Alex Cranberg

The case for affirmative action for faculty recruitment based on nonconformity of philosophical view is much stronger than that for affirmative action based on race. Provision of the latter is essential and not merely incidental to the University's mission.

@maxcanthelpit @aeberman12 @citrinowicz @gbrew24 And if we cut their launch capacity by yet another 50%, Iran will have 12 months of missiles:)

@aeberman12 @acranberg @citrinowicz @gbrew24 Are you serious? The GCCs would die For all we know Iran has 6 months worth of missiles at the current rate. Anyway, none of that worked with Russia.

The US should CLOSE HORMUZ That would remove Iran’s leverage & income It would not materially worsen the oil supply crisis Time for hard strategic decisions What would Captain Kirk do? #Hormuz #Geopolitics #Oil #KobayashiMaru @acranberg @citrinowicz @gbrew24

@shanaka86 More doomerism: America is very nearly self-sufficient in helium which is produced in major quantities in politically tricky places like Wyoming and Kansas Also: your pieces would read with more authenticity if you didn’t use so much AI

BREAKING. Masayoshi Son just broke ground on a $33 billion natural gas power plant in Piketon, Ohio, on the site of a former uranium enrichment facility, to power the largest AI data centre complex in history. The plant will generate 9.2 gigawatts. The campus will consume 10 gigawatts. The first phase, an 800-megawatt data centre, is targeted for early 2028. The full build across 3,700 acres is projected at $500 billion by the end of the decade. Japan’s Prime Minister Takaichi sat across from Trump two nights ago at a dinner where Son was present and the $550 billion US investment framework was reaffirmed. The first shovel hit dirt on March 20. Day 21 of a war that is simultaneously creating the demand for AI infrastructure and destroying the supply chain that builds it. The site is the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. It enriched uranium for decades. The centrifuges are gone. The gas turbines are coming. The land that processed nuclear material for the Cold War will now process tokens for artificial intelligence. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attended. Son stood on remediated ground and announced the largest single-site investment in American history. This is what $550 billion looks like when the first cheque clears. Japan promised the investment under Trump’s trade framework. SoftBank is delivering the flagship. The Vision Fund holds an 11 percent stake in OpenAI with cumulative investment approaching $64.6 billion. The Piketon campus is where those models will run. The 9.2 gigawatts of natural gas generation is where the electricity will come from. The logic is vertical: invest in the AI company, build the infrastructure the AI company needs, generate the power the infrastructure requires. Son is not betting on AI. He is building the entire stack from turbine to token. The war makes this investment simultaneously more valuable and more vulnerable. Every NVIDIA GPU that trains the models Son wants to run is fabricated using helium that is 30 percent offline because Iran struck Qatar’s Ras Laffan. Every data centre chip uses silver for conductivity and packaging, and silver just crashed 43 percent from its January high because the same war spiked energy costs into stagflation. Jensen Huang said he is 100 percent committed to Israel, where BlueField-4 and ConnectX-9 are developed, but Huang’s chips cannot be manufactured without the helium that transits a strait the Houthis have threatened to close. Son is building a $500 billion campus that depends on chips that depend on a gas that depends on a strait that depends on a war that nobody can predict the end of. Trump told the world this week that America does not need the Strait of Hormuz. But Son’s data centre needs NVIDIA GPUs. NVIDIA GPUs need TSMC fabs. TSMC fabs need helium. Helium comes from Qatar. Qatar’s helium transited Hormuz. The president who says America is energy-independent just hosted the groundbreaking for a campus whose supply chain runs through the chokepoint he told other countries to police. Nine point two gigawatts. Three thousand seven hundred acres. Thirty-three billion dollars. A former uranium site. And a supply chain that passes through two threatened straits, a bombed LNG complex, and a semiconductor fabrication process that requires a noble gas no country can synthesise. The future just broke ground. The present is on fire. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@MosabHasanYOSEF These are all the reasons why the Vietnam conflict was not justified by the danger represented a communist regime there compared to the enormous stakes involved in assuring destruction of the IRGC rule in Iran.

