure the nation’s future.

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The book became an unexpected hit in Beijing policy circles, despite (or maybe because of) its controversial premise. Upon its release in late 2005, some 10,000 copies were quickly ordered by government agencies, including a bulk purchase by the Ministry of Water Resources. Deng Xiaoping's former personal secretary, stated that: 'On February 4, in the midst of the Spring Festival, the State Council instructed the Ministry of Water Resources, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the general office of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project to carefully pore over the schemes outlined in the book.' Central ministries treated it almost like a reference manual. For a technical book on hydraulic engineering, this was remarkable uptake.

I’ll take a tangent here to speculate more generally as to why Li Ling’s book was such a hit with officials. From an American perspective, it may seem odd that so many officials would be interested or equipped to parse the complex ideas of hydro-engineering presented in the book. But China in this period was very technocratic. Let’s take a look at the 2002 standing committee for context. The 17th standing comittee (which would include Xi JingPing, who studied chemical engineering,) would be made up of 8 engineers and one economist (Li Keqiang).

*Important note- many engineering degrees (likely including Xi’s issued in China before recent times should be treated more as nominal degrees rather than of comparable rigor to western engineering programs) See Dan Wang’s analysis here, as well as his new book: “Breakneck: Chinas’s Quest to Engineer the Future”.

Why do we see so many engineers at the top in this period of China? I think much of it is because of the flow of money and funding in China that comes with infrastructure construction. At this time, it functioned almost like a system of patronage. The central and provincial governments would take on enormous debt (today it stands at ~4x U.S. debt ratios) to build infrastructure, housing, etc. A lot of control of where these project go (as jobs programs but also as contracts and money flows) is influenced by the engineers. This wins the official power, and he moves up, and is now in control of more money, and so on and so forth.

This process reminds me of the rise of LBJ in Texas and his involvement with the highland lakes system of dams. By bringing much needed jobs and often times the first instance of electricity to the people of the Texas Hill Country, he enamored them to himself and cultivated a strong base of power which would propel his career. It should not surprise us very much that he who controls the flow of money in a system, rises to the top of that system.

Taking this into account, we can frame Li’s book as not only accessible to this audience, but as a license to go after a huge amount of infrastructure funding. In essence, I think the opportunity presented by Ling in “Tibet’s Water Will Save China” was too large to resist, and everyone wanted a slice.

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Anyhow, Ling’s book revived Guo Kai’s plan and in March 2006, at the annual National People’s Congress session, delegates brandished the Western Route proposal again, warning that even the Yangtze may face shortages by 2020 and urging the state to look west to Tibet’s rivers. Li Ling had given the Great Western Route a new lease on life, framing it as not just an engineer’s whim, but a grand national strategy: a “再造中国” (remake China) plan, as his book’s subtitle suggested.

At the same time, Li’s book sent ripples of alarm through India and other downstream nations. Here was a former PLA officer openly championing the idea of diverting the Brahmaputra (among other transboundary rivers) into China’s irrigation channels. Though Li was not a government official, the book’s wide circulation and semi-official reception made it hard for neighbors to ignore. “Anxieties about China’s intentions were inflamed by the provocatively titled ‘Tibet’s Water Will Save China,’” wrote one Tibetan analyst. Fears of a Chinese “water grab” in the Himalayas grew. Bangladesh too expressed concern, given its reliance on Brahmaputra flows. Chinese officials repeatedly had to assure these countries that no Brahmaputra diversion was planned, even as state media in 2003 tantalized with reports of a planned “Tsangpo hydropower project” in Tibet.

As one Chinese hydropower official, Zhang Boting, argued in defense of the Western route, “On average, over 100 billion cubic meters of water flow through the Yarlung Tsangpo within Chinese borders every year, but we make no use of it at all. There’s only a bit over 50 billion cubic meters of water in the Yellow river, yet that waters half the country. We should draw water from transnational rivers”. These ideas gained traction thanks to Guo and Li.

Echoes in Today’s Megaprojects

Fast forward to the 2020s: China, under Xi Jinping, is once again pushing the boundaries of hydro-engineering on the Tibetan Plateau. While Guo Kai is now in his late 80s and his Shuotian Canal remains unbuilt, the spirit of his dream lives on in several ways.

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In May 2021, President Xi publicly announced China will “press ahead” with what he termed the world’s largest water diversion project, which was widely interpreted as greenlighting Western Route construction plans. The official proposal, developed by the Ministry of Water Resources, would transfer about 17 bcm annually from rivers like the Yalong and Dadu (upper Yangtze tributaries in Sichuan) across the plateau to the Yellow River. This is a far smaller volume than Guo’s scheme but technically it still requires crossing 3,000-4,000m-high terrain via tunnels and canals hundreds of kilometers long. It should be seen as a proving ground for China’s more ambitious plans. Especially as North China’s water demand grows and stimulus is sought for western provinces, we should expect these ambitions to grow.

The single most dramatic element of Guo Kai’s vision was a giant dam project at Tibet’s Great Bend to harness the Tsangpo’s 2,500-meter drop. Last month, this project was approved and broke ground. With a planned capacity of 60 GW (producing 300 billion kWh annually), it would far exceed the Three Gorges Dam in scale. More than hydro-electricity, a major effect of dams and diversion tunnels here is to provides a degree of flow control over the Brahmaputra. Even if official policy currently eschews diversion, and official plans call for “run of the river” infrastructure, the dam project is a necessary prerequisite to more ambitious schemes, and India is uneasy. The Yarlung Tsangpo dams could later be linked to diversion tunnels, or simply give China the ability to regulate seasonal flows. The ghost of Guo’s diversion plan thus haunts this hydropower project. India has called it out as a potential threat, and the Chinese side insists it’s “only for power.” Geopolitically, the dams tighten China’s integration of Tibet and gives it leverage by virtue of infrastructural presence in a sensitive border area.

As China proceeds with these megaprojects, Guo Kai is reportedly still watching intently. In a 2009 interview, he bemoaned that China was losing its bold vision and urged the nation to not be timid in “conquering nature”. Now in his elder years, he might take some comfort seeing the giant machines rumbling to work in Tibet’s mountains, finally acting on dreams drawn up on his map so long ago.

Conclusion: Legacy of an Ambition

Guo Kai and Li Ling were men ahead of their time in that their proposals were too grandiose for the China of the 1990s and 2000s. Yet they profoundly shaped the narrative of China’s “water dreams.” They injected into Chinese policymaking an almost mythic ambition to remake geography for national gain. In the end, the purest form of their plan has not yet been realized; economic, environmental, and diplomatic realities set limits. But their legacy lives on in a Chinese state that is aggressively damming the Himalayas and still pondering new water transfers from water-rich regions to dryer ones. As China’s power grows, it will no doubt seek to realize more and more of the ambitions set by Guo and Li.

For now, the waters of Tibet still largely flow along their ancient courses. But on the horizon, one can see the silhouettes of dams rising and the possibility of canals and tunnels snaking over high passes and through the hearts of mountains. In them will flow not just water, but a century of aspirations from Mao, Xi, and the likes Guo Kai and Li Ling. These two hydro-ideologues imagined a new map for China, and inch by inch, the country is redrawing itself closer to that vision.

Thanks for reading!

-Connor OfAllTrades

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Go read the Works in Progress piece here, I am espescially pleased with the great work they did on the illustrations.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/rivers-are-now-battlefields/

Between July 4th and 7th 2025, torrential rains from Tropical Storm Barry pummeled the Texas Hill Country, dumping 4 months of rain (1.8 trillion gallons) on the area in just 4 days. The Guadalupe River at Kerrville surged 26 feet in just 45 minutes, inundating campgrounds and homes and turning serene rivers into raging torrents. In Kerr County, floodwaters extended hundreds of feet beyond the river’s banks, inundating areas FEMA’s maps hadn’t marked as high-risk.

At time of writing, at least 135 people were confirmed dead statewide, including dozens of summer campers along the river, making this the second-deadliest flood in Texas history. Flooding is the most common and costly class of natural disaster in the U.S. and it’s easy to see why.

The Texas Hill Country flood swept away buildings and infrastructure, particularly in unincorporated areas where riverside camps and houses sat perilously close to the water’s edge. This tragedy has cast harsh light on a long-standing issue: construction in the floodplain.

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What is a floodplain?

When a river overtops it’s natural banks, the extra flow spreads out and up based on the local topography. In narrower areas, the water is fast and deep, and in shallower areas the same volume of flow spreads out and slows down. There is a different floodplain for each amount of flow. Typically, when we talk about “the floodplain” we are talking about the 100-year floodplain, which is an area that has a 1% chance of flooding each year, or an area that would flood given a 100-year storm (a storm that has a 1% chance to occur each years).

Set over the course of a 30-year mortgage,

• The 25-year flood zone gives your house a 71% chance of being flooded

• The 50-year flood zone gives your house a 45% chance of being flooded

• The 100-year flood zone gives your house a 26% chance of being flooded

• The 500-year flood zone gives your house a 6% chance of being flooded

In the eyes of the government: if your property is in the 100-year flood zone, you face special building requirements usage limits; if you’re outside it, you’re safe.

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Problems with the floodplain itself

The 100 year floodplain is meant to outline the area that has a 1% chance of flooding each year. However, there’s a bit more to how the sausage is made than that. The estimated level of a 100 year flood is based on observed data only, which means that under conditions like climate change that increase the frequency and magnitude of storms and floods, the floodplain is far too conservative, because it assumes that future hydrologic conditions will occur with the same frequency as past conditions.

Floodplain maps published by FEMA don’t cover enough of the country and are also not kept up to date. Only about a third of the nations streams, rivers and coastline have been mapped by FEMA, and of those, only about a quarter have been updated in the last 5 years. This compounds with the first problem above, because missing out on the most recent years (which are likeliest to have outlier events) again biases the maps towards underestimation.

These updates are important not only because they capture recent flood years, but because they capture physical and topographical changes in the floodplain’s basin. A boom in development that increases the paved area in a basin could have a huge impact on the floodplain in a given town, but not be captured by the lagging FEMA maps.

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Problems with floodplain policy

The government’s policy of treating flood risk (a continuous value) like a binary yes/no causes major distortions in how and where we build. Not only do people on the edge of these zones feel safer than they likely are, but builders are incentivized to build right up to the edge of the floodplain, where they then face a step function in the cost and complexity of construction. For example, federal law requires that any building in the floodplain be elevated above the predicted flood level. Buildings directly next to the floodplain border face no such rules.

Many communities prohibit new construction in the most dangerous part of the floodplain (the floodway immediately along the river), and will only grant permits in the broader 100-year flood zone if certain mitigation measures (like elevation or floodproofing) are in place.

Conversely, just beyond the 100-year line on the map, many of those strict rules vanish, creating a sharp regulatory cutoff between areas with a 1% chance of flood and a 0.99% chance of flood. The stark contrast in construction governance causes people to perceive these marginal areas as safer than they really are, leading to under-preparedness and surprise when disaster strikes. The 100-year floodplain became the dividing line between regulated and unregulated areas in the 1970s and has been enshrined in state and local building codes ever since.

The tragedy at Camp Mystic is truly an unforced error on the part of regulators and camp administrators. NPR reports that when 30 of the above map’s buildings above were found to be in the floodplain, federal floodplain administrators approved appeals to remove them from the area, to help the camp avoid high flood insurance premiums in the 2010s and early 2020s.

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Insurance and Risk

Local insurance brokers in Kerr County reported that even before the 2025 flood, certain river-adjacent homes (though outside FEMA’s high-risk zone) were seeing NFIP (National Flood Insurance Program) premiums many times higher than the old “Preferred Risk” rate. This was the NFIP’s new algorithm effectively saying, “FEMA’s map zones might not flag this property, but we calculate a high flood probability, so we’ll charge accordingly.” In bittersweet irony, it is the steep price to insure these risky areas that should have informed the camp of the danger they were in.

Remember, a price is a signal wrapped in an incentive, and in this case the signal was a warning that the camp should have heeded more closely.

Jeremy Porter of First Street noted about Camp Mystic, “even the areas that [FEMA] showed were outside were right on the edge of a flood zone.” First Street’s model put nearly the entire camp at risk in a 100-year event once heavy rainfall runoff was considered. The flood obliterated any illusion that the camp’s exempted sections were safe. Insurance pricing had already treated them as dangerous; zoning hadn’t.

The divergence between the old binary system and the new NFIP continuous risk algo played out in painful detail in the July 4 flood. Nearly every home actually within the 100-year flood zone in Kerr County flooded, as expected but thousands of homes outside it flooded too, 98% of these extra homes lacked insurance coverage for flooding, despite many being identified by the NFIP algo as high risk. Nationwide, the error between these two measures of risk could be as much as 100%, or an extra 8 million homes at risk that are not required to be insured, and face no construction standards.

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Solutions

Pushing for more uniform adoption of systems like the NFIP algorithm or First Street’s model through insurance would help people be more aware of and prepared to deal with their true risk of flooding. But there is a problem. Barring people from building in this expanded zone would likely be a disaster. A system that denies the utility people derive from the floodplain is doomed to fail.

However, we can work to build more intelligently in and around floodplains. Using permeable concrete and reducing the rate of runoff would help to smooth the peaks that these areas experience during flood events. By spreading the volume of floodwater over weeks and not hours, we can greatly reduce the degree of flooding.

When we do build in the floodplain, we need to be strict about the structures we put there. Exceptions like those given to Camp Mystic should be rare and backed by evidence, and granted only when insurers and regulators agree that risk levels have been reduced. It’s likely that the improvements necessary to do this will be costly, but we know that they are possible. Examples like the West Closure Complex in New Orleans or the Metro Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel in Tokyo show that investing in floodplain management pays off in the long run.

We only accept the risks of flooding because of a bias towards the status quo and natural systems. But it is an error to ignore our ability to make this land safe and useful. If we frame floodplain management as a form of land reclamation, it starts to look much more reasonable to pay the cost of this infrastructure. We would never accept an extension of downtown Manhattan if the buildings were guaranteed to be destroyed on a regular and predictable basis. So why do we accept this as a matter of fact in the floodplain?

All of this is not to say we should do away with the 100 year floodplain line is foundational to many state and local codes, and it will take time and data to move to a better system. In the transitional period, the 100 year line can act as a floor, from which we further manage risk with alternative methods including better infrastructure and insurance policy.

Most Americans experience flood risk through insurance rates, building regulations, and flood events themselves. It’s our job to allow and incentivize people to strike the third from the list.

Thanks for reading!

-Connor, OfAllTrades.

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On April 11, 2025, the U.S. Department of the Interior issued Solicitor’s Opinion M-37085, sharply changing how the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) is enforced. In a reversal of a 2017-era policy, the federal government will no longer treat “incidental take” of 1100 species of migratory birds as a crime, and now only deliberate, intentional harm is prohibited. Essentially, this means that if a construction project accidentally disturbs some birds, that is an “incidental” taking, and will not trigger the enforcement of the MBTA.

This change is pendular a reversion to a previous interpretation, which once again undoes changes made under both Obama and Biden that had made projects liable for unintentional bird deaths. This time, the change was made under the umbrella of the Trump Admin’s EO 14154 “Unleashing American Energy” and represents a win for the abundance mindset.

How important are these bird laws? To give some context, I consult on a project that until April 11th, was required to perform a special migratory bird survey of all disturbed trees in the project area, which, if birds were found would have set back construction by two months, or necessitated that we relocate and re-nest all the birds and eggs found, which requires a special permit which is not usually granted unless the birds or human health and safety are in immediate danger. Even if a permit is granted, the process to apply and receive such permits takes several weeks. This can be a huge cost to projects.

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Under the old rule, projects across the country that knew they would harm birds had to apply for special permits, which were often blocked by objections lodged by local interest groups. In 2024, the Osage nation forced a wind energy company to completely dismantle an 8400 acre windfarm which was located on land leased from private Osage members. This pattern created a cooling effect, where rather than risk any liability, developers would limit tree clearing and other activities to a 6 month “winter window”, when migratory birds are not present. Missing this window could easily delay a project by 6 months or more.

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But it gets worse, under the old reading, the MBTA doesn’t just apply exclusively to projects in construction or to construction projects, it technically applies to all human activities. Enforcement was selective but still broadly impactful. In 2013 the MBTA was used to make Duke Energy criminally liable for bird deaths caused by its wind turbines. PacifiCorp once paid over $45,000 per bird killed in the routine operation of powerlines and substations! Even a building with windows that are too reflective may find itself criminally liable for bird deaths.

