An actual, drivable, normal looking small sedan is being driven around Portland by many ordinary people, as Nissan launched the Leaf there last year. It's working. And its a plug in electric vehicle. Isn't that great? A vehicle that runs on any sourced electricity, does the daily commute, recharges in 5 hours. No muss, no fuss, enough range to work. Its like The Future.



From Gizmodo via YouTube, here's a video about narrow-track vehicles, which happen to be either electric or just very light so very fuel efficient and thus reducing oil demand around 80%. If we can adjust to lower speeds and take more risks on our journeys to work, we can solve the Middle Eastern crisis the very best way: by not needing those people at all. They'd like that too, right up until the Chinese and Indians start slaughtering them wholesale because those countries don't have great human rights records either.

I have long been a fan of bicycling and written about it in my stories, including my cyberpunk novels and short stories, and I've gained appreciation of scooters, as most get around 90-110 mpg, so a cup of fuel will get you through a week's commute. They work best in shorter runs, as overheating is a concern, but if its a few miles commute that's still far better than a car getting only 20 mpg at low speeds on city streets or wasting energy hard accelerating up the freeway onramp only to leave it a few minutes later and get stuck in traffic once more. Scooters make sense for many commuters, if they're willing to recognize the need for lower speeds and more surface streets rather than the mania of the freeway. Its a big change, and first worlders dislike new things that aren't "faster". Too much coffee, not enough quiet moments. We're not entirely sane, you know.

The NWO is going to be one where the Derivatives Bubble (which has NOT been fixed yet) is going to utterly destroy every country with a currency linked to another, and effectively end international trade until proper currency valuation based on physical exported goods can stabilize. That's going to take some time, and its going to make Globalism a bit of a joke for many years. The good news is you may end up riding your bicycle or scooter down to the rail station, hop a commuter train to your factory job, build some gizmo all day, or assemble other gizmos into something more concrete, put it in a crate, put that in a warehouse by a train, and then go home again. This will end up being most people's jobs. So much for Chinese factory labor. If they can't ship it because nobody has a trusted and stable currency to exchange for it, it doesn't get built. That's the REAL problem with the Derivatives bubble. And it hasn't hit yet.

The Next Big Thing is the Student Loan Bubble is about to burst, which is the outcome of rising tuition costs dropping millions of college graduates into a job market that doesn't need them and only pays Minimum Wage these days. Why go to college at all? Eventually most modern college grads will declare bankruptcy right after graduation, and live with the cash-only life for the required 7 years before the debt falls off their record and suddenly they can buy a house. Imagine your basic college grad: 23 years old, single, no job prospects. Declares bankruptcy by age 24 after failing to make ends meet working at minimum wage. 7 years later they're 31, married, self sufficient, and ready to buy a house. The bankruptcy is off the record so they get their mortgage and can afford it because they're not paying off that student loan debt anymore. This is much smarter than paying when you're only getting minimum wage. All jobs are heading for that too, btw. That's our real future. If you're getting minimum wage regardless, you may as well live where its cheap and the job you're doing is less annoying. This is another reality of our near future, and already the present in many cases. I suspect the rich will use the media to claim its a shameful scandal, but its their fault. They let the colleges ramp up costs, then shipped all skilled labor jobs overseas to increase return on the stock investments which only the rich have anymore (and don't kid yourself that your 401K will be worth anything if you even LIVE to retirement age. Govt can SEIZE that under current law, and inflation is happening), so only the rich have something to lose if all the kids declare bankruptcy the moment they take off the silly graduation gown. That's the future. You'll see.

Fans of Neil Stephenson's cyberpunk parody novel Snow Crash will remember the Burbclaves, commercially run, for profit, theme-park styled suburban enclaves where the fake middle class live under strict security and operational rules. It seems that Ikea likes the idea and has dropped their ideas onto one of London's papers to see how people feel about it.

Article from the Daily Mail.