Could This Iran War End Up Worse Than Vietnam? Vietnam was a quagmire, but it had boundaries: jungle, Ho Chi Minh Trail, North vs. South, a defined enemy. You could pull out, declare “peace with honor,” and the body count (58,000 US dead) was horrific but contained. The war stayed mostly in Southeast Asia, didn’t crash the global economy, and the US could eventually walk away without the world burning or being forced to accept defeat. This Iran situation? It’s shaping up to be a multi-dimensional nightmare: 1. Geographic & strategic scale
Iran is 3× the size of Vietnam, mountainous, with ballistic missiles that reach Israel, Gulf states, and potentially Europe. Proxies (Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraqi militias) are already active on four fronts. Vietnam didn’t have that kind of regional network. 2. Economic & energy impact
Vietnam didn’t control 20% of the world’s oil transit (Strait of Hormuz). We’re already seeing tankers blocked, $2 million extortion fees, Brent flirting with $150+, gas prices climbing toward $8–$10 in the US. That hits every American wallet directly. Vietnam never did that. 3. Nuclear wildcard
Vietnam had no nukes. Iran does (or is very close). Even if the program is damaged, loose material in a collapse scenario means dirty bombs, black-market sales, or warlord nukes. That’s apocalyptic-level escalation Vietnam never threatened. 4. Domestic US blowback
Vietnam polarized America, but today’s division is already at fever pitch. Add $10 gas, inflation rebound, dead soldiers on TikTok, and campuses erupting again? January 6-level unrest looks tame. Vietnam protests took years to boil over; this could ignite in months. 5. Civil war & the Islamic Republic emerging as superpower – bad and worse
 a. If the regime collapses, Iran could fracture into civil war along ethnic and ideological lines. Neighboring states (Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Gulf monarchies) risk their own internal implosions or spillover insurgencies. A fractured Iran means refugee waves, jihadist safe havens, and proxy wars spreading across the region, potentially dragging down fragile governments. b. A prolonged war could ironically strengthen a hardened, decentralized IRGC-led remnant. Surviving the storm, it could re-emerge as a more resilient, nuclear-capable, ideologically pure force, turning Iran into a Shia superpower with global reach through proxies. Unlike Vietnam, this war will reshape the world order forever in favor of China and Russia: China quietly buys discounted oil, Russia supplies drones and intel, North Korea sells missiles. A weakened, divided US loses credibility, energy security, and moral authority. The multipolar world tilts decisively toward Beijing and Moscow. The dollar weakens, alliances fracture, and the post-WWII order ends, not with a bang, but with $10 gas and empty promises. Vietnam cost ~$1 trillion (adjusted). This war is already burning billions weekly. Add prolonged chaos, refugee waves, jihadist blowback, regional collapses, and energy crisis? It could cost trillions and leave the US weaker, more divided, and less trusted globally. Vietnam was bad. This has the potential to be Vietnam × Iraq × Syria × 1973 oil crisis all at once, with nukes, civil war contagion, and a new world order permanently tilted toward China and Russia.

@gboddicker @aeberman12 If Vietnam had been at the threshold of nukes, and sat aside the worlds oil lifeline while being run by a bunch of apocalyptic mullahs we would have looked at the Tet Offensive as the victory that it was.

@acranberg @aeberman12 Please keep Ho Chi Minh's possible leverage and advantages quiet so Westmoreland can go on with his campaign until we fill the wall in Arlington

CENTCOM says bombing Iran’s coastal missile sites “degraded” its shipping threat That train left the station when Iran took de facto control of Hormuz Now Tehran wants navigation open on its terms: tolls, leverage, gatekeeper power. The US is being outplayed at every turn #Hormuz #Iran #Oil #Shipping #Geopolitics #EnergySecurity @annmarie @acranberg

Art is a serious expert and writes what he thinks even if it turns out to be wrong or could be right. My point is different: that in wartime we should emphasize our support and assume the best interpretations vs the worst fears about what’s going on, since we really are unlikely to understand the half of it.

@acranberg @aeberman12 Absolutely 💯 and to think I use to take him seriously. 🤦 Most of his post are Un-American, Anti-Trump propaganda right out of the IRGC playbook. This self proclaimed energy "expert" should move his office to downtown Tehran He thinks the US Military doesn't have a plan 😂

@JuanitaCalamid2 @aeberman12 @citrinowicz @gbrew24 What’s obvious is that we are the only nation which can fight the forces of terror that threaten the West

@aeberman12 @acranberg @citrinowicz @gbrew24 The US should accept they can't rule the world anymore.

@aeberman12 One of the downsides of X is that every event that occurs in the world gets viewed through a microscope as if it’s the only thing going on and then people take their positions according to their political preferences. Almost none of us have any idea what kind of deal making and quid pro quo is involved in releasing these sanctions. It’d be silly to think that it was completely valueless to us and only helps the Iranians. Perhaps this helps the Japanese and the Japanese in turn have made certain promises which obviously may never make it into the public arena. The poor guys running the show are faced with all these armchair quarterbacks amplified by their political opponents just trying to run a war. Let’s just cheer for USA success and IRGC failure and show the moral support that strengthens our hand and weakens theirs.

Iranian oil has been sanctioned for many years. The 140 million barrels he is referring to are part of the "dark fleet" that has been shipping Iranian oil to Asia (mainly China) for years. Iran gets money for oil, and China buys it at a discount. So, this oil already exists in the world market. It doesn't matter who buys it, or under what scheme (sanctioned through a dark fleet or legitimate open market sale), as a barrel sold anywhere, for whatever reason, adds to world supply. To emphasize, these barrels are already part of the world supply. These barrels are not randomly floating in a tanker on some ocean (for years?), waiting for sanctions to be lifted before they can be sold and offloaded. By allowing oil to be unsanctioned, all Bessent is doing is allowing Iranian oil to be sold to places like Japan or South Korea. In other words, all he did was raise the price of Iranian oil because they now have more bidders. He just made Iran wealthier and did nothing for the price of crude oil.