Broadly criminalizing incidental bird deaths essentially meant any human activity from building a house, driving a car, or even owning a cat, could be viewed as illegal, since birds collide with our structures, machines, and animals all the time. It’s a classic case of well-intentioned policy casting too wide a net. Enforcing it selectively (only some industries got hit with prosecutions) introduced uncertainty and unfairness, and smothered progress.

The MBTA’s incidental-take saga is a case study in the tradeoffs that paralyze today’s liberal establishments. A century-old law originally meant to stop overhunting birds was stretched to cover every incidental avian casualty of modern life, far exceeding its original scope. By refocusing the law on its core purpose (intentional harm), the government isn’t abandoning environmental stewardship; it’s acknowledging reality and priorities. This more balanced approach says: Yes, we should avoid needless wildlife harm, but we must also avoid paralyzing every construction site in the name of absolute protection. In practice, agencies can still work with developers on reasonable mitigation like bird deterrents without arbitrarily wielding the blunt instrument of criminal law to halt projects.

The next time the pendulum swings and people decry that we must “save the birds!”, we should remember that everything is a trade-off, and it behooves us to know what will be lost. We can’t build a better future if we can’t build. Speeding up construction of infrastructure and housing can benefit the environment and public well-being, even if it comes with some wildlife impacts. The abundance agenda is built on such pragmatic calculus, but dealing in absolutes is for the birds.

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Thanks for reading,

-Connor, OfAllTrades

You might not immediately associate your daily fix of Frappuccino with the world of finance, but if you look closely, there is more than meets the eye to the java giant. Starbucks made about $36 billion in revenue in 2024, and earned a profit of $3.7 billion, or about 10%.

So big brew is big business, that should be no surprise, but how does that make Starbucks a Bank? In 2011, Starbucks rolled out the ability to load money onto a virtual card via their mobile app. Purchases made with these pre-loaded dollars earned extra rewards points, which could eventually be redeemed for free drinks. According to their quarterly report from this March, through the app pre-payment system and physical gift cards, Starbucks owes almost $2 billion in coffee to its customers. (In the report they show about $1.9 billion in short term deferred revenues plus about $5.8 billion in long-term deferred revenues, but this long-term figure probably represents corporate deferrals and not coffee-debt).

Initially, that sounds like a huge liability, but Starbucks turns that liability into an asset. Because you cannot withdrawal money once it has entered the app or been loaded onto the gift card, they only need to worry about customers collecting as much coffee as they can drink. That means no FDIC, no reserve ratio, and no runs on the bank (despite the effects caffeine can have).

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The company can treat this money as a 0% interest loan, and with about 10% of funds eventually being forgotten, it’s actually a negative interest loan. Plus, the rate at which stored dollars can be exchanged for coffee, (which in this case is basically the collateral) is up to Starbucks, so if input prices go up faster than they can grow the dollars customers have loaned them, they can offset that by raising their own prices. This means that the bean-counters at Starbucks are free to do lots of interesting things with those dollars in the meantime. They could earn good returns in the market, expand to new locations, pay off union organizers, maybe they’ll even open a VC fund!

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The scale of the money held in the Starbucks eco-system is astounding when put in the context of other banks. The US has about 4500 banks that report to the FDIC, and Starbucks holds more in these customer deposits than about 80% of them! For comparison, the PayPal ecosystem (including Venmo) is only 8x Starbucks, holding ~$16 billion in customer deposits! As of September 2024, the Starbucks App had 33.8 million quarterly active users in the U.S., growing at 4% YoY.

It seems unlikely to me that deposits into the ecosystem will drop off very quickly, even as rates rise. Coffee spending is a strong habit and seems unlikely to respond strongly to changes compared to other goods. With the 30 year treasury rate hovering around 5%, the house (roast) always wins.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Thanks for reading,

-Connor, OfAllTrades

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Browsercookies started by uncovering a network of North Korean remote IT workers, mostly through web forensics.

Overall, I wasn’t too surprised to see that the lucrative flows of the global IT sector were being tapped by the DPRK. The Kim regime has suffered under sanctions and as a result is very creative with how they source their money, with lots coming in from crypto scams, ransomware attacks, and cybercrime in general.

These regime sanctioned cyberwarriors are picked from an early age based on their displayed affinity for math or computers, trained in specialized programs at schools like Kim Chaek Univeristy of Technology, Kim Il Sung University, and Moranbong University, and then deployed by the regime as a means of funneling foreign currency into the country. Some have even speculated that they may cross train with CCP and Russian hackers in cities like Shenyang and Vladivostock.

You can think of these cyber warriors as being projects of the Kim regime in a similar way that the USSR’s Olympic athletes were often projects of Soviet cultivation. The difference is that instead of prestige, these hackers seek only cold hard cash.

The Kim regime needs this foreign cash to import goods from outside of DPRK, since no one trusts them enough to accept North Korean fiat as a means of payment. Despite the Juche ideology of extreme self reliance, the DPRK is a country starving for essentials like fuel, fertilizer, machinery and grain.

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One new avenue for the DPRK to make this money has been to ride the recent wave of remote work. Browsercookies and others have documented the scale of this system as it pertains to IT, finding that a single remote worker can make the regime up to 300,000 USD/year, of which the regime pocket 90%. No one really knows how many remote workers there are in DPRK, but some estimate it at 8,000-12,000 workers.

If every worker hit those numbers, we’re looking at 3.6 billion USD, or 150% of the value of all other exports from DPRK. And there is definitely room to grow. Even if every one of those workers earns that maximum of 300k, that’s only a very small slice (less than 1%) of the global remote IT market, which weighs in at around 500 billion USD.

And remember, this is just how much they can make by impersonating legitimate workers remotely. The entire time they are doing work on these remote contracts, they are also doubling as cyberspies, building backdoors, collecting information, and laying the groundwork for hacks and ransomware attacks, which bring in even more foreign cash.

So what does this have to do with America’s Infrastructure? Well this is where things get interesting. Turns out, the DPRK hasn’t bounded themselves to the IT industry. Browsercookies recently put out a post tracking a network of these remote workers who have stolen the stamps and seals of professional engineers and are using them to churn out cheap design documents like plans, scopes, and specifications.

These stamps aren’t counterfeit, they’re stolen. Meaning that the DPRK are probably impersonating these engineers remotely, signing contracts in their name, and putting these engineers on the hook for the liability associated with the designs.

As an econ-exposed individual, I have mixed feeling about licensure. There is of course a beauty in the degradation of market barriers. (You can read here about the civil licensure process.) But the stamp is also a contract between the engineer and the public. The trust and responsibility it represents is foundational (literally!) to much of America.

If a bridge falls down and you are the engineer who stamped it, your work will be investigated for negligence, and you will be held personally liable if you are found to have made a mistake. This willingness to put ourselves on the line and the incentive to be sure in our designs is what allows most of society to blindly trust that when they use a bridge, it wont collapse, that when they flip their light switches their homes won’t burn, and that when they drink from the tap, they won’t get sick.

Browsercookies claims that they have found some of the worker’s ChatGPT logs, which they use to write scopes and solve problems.

This is where I feel conflicted. There is of course a contingent in the design industry who is vehemently opposed to LLMs, who are going to have a field day with this story. But there really isn’t anything wrong with using technology to do work like this, and I hope the industry adapts and changes so that we can build abundantly.

The reason this is intolerable and risky is the DPRK isn’t party to the contract that binds engineers to the public good of the society we serve. They probably aren’t checking the results of these models very closely, and they certainly won’t be there to clean it up when things go wrong. Layer on top of that the implications for national security and the whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Without systems to strictly verify who is doing what work and how, I see this as a big blow to the future of remote design.

What do my readers think of this? If you work at a design firm, how do you decide whether to use remote workers? How might your QAQC process change, knowing that this is a threat? What can Professional Engineers do to protect their stamps?

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I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Thanks for reading,

-Connor, OfAllTrades

Texas has developed a reputation for fast-growing cities with relatively affordable housing. On this graph (from ) the four major cities of Texas stand out as some of the only major metros in the U.S. occupying the graph’s lower right quadrant. Why is it that housing abundance is a Texas exclusive phenomenon?

One key reason is a novel approach to financing and governance at the suburban fringe: the Municipal Utility District (M.U.D.) model. These special-purpose districts let developers create new communities from scratch by funding infrastructure with *future* residents’ taxes, effectively building whole neighborhoods on “spec” without burdening existing city budgets.

In this post, we’ll dive into the origins of MUDs in Texas, understand how they work technically and financially, and why they’ve become a cornerstone of the state’s pro-growth, pro-housing environment.

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Origin Story: How MUDs came to be

The idea of special districts isn’t new in Texas – the state has used independent local districts sine the 1890s to tackle water, irrigation, and flood control needs​. Early on, Texas amended its constitution (Article XVI, Section 59 in 1917) to empower water districts with taxing and bonding authority, seeing them as tools for developing arid lands​. Their status as “subdivisions of the state” has played a key role in how they have driven development in more recent times.

In the mid-20th century, developers began using these districts for suburban residential projects, especially as cities struggled to extend utilities to far-flung areas​. Some of the first MUDs used for this purpose were in Houston in the 1960s and 1970s. Houston’s explosive growth (fueled by the oil boom) quickly outpaced the city’s own infrastructure expansion, so developers turned to MUDs as a solution​.

Throughout the 1970s, master-planned suburban communities like The Woodlands, Clear Lake City and Sugar Land’s First Colony sprouted on former fields, enabled by MUD-financed water and sewer systems​. These communities measure in the tens of thousands of acres, and house hundreds of thousands of people.

​By the 1980s, the MUD model had caught on widely: development “leap-frogged” beyond Houston’s city limits into unincorporated areas, all serviced by these autonomous districts​. Developers in other fast-growing Texas metros caught on, and soon the MUD model (as well as other special district models) spread to Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, though Houston remains the epicenter​.

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The MUDslide

Why did the MUDs catch on and spread so quickly among developers in Texas? A few things about Texas made it conditions ripe for MUDs to rise:

1.) Weak Texas County Governments:

Texas counties have limited authority and revenue for utilities or roads in unincorporated areas​. This creates a vacuum at the edge of growing markets which attracted developer interest.

2.) Low Appetite for Risk within Municipal ETJs: State law gives cities an “extraterritorial jurisdiction” (ETJ) ring outside their boundaries, but cities often *declined to extend utilities* into these areas due to cost or risk. Existing citizens didn’t want to pay for infrastructure to support new transplants. MUDs allowed development in the ETJ without immediate city annexation, solving the infrastructure gap​.

3.) Conditions were right for independent infrastructure. Around Houston and Austin, large tracts of undeveloped land lay just outside city limits, often with accessible groundwater for wells​. This made it feasible for new districts to supply water independently and build entire communities on what had previously been empty prairie or ranch land.

This mix led to the state of MUDs in Texas today. Over 950 Texas MUDs currently exist, and as development continues, even more may arise. But as the annexation map above shows, MUDs aren’t necessarily permanent, and many eventually get annexed by the local municipalities. Texas cities frequently annex developed MUD areas decades after growth occurs (Houston annexed Kingwood, Clear Lake, etc.), but notably MUDs enabled the growth to happen in the first place: growth that might never have occurred if it had waited on city financing or approval.

MUD Financing, How Does it Work?

At its core, a Municipal Utility District is a small government entity created to fund and provide basic infrastructure in an area where city services don’t exist​. The genius of the model is how these services are financed: developers front the costs, and *future* homeowners repay those costs over time via property taxes and utility fees​. Here’s how a typical Texas MUD comes to life:

Step 1 - District Creation

A developer or landowner with a large parcel (often empty land) petitions the state to create a new MUD for that area. This petition either goes through a special law passed by the Texas Legislature or to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ)​. If a MUD is within an ETJ, they have to agree to let the MUD take it, and usually do so with some standards to which the infrastructure should be built, expecting to annex the MUD in the future.

Once you get permission, you can get to founding your MUD. This can be done with as few as two people as residents to form the board. In one case, a Houston-area MUD was created after a developer arranged for two people to live in a trailer on the property and hold a 2–0 vote approving the district and $188 million in bond authority. This establishes the MUD as a legitimate elected body over the area.

Step 2 - Build, Baby, Build!

Now that the MUD is founded, the developer builds out the infrastructure. They build water lines and sewer systems (often drilling wells and erecting treatment plants if not connecting to a city), drainage ponds, streets and sidewalks, fire stations, street lights, and sometimes parks and playgrounds. All of this is done with the developer’s own capital or private financing. Essentially, the developer is acting like the “city,” constructing the backbone that homeowners need. This can require tens of millions of dollars for a large subdivision. Why would a developer take on these costs? Because the payoff comes next: the MUD will reimburse the developer by issuing tax-exempt bonds after enough homes are built.

Step 3 - Sell em like hotcakes!

Now that they’ve spent big on the infrastructure, the developer is in a race to build and sell as many homes as they can in as short of a time period as possible. Remember, all of the money they’ve spent so far is from their own pocket, or loaned to them at interest! The MUD helps the developer sell these homes with a low sticker price, because the cost of the infrastructure supporting them is not included in the home price, but rather will be collected by the MUD via it’s authority to tax residents. TCEQ has guidelines that say that a MUD can’t issue any bonds until 25% of the value of planned homes has been built and assessed. They also have to show that the tax burden on future residents is reasonable, which usually is achieved at around the 40% occupancy rate.

Step 4 - Collect!

After meeting the requirements and getting approval from TCEQ and the Texas Attorney General, the MUD will issue municipal bonds on the public market to raise funds​. These bonds are backed by the MUDs right to tax residents and are therefore quite a safe investment, they are also tax-free! So lots of people buy these bonds, and the money goes to reimburse the developer for fronting the capital in the first place. By paying out on the bonds, new homeowners gradually pay off the infrastructure over 20–30 years instead of having those costs loaded into the upfront price of the home. Once the bonds are paid out, the tax rate generally drops to cover maintenance costs. As the MUD matures, they are required to elect real residents to run the district. A MUD will continue to exist until and unless the city annexes the area and takes over services and the MUD is dissolved. In the Houston area, annexation was once common, but in recent decades cities have slowed annexations, meaning many MUDs persist as permanent local governments run by the residents.

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In summary, the MUD model aligns the timing of costs and benefits: developers build first, get paid later; homeowners buy homes, pay later for the infrastructure through taxes; and cities get growth without upfront expense or risk. It’s a clever public-private partnership that became a standard operating procedure for Texas suburbs. It reminds me of and discussions of the tradeoff between present and future people. In the case of the MUD, it seems to be a viable way to borrow from the future, *because* the future people we borrow from benefit too.

Where are all the MUDs?

MUDs have parallels in other states. Let’s start with the states that build.

Florida has Community Development Districts, which are a lot like MUDs, with the main difference being that Texas MUDs are more vertically integrated, while Florida CDDs don’t usually operate the infrastructure they finance. Colorado has metro districts, which operate like MUDs but get permission from local cities rather than the state legislature or from a TCEQ equivalent.

It’s no coincidence to me that these states also lead in championing new growth (see Denver, Orlando, and Tampa on the graph, some interesting data here too).

Some cooling forces may be too great for MUDs to overcome, as in the case of California. California has something caled the Mello-Roos Community Facilities District law (since 1982), which allows a city or county to create a special district to finance infrastructure with voter-approved special taxes. In practice, many new subdivisions in California do have Mello-Roos taxes that homeowners pay for 20-40 years to fund roads, schools, etc. The difference is that these CFDs are usually initiated by local governments and don’t create a separate governing board the way MUDs do; they are more a funding mechanism than an independent mini-government.

California’s governance and environmental regulations (like CEQA) also mean that even if financing is available, getting permission to build large new communities is very difficult. So, while California has the legal ability to do something MUD-like, the broader land-use climate has limited its impact. One could imagine, however, that if California reformed some of its processes, it could empower private developers to form their own utility districts in peripheral areas to jump-start housing through a more autonomous version of CFDs. This might help build new towns in the Inland Empire or Central Valley to take pressure off coastal metros.

By contrasting California and Texas/Florida, we can take away that MUD’s are a helpful but not sufficient ingredient in the recipe for affordable new development.

