[Deukhoofd]

It's probably not a bad idea. Steel is one of the things that an industrialized country needs to produce to protect its own sovereignty. Letting it shut down and just hope you'll always be able to import enough steel from other countries is a bad long-term strategy. You'd be left unable to fend for yourself.

[jarym]

Yep, same can be said of manufacturing capability in general. If you don't have a manufacturing base then inevitably when there's a war you may find yourself unable to build defense components.

[t0mpr1c3]

Supply chains are so diversified that self sufficiency is only feasible for countries the size of US and China.

Russia has been forced to cannibalize jet planes because sanctions have starved it of spare parts.

Even the US Navy gets its ships built in South Korea now.

Britain's remaining industries are very niche. With a small domestic market, you can't get economies of scale. You have to specialize.

[dukeyukey]

The UK is still the world's 5th largest economy. It's a large domestic market, just not a hyperscale one.

[warumdarum]

27th?

[ksec]

Except out of the top 5, UK has the lowest manufacturing basis while 80%+ of GDP are service based.

[t0bia_s]

Thats what comrades tried many times in history, allways with deadly costs.

[Incipient]

I'd say you have to have a really solid/creative (ingenious?) plan beyond "just nationalise it and she'll be right" - otherwise yeah it'll just be heavy and a drain on the economy.

[t0bia_s]

Centrally planed economy don't reflect actual demand among people. Also cannot implement theory of games.

[georgeecollins]

Let's imagine a hypothetical symmetrical war between two modern countries. One can disable the other's satellites and maintain their own fleet. The other can't get access to any third parties' satellites.

You aren't going to send your steel navy out when one side can see you from space and you can't, almost regardless of the numbers. Your big army of steel tanks is useless against a bunch of drones directed by distribute satellites.

[pjc50]

Everyone in this discussion seems to be forgetting Trident as well. There's a lot of assumption the next war will be helpfully similar to WW2, and some sort of reverse sweet spot where we are subject to naval interdiction but will not deploy the strategic nuclear deterrent, and at the same time have enough time to build things, but not things that require any of the rest of the supply chain than steel (I have bad news about the number of ASIC fabs in the UK).

Back to "dead men dominate UK politics". In this case, we're trying to refight a war from 70 years ago.

[benj111]

Well if trident gets used then what comes next is irrelevant.

It's like planning for your house burning down V dying. If you're dead you don't really need to worry about the after.

So yes the military plans for everyone but global thermo nuclear war, because there's no point planning for that anyway.

I wouldn't say were planning for the next ww2. Look at the number of tanks we have. If anything were over optimised for helping the US fight insurgencies in the middle east at the expense of being able to fight a high intensity war.

[warumdarum]

Beating a exponential curve with a stick. The military never changed

[thegrim33]

The absolute worst case is that it's not advantageous/useful at all in the next war to have the capability, but it wouldn't harm you at all if you do have it, it just wouldn't be useful. In every other case, from the worst case all the way up the continuum to the best case, having the capability is beneficial to varying levels of degree.

[Sabinus]

How many billions have you spent propping up useless industries in the years before the war though? What capacities could have been built with those billions otherwise?

[franktankbank]

We follow a path governed only by the logic chain of previous mistakes. Our next recognition of one could be pretty brutal.

[pseudohadamard]

For Americans wondering why they were making a Judas Priest album public property, it's actually a company based in S****horpe.

[t0mpr1c3]

S tier post

[wongarsu]

In a defensive war, a steel navy sitting in spitting distance of your shores and an army of steel tanks will still do a lot to keep the enemy at bay. And you can swap the tank turrets for Gatling guns on some of your newly produced tanks to help against drones

You wouldn't be able to win the war in your scenario, but you could still do a lot to make sure the other side isn't winning either.

[georgeecollins]

If machine guns were useful against drones Russia would be winning in Ukraine.

Check out Russia's Black Sea fleet to learn the fate of your navy sitting by your shores.

[8note]

russia is currently holding just about all the land it wants in Ukraine

They might not be taking Kiev for a hundred years, but the fortress belt is well within reach in the next couple of years

If they were to negotiate an end tomorrow, Russia certainly wouldnt be giving up territory in ukraine. i dont see how thats not winning

[onlypassingthru]

Russia is not only on the precipice of giving up territory in Ukraine, it's likely to give up so much more because its ability to function as a country is being systematically destroyed.