@leadlagreport “Japan has 254 days of oil consumption in strategic storage”. That does not sound like a vulnerable country. In fact it is sitting on an incredibly valuable asset all of a sudden.

@vmblakeslee @aeberman12 For the mullahs

@aeberman12 Every hour, the nightmare worsens.

Trump says no boots on the ground so WTF? The U.S. is sending another Marine expeditionary unit & warships to the Middle East It quacks like a GROUND WAR wsj.com/livecoverage/i… #IranWar #MiddleEast #USMilitary #Marines #Geopolitics #SystemicRisk

@Lacertko @aeberman12 Sowing fear for no good reason. Reminds me of when Oscar Wyatt predicted before the Gulf War that “our boys will be facing a meat grinder”… whoops

@aeberman12 He says always opposite of what he intends. Suicide mission, I feel sorry for the young soldiers. Hormuz will remain closed.

@MichaelEWebber This is a great idea. Bypass California.

Let's do this!

@aeberman12 Meanwhile someone in Iran is saying that it’s clinically insane for Iran to undermine its own imposed oil embargo by selling oil in the world market.

Bessent's suggestion to lift sanctions on Iranian oil is INSANE Congressman Scott Perry explains that the world gets the oil but Iran won't get paid b/c it's outside the global financial system now He's clinically INSANE #Oil #Iran #EnergyCrisis #Geopolitics #Markets

@aeberman12 @annmarie It’s obviously not simple. But Iran would be less likely to attack if it sees more countries actively participate in securing the Straits

A simple maneuver to open Hormuz, says Trump. "So little risk." Then DO IT and stop whining about NATO Easy peasy What a moron. @annmarie

@HormuzLedger @annmarie No reservoir damage from shutting in wells.

"Simple military manoeuvre" assumes the problem is transit. The infrastructure damage has already made that framing obsolete. Ras Laffan: confirmed missile strikes, 30 years to build. South Pars Phase 14: still burning. Iraqi reservoir damage permanent at current shut-in timelines. You can't reopen a strait and restore production that no longer exists. The market is pricing a transit disruption. It hasn't finished pricing a destruction campaign.

“… they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz, a simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil prices”

In 1918, King Hussein of the Arabs—one of the great heroes of Arab history, the leader of the Arab revolt against the Ottomans along with the British—wrote an op-ed in the Al Qibla newspaper. He says that if the Arabs want the British and the rest of the world to care about their claim to their ancestral land, which they want back now that the Ottomans are gone, then they cannot deny the Zionists’ claim to their ancestral land in the Land of Israel. This isn't me. This is the leader of all the Arabs, King Hussein himself. And he says at the end of the op-ed, and I quote, "The Jews are the original sons of that land." If you don't care about King Hussein, nine months later, on December the 29th of 1918, King Hussein's son, Prince Faisal, who becomes King of Iraq, the first King of Iraq, has a banquet in his honor thrown by a bunch of British dignitaries, along with Lord Rothschild. And he stands up and gives a toast, and at the end of the toast he turns to Lord Rothschild and he says, "We Arabs cannot in good conscience deny the ancestral home of the Jewish people." And he turns to Lord Rothschild and he says, "To my Zionist friends, I say to you, welcome home."

@picturepost444 @Mylovanov If only it were that simple

@Mylovanov lol If only it were that simple. Stop reliance on oil, and money dries up in the Middle East. No money, no arms...no conflicts.

Kellogg on Iran and regional operations: I’d be satisfied with kill them all. They should have taken out Hezbollah a long time ago, and instead everything was allowed to fester across multiple groups in the region. 1/

@aeberman12 @citrinowicz You and I don’t really know what’s going on, so there’s really no point in cheering for the enemy. When there’s a lot more clarity maybe it makes sense to criticize but right now a major portion of what’s available in the press is just Cassandra.

Iran is escalating on its own terms while the U.S.-Israel campaign drifts without a clear endgame, writes @citrinowicz Iran's regime is intact US allies are diverging. No strategy. No visible exit ramp. DISASTER #IranWar #Geopolitics #Strategy #OilMarkets #Hormuz #GlobalRisk

@MichaelEWebber As I wrote, lots of problems. But also it would put pressure on the Europeans that depend on those imports. I’m not suggesting it’s a good idea.

@acranberg I mean, the gulf coast refineries will use the imported heavier oil, but where do we send the light sweet crude?

Dear President Trump, please don't do this. Banning exports won't help.