Could America’s Pluto Return be a hint of a slow moving collapse of global power and prestige? Loss of faith in US institutions could spiral towards a significant decline with the possibility of ‘a series of catastrophic governmental failures following key personnel having been fired and ‘dangerous lack of oversight of critical infrastructure, including nuclear reactors and cyber security.’ Culminating in a tech meltdown in 2030, due to institutional failures and growing concentration in the industry.
A sobering, well argued piece in the FT by Nobel-winning economist Daron Acemoglu does not blame Trump. The cracks he says were visible long before 2016. ‘He was in many ways a symptom of those troubled times. But ‘ he quickly transitioned from being a symptom to being a cause, repeatedly breaking with democratic norms.’
Does the astrology back up his economic argument? The USA chart is going through a few seismic upheavals at the moment through into 2026 with the Solar Arc Sun square Saturn colliding with the USA Mars square Neptune. Just after the turn of the decade in 2031/32 transiting Neptune will square the USA Sun and oppose the Saturn for loss of morale and great uncertainty; even before then having been on a long slide with tr Neptune square the USA financial Venus Jupiter and a Uranus Return in 2027/28.
The USA Federal Reserve chart has considerable hitches and glitches, noticeably from the middle of this year and 2026 with tr Neptune Saturn square the FedRes Saturn Pluto; with an insecure tr Uranus opposition Mars in 2026. But it is 2031 when it is showing most jeopardy with a scary, trapped, catastrophic SA Mars square the Saturn Pluto.
The ‘magnificent seven’ are also showing stress towards the end of the decade. These are companies commonly recognized for their market dominance, their technological impact, and their changes to consumer behavior and economic trends – Alphabet (GOOGL; GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Apple, META, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Tesla.
Nvidia is in a disappointing slump from 2028 onwards with tr Neptune opposing their Jupiter and conjunct the financial Venus. 2029 is jangled (SA Uranus opp Saturn), 2030 extremely uncertain (SA Neptune conjunct Saturn) and 2031 sees a calamitous setback with SA Mars opposition Saturn.
Microsoft is sagging in 2026/27 and facing potentially terminal problems by 2031/32.
Meta/Facebook – financially fraught with major setbacks in 2027; 2030 will be devastating.
Apple – a long, disappointing, panicky slide from 2027 onwards with extreme anxiety in 2030 and financial disappointment in 2031.
Google – again 2027 in disappointing financially and 2031/32 are flagged up as calamitous.
Amazon – again same pattern. 2027 is high anxiety. 2030/31 worse than they have known before.
Tesla – insecure jolts 2026 to 2028; with simultaneous uncertainty and disappointment from 2026 to 28/29 courtesy of tr Neptune. Failure in 2028 and major confusion by 2030.
Some of the above will be due to internal or disparate causes but there does seem to be a pattern which suggests that Daron Acemoglu might be right.
https://www.ft.com/content/4e3f1731-3d63-4b31-88ce-c3f5157d8170
“What has history said of eminence without honor, wealth without wisdom, power and possessions without principle? The answer is reiterated in the overthrow of the mightiest empires of ancient times. Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome! The four successive, universal powers of the past. What and where are they?” Orson F. Whitney
“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.” Marcus Aurelius
“America is an empire. I hope you know that now. All empires, by definition, are bumbling, shambolic, bullying, bureaucratic affairs, as certain of the rightness of their cause in infancy, as they are corrupted by power in their dotage.” Felix Dennis
“I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.” Martin Scorsese
“The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.” Woodrow Wilson
“I complain about the United States not being Athens. I certainly say we are a very good Roman republic, and the lies are based upon the most advanced techniques of advertising, which is the only art form my country has ever created—the television commercial—and we sell soap and presidents in the same fashion. Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back.”
Gore Vidal
See previous post in search: Pluto Returns 17 October 2020.
2030 moght be significant for tech stocks because the US might then be in a new civil war, often associated in America with Uranus in Gemini.
After reading Marjorie’s post, two thoughts come to my mind. Would 2026 refer to a bigger economic downfall rather than a tech-related issue? The 8th house showing up on Musk’s chart is about other people’s money or stocks of his companies.