The only barrier between Russians and anarchy is the last nine meals they’ve had. How's the summer harvest coming along?

[afavour]

If you’re looking at win vs loss you also need to look at what you got in return for what you gave. A ton of casualties and further international isolation aren’t really worth the middling gains Russia could negotiate for peace today. Which is probably one of the reasons they still haven’t, sunk cost fallacy and all that.

[GJim]

> If you’re looking at win vs loss you also need to look at what you got in return for what you gave.

This.

Russia is suffering over 400 casualties for every square km (1036 per square mile!) of territory captured in Donetsk, screwing their own economy and turning themselves into a pariah. Russia certainly isn't winning.

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian...

[solumunus]

Is that land worth the costs Russia has endured? Very obviously not, that’s why it’s not “winning”. If they could turn back the clocks they would.

[somenameforme]

The benefit of war is almost never worth the cost. It just tends to scale up from repeated mutual miscalculations. For instance WW1 started from a Bosnian Serb assassinating the Austro-Hungarian heir and the next thing you know Brits are killing Germans over it. Everybody would have certainly turned back the clock there if they could, even moreso given that "The War to End All Wars" directly set the stage for WW2. But that doesn't mean that the Allied Powers didn't win WW1.

[DANmode]

> If they could turn back the clocks they would.

That’s not my very objective understanding of Russian history.

[mrguyorama]

Russia's explicit and communicated goals for this war were utterly failed by day four of the invasion. Arguably they lost within hours when they failed to take Hostemel airport.

By Russia's own accounting, they lost years ago. It does not matter what the outcome is, Russia has taken massive pain to sustain this war they never planned to sustain. They entirely used up their immense Soviet inheritance, which was something they held in high regard and used to insist made them strong. It's gone now. Used up.

The gas station of Europe can no longer produce sufficient gasoline for internal use. It will take at least months to get that capability back.

They have utterly failed to substitute sanctioned components, having switched back to imported components after their internal substitutions performed so poorly.

Their navy is being taken apart by a country that scuttled it's own navy on day one. Ukraine sunk the flagship of the black sea fleet with supposedly just a few missiles, something which the Moskva by all accounts on paper, should have handled just fine. Except all their craft are in such poor condition that many of the systems on the Moskva were likely just nonfunctional, including defense radars, communications, and anti-missile defenses.

Russia was totally reliant on an American private company for their battlefield communications, and is not coping with the shutdown of their access, which they should have been prepared for long ago. They were also dependent on Discord and Telegram.

Russia is being seriously wounded by a country much smaller than it, which also ostensibly had all the same problems as Russia, like poor soviet doctrine, corruption, a poor economy, and demographic issues.

Russia is failing to compete industrially with a former vassal.

Russia had to import soldiers and ammo from north korea.

Russia's weapons export industry is dead. Nobody wants their trash that has proven terrible on the battlefield. Nobody expects Russia to actually be able to build what they claim to sell anymore.

Russia is so run dry on arms that they couldn't help Venezuela against the US invasion. They sent a single anti air weapon system.

Half a million Russians are dead.

If the war ends today and Russia is allowed to keep all the land it is currently standing on, it still has lost. It's not even a Pyrrhic victory at this point.

[benj111]

>russia is currently holding just about all the land it wants in Ukraine

Based on? The fact it tried to take Kyiv in the first week? That it's still trying to advance?

If Russia were to collapse tomorrow, they would lose everything, I don't see how that's winning.

[t0mpr1c3]

It still hasn't got all of Donbas.

Russia can't even keep what it previously took. Crimea is becoming indefensible.

[AngryData]

Is it that they can't work, or that they are too expensive for Russia to field any appreciable amount that won't just make them valuable targets? Its not trivial to produce the hundreds of thousands of rounds you need for each one to be ready.

[Sabinus]

If there is any nation on earth that is capable of cheaply producing large quantities of simple weapons of war it is the Russians. The issue is not a lack of cheap bullets.

[echelon_musk]

The PM M1910 is used by Ukraine to shoot down drones.

[morkalork]

Steel on its own is inert and useless, you need to retain the entire downstream manufacturing ecosystem that consumes it. Like cars for example, producing steel but letting all your vehicle manufacturers sell off to foreign owners just so you can import BYDs doesn't do you any good.