When MUDs get dirty

There are a few concerns when it comes to the MUD model. Everything comes with trade-offs and MUDs are no different. While MUDs have clearly facilitated growth, they are not without downsides even from a pro-growth perspective. Here are some of the key concerns and how Texas has addressed them:

1.) MUDs Facilitate Sprawl:

This is a common objection to MUDs from the optimal urbanism camp. It’s true that most MUDs are suburban in character (single-family subdivisions with cul-de-sacs and lawns)​. If one’s goal is dense urbanism, MUDs might seem counterproductive. However, nothing in law limits MUDs to sprawl; they simply finance infrastructure, and could just as easily fund an apartment grid or transit-oriented development if a developer chose that. In fact, some MUDs around Houston have begun incorporating mixed-use “town center” projects within them.

2.) Are MUDS a good deal?

Critics also point out that by the time the 30-year bonds are paid off, homeowners may have paid more in taxes plus interest than the original infrastructure cost. It’s akin to a mortgage on the neighborhood’s roads and pipes. But that’s the cost of borrowing: residents get the benefit of living in a fully serviced community during those years. It’s also worth noting that a MUD board composed of residents can choose to prepay or refinance bonds if advantageous, just as a city might, or use any surplus from growth to pay debt down faster. Many older MUDs in Texas have indeed paid off bonds and reduced taxes substantially over time​. Without MUDs, there may have never been homes for these people to buy in the first place!

3.) Infrastructural Balkanization

A mosaic framework of MUDs doesn’t always appeal to central planning minded folks, and it can be hard to coordinate and solve problems of common resources. Usually, cities can help to standardize MUD infrastructure by requiring that the MUDs build to their code when consenting that the MUD take land out of the municipal ETJ. MUDs outside of ETJs, while not beholden to city standards, still need to meet state design code, but have the freedom to operate as infrastructure laboratories, fueling innovation and efficiency for all future builders.

For example of a coordination problem, widespread groundwater pumping by dozens of MUDs in the Houston region led to aquifer depletion and land subsidence (ground sinking, read more on settlement and subsidence in my past post here) in past decades. The solution was the creation of regional water authorities that forced coordination across MUD boundaries.

4.) Governance and Accountability

The democratic deficit in early MUD formation raises eyebrows. As noted, some MUDs are created with just a handful of proxy voters approving huge bond issuances​. This can lead to conflicts of interest. For example, a developer-controlled board could approve buying infrastructure from the developer at inflated prices, or hiring the developer’s affiliates as contractors.

Additionally, once residents take over, they are essentially managing what can be a complex utility business without the resources of a full city government. A small MUD board might lack professional oversight compared to a city council. These issues have occasionally led to mismanagement and corruption.

However, Texas provides some checks: MUD financials are subject to review by state agencies and required annual audits, and any new bond issues or tax increases are generally transparent to voters. The initial developer-appointed board is temporary, so within a few years, residents get to elect their board and can kick out any bad actors. In practice, many MUD boards hire reputable outside consultants (like yours truly) to advise them, and there’s a whole ecosystem of professional firms in Texas that specialize in running MUD services efficiently.

The sheer number of MUDs (nearly a thousand!) means oversight is decentralized and some will be better run than others. But from a pro-growth view, this light oversight is part of why MUDs are nimble, and the drawbacks to local governance are not unique to MUDs.

MUDs - fertile ground for abundant growth

Naturally, MUDs are not a panacea for every housing issue. They primarily address greenfield development (or large brownfield redevelopment) – they won’t fix zoning limits in fully built cities or substitute for infill where that’s needed. And they require that there is land available to develop (Texas had plenty of cheap land around its cities, which isn’t the case everywhere). But as one tool among many, the MUD model could significantly expand the housing frontier in states that have hit a wall with traditional development processes. MUDs are a hammer, and new housing isn’t built entirely from nails.

Texas’s Municipal Utility District model demonstrates how empowering developers to build infrastructure (with oversight and the promise of future repayment by residents) can create a virtuous cycle of growth. It aligns incentives for pro-housing outcomes: developers build, investors buy bonds, families get new homes, and cities ultimately gain thriving communities. The historical success in Texas (despite some bumps) suggests that other regions grappling with housing shortages might do well to study the MUD playbook.

The overarching lesson policy makers should take from Texas is that when you remove upfront barriers and spread costs over time, you can unleash development on a grand scale, to the benefit of millions of would-be homeowners.

Thanks for reading!

-Connor, OfAllTrades.

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2024 saw the Park fire consume over 400,000 acres in Northern California.

And 2025 started with the infamous Eaton and Palisades Fires in L.A, which destroyed more than 16,000 structures, burned 50,000 acres, and represented an estimated $275 billion in damage and loss.

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Today in Austin, I woke up to the smell of smoke. A light dusting of ash fell from the sky, mixing with the pollen to coat my windshield. Smoke had been blowing for hours from a 400 acre fire in Fredericksburg TX, nearly 60 miles from where I lived. Here’s a video of the smoke blowing in. The fire is still 0% contained at time of writing.

Although in no immediate danger, today’s fire ought to serve as a wakeup call for the Austin metro area. In 2025, we are the city that builds. You can throw a rock in the city and trigger a feeding frenzy of developers hoping to site homes on it. But we could just as easily be the city that burns.

The city council meets this month to discuss updating rules about fire risk. Austin is currently the 5th most at risk city in the U.S. for number of homes imperiled by wildfire, and ranks #1 outside of California. The council discussion will include an update to the city’s wildfire risk map proposed by the fire department, which would classify 71% of land parcels in the city as vulnerable, compared to the 38% classified vulnerable in 2015.

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The speed at which a fire can spread is mainly driven by wind and the proximity of structures to wildlands. The interface between a city’s urban area and these wildlands is called the W.U.I. (Wildlands Urban Interface). Here is a recently proposed map of Austin’s W.U.I.

Because most fires are driven by embers and spread by wind, a sufficiently large fire could easily trigger multiple subsequent outbreaks. across large areas, tying up response teams in a game of Whac-a-mole. Even assuming crews get to every fire in time, can we guarantee that there will be pressure in the hydrants to supply them if the tanks in their trucks aren’t enough? As a water system designer, I have a worry in my gut that the answer is no, and here is why.

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Water System Design & Austin

Urban systems are often designed to handle a specific set of worst case scenarios, which do not include wildfires. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) mandates that Public Water Systems maintain a minimum pressure of 35 psi during normal operating conditions, and a minimum of 20 psi under the condition that they serve both fire flow and regular demand. Typically, designers model these parameters per pressure zone (learn more about pressure zones here), and test the zone’s infrastructure against a number of scenarios to determine which scenario controls design.

Austin Water designs to meet peak day demands (highest demand day in the year) plus fire flow. But this does not model a wildfire scenario well, specifically because a large wildfire might mean multiple fires, all at once. Single family homes might need an hour of 1000gpm fire flow, while high density or industrial buildings with volatile fuels might require fire flows of 3000-4000gpm for multiple hours, but one can easily imagine a scenario where 10s of fires spring up in a pressure zone, due to embers. In areas already evacuated, these fires are much less likely to be noticed and called in, allowing them to burn long enough to throw embers of their own even further from the initial fire.

Preventing the next Palisades

Real-world events like the Palisades fire have illustrated the mismatch between design assumptions and wildfire realities. If we act quickly, Austin can act as an example and help other cities avoid a repeat of events like the Palisades and Eaton fires. In those fires, the municipal water system could not keep up – fire hydrants started running dry, forcing firefighters to scramble for water. Officials reported that the area’s three major water storage tanks (each about 1 million gallons) were rapidly depleted by the firefighting efforts​. According to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the first tank drained by late afternoon, the second by evening, and the third was empty overnight – the demand simply outpaced the system’s ability to refill or maintain pressure​.

Once those tanks were drained, hydrant pressure plummeted and some crews had no water to fight the advancing flames. This was not due to any single hydrant’s performance (each individual hydrant can flow a lot of water), but because so many hydrants were in use simultaneously that the entire local distribution network was overwhelmed. While the Palisades firefighters also faced a power shutdown, the sheer volume of water being drawn from the system was beyond what it was designed for, so even with pumps on, the situation would have been dire.

History has shown that the map is not the territory, and code-compliant systems fail in extreme scenarios. The Palisades Fire in particular provides a cautionary tale: even with a “properly” designed, modern water system, wildfire-driven simultaneous ignitions lead to firefighting failures.

What’s wrong with current design codes?

The fundamental shortcoming is that current design codes are built around typical fire incidents – they do not require engineering for many fires at once. This is largely a practical compromise: designing every water system to handle a full-scale wildfire or multi-structure urban fire is costly and was historically viewed as unnecessary.

The probability of, say, 5+ houses on the same street burning at once was low, so standards focused on the single worst-case fire. As a result, the distribution mains, pump stations, and storage in the Austin area are typically not sized for simultaneous multi-fire demands beyond perhaps two nearby hydrants. When confronted with a wildfire, this built-in limitation means the system can’t guarantee adequate flow to all points in need.

Additionally, current codes don’t explicitly address scenarios like power loss during a fire – if electric pumps shut down (as happened in the Palisades incident), a system reliant on pumping will quickly lose pressure unless backup power or gravity-fed storage is available. Austin’s water system has many gravity-fed zones (elevated storage tanks), but also uses pump stations for high elevation areas, so it is similarly vulnerable if those pumps lack backup generators (this is being addressed after Texas’ big freeze caused power loss at many points of critical infrastructure).

Another gap is that peak demand contingencies are minimal – on a record high-use day (usually coinciding with one of the driest and hottest days of the year, which also coincide with wildfire risk), there may be little safety margin beyond what’s needed for one fire. In essence, today’s codes ensure a robust baseline (one fire at 20 psi), but do not ensure resilience against a catastrophic wildfire scenario.

How can we fix this?

(I’ll stick to system design and operations stuff here, but there are tons of changes that we can make to our buildings themselves to make them more fire resistant, so just keep that in mind.)

To improve wildfire resilience, codes and design criteria could be updated to acknowledge multiple simultaneous fire flows in high-risk areas. For example, a water district in San Diego’s high fire hazard zone adopted a policy to size the system for two simultaneous 2,500 gpm fires for 2 hours, given that their service area is in a Very High Fire Severity Zone. A change like this in Austin would increase infrastructure costs, but provide a buffer if several houses ignite at once.

Increasing local water storage in fire-prone areas can also help bolster an area against wildfire, especially in a power loss scenario. Water already stored at higher elevations (like in a water tower) doesn’t need pumps to run to get to lower elevation areas.

Operationally, utilities and fire departments can coordinate on emergency demand management. Austin Water might implement an emergency demand curtailment plan on extreme fire weather days – for instance, sending alerts to residents to immediately stop all outdoor water use when a wildfire is in the vicinity. By quickly reducing domestic demand, more system capacity is freed for fire flows. During the Palisades Fire, Los Angeles officials literally begged residents to conserve water so firefighters could use it​. Greater degrees of interconnectivity between different public water systems would also help systems in need to channel water from their neighbors when they can’t keep up themselves

In conclusion, current design codes ensure reliability for ordinary fires but not for wildfires. Addressing this gap will likely require a combination of code changes (to require higher fire-flow capacities or multiple-flow scenarios in high-risk areas), infrastructure investments (bigger pipes, more elevated storage, backup power), and supplemental strategies (sprinklers, demand management).

I have faith in my colleagues in water engineering and planning, and in the Austin City Council to read the smoke signals when they convene on the 27th. Ensuring Austin can stay the city that builds without becoming the city that burns is a fine line to walk, but if any city in America is going to be an example for others to follow, I think it will be us!

-Connor, OfAllTrades.

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The Great Salt Lake, located in Utah, is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere. Its unique ecosystem provides critical habitat for millions of migratory birds, supports a vibrant brine shrimp industry, and is an essential component of the region's cultural and natural heritage. But recent data indicates that the lake is shrinking at an alarming rate, primarily due to human water consumption and climate change.

You may be thinking - How are humans causing the depletion of a saltwater lake? It’s not like we can drink it or use it for irrigation. The key idea here is that the lake is a product of local hydro-equilibrium. In order to remain, it must gain as much water from rain, rivers, and other sources as it loses from evaporation.

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As farmers and the growing metro area of Salt Lake City have diverted more water from the sources that would usually feed the lake, it can no longer refill itself fast enough.

The Great Salt Lake is facing an existential crisis. And the consequences are not just an aesthetic or cultural loss, they could be dangerous to our health: if the lake dries up, it could unleash a toxic dust storm across Utah, with disastrous implications for both human health and the environment.

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Currently, there is an exposed lakebed area the size of Luxembourg, and this dried lakebed has no rooted plants to protect it from erosive wind which quickly turns to dust. This dust, already harmful to human respiratory tracts due to the small particle size, also contains a more nefarious threat, heavy metals.

The soil that makes up the lakebed of the Great Salt Lake contains high levels of Antimony, Copper, and Arsenic. For Arsenic, the deadliest of the three, this might be as high as 118.89 µg/g, or 12 times the threshold concentration at which effects are usually observed (9.79 µg/g). Copper came in as high as 70 µg/g, more than twice the threshold of 32 µg/g. Antimony has been found at levels up to 2759 µg/g. As long as these metals stay in the soil of the lakebed, they pose minimal threat to people. But once they are whipped up by the wind and dispersed as fine particles of dust, they represent a public health disaster.

This toxic dust could travel hundreds of miles, spreading across the region and affecting millions of people in its path. The long-term health risks are significant, as these particles can cause respiratory illnesses, neurological disorders, and even cancer.

A Precedent in Owens Valley

This is not an unprecedented scenario. In the early 20th century, the Owens Valley in California experienced a similar fate when its lake, Owens Lake, dried up due to excessive water consumption by the City of Los Angeles. The result was a dust bowl of toxic particles that have plagued the region ever since. Although efforts have been made to mitigate the dust storms, the impacts persist to this day, affecting local residents and wildlife. Owens lake is the largest source of carcinogenic particulate air pollution in North America.

To avoid a similar disaster, swift action is required to protect the Great Salt Lake. This includes reducing water consumption in the region, implementing more sustainable water management practices, and promoting greater awareness of the lake's importance in mitigating dust.

As suggests, better pricing of water for agricultural users in the area might be on the horizon, as groundwater conservancy districts in the GSL area put pressure on water supply companies. Here is a great interactive map of all water supply companies in Utah and their service areas.

If not economics, perhaps technology can save us. The American West is experiencing what is thought to be the worst drought conditions in nearly 1200 years. Companies like Rainmaker by , which offer the ability to control the weather, may play a key role in ensuring basins like the Great Salt Lake don’t run dry.

Whatever we do, it should be done fast. Understated are the effects of air pollution, so the stakes are high. The heart of the Mormon project in SLC might quickly dissolve if residents were forced to endure toxic dust storms.

-Connor, Of All Trades.

Venice, the city that “floats on water”, has faced a huge challenge since its founding- Where does a city surrounded by saltwater get freshwater?

Unlike most medieval cities that could simply dig down to access groundwater, Venice's unique position atop mudflats in a brackish lagoon required remarkable engineering innovation. The muddy soil made the walls of excavated areas extremely unstable and prone to collapse, further disqualifying the city from using conventional wells. Importing water from the mainland, either by means of an aqueduct or water-boats, left the small merchant republic vulnerable to siege by land-based powers.

To solve this problem and maintain their independence, the ingenious residents developed a system of rainwater collection cisterns and wells that would help sustain the maritime republic for centuries.

At first glance, these wells appear similar to those found in any medieval European city - cylindrical stone structures with ornate wellheads rising from squares and courtyards. But beneath the surface lies an engineering marvel that showcases Venetian ingenuity.

The typical Venetian well wasn't actually a well in the traditional sense - it was closer to a sophisticated cistern system. Here's how it worked:

1. The pavers in each courtyard were subtly sloped to direct rainwater toward the well inlets, called casselle

2. Below ground, a large inverted bell-shaped chamber was constructed, lined with waterproof clay

3. The chamber was filled with layers of sand acting as a natural filtration system

4. Four to eight stone casselle around the well's perimeter collected and channeled rainwater into the sand

5. The filtered water would collect at the bottom of the chamber, accessible through the wellhead

The filtration system was remarkably effective. The sand layers would trap particulates and some contaminants, while the clay lining prevented saltwater intrusion - a persistent threat in Venice’s lagoon environment. The result was surprisingly clean drinking water in a city where such a resource should have been scarce.

