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Imagine a US-China war where China's oil supply is cut off by the US Navy, and China refuses to export the precursors to pharmaceuticals.

About 2/3rds of US adults take at least one prescription medication.

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And the US still continues to hesitate to forge stronger ties with India because of Cold-War-era (mis)alignments. It should be Canada, UK, India; instead India doesn't even feature in the top 15 closest American allies.

India’s local geopolitics are much too complex for that string of ties. Canada is almost our twin and the UK had very similar interests and despite the ocean between us has essentially the same neighbors.

India’s necessary relations with China, Russia, and the Middle East are just complex and it would not fit and be a major shift in power for it to align closely with American interests nor does America want to put itself in that position.

It is not difficult to recreate industries with blank checks.

Especially for chemical precursor kinds of things where it isn’t a complexity problem but a scaling problem.

When you don’t care about cost things can be scaled up rather quickly.

Not if you don't have the raw material. Not if you've forgotten how to produce it. Not of you don't have anyone that can run the process.

Restarting a supply chain can be very difficult.

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