I used to shoot paper targets at a gun range. I got pretty good at it. Its a skill, like operating a chainsaw or driving a car or riding a bicycle. Takes effort to learn, and to understand. My early stories are filled with some really bad information about firearms. There was no internet yet, when I started writing them, so I had to look things up in books or catch snatches of on TV or in small magazine articles. Never take any claims about the future from Popular Science, btw. They're always wrong. They love the impractical. It sells magazines, and advertising. They don't care if its "bollocks".

I do know sites, today, which have plenty of info, and my own more educated opinions of them are just as strong. I've seen demo videos of various firearms, different schools of thought, designs that went into use yet are considered failures everywhere else. Love the P90? Its a gutless M-16 with very expensive and proprietary ammo and a primitive action which wouldn't work at full power anyway. Most Bullpup rifles, a favorite in fiction, turn out to be too unreliable and inaccurate for combat. The sear doesn't engage quite right so the trigger pull varies, and the connector can break. Love the AK-47? Try hitting something at 150 yards. Try at 200. Try at 300. There's a reason Russian peasants don't hunt with them. The AK is a terrorist's weapon because it isn't much better than a fast shooting musket. If it doesn't explode in your face. Like the M16? Clean one. Filths itself up something fiece. Trigger slap hurts your finger, and the sound of the bolt sliding past your ear on a cheap coil spring while the bottom of the stock digs into the top of your collarbone because you can't get a sight picture any other way... well, its got some big flaws. It also requires a long barrel to work right, but real world ops require Close Quarters Combat, with a short barrelled rifle. That requires a different caliber just to accomplish. Considering that troops only carry one rifle and have to deal with long engagements one minute and short range automatic weapon burst firing another, its not much fun to be a soldier today. Attempts have been made, at great expense, to compromise, using USSR ammo from 1947 in modern AR-based controlled rifles and carbines of USA manufacture. Its a compromise. Real firearms are about compromise and cost. Wars are lost in economics. In a story, you need to remember that troops don't use the best. They use the least. And also remember that the people running around with the firearms are the cannon fodder, especially when they pile them with medals and parades. We forget that as young men. We're taught to claim glory and embrace rage and kill for our blood god and the comforts of our elders. That's why such stories appeal to us. We don't recognize the truth till much later, and maybe not even then.

Some of the folks on the Chatsubo BBC were smart enough to know this, and refuse to describe a gun and simply call it "a pistol" and leave it at that. They all do the same thing, really. Throw a chunk of lead and make a loud "POP!" sound. The resolution is rarely so simple. We live in a world where we willingly, naively, exploit ourselves and each other for perceived gains. We're fools.

When the oil slows to a stop, that $4.57/gal. gasoline will feel like a fond memory of affordable transportation.

When fashionable looking but armored day-wear scooterist riding suits can be had for under $300.

When TSA perverts groping passengers make flying unfashionable.

When passenger trains find themselves heavily refunded, cleaned up, and pushed into rapid common use for journeys over a couple hundred miles, and Hi Speed Lines (HSLs) go into place to parallel the current freight routes, or close enough not to matter, trains like the ACE in the SF bay to Manteca runs.

When all these happen... things change. We change. We become tomorrow, as we did with common Internet usage in 1995, and cellphones in 2002.

Whats the next tomorrow? Its trains. What's after that?

There's a debate, waged silently between Prius owners and Tesla geeks about the future of the electric car. Right now, with existing technology, there is no good option for sufficient battery material to supply everyone on earth with an electric car. There just isn't enough. There's enough for around 2 million cars, and who knows how much of that will end up with the various militaries and emergency services. People like to say "but even if there's not enough lithium so other technology will come along" but that's pie in the sky. Its not real. We have to work with what we've got or we may as well be just another fantasy genre and crack out space elves with vorpal swords and magic beams. No thank you. Much as the "space elevator" requires cables that don't exist in materials science, and a means of emplacement which would be exceedingly dangerous, namely lowering from space while the end whips through the atmosphere and the other end is counterbalancing out 26000 miles (can you say "not gonna happen"?), real world tech that either exists now or has gotten through proof of concept and is in the patent process is what we've got to work with.