My second thought is that the courts will clearly rein in Trump’s outlandish ideas, to some degree. Does the USA chart show anything related to the justice system working or not working? I think Musk will deal with the consequences of his actions in the courts for years to come…
2026 is also the year of midterms. Perhaps a Democratic-leaning House could stop all the craziness…Anything showing such a development in the Dem Party chart?
Crazy thought but I wonder if the internet itself has a chart, and if the internet itself could be in trouble when the astrology suggests the big tech companies hit big problems? The internet needs an awful lot of power, and if climate change becomes catastrophic perhaps the loss of power to the servers will lead to a loss of power for the likes of Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg et al…. And a loss for us all! Like I say, a crazy thought.
@Victoria Thaw, I’ve seen first ARPANET message send time, 10:30 pm PST on 29 October 1969 (6:30 UTC on 30 October 1969) used at places. I am not entirely certain if I’m sold on this, though. The first e-mail services for companies were developed in the late-1970’s and and the first applications targeting to consumers in the late 1980’s, when PCs had been popularized. When I went to school in the turn of the 1980s and 1990s the computer class has IRC connection, of which I was very jealous, because if I had known this, I’d likely taking programming, too.
I’ve been wondering about this too, Victoria and Solaia. Internet’s official ‘birthday’ is 1st January, 1983. There’s Pluto at 29 Libra square Mercury 29 Capricorn/1 Aquarius, and Venus (money?) 24 Capricorn – which seems to resonate with the US Mercury-Pluto opposition.
Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the world wide web seems to have two months to look at – March 1989 and May 1990. In March there’s a Saturn-Neptune alignment at 11 Capricorn. By the May of 1990 Saturn is 25 – 24 Capricorn – hitting the US Mercury again, and conjunct Venus for the 1983 birthday date.
As we know, the Berlin Wall fell on 9th November, 1989 – also on a Saturn/Neptune conjunction, 10 Capricorn. Comments by Hugh and Unmystic Mom are very interesting regarding all this. The Web dissolved boundaries in so many ways, and opened up access to knowledge. The money-making Capricorn element kicked in, and so much has changed. But it will doubtless change again, inevitably. I remembered My Space, Friends Reunited, Napster…..
Currently, tr Neptune and the Nodes are crossing the 28 Pisces Moon for the fall of the Berlin Wall – so perhaps dreams and memories of that pivotal era are surfacing strongly once more? The coming Saturn-Neptune in Aries conjunction awaits!
Could also be worth noting – Tim Berners-Lee (no time) 8th June, 1955, has Uranus 25 Cancer, Jupiter 29 Cancer (lucky?) square Neptune 25 Libra that picks up the US Mercury/Pluto opposition. He was having a Pluto in Scorpio transit to his natal Saturn when his research papers were published. His natal Mercury, 28 Gemini, is conjunct the US MC in the chart Marjorie has posted here. Currently, he’ll be ‘enjoying’ a Neptune transit to his Mercury, so I wonder what he thinks about how things have evolved since those far-off early days?
My Jupiter is also at 29 Cancer (in the first/second house, depending on house system) and part of a Water Grand Trine. I’ve often thought that I have been lucky, not in the sense of having things handed to me easily, but being offered unusual/non-standard opportunities that allowed me to develop unconventional skill-sets (one of the planets in the Water Grand Trine is Uranus).
Just realised that Saturn-Neptune will be trining my Water Grand Trine and Tim Berners-Lee’s Jupiter soon too.
Good to know that you work (or used to work) in IT, @Solaia. Same here.
I’m so old my first web browser was text based (lynx on Unix) and remember fingering other users at the terminal(get your mind out of the gutter, people. “finger” is an authentic UNIX command). Not that I am trying to vi for your attention 🙂
I never could get my mind around unix. (1980)
I did a quick search on the site, but there doesn’t appear to be an article solely on the Panama Canal.
Marjorie, when you have the time, could you do a write-up on it?
It would be the ultimate irony if the Pluto Return of the United States is underscored by a battle/war on the Panama Canal, where the US will receive the same treatment from its allies that it gave the UK and France during the Suez Crisis, karma being the proverbial.
I think that the downfall of the US, at least in the international arena, will be caused by the purely transactional approach that the US appears to be taking under Trump. Sure, the US was transactional in the past too, but at least it was veiled in language of democracy and international peace, etc. Now other countries will treat their relationships with the US in purely transactional terms and there will be no affection for or idolisation of the US.