[tonyedgecombe]

The UK car industry had been doing quite well until Brexit.

[fsuts]

Uk based but foreign owned UK car industry…

[wolvoleo]

Yeah I was going to say what brands are actually still British?

[neilwilson]

Having said that if you have no source of iron ore and no self sufficient energy production you’re stuffed anyway.

The UK ran out of both a fair while ago

[t0mpr1c3]

Britain didn't run out of coal, it's just in deep seams that are uneconomic to extract compared to strip-mined lignite.

Newcastle is proverbially built on top of the stuff.

Although renewable energy sources and electric arc furnaces that consume scrap are preferred these days.

[lazide]

Notably, things like that is why they had their colonies.

[t0mpr1c3]

In fact, during the age of empire Britain exported coal all over the world. That was one resource it did have.

Cotton was another matter.

[lazide]

It still has 3+ billion tons of coal reserves - no one wants to burn them though, apparently.

[warumdarum]

Its also not price competitive as producedin the uk. No high energy industry will survive in europe

[warumdarum]

A political movement that destabilizes the living situation for large parts of the population feeding them to the populists to archieve a lofty abstract goal, thats almost poetic.

[caycep]

would it be situational re economies, though?

i.e. if you have a lot of financial resources and can buy 1000 ships cheaply for the cost of propping up your steel industry to build 100 ships, should you buy 1000 ships (or the steel needed to build them quickly) to instead?

[idiotsecant]

Drone and satellites don't hold territory.

[ekjhgkejhgk]

I was told by economists that the invisible hand would solve this!

[lazide]

Sometimes a pimp slap is what is needed, but no one ever signs up for one voluntarily.

[0x3f]

You can make this same argument about a great number of things. Why is steel any more critical than food or vaccines or the like? Indeed we got caught short of vaccines recently, and had some nontrivial consideration of running a military op against NATO member over it.

[matt727]

The food example, is the exact reason for large farming subsidies in the European Union. These were implemented as a founding initiative, due to the experience of food shortages during the second world war. A great number of things could be considered critical. Due to the nature of when access could be cut off, the main thing countries likely worry about being able to access, is things humans need to stay alive, and things needed to wage war.

[0x3f]

Farming subsidies are one of the most criticized parts of the EU. My comment isn't in support of it. But even so, subsidy is quite different from compulsory purchase. The question is: why is steel special. Not in a no-action-vs-some-action way, but why so aggressive?

Ironically I think it's the same for both steel and farmers: they provide votes.

[XorNot]

Because like, every basic war machine is made from it? Like how is this a question?

There's been two world wars and access to or stockpiling of steel has been a critical strategic factor in both.

Most consumable military assets are made from steel, for example and it underpins most machine tools and factory components as well.

[lazide]

Also all non-flying forms of transport.

[handelaar]

For lots of reasons but if you're the UK and you're honest with yourself and you are only allowed to pick exactly one reason that steel is absolutely critical?

Royal Navy.

[t0mpr1c3]

Ezcept that the shipyards closed in the 1970s.

[AngryData]

Farming subsidies are the only way to prevent famine, the granary system sort of works, but regularly resulted in shortages and famines throughout every empire in history. Even not accounting for longer term climate trends, yield due to weather can vary up to 30% in a year, so it only makes sense to pay for a bit of over production so in the event of a couple bad years your food output is merely break even, and not 70% of needs.

Its better to pay 5 cents more for a loaf now than pay $20 a loaf with rationing later, or if we went back to granary system possibly getting moldy food.

[benj111]

Isn't the point of rationing to prevent the loaf going to $20.

[lazide]

Usually no one tolerates rationing until it’s already at $20 a loaf.

[remus]

Obviously there are a lot of important things you need to keep a country running, but steel is a key input a in a huge number of very important sectors (infrastructure, military, automotive etc.) so having some ability to produce your own steel seems a sensible hedge.

[Deukhoofd]

Food tends to be a lot easier to produce, and many countries do often subsidize their food production, as well as have mercantilistic policies to ensure food production is kept locally.

Vaccines is a more interesting one, and would be something that might indeed be of interest to a nation. On the other hand I don't think many governments are that concerned about another pandemic, sometimes the discourse regarding it very much sounds like "what are the odds it'll happen again"

[ben_w]

> On the other hand I don't think many governments are that concerned about another pandemic, sometimes the discourse regarding it very much sounds like "what are the odds it'll happen again"

Gambler's fallacy will keep striking until we do better, won't it.

