The more you understand the way societies materially operate, the more you also see politics as the tiniest…

The more you understand the way societies materially operate, the more you also see politics as the tiniest veneer of pointless hot air getting in the way of things that actually matter. For example, this machine is far more important than any political leader. /1 https://t.co/kly0ynAMTu

I guarantee just about everybody you ask won’t have a clue what it is. Without this machine the world as we know and enjoy it would more or less cease to operate. It’s an EUV lithography machine, that ‘draws’ the ‘circuitry’ on the silicon chips we use in everything. /2 https://t.co/m3oUqJP8IL

One of the most complex and extraordinary machines ever built. Joe Biden recently regulated to try to ensure this technology wouldn’t be shared with the Chinese. (The Dutch make the machines.) Semiconductors (’silicon chips’) are easily the lifeblood of modern societies. /3 https://t.co/qoBqQJEs5s

Remember the long delays buying cars in the past year? A shortage of semiconductors was mostly responsible. Semiconductors are mind-boggingly difficult to make, and the Taiwanese make the most advanced ones. The dominant reason China and the US argue over that territory. /4 https://t.co/g5VBEHwGj5

We’re so saturated in political team sports, in high school culture, that we have no interest in the material reasons for conflict. But about 99% of what actually keeps our societies running has nothing to do with any elected leader. It’s engineering. /5

The modern world is a genuine scientific and technological marvel. What’s more, that all only works by ignoring most of the territorial team sports of politics. The supply and production chains for semiconductors for example cross the globe. This is our true social glue. /6

One of the great tragedies of the modern world is that genius and smarts in general make it happen. But politically genius has no real power at all. If all of the brilliant minds working on the operating systems of our lives refused to support…/7

…the political nonsense of our time, they could bring politicians to heel immediately. Worth pondering, why intelligence has almost zero political power, even though it creates that world and keeps it running. We need much smarter ways for the smart to operate. /end