Far more nail-biting than IPL!

This IPL season, there is one real nail biting and interesting match I am eager to witness.

The real India Pakistan match.

And how India is going to thrash the Pakistani military and its puppet govt.

India will go with Military action this time too. The question is when? Tonight or tomorrow night or day after night? The bets are on!

India has already flooded a district of PoK last night.

What is different this time is the context.

External to both these countries, the state of the 2 biggest associated countries - China and USA and the 2 running wars.

China usually supports Pakistan militarily and has been against India in multiple fronts including the trade front. But this time, if India gains some key areas in PoK, the China invested area in PoK for the Belt and Road Initiative would be for India to destroy or overtake. This would be interesting to see how China would respond: Whether it would ask India to not destroy their investment or to deter India, start a parallel military campaign on India-China border. The other change this time is China's slowly warming to India after many years of the military standoff as its trade war with USA is raging.

USA this time is very different than all the historical USA. With an indifferent Trump at its President who has very weird goals, (like making Gaza a tourist spot) and not getting USA into any new war and trying to end the Russia-Ukraine war. But, unfortunately, as usual, USA has supported Pakistan again and given USD 400 million aid to Pakistan to sustain its F-16s. Mostly, USA wants to watch the 'fun' from the sidelines and then ask India to invest more into its Apaches, AWACs, F-35s and other military platforms.

Wars are not anathema in today's world. The Russian war on Ukraine saw the first fulls scale war in history in Europe after 60+ years. The Israel-Palestine war is also running. People are not so against war and reasonably expect it in case of retribution.

This time, the Indian govt. is more determined to take action than the previous govts and is willing to make use of all the historical mistakes it has done previously and turn it around.

Best case scenario: 

1. Breakup of Pakistan into an independent Balochistan (40% of Pakistan territory) and the rest of Pakistan

2. Retaking of PoK by India

3. Destruction of China's investment in PoK worth billions and stopping China in its tracks

Only if Pakistan was not nuclear armed, all this could have been achieved with much ease.

Fingers crossed and waiting to read the books on this war and the strategies employed a few years from now.

Give free, remove competition, Increase prices

The 3 step process:

1. Give for free or at less price
2. Remove competition
3. Increase prices

The above process has been deployed by all late comers to gain marketshare and change the industries. Startups do this constantly. It is famously called the "Loss Leader" strategy. Be it Amazon or Flipkart or Uber or innumerable other startups.

Costco does this with its USD 1.50 hot dog for which the price has not changed, believe it or not, since 1984.

China used this strategy consistently and has killed other countries' competition in multiple industries.

Interestingly and sadly, the India's tax department has brought this strategy to UPI transactions.

The once great UPI which brought about Digital payments revolution to millions of Indians unlike the pre-historic west and eased the way to do business from small to medium enterprises is now going to be taxed (with the government finding ever increasing ways to tax and deliver less).

May your force beat you back

One of my senior colleagues at one point in time who practised Taekwondo, told me that "one of the keys of Taekwando is to use the force of the opponent itself to subdue him."

The above is a powerful statement. Reread and think about it.

The opponent: USA

Opponent's move: USA issues 125% tariff on products from China with immediate effect

China was anticipating this move after the tariff war during Donald Trump's first presidency.

The countermove:

Today, Chinese companies are sharing where the US's top luxury branded items are made, their materials, methods and costs and are asking the world to directly work with them and make things cheaper for consumers instead of buying them from the top Luxury brands.

The top US companies have used and sometimes exploited the Chinese to make the huge profits and become some kind of a poly (monopoly or duopoly or oligopoly).

How does this move work:

The US's outsourcing and demand for all these years have helped built the Chinese manufacturing ecosystem for luxury products. Now, by using the credibility of the brands (minus their tags and prices) - (The opponent's force), the Chinese are hoping to sell their products to the world at a lower price point where they would continue to manufacture and customers would buy them worldwide. In one way, this is open-sourcing the proprietary luxury products

This would also force the luxury customers to start evaluating the value they are getting after the exclusivity is gone and when they see 100s more of these same products with everyone. This in turn would loot and ruin the luxury brands the most.

This is 100%

 When someone asks you to give your 100%, this is what 100% looks like.

https://x.com/ShangguanJiewen/status/1902842590497513481

But if you look closely, it would be 99% as who is going to clean the solar panels on the cleaner?

Reopening Mysteries

It is weird that even after so much advancements in Science & Technology, many mysteries are not solved yet.

The latest reopening of mysteries include the discovery of pillar like structures below the pyramids using LIDAR and reopening the search for the remains of MH-370.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/egypts-pyramids-hide-a-shocking-secretscientists-reveal-whats-below/articleshow/119352661.cms

The search by Ocean infinity is for a long period of 18 months using its state of the art technologies of deploying multiple mini-submarines for detection. This agreement with the Malaysian government is to search with a no find, no fee structure and USD 70 million if the remains are found.

This amount is pretty high considering a new Boeing 777 starts at USD 310 million.

Is the value of finding the debris and the reasons for the dissappearance of the aircraft and bring the closure for the families worth USD 70 million dollars?

Understanding the big game of world economics in 2025

The below link involves a lot of macro economics and helps explain the rationale of the trade war initiated by USA.

https://medium.com/@mcnai002/the-sovereign-wealth-effect-americas-new-tool-for-rebalancing-the-global-trading-system-363176816035

There would be multiple questions for the readers after this article on the hows, whys and the impacts.

It also helps predict the future, but no clear answers on what to do exactly depending on what is your locus standi.

Can one person change the world?

It is difficult to fathom that in today's world of democratisation of internet and communication where anything secret or plan or thoughts can be dissipated to millions in minutes, with so much interconnectedness with all things and anything can come back and bite you immediately, that one person can overcome all these and get do something unexpected again and again.

With so much interconnectedness and checks and balances and democracies, it should have been almost impossible for someone to change the world's dynamics so fast.
Yet, Donald Trump did it.

Many of the countries of Europe after millenia of fighting against each other and USA came to the mature conclusion of not fighting with each other and rather saving the millions of national resources to better uses like education, lifestyle enhancement, technology and progressed substantially after world war 2 until 2023.

Now, all of a sudden, 1 man is creating havoc almost on a daily basis and causing distrust among things that were built layer on layer for so many decades of trust and effort.

Surely, many would be in disillusionment as was all these years of trust and work just a fake and was it worth it?

The same kind of disillusionment that happens when trust is broken with someone for selfish reasons.

How would humanity look upon this 100 years later? Does this instance change of course of history forever where no country would trust another or just a blip in the overall maturity of having more non-fighting friendly relationships?

Do you have a voice in your head?

Most of us believe that we all have a voice in our head that we listen to.

This "voice in your head" is called "Inner Monologue".

It came as a surprise to me when my friend told me that many people do not have this inner monologue.

More on this research here:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/not-everyone-has-an-inner-voice-streaming-through-their-head/