[0x3f]

I don't really care for farm subsidies either, but even ignoring that: it's quite a different level of intervention than compulsory purchase. Same with the vaccines. We didn't respond to that crisis by nationalizing AstraZeneca.

My rhetorical point is just that steel gets special treatment probably because it's politically expedient. There are large, politically-relevant parts of the country that are still emotionally tied to the idea that we're an industrial nation. People under the age of 30 still go on about Thatcher and the miners.

There's no real shortage of steel around the world that I know of. We could just stockpile it instead, for example. And in the hypothetical tail-risk scenario this is all supposed to insure against... how do we even get the raw materials for making steel anyway?

[ben_w]

> There's no real shortage of steel around the world that I know of. We could just stockpile it instead, for example. And in the hypothetical tail-risk scenario this is all supposed to insure against... how do we even get the raw materials for making steel anyway?

The more I learn about steel, the more I realise it's not one single thing but a whole collection of different families of things, each with different tradeoffs.

e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-strength_low-alloy_steel#...

[vablings]

One big thing about steel is actually traceability, certain industries require very specific steels. One example that always comes to mind is Sheffield Forgemaster's who are one of the few places in the world that can make absolutely gargantuan sized castings for nuclear reactors and marine equipment

[XorNot]

Vaccines aren't something you need urgently in a crisis.

A wartime effort has to keep supplies moving daily, or the front collapses.

Whereas the need for vaccines is heavily deferred - your population is already vaccinated in peacetime, and you are unlikely to need to make a novel vaccine over the course of a war, nor vaccinate new population during one either: that large vaccinated population providing herd immunity gives you a lot of runway for children with less access.

[pjc50]

> Vaccines aren't something you need urgently in a crisis

.. what were you doing in 2020?

> you are unlikely to need to make a novel vaccine over the course of a war

The lab leak people are probably wrong, but in the present era we're a lot closer to "hook AI up to a CRISPR machine and generate a biological weapon" than we have ever been.

Everyone seems to assume that we might get in a war that we recognize and can fight with the tools of WW2, ships and tanks, rather than a war we don't recognize fought with weapons we don't understand and have no counter for. Or, more likely, simply get bought out at the top. Why fire a missile when you can buy a political party for a mere £5m?

[XorNot]

> .. what were you doing in 2020?

Waiting several years for widespread vaccine availability, and practicing good hygiene and social distancing.

Viruses aren't so good at seizing and holding territory.

[ben_w]

As I recall, the economic damage of the pandemic was ~ "it's worth spending ten billion dollars to make the vaccinations arrive one day sooner": https://www.newsweek.com/operation-warp-speed-what-deal-opin...

(And that was just the cost to the USA, not the world as a whole).

[toast0]

> Viruses aren't so good at seizing and holding territory.

Neither is infantry that's sick with the flu, which may have been a factor in the ending of of WWI.

Tis hard to practice good hygiene and social distancing in the trenches.

If one side had better access to vaccines or access to better vaccines in a conflict during a pandemic, it would be significant, regardless of how the pandemic came about.

[timschmidt]

> The lab leak people are probably wrong

https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/Testimony-Qu...

[defrost]

That is indeed the testimony of Steven C. Quay, one of "the lab leak people" that are asserted by GP to be probably wrong.

Very few people would claim that there is no testimony for the lab leak claim, it's simply that relatively few domain scientists support that claim.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_C._Quay

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory

[8note]

you definitely want flu vaccines for your infantry, lest they get captured or killed en mass due to fever

on a similar note, medical supplies and logistics are a huge deal for going to war, to handle casualties

[cucumber3732842]

>Why is steel any more critical than food or vaccines or the like?

Countries that import large shares of their food and medical supply chains are constantly trying to develop domestic capacity.

[1970-01-01]

Steel comes from iron, which you can't grow. It's more critical than food, which you can grow. Same for vaccines.

[0x3f]

> Steel comes from iron, which you can't grow

Right, and where is the iron coming from in the scenario where we can't import steel?

[1970-01-01]

As it is top-critical, you're recycling it, opening new mines, and taking it by force.

[0x3f]

Don't most of these contingencies apply to steel in the first place?

[1970-01-01]

Nope. The entire point here is facing the decision on which of these contingencies will apply.