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By the 16th century, Venice had developed over 6,000 such wells throughout the city. The Republic even established it’s own Ministry of Water in 1501, one of the world's first water management authorities, to maintain and protect these vital systems.

The wells weren't just engineering achievements - they were also works of art. The wellheads were often elaborately carved from Istrian stone, featuring everything from religious symbols to family crests. These decorative elements reflected Venice's dual nature as a city of practical merchants and ambitious artists, and embodied the massive wealth that the city was able to earn due to it’s independence.

While most of these wells no longer function as water sources (the city switched to modern water infrastructure in the 1800s), their design principles show parallels to contemporary challenges:

• Sustainable water harvesting in water-stressed regions

• Integration of infrastructure with public spaces

As water scarcity becomes a growing global concern, and humanity becomes more concentrated in urban areas, the ancient well system of Venice reminds us that innovative solutions often lie in understanding and working with local environmental conditions rather than fighting against them.

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Appreciating historical infrastructure is important because it breaks many stereotypes we hold in our minds when we think or pre-modern people. While they may not have been as educated, people of the past faced and overcame many tough problems, without the benefit of modern tools or abundance. When considered against the constraints they faced, their solutions become elegant illustrations of human ingenuity, echoing through the ages.

-Connor, OfAllTrades

Japan however, seems to make a strong case that “everyone can just”, given a few preconditions. Instances where the Japanese coordinate on a level that would be impossible in other countries abound, but here are a few of my favorites:

1.) Old Enough!

This Japanese Reality TV show showcases the high degree of safety and autonomy afforded to Japanese children, who can safely cross roads, make purchases, navigate public transport, and much more, unaccompanied by an adult (save the camera crews). The full show is available on Netflix, and I recommend for any new parents.

This would be absolutely unthinkable in America and many other countries, where even leaving a child as old as 10 to walk a mile, can draw the ire of the authorities.

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2.) Trash

Japan's approach to waste management demonstrates how internalized social responsibility creates effective systems without external enforcement. Despite the notable scarcity of public waste bins in major cities like Tokyo, the streets remain remarkably clean. This functions because Japanese citizens routinely clean their own shared spaces, and carry their garbage until they reach home or an appropriate disposal location.

I challenge you to take a moment the next time you step outside to start a timer, and end it as soon as you see any litter. My suspicion is that in the west, a 30 minute interval without a single sighting of litter is a luxury afforded only to the blind.

For those who do live in a pristine paradise and require an illustration, just take a look at New York City, where trash literally lining the streets and alleyways is a common occurrence. There are no norms here of taking care of your own trash, that duty falls on the sanitation workers, whose union has been notorious for holding the city hostage.

3.)Public Health

Even before the global pandemic prompted governments to spend billions on public health messaging campaigns, Japan had a remarkably strong culture of wearing masks when experiencing mild illness. In 2018, Japan produced or imported 5.5 billion masks, of which 4.3 billion were designated for personal use. That’s 34 masks per person per year, or around a 10% masking rate on average, assuming all masks are disposable.

This is a very common practice, and seen as a basic courtesy to protect others. This attitude extends to workplace culture too, where Japanese companies typically provide paid sick leave without requiring doctor's notes for short absences.

In contrast, many Western countries struggled to achieve widespread mask adoption even during peak pandemic media spending, and workplace cultures often incentivize employees to work while ill, with the strongest incentives for service sector employees. One study estimated that as much as 2.1% of all U.S. workers are working while sick in any given week.

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4.) Institutional Trust

The Japanese railway system exemplifies how shared social expectations create extraordinary reliability. When trains experience delays exceeding five minutes, operators issue delay certificates ("chien shōmei-sho") that passengers can present to employers or schools.

The average delay on the Tokaido Shinkansen line is remarkably less than one minute per year. The shinkansen has an on-time performance record of more than 99%. Compare this to major Western transit systems - New York City's subway recorded an on-time performance of approximately 80% in recent years, while London's Underground achieves about 85%.

5.) Honor among thieves

Even within Japan's criminal organizations, the concept of structured social obligations persists. The Yakuza traditionally operated with explicit codes of conduct, including territorial boundaries, conflict resolution procedures, and obligations to local communities.

During natural disasters, some Yakuza groups have provided emergency supplies and assistance to affected areas. This differs markedly from Western organized crime groups, which typically operate with less structured codes and rarely maintain formalized relationships with legitimate society.

These examples establish a few important aspects of Japanese culture and society that explain their bewildering success in areas where almost everyone else fails, which I group together as “Legible Norm Conformity”.

1. Norms are shared by almost everyone

2. The norms that apply to a given situation are legible by most parties

3. Norms are adhered to by most parties

This is the secret sauce that allows children to safely roam the immaculate streets, business owners to provide legendarily good service on the honor system, and even criminal institutions like the Yakuza to exist largely in harmony with polite society. But why doesn’t this happen everywhere else?

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Enter the World Value Survey. This graphic places countries on two axes, Traditional vs. Secular Values, and Survival vs. Self Expression Values, the definitions of which you can find at the W.V.S. For short, the top right corner represents very secular very individualist societies, and the bottom left corner represents very traditional, very conformist societies.

Japan is one of the few countries that is A.) Highly Secular, B.) Rich, and C.) Does not suffer from social defection. This mix is what allows them to continue to enjoy the bounties of safety, harmony, and trust we explored above, and break the rule of: “Everyone will not just”. However, let us not pretend that this comes without cost.

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The Japanese deference to consensus and venerance for norms makes it a startup desert. Many would be founders leave the country to try their luck elsewhere. The ones who stay face a daunting bias of risk-aversion. The culture is so oppressive that by the account of writers like ; rather than seek advice on how to get investment or finding customers, Japanese entrepreneurs would commonly ask “how to sell the idea to their parents or girlfriends”.

You may be thinking: “surely foreign entrepreneurs are at the gates to fill this vacuum?” And you would be correct! They are at the gates, and Japan intends to keep them there. Although Japan puts on a friendly and welcoming face for tourists, they essentially disallow immigration compared to other G7 countries, and of the immigrant groups they do allow, a vast majority originate in countries that match the profile of Secular Conformity that Japan operates on.

Without the ability to maintain it’s shared and legible norms, Japan’s culture would cease it’s exceptional functionality. This creates a very narrow window in which Japan can have a pluralistic society. Perhaps this would all be well and good, save for the fact that Japanese birth rates are the lowest since 1947.

Shrinking by more than half a million people a year, the nation we know and love, (and it’s norms!) are almost certain to fade into an unrecognizable other.

This all paints a picture of Japan as a glorious but perhaps fleeting bubble of cultural functionality in a world largely dominated by more individualistic cultures. Whether or not this bubble can continue to survive, only time will tell, but I intend to book my tickets in 2025.

-Connor, Of All Trades.

But none have had quite the same impact on our world as my number one pick: the Internal Combustion Engine (I.C.E.).

The Birth of a Revolution

To truly appreciate the significance of the I.C.E., we need to delve into its origins and understand how it works. The story of the Internal Combustion Engine begins in the late 17th century with the invention of the first piston engine by Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens. This early engine, designed in 1673, used gunpowder as its fuel source. While innovative, it was impractical for widespread use due to its explosive nature and lack of control.

The next significant step came in 1794 when Robert Street patented an engine that used liquid fuel (turpentine) with air in a cylinder, compressed and ignited. This was closer to our modern concept of the I.C.E., but it still lacked efficiency and reliability.

It wasn't until 1859 that the first true Internal Combustion Engine was patented by Belgian-born engineer Jean Joseph Étienne Lenoir. Lenoir's engine used electric spark ignition of a mixture of coal gas and air. It was double-acting, drawing gas and air into the cylinder in the first part of the stroke, then igniting the mixture and exhausting it in the second part. While revolutionary, it was inefficient, converting only about 5% of the fuel's energy into useful work.

The breakthrough came in 1876 when German engineer Nikolaus Otto developed the four-stroke cycle engine. This design, known as the Otto cycle, is still the basis for most gasoline engines today. Otto's engine doubled the efficiency of the Lenoir engine and set the stage for the modern I.C.E.

The Inner Workings of the I.C.E.

The genius of the Internal Combustion Engine lies in its ability to convert chemical energy into mechanical energy through a series of controlled explosions. Let's break down the four-stroke cycle that powers most I.C.E.s:

1. Intake Stroke: The piston moves down from the top dead center (TDC) to the bottom dead center (BDC) of the cylinder. This movement creates a vacuum that draws a mixture of fuel and air into the cylinder through the intake valve.

2. Compression Stroke: With both valves closed, the piston moves back up to TDC, compressing the fuel-air mixture. This compression raises the temperature of the mixture and makes the subsequent combustion more powerful. The compression ratio (the ratio of the volume of the cylinder at BDC to the volume at TDC) is a key factor in engine efficiency.

3. Power Stroke: Just before the piston reaches TDC on the compression stroke, the spark plug ignites the compressed mixture. The resulting explosion forces the piston down, generating power. This is the only stroke that produces power in the four-stroke cycle.

4. Exhaust Stroke: As the piston moves back up, the exhaust valve opens, and the piston pushes the spent gases out through the exhaust valve.

This cycle repeats thousands of times per minute in a running engine, with multiple cylinders firing in a carefully orchestrated sequence to provide smooth, continuous power. In a typical four-cylinder engine, for example, the firing order might be 1-3-4-2, with each cylinder at a different stage of the cycle at any given moment.

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A Unique Approach to Power Generation

What sets the Internal Combustion Engine apart from other power generation methods is its direct harnessing of combustion energy. Most other large-scale power generation techniques - from steam engines to nuclear power plants - ultimately rely on heating water to produce steam, which then drives a turbine.

The I.C.E., in contrast, converts the chemical energy of fuel directly into mechanical energy. This allows for a compact, portable power source that can be scaled from small handheld devices to massive ship engines. The power-to-weight ratio of I.C.E.s is particularly impressive, which is why they've been so successful in transportation applications.

Consider, for example, a modern automotive engine. A typical 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine in a compact car might produce around 150 horsepower (about 110 kilowatts) and weigh about 300 pounds (136 kg). That's a power-to-weight ratio of about 0.8 kW/kg. In comparison, a typical steam turbine power plant might have a power-to-weight ratio of less than 0.1 kW/kg.

The fuels used by I.C.E.s are also much denser per unit of energy they contain compared to batteries, which makes them the go-to for moving energy sources around, like we do with automotive transport.

This efficiency and compactness come at a cost, however. I.C.E.s are less thermally efficient than large steam turbines, typically converting only about 20-35% of the fuel's energy into useful work (with the rest lost as heat), compared to up to 50% for large steam turbine plants. But for applications where size and weight matter more than absolute efficiency, the I.C.E. reigns supreme.

The I.C.E.'s Impact on the World

The advent of the Internal Combustion Engine reshaped our world in ways that are hard to overstate. Let's explore some of the key areas of impact:

Transportation Revolution

The most obvious impact of the I.C.E. was in transportation. The ability to have a powerful, compact engine revolutionized how we move:

• Automobiles: The I.C.E. made personal transportation accessible to the masses. In 1886, Karl Benz patented the first gasoline-powered automobile, and by the early 20th century, Henry Ford's assembly line was producing affordable cars for the middle class. This democratization of transportation had profound effects on society. Cars transformed city planning, led to the development of suburbs, and changed social dynamics by increasing personal mobility.

• Aviation: While the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903 used a custom-built I.C.E. producing just 12 horsepower, it was the development of more powerful and reliable engines that truly enabled the aviation industry to take off. By the 1930s, engines like the Rolls-Royce Merlin were producing over 1,000 horsepower, enabling long-distance flights and military applications that would change the course of history.

• Shipping: Large diesel engines dramatically increased the speed and efficiency of cargo ships, accelerating global trade. The first diesel-powered ship, the MS Selandia, was launched in 1912. By the 1950s, diesel engines had largely replaced steam power in commercial shipping, enabling larger ships, faster travel times, and more efficient global trade networks.

Economic Transformation

The I.C.E. didn't just change how we move; it changed how we work:

• Industrial Applications: Portable I.C.E.-powered generators and compressors allowed for mechanization in places far from established power grids. This was particularly important in construction, mining, and agriculture, enabling productivity increases in these sectors.

• Agriculture: Tractors and other I.C.E.-powered farm equipment dramatically increased agricultural productivity. The first gasoline-powered tractor was built in 1892, and by the 1920s, tractors were rapidly replacing horses on American farms. This mechanization freed up labor for other sectors, contributing to rapid industrialization and urbanization.

• New Industries: The automotive industry became a cornerstone of many national economies. In the U.S., it was the largest single manufacturing enterprise by the mid-20th century. In 1955, General Motors became the first company to earn over $1 billion in a single year, and the industry employed millions of workers directly and indirectly.

Urban Planning and Infrastructure

The widespread adoption of I.C.E.-powered vehicles necessitated massive changes in our built environment:

• Road Networks: The interstate highway system in the U.S. and similar projects worldwide were direct responses to the proliferation of automobiles. The U.S. Interstate Highway System, initiated in 1956, eventually spanned over 48,000 miles and cost over $500 billion (in 2016 dollars), making it one of the largest public works projects in history.

• Suburban Sprawl: The ability to commute longer distances led to the growth of suburbs, fundamentally changing patterns of urban development and allowing for much of our current standard of living to be accessible to the masses. Between 1950 and 2000, the proportion of Americans living in suburbs grew from 23% to 50%.

• Oil Infrastructure: The I.C.E.'s thirst for fuel led to the development of a global network of oil extraction, refining, and distribution infrastructure. By 2019, there were over 700 oil refineries worldwide, processing about 100 million barrels of oil per day.

Geopolitical Shifts

The I.C.E.'s dependence on oil has had profound geopolitical consequences:

• Oil Diplomacy: Nations with large oil reserves gained significant geopolitical leverage. The formation of OPEC in 1960 and the oil crises of the 1970s demonstrated the power of oil-producing nations to influence global politics and economics.

• Conflicts: Many 20th and 21st century conflicts have been influenced by the desire to control oil resources. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990 and the subsequent Gulf War is a prime example.

• Economic Interdependence: The global oil trade has created complex economic relationships between nations. For example, despite political tensions, the U.S. imported billions of dollars worth of oil from Venezuela for decades, demonstrating how oil dependence can supersede political differences.

’s recent episode on the oil as a global force was outstanding, see below.

Dwarkesh Podcast

Daniel Yergin – Oil Explains the Entire 20th Century

Unless you understand the history of oil, you cannot understand the rise of America, WW1, WW2, secular stagnation, the Middle East, Ukraine, how Xi and Putin think, and basically anything else that's happened since 1860…

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2 years ago · 49 likes · 4 comments · Dwarkesh Patel

The Dark Side of the Revolution

While the Internal Combustion Engine brought unprecedented mobility and economic growth, it also introduced new challenges:

• Air Pollution: I.C.E. emissions are a major contributor to urban air pollution, leading to significant public health issues. The World Health Organization estimates that outdoor air pollution causes 4.2 million premature deaths each year, with vehicle emissions being a major factor.

• Climate Change: The massive scale of I.C.E. use has made it a primary driver of anthropogenic climate change. Transportation accounts for about 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with road vehicles being the largest contributor.

• Mechanized warfare: The I.C.E. is a tool like any other, and in the hands of humanity (at least in the 20th century) any tool doubled as a weapon. Personally I think the balance puts the I.C.E. solidly in the net positive bucket, but the advent of modern warfare cannot be dismissed as part of it’s story.

A View from 2300

To truly appreciate the long-term impact of the Internal Combustion Engine, let's take a leap forward in time. Imagine we're in the year 2300, looking back on the past three centuries of human history. Let's listen in on a conversation between two future anthropologists as they debate the significance of the I.C.E.

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Historical Dialogue: The Legacy of the Internal Combustion Engine

The holo-projection flickered to life, revealing two figures in the minimalist attire typical of 24th-century academics. Dr. Aria Chen, her dark hair streaked with iridescent highlights, faced Professor Zain Al-Rashid across a virtual recreation of an ancient library. The air around them shimmered with data streams, holographic charts, and 3D models of various engine designs throughout history.