As an aside, Marjorie has written about the EU breaking up, possibly with the A8 countries splitting away from the EU in about the same timeframe (from now till 2030). So it is not impossible that the world in 2030 would be unrecognisable from the current one. It almost feels like the 1989-1991 fall of the Iron Curtain. Are there any planetary similarities from that period? I think the Saturn-Neptune conjunction and the Saros cycle of eclipses are two common points across these two periods (1989 & 2025).
In a world as fractious and fraught as today’s, I don’t think small European countries would want to go at it alone. So I don’t think the Union will break.
Panama has left the Chinese Belt and Road project which has deescalated things and included a review of the Hutchinson transportation contracts underlying the issue.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/04/marco-rubio-panama-china-us-relationship-infrastructure-plan
So I gave my earlier point some further thought. Approximately 2-3 years after the last few Saturn-Neptune conjunctions (which happen every 36 years), the map of the world, but particularly Europe, has changed drastically.
In the list below, the first year is the year of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, which takes place every 36 years.
1989-1991 – Fall of the Iron Curtain and the unification of Germany.
1953-1955 – Hit a bump here. Can only think of the Korean War and the start of decolonisation.
1917-1919 – The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, followed by the Versailles Treaty and its associated Treaties redrew the borders of Europe.
1881-1885 – The redrawing of the borders of the Ottoman Empire in Europe and the creation of many Balkan states and the Berlin Conference, which redrew the map of Africa.
1845-1848 – The redrawing of the US-Mexico border after the US-Mexico war and the partition of the Oregon territory between the US and Britain (the British portion forming the modern Canadian province of British Columbia), the 1848 revolutions in Europe that led to German reunification and the modern Swiss constitution.
1809-1815 – Err, Napoleon. Need I say more?
1773-1776 – USA, USA, etc. Also Russian expansion in Ottoman territory, particularly in Crimea. Captain Cook landing in Australia and circumnavigating New Zealand.
So a pattern does appear where a major redrawing of borders takes place in these periods. That is not to say that the redrawing of borders didn’t take place at other times. It’s just that such redrawings appear to take place across the world or major parts of the world at such times. And typically it is not a case of reclaiming lands lost in the past (irredentism), but of gaining or losing territories with no previous borders in that area.
Marjorie is 120% correct, USA is going to lose its dominance and prestige over the coming years. Pluto in Aquarius is humanitarian, it promotes unity, good family ethics. Over the coming years, we are going to see distribution of wealth across the board, there is going to be more equality among nations all over the world. The issue of one country being dominant is coming to an end. With Pluto in Aquarius, and Uranus moving into Gemini in July this year, there is also going to be innovations, more technological developments all over the world, not just In US by US companies, there is also going to be a formation of new tech companies spearheaded by AI around the world. The US ‘magnificent 7’ is definitely going to lose their dominance, Tesla is already falling, losing its dominance on EV’s, that’s the beginning of a domino, others will follow too. What Trump is trying to do of making the USA a superpower of technology and financial hub, is not going to work. Same as promoting hatred among people, targeting LGBQTI+ groups, is going to blow on his face. From 2030 and onwards more people are going to live more peacefully and in harmony, and accepting each other as they are. Pluto being the ruler of Scorpio, does not support or tolerate racism, being divisive or hate.
All of Trump’s team, ALL of them look completely deflated and destroyed in 2026. It would be interesting looking at the American banks chart to see if its a repeat of Iceland 2008.
Much worse, really, Iceland is a tiny island, and even if their finance bros punched upwards with what now seems to be Russian Mafia money, the power they had to hurt the World economy was limited.
Therefore, the below story Reuters ran before Superbowl is concerning:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/trump-says-us-might-have-less-debt-than-thought-2025-02-09/
Paul Krugman commented to this on Bluesky that “It could mean that the world financial system melts down when investors realize that Elon Musk may selectively default on US debt. Just saying.” and continued: “For those not familiar with how financial markets work, US Treasuries are the ultimate safe asset, used as collateral for everything. Even a hint that some Treasuries might not be honored could bring everything to a screeching halt 1/Musk and Trump are both in the habit of stiffing people they owe money. If markets even suspect that this habit will extend to Treasuries, God help us 2/”
US Treasury was established September 2nd 1789, and has a Pluto return in about 10 years. But maybe there are other factors playing here, with Musk being stopped earlier.
