Infinite TAM for War
or, how a brief peace panicked a war machine
"Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
-W
TAM
In startup culture, there is the concept of TAM. When pitching a new startup to people with money who might invest, speaking about TAM or total addressable market is a way of sizing up the long term potential of an opportunity. Using an anticipated market share of, for example, 10% on a TAM of one trillion, a company's share of the market would be 100 billion. From there, the investors can get a sense for the future valuation of the company.
A Brief Peace
The ill fated withdrawal from Afghanistan took place on August 30th, 2021, after twenty long and unproductive years of occupation. While painful, this was a cathartic release from bondage of a war-weary America and a war-weary world. There was some hope that the world would have time to heal after the tragic and horrifying footage we watched of the Kabul airport.
On February 24th, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. We watched in disbelief as the unthinkable became reality. The world was immediately thrown into another war with the absurd renewed possibility of nuclear escalation.
The time between the Afghanistan withdrawal and the Ukraine invasion?
178 days.
The interwar period, if it even deserves the name, was a touch under six months.
Insatiable War Machine
It has become clear that the business of war is powered by a hungry machine that needs constant feeding. This brief interregnum abruptly threw that machine into an unwelcome crash diet. We can almost imagine the team of consultants and military experts in a boardroom somewhere on the east coast of the United States throwing themselves into a lockdown to try and manufacture new demand for their wares. A cynic might even imagine this team being given an OKR by their leadership team to deliver a new conflict within six months. Goals were crushed. Bonuses were paid.
That highly speculative paragraph is quite cynical and only slightly tongue-in-cheek. There may be no cabal of warmakers in the halls of power manufacturing war. Indeed, the US invaded no one. Russia initiated the most recent action. If we believe some of the assertions of the people who might be in a position to know, it's possible that the West maneuvered to prevent a peace that could have prevented the invasion. So, while not directly responsible, there may have been some complicity involved on the part of the West, even in the Ukraine conflict.
The Ukraine war has extracted well over $100 billion from US taxpayers. This extraordinary largesse has gone some way to sate the military machine. The amount of money flowing through this new conflict has already exceeded the pace of funding for the Afghanistan conflict. The war weary public and the deeply indebted American people, with a federal budget in deep deficit, continue to be mined to slake the bloodlust of this war machine.
Sliding Overton Window
Enter, UAPs.
On July 25th, 2023, Congress hosted a hearing on the threat that UAPs pose to the world. David Grusch, Ryan Graves, and David Fraver testified before a breathless Congress regarding their experiences with UAPs. They established their credibility as straight talking, trustworthy men with no reason to lie to the public about this issue. They spent much of the conversation advocating for removing the stigma of reporting incidences of UAP sightings. Lowering the stigma for reporting lowers the cost. Basic economics tells us lowering the cost of reporting would increase the quantity of reporting. More reporting amplifies the threat.
Fraver insisted on a message of helplessness in the face of this vastly superior technology when he said there is "nothing we can do about it, nothing." The team of testifiers advocated for centralizing the reported data. This sounds like the creation of yet another federal department staffed with archivists and information handlers. We read that as new unfunded government spending.
They spoke about how these objects defied our current understanding of the laws of physics and that no human could survive the accelerations achieved by the crafts. In other words, this is not China. This is a new threat. The congresspeople spoke in terms of "grave importance to national security" and the urgent need for whistleblower protection. The gentlemen all described moments of fear inspired by the encounters. In short, the public is being instructed to fear this awesome unknown and omnipotent threat.
Fear for Sale
Whenever someone tries to instill fear into us, they're selling something. In this case, the UAP whistleblowers and Congress are firmly placing their hands on the Overton Window and sliding it to include serious discussions of the vague and all powerful threat of potentially hostile alien forces. Once established as a serious threat, the next logical step is to take countermeasures to respond to that threat. Of course, there are numerous providers of weapons and technology whose services would be needed. It follows that funding for those services would need to be secured.
Infinite TAM for War
This brings us back to our discussion of TAM. If a startup effort wants to paint a picture of great success, they magnify their TAM estimates and flatter their expected market share to justify eye watering valuations. The investors start to panic that they don't have enough exposure to this wunderkind of the future of industry and throw money at the startup founders. This gives those startups incredible valuations, manufacturing new billionaires from borrowed money.
This Overton Window Sliding Team is painting a picture of a threat so extreme that our very survival could be at risk. If a threat is existential, then it would follow that any amount of investment is justifiable. After all, what would the human race do with the money if we were all wiped out? The TAM for an effort of this kind is infinity because the penalty for failure is infinite. Cost is no object when it concerns preventing an outcome whose cost is infinite.
Conclusion
We've seen this story recently regarding the existential threat posed by AI. We also saw this during the pandemic. Fear this new danger! Trust us, we’re the experts! Comply with new commands, new tax, new liberty curtailments!
People in the halls of power will clearly do anything to accrete more power. This includes inflating threats and outright lying. Sliding the Overton Window to include serious discussions of alien threats is just the first step in this new venture. Expect more fear salespeople with ever more convincing "evidence." Some of what we might see could be very convincing AI-generated deep fakes. Stay frosty.
It's possible some of the people involved in this UAP narrative believe what they say. We believe none of it. We'd like to opt out of this funding round.
Somewhere in 2022 I heard Mike Green make a statement that hit me hard. He said something along the lines of, "We learned that we have a population that can be ruled by fear."
This selling of fear works both ways. People are buying it! They crave the solution that will "keep them safe."
One of the great tragedies of modern culture is that we don't know how to handle fear so we overreact it to it and end up living in a cage of our own making. I think our world would be a far happier place if we were more concerned with living a great life rather than trying to mitigate every potential threat.
> On February 24th, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. We watched in disbelief as the unthinkable became reality. The world was immediately thrown into another war with the absurd renewed possibility of nuclear escalation.
> The time between the Afghanistan withdrawal and the Ukraine invasion?
> 178 days.
> The interwar period, if it even deserves the name, was a touch under six months.
Yes, the "military industrial complex" used their mind control lasers to make Putin invade Ukraine.
Or, maybe Putin saw the weakness of the US as revealed in the Kabul debacle and decided now was a good time to challenge the West.