Dr. Chen, a renowned anthropologist specializing in the study of human-technology interactions, was in the midst of preparing a landmark presentation on the defining inventions of the Anthropocene. Her colleague, Professor Al-Rashid, an expert in the socio-economic impacts of historical technologies, had been invited to challenge her assertions and help refine her arguments.

Chen: "Zain, I'm telling you, the Internal Combustion Engine was the linchpin of the Anthropocene. It reshaped Earth itself. My research clearly shows its unparalleled impact on human civilization."

Al-Rashid: "A pivotal invention, certainly. But more so than the transistor? The fusion reactor? Aria, you're making a bold claim here. The committee will need rock-solid evidence."

Chen: "Those built on existing paradigms. The I.C.E.? It redefined humanity's relationship with energy and the planet. Look at this."

She gestured, and a holographic globe materialized between them, pulsing with light that represented carbon emissions over time. The glow intensified rapidly from the late 19th century onward.

Chen: "This is the I.C.E.'s fingerprint on our world. No other invention left such a mark. It's the smoking gun that proves my thesis."

Al-Rashid: "At a terrible cost. The Great Climate Crisis—"

Chen: "Exactly! It forced us to confront our power over global systems. Without that wake-up call, would we be terraforming Mars today? Our entire field of study might not exist if not for the I.C.E."

A 3D model of Mars appeared, showing the gradual transformation of its atmosphere and surface over the past century.

Al-Rashid: "An interesting point. The crisis did accelerate clean energy development. But surely the fusion reactor—"

Chen: "Was built on the foundation laid by the I.C.E. era. The I.C.E. showed us the power and peril of energy abundance. It set us on the path to fusion. This is crucial for my argument about the cascading effects of technological paradigm shifts."

Al-Rashid: "What about the social impacts? The I.C.E. reshaped human geography, led to urbanization, suburbanization..."

Chen: "Precisely. It fundamentally altered how humans interact with space and distance. And consider this."

She pulled up a chart showing the evolution of global trade volumes over the past 400 years.

Chen: "The I.C.E. era saw an explosion in global trade and cultural exchange. It laid the groundwork for our current global civilization. This is key to understanding the anthropological implications of the technology."

Al-Rashid: "You make a compelling case, Aria. But what of its environmental legacy? The mass extinctions, the altered climate, war... How do you reconcile that with your argument?"

Chen: "A harsh lesson, but a necessary one. The I.C.E. era taught us the full extent of our power to alter our environment. It birthed modern geoengineering."

She conjured an image of massive atmospheric scrubbers and orbital sunshades.

Chen: "Without the I.C.E., would we have developed these technologies? Would we have understood the need for them? This is the crux of my argument about the I.C.E. as the catalyst for our current era of intentional planetary management."

Al-Rashid: "So you're saying..."

Chen: "The I.C.E. wasn't just an engine. It was the key that unlocked humanity's potential as planetary engineers. It showed us we could change worlds – for better or worse. That's why it deserves the top spot in my list of Anthropocene-defining inventions."

Al-Rashid: "And now we're applying those lessons to Mars, to Venus, to the moons of Jupiter..."

Chen: "Exactly. The I.C.E. was our first step towards becoming a multi-planet species. It taught us to harness energy on a massive scale, to reshape environments to our needs. This is the thread that ties together all of human technological development in the Anthropocene."

Al-Rashid: "But at what cost? The suffering during the Climate Crisis era—"

Chen: "Was immense, yes. But it also united humanity in a way nothing else had. The Global Climate Accords of 2047, the Manhattan Project for Carbon Capture in 2060 – these were unprecedented collaborations. They're textbook examples of crisis-driven innovation in anthropological studies."

Al-Rashid: "So the I.C.E.'s legacy is not just technological, but social and political as well?"

Chen: "Precisely. It reshaped every aspect of human civilization. And now, as we reach out to the stars, we carry those lessons with us. That's why the I.C.E. is the most significant invention of the Anthropocene. It's the key to understanding how we got here and where we're going."

A starmap appeared, showing humanity's current interstellar colonies and exploration missions.

Chen: "Every one of these missions, every colony, every terraformed world – they all trace their lineage back to the lessons we learned in the age of the Internal Combustion Engine. It's the thread that ties together our entire technological history."

Al-Rashid: "A compelling argument, Aria. I think you've convinced me. The committee will be impressed."

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Looking at things from our vantage point in 2024, it's easy to focus on the immediate impacts of the Internal Combustion Engine - the cars, the planes, the radical reshaping of our cities and economies. But as our fictional future anthropologists point out, its legacy extends far beyond that.

The I.C.E. represents a pivotal moment in human history - the point at which we first began to significantly alter global systems. It's a cautionary tale and a source of inspiration, a reminder of our power to shape our world and the responsibility that comes with that power. That's why it earns the top spot in our list of Wonders of Our World.

As we look to the future, let's carry with us the lessons of the I.C.E.: the power of innovation, the importance of considering long-term consequences, and the potential for human ingenuity to solve the most daunting challenges, whether they be of our own making or the work of mother nature. After all, it's not just our world we're shaping now - it's our future among the stars.

The Internal Combustion Engine, in all its complexity and contradiction, stands as a monument to human achievement. It has powered us through a century of unprecedented growth and change, and its legacy will continue to shape our worlds for centuries to come.

-Connor, Of All Trades.

When I started this series, I was set on using the ISS as the #1 Wonder of our World. I wanted to highlight the amazing engineering behind it’s construction, it’s symbolism for something greater than national achievement, and showcase all of the spin-off technologies that must have emerged from such an iconic piece of infrastructure. In my research though, I was surprised to find that the ISS has produced many fewer spin-off technologies than one might expect. Perhaps it is too early to tell and they are still yet to come, but combined with the recent calls for it’s decommission, I had to de-rank it from the list. This led me to be in a hard situation, where I had to think of ideas better than all 6 of my previously listed wonders. This was very difficult, but I kept a list, so I could do an honorable mentions upon ending the series. Here it is, with why each wonder almost made the list- and why it was eventually nixed. You can expect posts on many of these in the future. Leave a comment about which one you are most excited to see!

Honorable Mentions: The Hall of Almost-Wonders

1. Starlink: SpaceX's satellite internet constellation promises global high-speed internet access. While revolutionary, its full impact is yet to be realized, and it’s unclear that it will be more impactful than the lives saved by the global weather satellite system. Asheville has me rethinking this.

2. International Space Station (ISS): A marvel of international cooperation and engineering, the ISS has advanced our understanding of long-term space habitation. However, its direct impact on daily life for most people is limited. Where are all the jetsons style spin-offs we were promised? What has come of the many many experiments conducted aboard? These gains are hard to track and quantify, so only time will tell.

3. Haber-Bosch Process: This method of synthesizing ammonia revolutionized agriculture by enabling large-scale fertilizer production. If you are reading this article. You eat because of this process. Hugely impactful - it almost edged out the I.C.E., but it was just a little too far away from what I could class as a “wonder”. There is no centralized thing to point to, just a methodology. Were all the ammonia synthesizing done in one place, that place would have made the list, probably at #1 or #2.

4. Moroccan Phosphorus Mines: Similar to the H-B process, these mines produce a significant portion of the world's phosphorus, crucial for fertilizers. While important, phosphorus is secondary to nitrogen and there were recently huge deposits discovered in Norway, which made the Moroccan mines less of a singular pillar holding up the world. Awesome conveyor belt though!

5. Panama and Suez Canals: These engineering marvels dramatically shortened shipping routes. They didn't make our list as they're more evolutionary than revolutionary in the context of global trade, and I thought the shipyards of the world were more relevant to today’s trade, potential naval wars, etc. Also, these canals are getting outmoded with the rise of supercarriers too large to go through them.

6. The Channel Tunnel (Chunnel): Connecting Britain to mainland Europe, this underwater rail tunnel is an impressive feat. It's regionally significant but lacks the global impact of our top wonders, so a lot of this post would probably have needed to be about means and methods, dredging, waterproofing, and the significance of the project as a “first” rather than a “best”.

7. Trans-Siberian Railway: The longest railway line in the world, it connected the vast expanse of Russia. Its impact, while substantial, is primarily regional. Much like the suez/panama canals, the trade aspect is cool, but this is a feat of scale rather than one of skill.

8. Drinking Water Treatment Systems: These systems have saved countless lives by providing clean water. They missed our list due to their decentralized nature and varying implementation worldwide. Designing water treatment systems is what I do for my day job and will likely be the subject of a future mega post, if not a series.

9. Large Hadron Collider: This incredible machine has advanced our understanding of particle physics. Its impact on daily life, however, is not yet as direct as our chosen wonders. Just like the ISS, where are the spinoffs??

10. Bridges and Tunnels of Manhattan: These structures transformed New York City's development. While locally crucial, their impact is too geographically limited for our global list. If I ever get around to watching 21 Bridges this might be a fun post.

11. CRISPR Gene Editing: This revolutionary biotechnology holds immense promise for medicine and agriculture. It's not on my main list as it isn’t really infrastructure and it’s full potential is still being explored.

12. The Internet: While undeniably world-changing, the internet is more of a system than a single wonder, built upon multiple technologies and infrastructures.

13. Global Positioning System (GPS): This network of satellites has revolutionized navigation and timing. It narrowly missed our list due to its reliance on other technologies and similarity to weather satellites.

14. Three Gorges Dam: The world's largest power station by installed capacity, this dam is an engineering marvel. Its environmental impact, dubious ability to last for much longer, and localized benefits kept it off our main list.

15. Penicillin: This groundbreaking antibiotic has saved countless lives since its discovery. It narrowly missed our list due to its nature as a scientific discovery rather than an engineering/infrastructure marvel.

16. Vaccination: The development of vaccines, especially the recent rapidly deployable mRNA versions were on my list for a while. Vaccination has eradicated diseases and prevented millions of deaths. While immensely impactful, it's more a medical breakthrough than a singular, physical wonder. The strategic egg reserve almost made it onto the list but it’s being phased out in favor of synthesizing doses.

17. The Hoover Dam: An engineering marvel that tamed the Colorado River and provides water and power to millions. Its regional rather than global impact kept it off our main list, but much of the discount is also because of it’s age were I writing this in the year it was built, the case could have been made that it was the first step in a rich future of similar projects. This is harder to do from today.

18. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault: This fail-safe seed storage facility in Norway safeguards plant biodiversity. While crucial for the future, its impact is more potential than current. Like an appendix, it doen’’t do much until it’s needed.

19. The Burj Khalifa: The world's tallest building is an impressive feat of engineering. However, its impact is more symbolic than functional on a global scale, and is more in line with the conventional wonders list.

20. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER): This ambitious project aims to prove the feasibility of fusion power. It's not on our main list as it's still under construction and its full impact is yet to be realized.

21. The Svalbard Satellite Station: This remote facility in the Arctic plays a crucial role in gathering satellite data for weather forecasting and climate monitoring. Its specialized nature and limited public awareness kept it off our main list.

22. The Large Scale Solar Parks of China: Massive solar installations like the Longyan Xia Dam Solar Park showcase China's push for renewable energy. While impressive, these parks are still evolving and their long-term impact is yet to be fully realized.

23. The Gotthard Base Tunnel: The world's longest and deepest traffic tunnel, it's a marvel of engineering that has significantly improved transportation through the Alps. Its regional focus limited its placement on our global list.

24. The Square Kilometer Array (SKA): This international project to build the world's largest radio telescope will revolutionize our understanding of the universe. It's not on our main list as it's still under construction.

25. The Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS): This international system for observing, modeling, and analyzing marine and ocean variables is crucial for climate science and oceanography. Its distributed nature and lack of a singular physical presence kept it off our main list. It would also be cooler if it served as a global earthquake/tsunami warning system, but it only does this in some regions

26. McMurdo Station: The largest Antarctic research station, McMurdo represents humanity's scientific presence on the coldest, driest, and windiest continent. I think it has the potential for lots of useful spinoffs. Like the ISS, it's a testament to international cooperation and our quest for knowledge in extreme environments. While crucial for climate research and other scientific endeavors, its specialized nature and remote location limited its placement on our main list.

These almost-wonders remind us of the incredible breadth of human achievement and innovation across the globe and even in the most inhospitable environments. While they didn't make my list, each represents a significant leap forward in human capability, understanding, and our continuous push to expand the boundaries of what's possible. Expect some of these to crop up in future deep dive posts!

Trying to showcase a cleaner, greener Paris, the French government has undertaken an ambitious project to make the Seine river swimmable in time for the Olympic open water swimming events and triathlon on July 26th. However, with costs ballooning, engineering challenges mounting, and a viral Tiktok trend threatening to undermine the effort, the question remains - will the French be able to un-stain the Seine?

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The Problem

The Seine has long been plagued by pollution. Multiple cholera outbreaks, typhoid fever, and even malaria were traced back to the river’s waters.

Today, the seine sees over 360,000 m^3 per day of raw sewage discharged into the river from Paris' aging combined sewer system. This is the equivalent of 120 Olympic swimming pools!

Because the sewers are combined, the sewage is a mixture of wastewater and stormwater, which means that during heavy rains, the system gets overwhelmed, resulting in untreated waste flowing directly into the river.

The Project

To combat this, the city has embarked on a €1.4 billion project. One cornerstone of the project is the Austerlitz basin - a cavernous structure 50 meters below ground capable of holding 50,000 cubic meters of water - the equivalent of 20 Olympic swimming pools. During storms, wastewater will be diverted to the basin instead of flowing into the Seine.

A useful way to think about the basin is in the context of flow equalization. During periods of high flow, an equalization basin can store wastewater, and keep discharge rates steady. This protects all the downstream infrastructure at the treatment plant from being overloaded. Then, the stored wastewater can be discharged smoothly over time, keeping the reduction in flow after a rain event to a smooth taper. The ability to smooth out the peak flow allows us to build less capacity, and keep the capacity we have built running more consistently. For context, here is a infographic from the city of Springfield, MO showcasing some of the most common steps in a typical WWTP.

Another key component to Paris’ megaproject is the €500 million upgrade to the Seine Aval wastewater treatment plant, to which the water captured by the Austerlitz basin will be pumped. This plant processes about 80% of the wastewater from Paris. The planned improvements are slated to boost treatment capacity by 30%. But the plant has a checkered environmental record, often discharging excess flows to the river, and locals worry it won't be able to handle the increased load. As one resident put it, "they're spending all this money, but at the end of the day, it's still going into the same old antiquated system."

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The plant’s spotty record may be caused in part by the combined sewer system. Beyond the problem of large volumetric fluctuations, combined systems cause a lot of variance in waste concentration. The microbes we use to process our waste (see step 4 in the infographic) need a steady supply of food, and are sensitive to the concentrative fluctuations that can result from large volume wet weather events in combined sewer systems. Too little food, (which might be caused by too much rainwater diluting the nutrients in the wastewater) and the microbes will starve, meaning they won’t be able to handle the next peak in concentration, and waste organics will their way through the process.

Paris' propensity for summer thunderstorms adds another layer of uncertainty to the project. Officials acknowledge that even with the upgrades, significant rainfall could still lead to overflows. As one engineer candidly stated, "We're doing everything humanly possible, but we can't control the skies." Sounds like a job for of Rainmaker.

The PR Nightmare

Hoping to instill confidence, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and President Emmanuel Macron have vowed to take a celebratory swim in the Seine this Sunday (June 23rd). But their PR stunt may be torpedoed by a tongue-in-cheek Tiktok trend called "Je Chie Dans La Seine Le 23 Juin" (I Shit in the Seine on June 23). Hundreds of thousands have watched videos of people pledging to take a "crap for freedom" to protest what they see as political greenwashing and government over-spending. If even a tiny fraction follow through, it could make for quite a messy situation.

In the end, Paris may pull off the engineering feat and avoid a watery fiasco come late July. But with so many variables in play it’s a sink or swim situation. As the Olympics draw nearer, all eyes will be on the Seine - and Parisians will be holding their noses.

Thank you for reading.

-Connor, OfAllTrades.

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UPDATE 06/01/2024

Team ECCO (the org who owns Charlotte and the aquarium) posted this on May 30th (1 day after publication)

The statement still leaves some questions to be answered with regards to how long the aquarium has known this without disclosure and whether the claims of parthenogenesis are false, but it seems increasingly likely that Charlotte's pregnancy is non-viable. Thanks to user for updating me in the comments.