Might this explain why Musk, with Trump’s blessing, wants access to the US Treasury’s electronic check book and won’t explain to what he wants access for?
or was that just for domestic business?
In many ways it is not surprising that Trump has coincided with the US’s Pluto Return, particularly since he seems to be dreaming of trying to return the US to the geopolitics and economics of the Gilded Age when America was a rising power with vast horizons before it. Trying to return to perceived past glories won’t work, though.
Countries and empires can survive and get through Pluto Returns but it is a major event that changes things a lot. Taking the 27 BC start date of Imperial Rome, the first Pluto Return marked the onset of the Crisis of the Third Century (also known as the Imperial Crisis) which for the next 50 years or so saw Emperors come and go like straws in the breeze, repeated civil wars, invasion threats and insurrections, and the Empire breaking into separate parts for a while before Aurelian reunified them and Diocletian finally drove through reforms to hold it all together. The Empire survived and rebuilt but it was not the same as it had been in the Pax Romana era. The next Pluto Return however in the Fifth Century saw the end of the Western Empire as Roman power shifted eastwards to Constantinople (a process which had already been going on for some time), marking the start of the Byzantine era.
Another example is the British Empire. I favour using the 1707 Act of Union chart in this regard as the Anglo Scottish union was the driving force that led Britain to establish itself as the largest empire in world history. The Pluto Return for this chart came in the mid 1950s with the Suez crisis which marked the end of the Empire in all practical sense. The Union itself survived and continued on although I think it is interesting that the 1955 election marked the last time that the party officially known as the Conservative and Unionist Party managed to gain a majority of seats in Scotland – something symbolic there.
It should be noted that in both of the above examples the Pluto Return accelerated or outlined in raw facts the reality of a situation which had been going on for some time. The Imperial Crisis had been in the works for decades with increasingly egocentric and power mad behaviour from certain Emperors that had weakened the Pax Romana. Likewise the Suez debacle simply wrote the plain facts out which were already known – that the British Empire’s time was past. The Empire had never recovered from WW1 (let alone WW2) and Indian independence had removed the keystone. Suez just underlined the reality of the change in a way that couldn’t be ignored. Trump is obviously a major issue but the rot in the system has been going on for some time and it could well be argued that the 2003 Iraq invasion was when America’s lustre was truly dimmed, in much the same way as the Emperor Commodus’s reign at the end of the Second Century marked the fading of the shine and glory of the Pax Romana.
It has been a long time since the world has witnessed a superpower undergo a Pluto Return (apart from the British Empire I think the last ones were the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire – note that the Ottoman Empire survived two Pluto Returns so it is not a given that the US won’t recover or progress from this period) and I think it’s a pretty intense time for that reason as something like this hasn’t been experienced by most people around today.
Apologies – having checked the ephemeris the 1707 chart’s Pluto Return happened a bit earlier, in about 1951 or so. That still however isn’t too far off the Suez crisis which happened five years later so it can possibly still be seen as symbolic in that regard.
Further to this – it is interesting that the Suez crisis came just after the 1707 chart’s Pluto Return. (It is also interesting to note that Pluto made its first entry into Virgo just around the time of the crisis as well). I would interpret this as showing how the Pluto Return had changed the rules of the game. Trying out an old school Imperialist power move like Suez was something that even in the late 1940s Britain might just have gotten away with, albeit temporarily. Instead Britian tried it just after the Pluto Return had finished, and ended up humiliated. Playing the old games wasn’t going to work any longer.
With this in mind it should be noted that the US’s Pluto Return, albeit still in orb (if using 8 degree orbs for transits), is past its exact aspect and with Pluto moving on and changing signs into Aquarius I have a suspicion that Trump’s efforts to try 1890s style geopolitics may produce similar results to Suez – he and his crew can try (and ten to twenty years ago might have succeeded for a while), but it is doubtful whether it will work out as intended.
Goodness – 8° for transits?!? Usually it’s 1°.
But then again, I think a pupil of Hamaker’s mentioned she changed that in one of the last few issues of her magazine when she was looking at something…
Thank you. This was great.
