The world is one bad decision away from a silicon ice age

Opinion For a world economy driven by consumerism, it's become markedly unkind to consumers. This goes double – literally – for digital tech, where memory prices have increased by between 100 and 250 percent in six months. If you think GPUs are pricey now, you'll only have to wait six weeks, during which both AMD and Nvidia are expected to demonstrate supply-side economics much as the Road Runner demonstrated gravity to Wile E Coyote.

Six months and six weeks are as nothing to 2026, which took just three days to increase the chances that everything tech will look back to now as a lost golden age of availability and affordability. America's actions in abducting Venezuela's president while threatening to annex Greenland are many things, but let's concentrate on the simultaneous rejection of international laws and the concept of alliance.

Such abdication can only embolden other proponents of ...