“We regret the delay of updates regarding Charlotte. This time was necessary to gather data and analyze lab and testing results. These reports were shared with our care team. The reports show that Charlotte has developed a rare reproductive disease that has negatively impacted her reproductive system. The findings are truly a sad and unexpected medical development. Our priority is to focus on Charlotte’s health and wellbeing. We will work with, and be guided by, veterinarians and specialists to better understand this disease and the treatment options for Charlotte. While the research of this disease is limited, we hope that Charlotte’s case and medical treatment will positively contribute to science and be of benefit to other rays in the future. We sincerely appreciate the incredible outpouring of love and support for Charlotte. Please respect Charlotte and her care team as we navigate this unexpected news and work to determine the best path forward. Updates will be given as we are able."

In February 2024, NPR ran a story that a female stingray had become pregnant without any contact with a male counterpart for years. Just in time for Valentines day, the story immediately piqued the interest of thousands across the nation, myself included. Almost four months later, we are still waiting with baited breath to see the pups and have them genetically tested, to determine their origin once and for all. As time goes on, our chances of solving this mystery dwindle.

Background:

Charlotte’s pregnancy was first noticed around September of 2023, when staff saw a bump on her underbelly. Thinking it was cancer, they performed an ultrasound, and consulted with aquariums in Arizona and Australia, who were the first to think it could be a pregnancy.

Pregnancies in Charlotte’s species of stingray typically only last 3-4 months, so given that the pregnancy was spotted in September, Charlotte was essentially due in February.

On the 6th of February, the Hendersonville aquarium made a social media announcement that was picked up by national news, confirming that the stingray was pregnant. Aquarium staff claim that she had not been in contact with a male ray for about 8 years. So how had she been impregnated? Let’s take a look at some of the possible explanations for Charlotte’s condition.

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Immaculate Conception:

On the 8th of February, they held a livestream, where they put forth the idea that Charlotte was pregnant via a process known as parthenogenesis. This would be unique because although it has happened it other species of ray, Charlotte would be the first of her species where it happened.

There are multiple forms of the process, but if she *is* pregnant, it’s most likely via something called automixis. This means that her offspring will likely be very similar genetically to their mother, but are not likely to be “true clones”.

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The Shark Angle:

They had recently introduced a juvenile white-spotted bamboo shark to the tank, and bite marks had appeared on Charlotte’s back indicating that the shark may have attempted to mate with her. Despite the evidence of shark on ray action, the likelihood of a shark-ray hybrid pregnancy seems lower to me than the parthenogenesis explanation, because of the genetic distance between sharks and rays as compared to other species capable of hybrids. Donkeys and Horses, who can hybridize to produce Mules, are separated by about 7-15 million years, whereas sharks and rays are separated by almost 300 million years. However, the hybrid and parthenogenesis explanations both explain why the pregnancy has dragged on for so long, as they can both cause problems in the viability of the offspring.

(Note: There are examples of hybrids like the Sturddlefish, which came from species separated by 184 million years, but both donor species in this case had not changed very much in that time. Important to remember that time from last ancestor is not a direct indicator of genetic distance, because selective pressure and therefore the “speed” of evolution can be variable.)

Taking all of this into account, my stance is that even if they got it on, it’s unlikely that this shark will have to dish out any child support to Charlotte’s pups.

Contamination/Co-mingling:

Initially, I was skeptical of the whole parthenogenesis story. I thought the most likely explanation was that a male stingray at some point had brief access to Charlotte’s tank, or that there was a holding tank shared by both rays during a cleaning or veterinary examination.

Slightly less likely but still plausible at first glance was that only water was shared, and that somehow male ray genetic material made it into Charlotte from the water she was swimming in.

However, I couldn’t find any record of the aquarium housing a male stingray, so unless she was transferred somewhere else I think I have to discard this explanation, although it best fit my priors.

The abnormal length of the pregnancy also works against this theory, because the weird conception circumstances makes failed or abnormally long pregnancies much likelier, as compared to the base rate of long/failed pregnancies under normal conditions.

Storage:

Is it possible Charlotte could have stored genetic material from an earlier mating all this time, and her body is only now going into pregnancy mode?

Stingrays have been documented to store sperm in the past, but the claimed 8 years would be 4x longer than the next longest storage time I could find, which was two years at the Sea Life London Aquarium. The two female rays in that case gave birth to seven healthy pups.

Like the contamination theory though, this doesn’t explain the abnormal length of the pregnancy.

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Hoax:

Obviously my inner cynic screams hoax louder every day that we do not see the pups, but this response is rooted in vibes rather than evidence. There are many questions about the aquarium’s actions and motivations, but certainly no smoking gun.

Q1: Why did it take them months to announce that Charlotte was pregnant? They knew she was pregnant in September but did not announce it until February, when she should have been imminently due. Perhaps they thought that by waiting they could insulate from the risk or they wanted to hit the valentines day run-up with the story.

Q2: Why has the pregnancy gone on so long and why haven’t we heard about the health of the pups? We’ve been getting lots of updates about Charlotte’s health, but I haven’t heard anything about whether the pups have heartbeats or any sort of ultrasound with higher definition than the initial announcement. People in the comments clamor for confirmation from a medical/veterinary expert, but teamECCO seems to want to maintain their monopoly on Charlotte-info.

Q3: Cui Bono? Brenda Ramer, who is the director of teamECCO (the charity which runs the aquarium), was the first to post about Charlotte, where she suggested the ray’s pregnancy was the result of mating with the white spotted bamboo shark. As we went over before, this is very unlikely and most with knowledge of marine animals would be able to tell. Was this her first attempt to garner media attention? Maybe it was an attempt to drive business to the aquarium itself or even to the town of Hendersonville at large. Once the people started coming to see Charlotte, it would be hard to turn off the tap.

Q4: Will we ever know? With the way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if Charlotte never makes it to the end of her pregnancy and we never see the pups. The aquarium estimates her to be 12-16 years old, and her species of ray typically only lives to be 14. This makes her a potential double threat of geriatric parthenogenetic pregnancy.

I think a full hoax is unlikely, but it’s definitely possible the aquarium knows more than they are telling us. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised if the pups are already known to be non-viable or dead within the womb, and the aquarium is just milking the situation for as long as possible. This might not even be the prerogative of the aquarium, it’s totally possible they want to tell us but are being pressured by local officials to keep the tourists coming. Even if this were all true, I think it only qualifies the situation as a partial hoax, because it seems clear that *something* is happening with Charlotte as she is visibly larger and the ultrasounds do show what appear to be pups.

False Positive:

Could Charlotte herself be adaptively scamming the aquarium staff out of food?

This theory is popular with Charlotte fans on social media, but I think this is pretty unlikely, but it may be that Charlotte’s ultrasounds were misinterpreted as a pregnancy while actually being something else like cancer or a cyst, and the aquarium is leaning into it because they feel they are in too deep to turn back.

What do you think?

When I first heard the story back in February, it sounded a little too good to be true, so I created a betting market to poll the people about where they think the pregnancy could have come from. You can create an account for free to weigh in with your own opinions and even add options (The failed to carry option was added by another user). As far as I know, answers resolve without mutual exclusivity, so multiple options can be correct! I plan to resolve the market once the pups are born and can be confirmed to be parthenogenetic in origin or not. I am invested into the parthenogenesis option pretty heavily, but I’m excited to see what my readers think!

As you can see, people (and largely myself) generally bought in to the story of parthenogenesis. However, as time has gone on and no birth has occurred, I’ve become more open to the idea that the aquarium owners may have embellished or leaned into the holy birth hypothesis as a way to drive business to their small town.

Thank you for reading.

-Connor, OfAllTrades.

In the first post in this series, we took a look at the Dutch-Portuguese War, diving into the background for the conflict, the motivations of the belligerents, and the strategy and key battles of the Indian Ocean theatre. This time, we’ll examine the fighting in the Americas and Africa, and characterize the importance of the war as a battle not only between fleets and armies, but also of behemoth ideas and institutions that would come to shape our modern world.

BACKGROUND

In contrast to the Indian Ocean Theatre, the Atlantic Theatre of the Dutch-Portuguese war saw a much more even balance emerge between the Portuguese and their allies and the Dutch West Indies Company (W.I.C.). This was in no small part due to the greater Spanish presence in the theatre, but also had to do with the difference in nature of the Iberian holdings in the Atlantic vs. Indian Ocean Theatres. In the Atlantic, the Iberian forces often had a deep frontier of friendly and self sufficient settlements to retreat into, licking their wounds and recovering their strength, whereas the Indian Ocean was a landscape dotted with outposts that were often isolated from any possible relief or reinforcement (other than by sea). Due to this contrast, Dutch victories in the Atlantic were in many cases closely followed by Portuguese recovery.

Additionally, Spanish treasure ships were less vulnerable to privateering, due to their more extensive use of convoys (called flotas), as compared to the Portuguese. Instead of isolated Portuguese galleons laden with sugar and slaves, privateers looking for a Spanish meal faced a daunting treasure fleet, with escorts ships armed to the teeth.

However, even when the chips fell back into their original positions, the effect of the conflict in weakening Iberian entrenchment in the hemisphere is important and often understated, as it lowered the barrier to entry for other outside powers to enter the fray.

What exactly were the Dutch aiming to accomplish in the theatre? Enter the Groot Desseyn (Grand Design) of the W.I.C., which hinged on seizing key ports and disrupting Iberian shipping, to starve the treasuries of Spain and Portugal, and hopefully grinding their war efforts to a halt.

In the Groot Desseyn, the Dutch would seek to first capture Salvador de Bahia in Brazil, which controlled entrance to the Bay of All Saints and Paraguacu river, and was an important port of entry for ships and goods coming from Africa. Then, the plan was to jaunt over to the African Coast to strike the relatively weak fortress at Luanda, and travel up the African coast to assault the now isolated fortress of Elmina in West Africa, which was initially avoided due to it’s defensiveness.

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AFRICA

The Atlantic African coast was coveted by European powers in the 16th and 17th century for it’s key role in control of the slave and triangle trades. Over the course of the war, the Dutch West Indies Company would seize Portuguese colonies and trading posts in the Gold Coast and the Congo areas, and involve themselves in local politics and affairs as traders in many other West African periphery areas.

The Dutch would hold their Gold Coast colony until 1872, when they sold it under duress to the British for 46,939.62 Dutch guilders, (only about $2M today, converting from guilders to gold to dollars)

The Dutch victories in the Congo and Angola would prove more temporary. Soon after the capture of the area by a Dutch fleet fresh from a victory in Brazil, and it’s incorporation into the W.I.C., the Dutch found themselves embroiled in local affairs, and they were unable to cement their control over the region.

The Dutch Cape Colony was a late addition in the span of the war, only being settled in 1652, just 11 years before the end of the war, but would go on to play a large role in the shipping and extraction of natural resources from the Indian Ocean and African theatres, and as a key chokepoint, cemented the Dutch ability to trade between the Indian Ocean and European ports.

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THE CARRIBEAN AND AMERICAN THEATRES

Lets take a closer look at the American/Caribbean theatres, and some key differences to those of Asia and Africa that allowed the Iberian powers to more effectively combat Dutch attempts to undermine their presence in the theatre.

1.) As we touched on earlier, Iberian holdings here had the advantage of retreat, and could not be defeated in detail as easily as the isolated holdings in Africa and Asia. When the Iberians lost here, they often faded into the countryside to lick their wounds, and draw from the colonial reservoir of money, men, and materiel to mount counter-attacks. This largely contrasts with how things played out in Africa and Asia, where isolated garrisons and fortresses could be taken in sequence from the periphery inward. These forces, which often had fewer options for retreat, were more likely to formally surrender, granting the Dutch cheaper victories with more staying power.

2.) The goods traded by the Portuguese and Spanish in the Atlantic during this time were different in a few key ways. The Spanish goods (especially precious metals and porcelain) could be temporized, meaning that they could be stored with minimal losses to degradation, while Portuguese goods (Largely slaves and sugar) were much more volatile. This led to a difference in fleet size! Portuguese ships in the Atlantic were constantly making the journey back and forth between Brazil and Africa due to the perishable nature of the goods they traded in, while Iberian ships returning to Europe from the colonies (Mostly Spanish) made the trip much less frequently, in large convoys called flotas. The Spanish treasure convoys, while they were huge targets, were easier to protect from privateers than the smaller Portuguese groups of ships and their escorts, which could be targeted by smaller privateering fleets at a lower risk.

Quantifying the degree to which piracy occurred in the Ameri-Carib theatre is difficult due to the asymmetric nature of the practice. Because of the Spanish and Portuguese policies of Mare Clausum (discussed in part 1), any foreign ship travelling through the waters claimed by Iberian sovereigns without paying for passage or trading rights, could be considered to be engaging in smuggling, piracy or otherwise prosecuted harshly. Successful pirates were notoriously secretive about who and what they captured. Rather than ransom their prisoners, they often sold them into slavery instead.

I’d love to see some analysis on the economic history of pirates and privateers and their impact on trade, if you know of work in this area, please leave a comment! All I could find was studies on Somali piracy and some work on the organizational structure of pirate ships, but few estimates of the total booty taken. Perhaps I would follow the breadcrumbs from the foundation of Lloyd’s of London, which started as a maritime insurance underwriter in 1689.

HAVANA AND THE SPANISH MAIN

There were some daring strikes on treasure fleets over the course of the conflict. Predated by some more minor French and English captures of Spanish ships; the capture of an entire Spanish treasure fleet in September 1628 likely takes the cake as the biggest prize. The Dutch force of 31 ships led by Admiral Piet Pieterszoon Hein (with the help of a pirate!) captured the entire New Spain treasure fleet on its way to Havana. The Dutch seized 46 tons of silver and many other valuables, (worth over 11 million 1628 guilders, or about 350m 2021 euros) in the raid, which nearly bankrupted the Spanish empire. However, they were unable to seriously threaten the fortified ports of the Spanish Caribbean, and so returned home laden with booty. Shareholders in the Dutch West India Company received 50% cash dividends that year.

Admiral Piet was the only privateer to ever capture a large part of the Spanish Treasure fleets. He famously also captured 30 Portuguese ships in his 1627 series of raids on the port of Salvador in Portuguese Brazil. He would die guns blazing in 1629, heroically sailing his ship in between two enemy ships to give them simultaneous broadside fire.

THE BATTLE FOR BRAZIL

As part of the Groot Desseyn, the Dutch West India Company turned their ambitions to Portugal's massive colony in Brazil. In 1624, a WIC fleet of 51 ships carried over 3,000 soldiers in an audacious strike against the city of Salvador (now the capital of Bahia state). Catching the Portuguese garrison unprepared, the Dutch overwhelmed the defenses and occupied Salvador for over a year.

Though eventually repulsed, the Dutch persisted, returning in 1630 to seize the northeastern captaincies of Pernambuco, Itamaracá, Paraíba, and Rio Grande do Norte. They consolidated their Brazilian territories into the colony of New Holland, governing from the capital of Mauritsstad (present-day Recife).

For the next quarter century, Dutch settlers, Jewish immigrants, and African slaves poured into this corner of Brazil. Mills processed the region's bountiful sugar harvests, while the WIC waged a seesaw battle with Portuguese forces over the colony's future. Ultimately outnumbered, the Dutch finally abandoned their Brazilian foothold in 1654 after over 30 years of occupation. In the Treaty of the Hague, which is widely accepted as the official end of the war, the Dutch renounced their claim to the area and ceded it to the Portuguese, for 63 tonnes of gold.

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OUTCOME AND IMPACT

At the end of the conflict, the Netherlands were free from the Catholic control of the Spanish Habsburgs, the Portuguese had lost control of the most lucrative of their trading posts in the Indian Ocean, and cracks were beginning to show in the Iberian stranglehold on trade in the Atlantic. The capitalists of Northern Europe bayed like hungry dogs at the wounded lion of the Iberian Union.

Religiously, the Dutch-Portuguese War can be seen as part of the broader conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism that defined much of European politics at the time. The Dutch Republic, having declared independence from Catholic Spain in 1581, was predominantly Protestant, but still tolerated Catholicism among the citizenry. This fight for independence against the Catholic Spanish Habsburgs extended naturally into a conflict with Portugal, which was in a dynastic union with Spain from the 1580s to 1640s. The Dutch sought not only to undermine Catholic hegemony but also to establish themselves as a Protestant maritime power. The inclusive markets and institutions of the Low Countries, forged in the fires of conflict between Catholics and Protestants, attracted much human capital, not only from Christendom, but also from other faiths. Leveraging this human capital would allow the Dutch to supercharge their economy and industry, catapulting them to wealth and power.