I am trying to figure out how to protect myself. Simple things – like – is the market going to crash? How do I protect my money?
I have spent a lot of time wondering how the peoples of Rome felt when their decline started. I know GB went through somethings after the Romans left.
The England 973 AD chart had its Pluto Return exactly on the Suez crisis and after WW11 ended with a bankrupt country and the empire breaking up.
My god, what’s coming for those seven major tech companies between 2030-2032? Sounds like either some major competition to make them lose consumers and investors or a potential massive regulation coming? But it sounds like they’re all going to possibly flat line? God to see Tesla is already getting violently hit long before then
I have written a previous post that describes the trajectory of their demise. I feel quite cheffed that Ms Orr has provided confirmatory astrological analysis. Read it here because you won’t see it in main stream media – you’ll be dismissed as a fruitcake.
I have been telling my husband for years America is on the decline and all great empires last approximately 250 years.
Marjorie thank you for this great insight.
I wondered that too… Those are the last years of Uranus in Gemini, right? So whatever innovation that planet brings to the world in science and tech – that will probably be one part of it. And it is kind of the middle of the AI cycle, until in 2043 Pluto exists Aquarius and we are then left with what all this AI came to.
I wonder if the calamity of something global and climate wise is the catalyst in 2030? Data centres are heavy users of both water and electricity and concerns are being raised at the present time and realistically this is only going to increase with “growth”. I believe there was a report within the last month from some financial body that fresh water is running out across the world. Hard questions for governments – do you keep these businesses going or do you tend to your population’s basic needs?
Solar flare?
Maybe Silicon Valley is the new Macchu Picchu…what happened? where did everyone go?
Possibly to British Columbia – they certainly won’t go to Mar a lago
2027 for Apple – and all the rest – so I wonder of that’s the year of Tim’s exit?
How utterly depressing! Does the astrology provide ANY hope for survival or restoration of American democracy? Or are we doomed to a totalitarian regime?
Look at 17th century England: James 1st came to the throne master of all he surveyed; his grandson scuttled away to France. Thereafter, English monarch were appointed by statute.
Be cool. No. All of the Trump team looked discombobulated in 2026 – Musk in particular who has SA Pluto square his 8th house Mars at the same time as tr Neptune Saturn square his Sun which is totally catastrophic.
But the point the FT piece was making was that this slide towards the erosion of democracy and government checks has been going on a long time. So maybe it needs to hit rock bottom before it gets sorted.
Nicole: Not to fret. The US has been on the cliffs edge from the very beginning and we’ve always come through. It’s just the scales shifting left, then right, then left again….
The people who followed the clown and became part of the circus are already regretting their vote. Wait until another natural disaster hits a red state, or two – probably this summer with hurricanes and tornadoes– and they try to call FIMA only to hear: “This number has been disconnected. Please check your local directly and try again”.
Is it being reported in the news that people are regretting their vote? I live in the UK but happened to meet a young American man at the weekend who lives in a liberal city in California. He said that he personally knows many people who still admire and approve of Trump.
When I heard him say that I thought, oh, perhaps people are not regretting it quite yet..?
I thought I’d look up where the Planets were during the Roman period.
The founding of Roman Republic dates to 509 BC, when the monarchy was overthrown. We don’t have a day and month, but that year starts with Saturn at 14 Aq 49 opposite Pluto at 14 Leo 17, trine Neptune at 11 Libra 19.
Julius Caesar’s army crossed the Rubicon on 10th Jan 49 BC. Saturn is at 22 Lib 38, Jup at 21 Leo 18, Neptune at 2 Leo 39, Pluto at 23 Gem 25, the North Node at 15 Leo 51.
The Roman Empire starts in 27 BC, when Octavian is renamed Augustus. At the start of August that year, Saturn is 11 Tau 22 (squaring the Republic’s Pluto), Neptune is at 15 Cap 28 (quincunx the Republic’s Pluto). Pluto is at 29 Scorpio, trine Uranus at 24 Cancer.
So Rome changes from Air/Fire to Earth/Water, and becomes very different.
I’m not sure Pluto returns are a problem by themselves – the Roman Republic sort of staggered through it’s second Pluto return. The issue is when the natal Pluto is harshly aspected by more than one other malefics.
