1984 in the 'defence' industry

November 10, 2025

As we rapidly approach the point at which the dying West will actually fall off the cliff it has been constructing for itself for the last 30 years, we see the usual accompaniments of empire death.

Frantic efforts to convince ourselves that our lashing out in all directions is actually evidence of our continued grasp of the levers of power, finding increasing numbers of relatively powerless others who we can identify as threatening our glorious civilisation and the election of increasingly unhinged leaders who reflect that civilisational decline.

The most obvious of those signs is our belief that increasingly complicated and expensive weapons of war will save us from that historical inevitability. Our politicians identify with the merchants of death as it reflects their infantile cowboy movie beliefs that the bloke with the biggest gun will always win, whilst being confronted with the accumulating evidence that such a scenario no longer applies in a more complex multi-polar world.

The question is, I guess, whether our system of governance has the capacity to produce mature, thoughtful, intelligent and cautious leaders who might change the outcome. On current experience, that seems extraordinarily unlikely!