Socially, the war also represented a shift of financial power from the colonial empires in Iberia to those emerging in Northern Europe. Many Jewish families in the Iberian Peninsula had faced persecution under the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions. A significant number of Jewish refugees, fled to the more tolerant Dutch Republic, where they could practice their faith freely. They brought much wealth, expertise, and knowledge of trading routes with them. Some estimate that Jewish traders may have made up as many as 1/3rd of all merchants in Portugal before the Portuguese began to persecute them (beginning in 1547, but intensifying after Portugal fell under union with Spain).

The Sephardim (Iberian Jews) had a distinct advantage in the trade of sugar, leveraging their post-diaspora network of knowledgeable merchants to play a pivotal role in the transatlantic sugar trade. The Sephardim would become the dominant importers of sugar to Amsterdam (where religious tolerance allowed them to flourish) in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At one point, they threatened to take their business elsewhere if Dutch authorities did not hand over captured stocks of sugar, and even petitioned the Dutch government to grant them a monopoly on sugar trade with Brazil, on the grounds that they stimulated the local economy. You can read more about their involvement in Atlantic trade here.

Economically, the war represented a clash between emerging capitalist principles, embodied by the Dutch and their open institutions, and contrasted by the traditional colonial empires of Spain and Portugal. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (WIC) were pioneering capitalist enterprises that used private investment and advanced logistics to dominate trade routes and exploit resources. These gains were not simply made property of a king or dynasty, but were distributed as incentives to those who made them. Here are graphs of their stock prices, which often paid large dividends to holders.

By expanding private capital's role and minimizing rigid state control, the more dynamic and profit-driven Dutch system progressively displaced Portuguese imperial mercantilism as a trade/colonial model over the following centuries. The Dutch Groot Desseyn, although not completely successful, disrupted the Iberian control of critical trade routes and resources, such as spices from India and sugar from Brazil, and opened investment in such plays for power to the merchant classes, fundamentally altering the structure of global trade.

This ideological conflict's outcome had dramatic repercussions in shaping the modern international economic order. Many other Northern European countries took notice of the blow dealt to Iberian power in the world and hungrily eyed their possessions as they adopted bits and pieces of Dutch strategy.

In many places, the Dutch were made to give way to the British, but their model of free(er) trade and merchant autonomy would echo through history as one of the first drumbeats of modern capitalism to be heard above the cacophony of colonialism and conquest. Although empires would continue to span the globe for centuries to come, they would no longer be heard as single voices, but rather great choirs, with melodies of trade, finance, and freedom harmonizing together to weave the song of power.

Thank you for reading.

-Connor, OfAllTrades.

If you’ve been relatively exposed to the political meme-sphere in the past 4 years, you might be familiar with Dark Brandon. For those out of the loop, Dark Brandon is a meme that the new left has developed by embracing the conservative coloring of Joe Biden as a dark, villainous figure, responsible for high gas prices and attacks on American values. They call him Brandon as a reference to the “Let’s Go Brandon” chant, often heard at Trump rallies and NASCAR races. The Dark Brandon meme flips this around, turning him into an antihero with an appealing aesthetic. The Biden campaign has even officially acknowledged and embraced the meme, selling merch like the mug pictured below. As the 2024 election season ramps up, we will no-doubt see an uptick in Dark Brandon memes.

But exactly why are people so attracted to the idea of such a menacing version of a politician who has previously sold himself as America’s wholesome uncle? What does this attraction mean for the democracy? To answer this we need to understand what people love about Dark Brandon.

THE LIGHT WITHIN DARK BRANDON

1.) Malarkey will not go unchecked.

Dark Brandon’s domestic policy stance stands in contrast with common complaints about the President. He is a no-nonsense hyper-focused cybertronic machine, hellbent on cutting red tape and achieving policy progress at any cost. This offsets the “Sleepy Joe narrative” and is extremely appealing if you believe Dark Brandon to be on your side. Who wouldn’t want a Terminator fighting for them on Capitol Hill?

2.) Dark Brandon is in touch with the kids

Dark Brandon knows that vaporwave is cool, and understands the future as well as his RAM remembers the past. Coming of age in the 60s, Dark Brandon remembers old-school cool and elevates it to bring us a cyber-punk promise of the future. His laser eyes imply a laser-focused sharpness that is a stark contrast to Joe Biden’s moments of mental in-fortitude.

3.) Dark Brandon’s strong foreign policy

Dark Brandon doesn’t shy away from battle. He’s willing to flex the muscles of the American military and geo-political machine, and use his cybernetically unwavering resolve to ensure our enemies will never put America or her allies under the yoke. This is an upfront and in-your-face version of the willingness to police the world that the left has previously had to keep in the back-room for fear of seeming patronizing to the minor powers of the world. In part, this is due to the rise and increasing boldness of American rivals on the world stage. When framed as a protector of the world from evil rather than a hegemon ruling over it, the left can stomach and even savor the idea of an interventionist foreign policy.

4.) Dark Brandon is anti-decay and pro-growth

Dark Brandon is more than just a figure-head. He gets things done, cuts red tape, and feels the pain of those on the front lines. He puts de-railed trains back on track, re-shores critical manufacturing, and funds large-scale infrastructure projects. He is the embodiment of an empowered governor, and will stop at nothing to move his metrics.

This, in stark contrast to the president-in-being, hamstrung by a republican controlled congress, highlights not what people see in Joe Biden, but rather an ideal of what they want in their elected representatives. Playing up Dark Brandon is doubly useful to the campaign. It allows them to distract from and offset his inadequacies as a candidate, while simultaneously tapping into a wellspring of populism deeply desired by democracy.

People often say “joke about outcomes you want”, to highlight the power of humor in making memetic ideas materialize into truth. But what would happen if a politician were to go farther than offering a Dark Brandon character as a farcical and complementary reflection of themselves, and actually stepped into the role? For that, we look to history.

History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

We’ve established that the desire for an irreverent, agentic, antihero, of a leader is alive and well in American politics (for an example on the right, see notes at the end of the post). Now let us look to history to show us what happens when someone like that takes power. There are many examples that fit this template, but what immediately struck me about the Dark Brandon archetype is it’s similarity to the men on either side of the conflict between the famed “benevolent” Roman dictator Sulla and his longtime rival Gaius Marius.

Sulla came to lead a faction known as the optimates, while Marius led a faction known as the populares. It was a classic divide between upper and lower classes that plagued the Roman republic, much like our own. Both men eroded the foundational legitimacy of the republic they claimed to love in pursuit of power for themselves and their side.

Both leaders would become notorious for cutting red tape, making exception to rules where it benefitted them, and being adept statesmen. The clash of their ambitions and disruption of the delicate system of Roman checks and balances would plunge the republic into Rome’s First Civil War.

Dark Marius

Marius is the more senior of the two men, so we’ll start with him. How is Marius similar to Dark Brandon? Marius began his career as tribune of the plebs, a role similar to a House of Commons or House of Congress position, with the common thread being that he was meant to represent the people over the elites. Importantly, he had the power to veto Consular (a Consul is like the president, but there are two) actions and bills proposed by the Roman Senate (a body made up of elites, like the House of Lords). This power was meant to be used by the tribunes as a way for the common people to have a voice in Roman affairs. However, the cunning Gaius Marius recognized the power that his veto ability gave him, and used it to block any legislation that was not to his advantage. He threatened to use his prosecutorial powers to imprison anyone who blocked his own legislation including the sitting Consul Cotta, and notably, his own patron and mentor Metellus, who had raised him from obscurity, and supported his campaign to become tribune in the first place. The senate backed down and the bill was passed.

The willingness to break taboo, use new levers of power to govern, and throw former comrades under the bus to accomplish policy goals shows us the dark side of Gaius Marius. One has to keep in mind that the Roman governmental system was tied by superstition and ritual to their religion, so innovation in governance was often seen as taboo. Marius unflinchingly used the system as a tool, rather than be channeled by its walls.

Marius would eventually ascend to the office of the Consul himself, installing loyal subordinates in his wake. As Consul, he instituted a number of large scale reforms to the military (notably allowing unlanded plebeians to fight to earn land rather than to defend land they already owned), defeated Roman foreign adversaries, and dealt with unrest in Italy that culminated in the Social Wars.

Marius and his reforms were eminently popular, but they changed forever the incentive structure between Rome, her generals, and their armies. Before his reforms, Roman armies were made up of citizens who already had land, fighting to defend it or Rome’s honor, whereas after the reforms, the men were unlanded and therefore had to trust in the general they fought for to climb the social ladder. This made armies loyal to their leaders, and not the Republic, and is eventually what would enable Caesar to march on Rome a generation later.

In Marius’ conduct, we see a prototypical set of Dark Brandon attributes emerging, and being embraced by the people without forethought of the effect on the Republic.

Dark Sulla

Sulla led the optimates faction in the First Roman Civil war and hailed from Rome’s aristocratic classes. He fought to keep the power of the Senate from the masses, in direct opposition to the populist reforms of Marius and his ilk. He was slighted when Marius took credit for his capture of the Numidian King Jugurtha, and when Marius tried to take his right to prosecute a lucrative war away from him, he entered into war with the Marian faction.

Sulla’s story is a more militaristic one than that of Marius, in part due to the Marian reforms themselves. The conflict crossed the line from political to physical over the issue of who would be given the command (and therefore the spoils) of a foreign war against the Kingdom of Pontus, led by a King named Mithridates. Pontus was extremely wealthy, and so the general and the legions that were allowed to conquer it would profit greatly, and be bathed in glory and power for years to come.

After the elections in 88 B.C. it seemed a given that Sulla had won command of the war in the east. However, Marius puppeteered a tribune of the plebs named Sulpicius into enacting legislation in an end-run around Sulla’s consular power to transfer the command of the Mithridatic war to Marius.

Rather than acknowledge he had been outmaneuvered, Sulla chose to take the fight to the battlefield and convinced his troops that it was they who had been cheated out of wealth, power, and glory by Marius. The mass of the soldiery followed Sulla in his march on Rome, but he was abandoned by his officers.

Sulla was initially seen by the Senate and the people of Rome as a tyrant. The response to his crossing of the Pomerium under arms was almost universally reviled, despite his insistence that he came as a liberator, rather than a conqueror. The citizenry pelted his army with stones and roof tiles, and Marius put up a daring although ineffective defense of the city by rag-tag militia and gladiators. With control of the Senate, Sulla passed legislation outlawing Marius and his supporters, who escaped to Roman Africa (Modern day Tunisia).

With the right to command his war in the east, one might expect Sulla to leave the city immediately. But here’s where it gets interesting. Sulla passed a few more laws before leaving Rome, not all of which were in his favor. He strengthened the Senate and plugged a few of the loopholes that Marius and the populares had used to advance plebian power. He sent his army home, and held elections, which he resoundingly lost to his enemies Cinna and Octavius. He made the new consul-elects (those same enemies, who swore to prosecute him) swear to uphold the law, and then left the city for the East.

While he was gone, the two newly elected consuls fought each other for power, with Marius returning from Africa to thumb the scale on the side of Cinna against Octavius, once again laying siege to Rome. They slaughtered the supporters of Octavius and declared Sulla an outlaw, and may have meddled in the elections to make themselves consuls in 86 BC. This pattern would basically continue until Sulla returned in 83 BC.

Sulla signed an early peace with Mithridates in the East and began his march home. Although most Romans disliked Sulla, more than a few veteran legions defected to his side once he step foot in Italy. The war would forge the names of Crassus and Pompey as skilled commanders and titanic figures in Roman politics. After a war too complicated to explain here, Sulla took Rome again. His rule opened with the wholesale butchering of thousands of Italian prisoners.

Then, after receiving permission through a vote of popular assembly (perhaps to maintain appearance of due process) he began to purge the upper classes of the Republic of its enemies. His first two lists contained about 500 names of various Senators and Equites, and each carried the bounty of their own estate and property to whoever delivered Sulla their head. It was often said of those unlucky enough to be listed, that they were “killed by their country estate”. Sons of those proscribed were demoted to the lower classes, exiled, or lost their civil rights. Among those proscribed was a young Julius Caesar, whom Sulla spared, but stripped of his inheritance and ordered to divorce his high-born wife. Later, Caesar would attempt to work within this system to “rehabilitate” some of the proscribed, to little success.

As dictator, Sulla stripped the position of tribune of the plebs of prestige and power. They could no longer propose or veto legislation, and their appointment had to be Senate approved. He also made it a dead-end job, banning an ex-tribune from ever holding other offices. Their main remaining power that was left unchecked was the power to shield others from prosecution. He bloated the Senate from 300 to 600 members (similar to the packing of the Supreme Court), and made it so that Roman courts could only be staffed by the blue-blooded elites.

He also codified the Cursus Honorum, which is like a progression tree for Roman political careers. He added an age requirement to each position and required that a candidate wait 10 years before he could repeat a term. If you take Sulla to be a one dimensional dictator, this is out of character, because this legislation would have prevented Sulla himself from taking power, and thus is an indictment of his own actions. He did a similar thing when he expanded the Pomerium, which is the taboo line of DMZ around Rome, which he himself violated to take the city.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Sulla is that once he had brutally restored the Senate to primacy (in his eyes) he voluntarily gave up power, to the mockery of characters like Caesar. In 80 BC, he resigned, disbanded his legions, and walked without guards or lictors in the Forum. He offered to explain his actions to ay citizen, and was unharmed. He would eventually retire to the countryside to be with his family and write his memoirs. (One of my hopes is that we recover these works someday through work like the Vesuvius Challenge).

When he died, his funeral was unprecedented in scale. His coffin was escorted through Rome, adorned with gold. Speeches were given by senators, and his cremated ashes were given a place of honor in the Campus Martius, to lay forever with the god of war. Sulla was oddly loved.

The immortal ideal of the benevolent dictator

What can we take away from all of this? The dynamics of republican government push candidates to appeal to a core desire in their constituencies; that of the benevolent dictator. This ideal is best embodied today by the memetic mirror of Dark Brandon, and perhaps the nascent Dark MAGA aesthetic. However, the race-to-the-bottom dynamic of ambitious politicians who attempt to fill this role only degrades and erodes the strength of our institutions. The stories of Marius and Sulla (which parallel today’s political landscape) show how one ruler’s reforms enabled the other to go further, and how even a “benevolent” dictator who is aware of his own risk to the republic, is not capable of repairing the damage done.

From this context, we can see that the Dark Brandon meme is a 21st century take on an undying idea. And although the promises of an effectively unbounded leader may appeal to the populace, history tells us to be careful what we wish for.

I wish you all a very happy 2024 election season!

-Connor, OfAllTrades

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FURTHER READING AND NOTES:

AS LEFT; SO RIGHT: THE RISE OF DARK MAGA

In coming to this conclusion, it’s important to maintain a wider lens. The Dark Brandon phenomenon doesn’t only exist on the left! There is a parallel aesthetic around Trump, loosely called “Dark MAGA”.

Dark MAGA is similar to Dark Brandon, by painting the subject as a ruthless reformer, here to “Drain the Swamp”, “Re-claim institutions” and “put Patriots in control”. Unlike Dark Brandon, whose canonical focus is on infrastructure, economic metrics, domestic and foreign policy, Dark MAGA is all about institutions and control. Dark MAGA is simultaneously paranoid and unafraid of friendly fire. Obsessed with rooting out the sickness within, as a necessary prerequisite of making war on the sickness without. It has a very conspiratorial, Q-Anon, night-of-the-long-knives feel that stems from Trump’s outsider status and anti-establishment rhetoric. A prominent example is Madison Cawthorne’s tirade after losing his home seat to a fellow (and more centrist) Republican.

Much like the Dark Brandon meme, the Dark MAGA aesthetic is something Trump’s supporters may lean on in 2024. Painting Trump as a solemn defender against tyranny, rooting out insidious plots, and constantly the victim of establishment backstabbing, allows him to write off his failures in office.

In their eyes, Trump is doing the best he can, but the Swamp runs deep. The failures of the first term and 2020 election deepens the resolve of his most loyal supporters, and emboldens them to shed any pretense of due process or respect for the institution they had left. Dark MAGA gives Trump permission to play dirty.