Also, stress from living through another element at odds with the country’s natural elements, breaks things. Like a bird forced into water (air forced to endure watery transiting planets).
Thank you Marjorie of this analysis! As someone who was in the IT industry for 10 years (and was very online for 10 years before) and quit around 2015 when many of the current developments were starting to take place, I have become somewhat of a Luddite in the recent years. So many of the really cool tech applications I saw from circa 2000 after the burst of the first dotcom boom to 2010 have been subject to “enshittification” (pardon my French, but this is a real word) when unchecked greed has replaced curiosity bright minds I loved to talk with. I really can’t, for instance, tell how amazing the first smart phones I used felt. Even the doomed Symbian based Nokia N97! After that, I observed tangible improvement in technology we use until around 2016-17, but it seems now the development has flatlined, when consumers are concerned. There are few innovations making our lives better in technology.
And here we come to Tesla, in particular. One driver, in the past years, has definitely been the battery technology behind electric vehicles. It seems this was an area where Tesla had an edge until a couple of years ago. It seems now the other manufacturers are catching up on this. Tesla sales in Europe were dropping even before the owner made that Nazi salute, and they will likely go off the floor in the coming months, with companies, who buy the vast majority of new vehicles in larger European markets looking for other options.
Also it seems like before, but that before was actually so long ago, you’ve had so many great free resources online and many interesting pages and websites. Now it’s all on subscription, and pretty hefty ones, especially if you were to add a few. Something charming left us, and maybe it was with the rise of social networks.
Are people going to stop using Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft etc by 2030 ? I very much doubt it. I am pretty sure the hype around AI will be wound back just as it has with so many other supposedly game changing technologies. However, there is a huge amount of sunk investment in those technologies which means their legacy is going to be around a lot longer than 2030 unless you assume individuals and governments are suddenly going to shift en mass to some unspecified replacement technology within a time span that is shorter than most hardware and software cycles.
Where I do agree is that economic issues are going to accelerate the process of institutional and political failure which is increasingly apparent particularly in the western world. It is likely to become an issue not just for the USA but globally. This is because the outer planets are now at significant stages in their secular cycles. Pluto in Aquarius and Neptune in Aries will be opposing the signs in which they resided when things such as the UN, WHO, IMF, World Bank, NATO, EU etc were created after the Second World War. At the same time Uranus is going back to Gemini where it was when most of these bodies were set up. This is going to be a period of reckoning for the whole post 1945 world order which was largely created, paid for and policed by the USA. The process has been underway for some time. It probably began when the Berlin Wall fell but has been accelerating since the time the USA and the UK ignored the UN when invading Iraq in 2003, the EU started to push its boundary eastwards and Russia responded by invading the Crimea etc.
When countries start wars then trade inevitably gets disrupted. One needs look no further than the cutting of Russian gas pipelines following the outbreak of the conflict in the Ukraine to see what that has done to Europe. With its Pluto return and progressed Mars retrograde from 2006 to 2086 it is no surprise that the USA has become increasingly inward looking and isolationist but I think people imagining this is just going to be an American issue need to look at those astrological charts which suggest much wider challenges. One worry is that if the US does not fulfil the role of hegemon policing the passage of trade across global seaways then people might have to start worrying about things a bit more serious than Trump tariffs.
Sadly I notice nobody responded to you, but I really must. I do enjoy your posts along with Ms Orr’s astrological analysis. However I must disagree with your remarks in your first paragraph. I have provided, I hope, an analysis of the fragility of the US tech industry in a previous post, which Ms Orr has provided an astrological analysis in this post which will play out later this decade. All the magnificent seven will go on the bonfire and carry NASDAq with it. The Chinese will merely be the catalyst.
That will be suficient to bring Pax Americana down with it along with the divine right(rite) of the Donald. He should look what happened to the firsrt two Stuart kings and their Divine Right.
I write this with a heavey heart as I grew up under the comforting embrace of pax Americana and Bob Dylan.
I did read your post in the questions section but I still don’t see how the US dominance of software particularly in the west is going to be undermined by open source software such as Chromium and Linux. The latter have been around for quite a long time this is especially so because they have already been widely adopted and used by organisations like Google, Amazon and even MS. I was using SUSE Linux well over 20 years ago which in software terms makes it ancient. I can’t see the commercial end users of MS or AWS cloud based systems simply abandoning them for Chinese alternatives partly for political reasons but also because the cost of replacing or repeat forming functioning legacy system is huge even with AI assistance.
