This is a more thorough and expert-level treatment of the East Palestine derailment than anything I would be able to muster.

Maintenance and systems control failures were my immediate assumptions.

Corollary - it is remarkably easy to induce the latter through SCADA attacks.

https://twitter.com/AnneNJunod/status/1625675148505530368

Another expert on the issue of supply chains, infrastructure, and national security - @JoshuaSteinman - frequently discusses the risk of covert or overt attacks on US logistics and energy infrastructure.

It also continues to be a leading concern of military/intel officials.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐄𝐙 𝐁𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐨𝐧

Food, energy, and water are the three things that sustain civilization - the oceans offer an abundance of each.

Established by the UN in 1982, Exclusive Economic Zones were created to resolve maritime disputes.

They have done anything but.

Thread. Prior to the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1982, maritime commerce and territorial disputes were settled via a complex maze of customs, agreements, laws, and treaties loosely called "admiralty law".

It worked, albeit messily.

2/

𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐢𝐧

The axis of the world turns upon control of four resources:

Protein
Water
Energy
Firepower

The first is the subject of this thread.

China's enormous population demands massive amounts of protein.

And a war is on for it.

1/ Christmas Eve 2013, panicked calls to logistics managers working in the grain industry began flooding in.

Without notice, China had banned the import of any corn or corn co-product that contained more than a tiny trace of Syngenta's MIR162 transgenic trait.

2/