This edit of a Medal of Honor Speech is adjacent to the “DARK Americana” aesthetic that perhaps supersedes either Dark MAGA or Brandon.

The Dutch-Portuguese War, fought between 1598 and 1663, marked a pivotal turning point in global history. Lasting nearly 70 years and spanning across South America, Africa, and Asia, this protracted global conflict saw the forces of the Dutch East India and West India Companies (abbrev. V.O.C. and W.I.C. respectively) battle those of the Portuguese Empire for control of colonies, lucrative spice islands, trade routes, and ports. Fleets clashed, pirates and privateers abounded, fortunes grew, and fortresses fell, from Ayutthaya to (old) Zeeland.

The opportunistic great powers of Europe intervened throughout the course of the decades long conflict, which by it’s end had involved Spain, England, France, Ming China, and many south-Asian kingdoms. Calling it the Dutch-Portuguese war is underselling it by a large margin!

On the surface, the war was fought over colonial territories and commercial trade dominance. But at a deeper level, it represented a clash between two divergent economic systems – capitalism and mercantilism. The Portuguese fought to bring territory and trade under the crown of their king, but the V.O.C. was much more internationalist, and fought for shareholder value!

The conflict catalyzed the rise of capitalism as a dominant global force that would shape international relations for centuries to come.

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FIRST SHOTS AND MOTIVATIONS

The conflict kicked off in earnest when the Portuguese treasure ship the Santa Catarina was captured by three ships belonging to the V.O.C. The riches contained within the hull of the captured galleon represented a doubling of the companies assets. This parallels the 1592 capture of the Madre de Deus treasure ship by the English during the Anglo-Spanish war (1585-1604) in which the value of the captured goods amounted to half of the Crown treasury at the time of capture. The privateering expedition that captured the ship was paid just 3,000 pounds, while the returns to investors (in this case Elisabeth I of England) amounted to more than 80,000 pounds.

The massive amount of wealth at stake on the high seas drove the Northern Europeans to re-imagine maritime legal policy to their advantage and fueled the fires of prospective pirates and privateers. Although the age of privateering had already dawned, huge captures such as these sparked investment in privateering and piracy from private coffers. Interestingly, and in the case of the ship captured by the Dutch the ownership of the captured property was often disputed in court once it reached European soil.

SIDE NOTE ON MARITIME POLICY

Previously, the Iberian colonial empires had espoused a policy of “Mare Clausum” or “Closed Sea”. Entrance of foreign ships to these closed seas required a passage rate to be paid, and fishing was a monopolistic right of the owner.

In 1455, the pope declared that no vessel could navigate the seas under Portuguese exclusive claim without express permission from the Portuguese king, the Portuguese kings would later come to title themselves “King of Portugal and the Algarves, within and beyond the sea in Africa, Lord of Commerce, Conquest and Shipping of Arabia, Persia and India” demonstrating their claim over the right to ship and conduct commerce within their claimed territory.

France, Holland, and England, of course did not take kindly to this policy and began to engage in privateering, especially around maritime chokepoints like the horn of Africa and Strait of Magellan. You can read about some famous Dutch privateers and pirates here.

I recently visited Sale in Morocco, which was a famous pirate haven and was governed by a piratical republic led by Jan Janszooon. It is now home to the third tallest tower in Africa, Mohammed 6 tower. Here’s a photo I took:

The Dutch capture of the treasure galleon led to a long legal battle in which the Dutch developed the legal-political theory of Mare Liberum, which allowed for free navigation of the seas and stood poised to end maritime monopolies like the Iberian claims. This school of thought was later revised to give countries sovereignty over the distance from their coast they could defend by cannon, resulting in the three-mile-rule. This extension of sovereignty outwards from a countries coastline is the basis from which we derive the current system of Exclusive Economic Zones.

THE ACTUAL WAR-INDIAN OCEAN THEATRE

Key battles in the Dutch-Portuguese war centered around trading posts and colonies. In the Indian Ocean Theatre, the Portuguese held a strong concentration of ports and bases in India, and had peripheral bases in places like Macau, Malacca, The Cape of Good Hope, and Hormuz.

The Dutch strategy hinged on chipping away at the Portuguese peripheral bases and using the captured ports to strangle the connection between Lisbon and Portuguese India. They would begin operations out of the port of Batavia in Indonesia, but would come to surround Portuguese India by the conflict’s end, turning many local kingdoms to their side along the way. The map below shows a number of Portuguese settlements in southern India that were captured by the Dutch and their allies.

Key to the theatre was the Siege of Malacca, which was a strategic fortress-port in a chokepoint for shipping between India and China. After multiple attempts, the Dutch were able to successfully siege the city. The capture of this key chokepoint, along with Dutch subterfuge and diplomacy resulting in the expulsion of the Portuguese from Japan, effectively isolated Macau, and diminished it’s importance to the Portuguese as a stepping stone port between Japan and their Indian holdings.

Over the course of the war, the established Portuguese power-base in India would vie for control over the periphery against Dutch incursions from Batavia and without.

By 1665 the Portuguese were left with a few major ports in the theatre. Although they did not lose all their territory, they lost something far more important; control of the shipping lanes. Their remaining ports were isolated and their ability to enforce the policy of Mare Clausum was broken. With the markets of the Orient open for business, the Dutch, French, and English would enter a feeding frenzy and quickly come to lay the Portuguese distributive monopoly to rest.

COMING UP…

Join me next time in part two, where we take a look at the war in Africa, South America, and the Caribbean Theatres. Will the capitalistic Dutch companies triumph over the Portuguese colonial empire? Fires rise across the globe as stocks are sold and ships are sunk!

-Connor, OfAllTrades.

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I took a break from writing the past few months in order to prepare for the Principles and Practice of Engineering Exam. The exam is sort of like the bar exam for lawyers, except for engineers. Studying for it while working at a consulting firm feels a lot like this:

The exam lasts 8 hours, and consists of 80 questions that cover an extremely wide umbrella of possible testable concepts. The first 40 questions make up a “Breadth” portion, meant to test you on concepts that you either know or don’t know. The reference materials and equations are unlikely to illuminate much in this section. The subjects in the Breadth section are:

Project Planning

Construction Means and Methods

Soil Mechanics

Structural Mechanics

Hydraulics and Hydrology

Geometrics

Materials

Site Development

Analysis and Design

The next 40 questions make up the “Depth” section of the exam. These questions take a lot longer to work out in general, and give you more opportunity to make mistakes. Since graduation, I’ve been working in water infrastructure, so I chose to take the Water Resources Engineering section for my depth study. It consists of the following sections:

Closed Conduit Hydraulics

Open Channel Hydraulics

Hydrology

Groundwater and Wells

Wastewater Collection and Treatment

Water Quality

Drinking Water Distribution and Treatment

Engineering Economics and Analysis

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In my time away, I often found myself explaining to friends and loved ones why I had to study, despite having graduated from university in 2021. The key to understanding why the P.E. is difficult is that every test is shuffled, and the scope of concepts that the test could include is much wider than the set of concepts they could possibly fit into an 80 question exam. Therefore, you need to study and be prepared to be tested on a really large body of knowledge in order to minimize your variance on test-day.

I’m happy to report that I recently received notice that I successfully passed, which is a key step in becoming a licensed Civil Engineer! I’ll likely apply for my license in Texas, which means I could be fully licensed by as soon as I fulfill their requirement for work experience. I made a handy map to show which states require what from P.E. applicants.

You’ll notice that almost all of them are uniform, with the exceptions of California and Alaska, which require additional Seismic and Cold Weather knowledge for licensure respectively.

States also issue licenses to engineers from other states, sometimes by reciprocity, but usually by comity. Reciprocity means you can use your original license to get a new one from the second state. Comity means that you must fulfill the requirements of the state you are now applying to be licensed in. Since most states have the same requirements, applicants usually* only need perform a state ethics test or update their references.

* Note that California requires two fewer years of work experience, which means new CA P.E.s can have a hard time getting a license through comity from other states

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But what about the rest of the world? How do they determine who is qualified to practice engineering? There are a number of bodies attempting to solve this coordination issue, such as the International Engineering Alliance (I.E.A.). The IEA is responsible for international agreements like the Washington Accord, in which countries try to determine a standard of teaching for engineering degree programs. These countries have signed the accord, easing the cross-border licensing process between them.

There are other certifications that act as parallels to the P.E. around the world. In Europe, you can earn a EUR ING, which is granted after you apply to your countries board of Engineers Europe. Engineers Europe, similar to the U.S. NCEES, is an attempt at self-regulation of the engineering profession by engineers, and is not itself a governmental body. Because of this, nations with pre-existing laws governing the use of the title “engineer” often dispute the EUR ING title. It is however, still considered a strong signal of competency.

In the U.K. the title of engineer is not regulated, but private engineering councils hold registers of qualified people. Being on the register of your field’s council is often a prerequisite for engineering roles. Titles like IEng for Incorporated Engineers and CEng for Chartered engineers are protected from unauthorized use. CEng’s can register to receive their EUR ING certification.

In Canada, licenses are regulated by provincial boards, but students are not tested on technical knowledge outside of their academic degree like U.S. engineers are in the P.E. Using the title of engineer is okay if you work on stationary machinery or on power infrastructure, but otherwise you need to be licensed.

Why do countries regulate the use of the title “engineer” at all? Are they protecting the value of a powerful signal? Have they been swayed by labor lobbies? Is it a legal, insurance, or safety issue? Yes!

On the one hand, it seems silly to protect a title like “engineer” when so many people outside the domain of “formal” engineering practice engineering skills like problem solving, critical thinking, and analysis everyday. However, the protections that exist show that the public values having a hard line to separate the profession from the practice. Why would they find this valuable?

1. Licensing and regulation allow for a high degree of confidence in the quality of engineering services.

2. Licensure allows for responsibility to be easily attributed when a failure occurs. If a bridge collapses due to a bad design, the P.E. who designed it is liable.

3. Having an industry-run regulatory body allows for regulation by qualified persons. Bodies like NCEES are made up of technocrats, not bureaucrats. This allows for more relevant information to reach decision-makers.

4. They may not find it valuable at all and their representatives have simply been swayed by the BIG ENG lobby

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Either way, I’m happy to be over the hump and on my way to calling myself a “Professional Engineer”!

See you all in the new year!

-Connor, Of All Trades

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But just how outsized is South Korea’s contribution to global shipping? Despite being home to less than 1% of global population, in 2020, the South Korean shipbuilding industry accounted for 29.8% of global tonnage ordered, and in 2021, reached 37% of total orders (17.37 million of 46.96 million CGTs)

Three massive Chaebol companies - Hyundai Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, and Samsung Heavy Industries - operate the main South Korean shipyards and essentially dominate the world's shipbuilding market. Their origins trace back to the 1950s and 60s as South Korea embarked on their journey towards the industrialized country we know and love today. The country strategically nurtured the shipbuilding industry (among other notable standouts like electronics) and has been climbing the manufacturing value chain ever since. In the 90s, the Won crashed, and South Korean ships got even cheaper for international buyers. Because of this, South Korea would pass Japan in terms of cargo tonnage ordered by the early 2000s.

Today, the cluster of shipyards run by the Big 3 employs over 100,000 skilled workers. Workforce training programs ensure a pipeline of technical talent and craftsmanship passed down through generations. The shipyards operate as highly efficient manufacturing ecosystems designed to construct vessels rapidly. Automated cranes hoist and weld together immense pre-fabricated sections with precision.

The dry docks that the ships sit in pump out water to expose a ship below decks for outfitting. Gantry cranes running on rails tower overhead moving components weighing thousands of tons with ease. These shipyards make it look easy, but this is something that has taken hundreds of years to perfect, with the first crude oil carrier built by Hyundai: the Atlantic Baron, failing to match up at the central joining point (these ships are so big, they were built in two halves and joined later at midships).

Vast Impacts on Globalization and Trade

The global scale and impact of Korea's shipyards becomes clear in the numbers:

• Korea's big three shipbuilders have capacity to construct over 3 million compensated gross tons (CGT) per year, representing 35-40% of total global shipbuilding capacity.

• Hyundai alone built 57 million CGT from 2003-2013, including some of the world's largest container ships, oil tankers, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers.

• Ships built in Korea account for 35-45% of total global shipping gross tonnage across vessel types.

The ships constructed in these yards end up serving in practically every major shipping route and trade corridor. Korea's shipyards manage to be both tremendously diversified and highly specialized. They can construct cargo ships, passenger vessels, oil and chemical tankers, and even offshore structures. Yet they excel in building sophisticated high-cargo vessels optimized for quality and efficiency. Because cargo ships carry 90% of traded goods by volume, and Korean ships account for ~40% of that capacity, that means that ~36% of globally traded goods flow through these ships.

Pioneering Large and Efficient Ships

Korea's shipyards have demonstrated continued innovation in designing and building increasingly large ships for economies of scale. The country was an early pioneer in constructing supertankers, mega container vessels, and massive liquefied natural gas carriers, and today they dominate these spaces.

South Korean shipbuilders have built ~66% of the global LNG fleet, of which 22% was built by Japanese builders, 7% by Chinese builders , and the rest built by a combination of shipbuilders in France, Spain, and the United States. The Korean share is expected to jump again later this year, when a pending deal with Qatar for 40 LNG carrier vessels closes. This is a large share of the global fleet, which is only about 640 vessels in total, many of which are smaller than the planned Qatari vessels.

What makes LNG carriers uniquely important is their effect on the global energy market. Without these carriers, the transition from oil based fuels to natural gas would have been much slower. Each of these ships (Qatar max Class) carries a LNG load sufficient to power 70,000 American homes for a full year. This outsized energy payload is largely due to the LNG being about 6x denser than the gaseous form of natural gas, which stovetop consumers would be most familiar with. However, to reach these levels of densification, the gas needs to be kept extremely cold (-160 degrees C). In the spherical Moss Tank configuration above, this is achieved with lots of insulation, while the cryogenic membrane system below uses a mix of composite and stainless steel panels that are structurally supported by the ship’s hull. Of course, some of the gas warms up and expands in transit, but the crafty shipbuilders have thought of this, too! As some of the gas warms and changes state (a process called boil-off) it is used as fuel to power the ship’s engines. This way, the tanks experience the minimum pressure stresses and the ship can have extra room to carry LNG rather than conventional fuel.

LNG is important as a transitional fuel when it comes to reducing emissions and moving towards a greener grid. In combustion, LNG produces 45% fewer C02 emissions than coal , and 30% fewer emissions than oil. This won’t stop climate change, but with the arctic shipping lanes opening up, natural gas reserves from the far north of countries like Russia and Canada are becoming more and more accessible. Spillage of LNG is also less detrimental to sea-life, as it quickly evaporates upon warming, compared to oil which can sit at the surface and pollute oceans for months. Specialized LNG carriers with icebreaking sterns were built by the Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) shipyard in 2017, and access to these energy reserves may prove vital in the future.

LNG ships have also played a large role in recent geopolitics. After Russian gas exports via pipeline were cut off, U.S. shipments of LNG to Europe more than doubled, preventing a localized energy crisis on the continent and strengthening the will of European democracies.

Shipping is important. It allows people from around the world to trade and specialize to degrees never before thought possible. By expanding access to global markets, shipbuilders protect us from price shocks, shortages, and famine. In remarkable contrast to the dispersed and diverse world they create, the shipyards that are responsible for connecting the global economy are uniquely concentrated in East Asia, and especially so in just a few cities in South Korea.

So why do I think these shipyards deserve the #2 spot in our list of modern "world wonders"?

It's a remarkable feat of engineering. The shipyards themselves are marvels of industrial scale and marine engineering. The sheer scale of the trade network - spanning the globe, and its effects are also routinely undervalued. Earlier in the post we described how 90% of globally traded goods travel by cargo ship, and how 36% of that volume is Korean-made. Considering that global trade is worth ~$25T a year, it’s safe to say that these shipyards are a great example of high-impact infrastructure. They’re important to trade, energy, and democracy, and they largely remain unknown to the everyday person.

For these reasons, I believe the shipyards of South Korea (run by the “Big 3” Chaebols of Hyundai Heavy Industries, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, and Samsung Heavy Industries) are collectively a modern world wonder.

-Connor, Of All Trades.

Links you should click

https://unctad.org/rmt2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q-Max

https://english.hhi.co.kr/about/history