I can’t really comment on the impact of Deepseek on AI used by ChatGPT etc or the Nvidia share price though I would agree the latter certainly appear to be in bubble territory. Similarly Tesla would appear to be vulnerable to Chinese competition in the EV market but Musk largely built his car division on the back of government subsidies and policies that favoured his business.
DeepSeek has shaken up the AI industry, overtaking ChatGPT to become the most downloaded free app on the Apple App Store in the US.I wonder how many other viruses can come from China.
I am afraid I could not reply earlier but I had the heavy hand of Saturn on my shoulders today.
I too cut my teeth on Linux by courtesy of SUSE Linux. two to three decades ago.
We could argue for hours as to how far the monopoly profits of the seven are sustainable. To date there have been many half hearted attempts to attack their monopoly positions both in Europe and the United States. However, China may well be the catalyst. Today it has the power and the ability to drive the seven out of their markets by mandating the use of open source software and prohibiting the use of American propriety software. Russia has already suspended the use of Microsoft and Amazon products.
I also think in some ways smartphones ruined something in the world and changed human interaction forever.
I can’t help but agree with you as my dear wife appears be trapped into the world of Whats App. Rather like drink technology is a wonderful servant but a cruel master.
According to Bloomberg who looked at Tesla’s 4th quarter revenue figures and found there were questions to be answered.
Is Tesla experiencing failure in 2028 (or at any point in time) really the worst thing?
I was not aware of a magnificent seven. I wonder because I don’t see Intel among them, but maybe a slide happened to them long ago and they’re not magnificent anymore?
@Gahan, I’m not in this industry anymore and don’t invest at all at the moment, but my reading from different places is that they overexpanded following covid-19 and have been constructing since. The CEO behind got ousted late last year, and there are talks about dividing and the selling parts of the company.
Yes, I think they even had problems before Nvidia came, and then Nvidia came. Also recently Intel announced the retirement of their CEO Pat Gelsinger, who went on to found his own startup and bought Nvidia shares.
Oh, almost the same time as Solaia. I mean, Nvidia was always there, but more graphic cards etc. And then voilà.
@El Aznar, this is a nice way to say he was forced out and took his severance package. I actually took a moment reading some of their Intel 2.0 strategy and wow, BoD really checked out there.
There is also a name for phenomenon where career executives make horrendous decisions putting workers to fire straits and plummeting the stock, but walk out with eight or even nine ficure severance packages, called “falling upwards”. And this actually got really out of hand during Pluto in Capricorn. Hopefully, it will be gone with Pluto in Aquarius.
a.k.a. Windoze 8?
Yes, I followed the story briefly and was trying to be polite. We all know what happened with that exit.
I think also Apple going its way with the chips was one other breaking point in the Intel story.
Solaia: There is also a name for phenomenon where career executives make horrendous decisions putting workers to fire straits and plummeting the stock, but walk out with eight or even nine figure severance packages
‘Golden parachute’?
@Roderick, “falling upwards” is even better term, I think, nowaday. The corporate world has become really toxic. Take Nokia: In 2014, when Nokia sold the mobile device business to Windows, there was a public outcry for 18.8 million € bonus the failed CEO (who moved to Windows) Stephen Elop received. Today, it was announced that the head of current Nokia, mostly a network manufacturer, Pekka Lundmark will step down April 1st. There hasn’t yet been discussion on the background of this decision (definitely to do with the business falling behind) and what has been offered to him as compensation, but I’d be surprised if the sum wasn’t higher than Elop’s inflation adjusted, even if the current turnover isn’t even half of what it was when Elop came in.
@Gahan- I came on board @ Intel in 1999. Prior to that, the mid-late 90’s were ripe for tech and corporate acquisition.
The dot-com bubble left Intel as a shell. Buying up promising tech companies, then “Intelizing” them by firing the worker bees and replacing them with Windoze clones. Mgmt were replaced by fat boys in fat suits driven by pushing profitability. Chaos and confusion ensued.
One of the coffin nails was that infamous “floating point” error in the CPU.
Intel had its time in the sun, and is now just a shell where techies burn out.