British Steel taken into public ownership to protect 'vital' UK supply

The more I learn about steel, the more I realise it's not one single thing but a whole collection of different families of things, each with different tradeoffs.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-strength_low-alloy_steel#...

.. what were you doing in 2020?

> you are unlikely to need to make a novel vaccine over the course of a war

The lab leak people are probably wrong, but in the present era we're a lot closer to "hook AI up to a CRISPR machine and generate a biological weapon" than we have ever been.

Everyone seems to assume that we might get in a war that we recognize and can fight with the tools of WW2, ships and tanks, rather than a war we don't recognize fought with weapons we don't understand and have no counter for. Or, more likely, simply get bought out at the top. Why fire a missile when you can buy a political party for a mere £5m?

on a similar note, medical supplies and logistics are a huge deal for going to war, to handle casualties

There's been two world wars and access to or stockpiling of steel has been a critical strategic factor in both.

Most consumable military assets are made from steel, for example and it underpins most machine tools and factory components as well.

Royal Navy.

Its better to pay 5 cents more for a loaf now than pay $20 a loaf with rationing later, or if we went back to granary system possibly getting moldy food.

They might not be taking Kiev for a hundred years, but the fortress belt is well within reach in the next couple of years

If they were to negotiate an end tomorrow, Russia certainly wouldnt be giving up territory in ukraine. i dont see how thats not winning

Same with the iron we'd need to make our own steel.

And a current glut just makes it even cheaper for us to stockpile, vs spending on votes by propping up a failing industry.

The UK built a lot of refining to use local iron ore and coal deposits. It used those deposits. They are now substantially used up. Subsurface mining is uneconomic, and open mining is politically unthinkable.

There is actually a really high quality government review of the whole subject: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/690b868714b04...

Lots of discussion of moving to EAF/DRI from traditional blast furnaces.

Yes you need artillery and particularly shells. But you are so much more limited by the capacity of your munition factories that how much steel you have would not be an issue. One of the main things you would need for a new munitions factory is trained workers.

The World Wars were wars of mass mobilization and industrial capacity. People went into the first thinking cavalry was important, the second thinking battleships still mattered. My point is I have no idea what the next great war might be like, but thinking the winner will be who chugs out the most tanks in five years may be looking in the rear view mirror.

How did self-sufficiency shake out for Europe as a whole during WWII?

But some do sightseeing trips, diving and sports fishing too.

idk if that counts as sport fishing, or sport sexual assault?

"Universities brought in an estimated £24 billion to the UK economy from abroad in 2022. They provide services (education) to international students who bring money to the institutions from abroad through international fees. These students also bring money to the local economy by spending on goods and services while they are studying"

(presumably there's an attempt to imply that those are bad courses in some way, but you haven't shown your working)

China's rise comes because it acquired, from inauspicious beginnings, competence at planning an economy.

Britain's decline relative to China comes because it is a democracy - which is to say, vacillating.

Britain has been particularly callow over the part decade, because we indulged ourselves in a bunfight about Brexit to the exclusion of all other concerns. This created a purge of ministerial talent and a sequence of governments primarily occupied with propping themselves up. Elections have been fought on Get Brexit Done and I Would Have A Pint With That Man, not on policy.

The entire edifice is deeply stupid, but it is a stupidity orthogonal to questions of industrial policy. Ministers haven't been in post long enough to reveal any strategy about such.

In a microcosm, the compulsory land purchases were done for HS2 and it was as on-track as infrastructure projects get, when Sunak cancelled half of it, writing off the sunk costs but crippling the long-term value of the project. Meanwhile, China laid more track than the test of the world combined, because it has the will to make large long-term investments.

Ok, being generous and accepting your point at face value ....

What about the people staffing those manufacturing cities ? Is the state creating them too ?

I seem to recall reading somewhere that – at most – the US could "find" 200,000 people for new manufacturing plants.

Sounds about right to me, no ?

I think even with a generous mind the US would struggle to "find" much more than that, let alone getting to or exceeding 1 million which is the value you would need for seriously thinking about >1 manufacturing city.

As long as the reform is to cut taxes for the rich

1018 is 1018 wherever it was made