The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'computer chips, missing chemicals, satellite phone.'
Back in February, Berkshire Hathaway sold 86% of its shares in TSMC, Taiwan's semiconductor giant. The estimated value of these shares was in the neighborhood of $4 billion. More recently, Warren Buffett's conglomerate has sold the remainder of its shares in TSMC. The company is by far the largest computer chip manufacturer in the world. Their chips are in all of our phones and computers.
Last month, 30 tons of ammonium nitrate mysteriously went missing from a train as it went from from Wyoming to California. Here's some of how KQED covered the story:
A railcar loaded with 30 tons of the chemical left Cheyenne, Wyoming, on April 12. The car was found to be empty after it arrived two weeks later at a rail stop in the Mojave Desert, according to a short incident report from the explosives firm that made the shipment. The company, Dyno Nobel, made the report May 10 to the federal National Response Center, or NRC. The report also appeared last week in an NRC database of California incidents managed by the state Office of Emergency Services last Wednesday. Ammonium nitrate is commonly used as fertilizer. It’s also an ingredient in high explosives and was used in the homemade bomb detonated in the 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
The news story makes it sound like the chemical just accidentally leaked out of the bottom of the railcar. And given the sorry state of rail in the US, that's probably what happened. But less than 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate were used in Oklahoma City. So the missing quantity of the chemical would be sufficient for 12 comparably sized attacks.
Maybe some terrorist pulled a Breaking Bad and robbed the train in transit. Maybe the cargo was removed at a stop by crooked workers selling the chemical to a black market buyer. Hopefully the ammonium nitrate simply leaked out accidentally.
A couple of days ago, it came out that 100 senators had recently been offered satellite phones for emergency communication. CBS Reports:
The satellite phone technology has been offered to all 100 senators. CBS News has learned at least 50 have accepted the phones, which Senate administrative staff recommend senators keep in close proximity during their travels. In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee last month, Senate Sergeant at Arms Karen Gibson said satellite communication is being deployed "to ensure a redundant and secure means of communication during a disruptive event." Gibson said the phones are a security backstop in the case of an emergency that "takes out communications" in part of America.
Berkshire Hathaway's TSMC divestment suggests rising geopolitical tension. The satellite phones for senators may indicate that big security threats we're not aware of are in play. The missing explosives ingredient may have been stolen or may have been lost to our crumbling national infrastructure. Either way, the situation isn't ideal.
One way or another, large disruptive events appear to be on the horizon. The kinds of events that knock out cell service, at minimum. These disruptions could possibly be due to terrorism, but I suspect they'll have more to do with the increasingly adversarial posture of the US in its foreign relations. My sense is that cyberattacks sponsored by a powerful nation state could temporarily disrupt our communication systems and there's not much we could do about it.
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