Someday they may work out the chemistry to get a magic battery which isn't limited in materials to rare earths so everyone can have enough battery to have an electric car. Optimists think its here now, but optimists are idiots. The Tesla uses Lithium Ion batteries doped with carbon nanotubes and phosphorus which is a great combo for battery and ultracapacitor, but the Tesla roadster costs $114K, last time I checked. Its a toy for rich people. More common electric cars like the Leaf and Volt actually cost around $48K to manufacture. Its only rebates via the govt that drop the price low enough to consider buying, and that's still twice to 3x as much as a tiny gasoline powered car, which ends up using few or no rare earths and is better for the environment thanks to the use of recycled steel from smelted down SUVs. So there.

The next little problem with getting an electric car besides the battery components and the cost of the vehicle is that it must be sufficiently common such that nobody is willing to kill you to steal it. Consider that once the Tesla gets on the road, its worth enough to car jack and take out of the country. That's half a house in California, that car, or a mansion in Bogota or Monterey. Assuming the battery problem gets solved in the next 20 years (somehow I doubt that but I can pretend to be optimistic), charging up the car will be the next little issue. The good news is that cheap solar is nearly here. The tech is here. The materials required are common. The methods to improve performance (layering, spikiness, 4x absorption) and cost of manufacturing (mylar plastic instead of silicon panels) means that we can afford to cover the roof with panels and generate lots of solar power. Enough to run our homes. A battery for the house so it will do things overnight and we can live off the grid, since that will inevitably go down without sufficient investment in maintenance and repairs. Cheap solar looks to happen right after we get blackouts bad enough to drive up demand for the panels, then its a race to the bottom on panel price, and a race to the top in panel performance. Since the cost is currently "very expensive" and most interest in solar is delayed by knowing cheap solar is coming, few are buying it now.

I suppose the real question is: will it be safe to drive an electric car that costs as much as a house when other people are locked into poverty and unemployment thanks to the US govt offshoring jobs to enrich Wall Street Tycoons? My answer to that question is: no.

Stepping back from electric cars until they're common enough to be safe, and cheap enough not to be a king's ransom on wheels, means retaining Internal Combustion engines, which points to the OPOC engine. Please note that there's a 40 lb module for cars and a 5 lb. 50cc module made to replace common scooter engines, and that they can be run in series, as well as scaled up and down, and run on various fuels thanks to the supercharger/turbo and biodiesel, kerosene, natural gas, ethanol, military JP8, whatever. It will work. And it uses common non-rare-earth materials like steel to manufacture. This is a big deal for IC engines. Of course, it has to have fuel to run, but if all our battery options are limited to what we've managed to invent despite our best efforts for over 100 years, and closer to 200 if you include Volta, then we may not get a magic battery and we'll have to make do with IC tech.

Everything hinges on the battery. Without a cheap scalable battery the electric car is a curiosity, a toy for rich fools.

Just a reminder that in fact, the Chatsubo, the Cha Tsubo, the Tea Bowl, still exists. It is about the Cyberpunk we live and breath through Ipods and Iphones and laptop computers with Clearwire and aerial photography and fake GPS locators and Google tracking us and cellphones ruining our reps with repetition and the Dot.com bust and the Biotech boom and the Obamacare scare and the Peak Oil massacre and the other stuff that really screws everything up in ways its still hard to comprehend. And that's okay. Because stuff happens. Its the real world, remember? We have to live in it. And we used to think it would be so cool to be Cyberpunks. And then, suddenly, we were in it.

Check this out: Thin Film Coating to replace bulky nightvision goggles. Very cool, and sensible, so long as they work well enough. Be a bit odd to see people wearing them glow their eyes green in the dark at night.

I have some fun trends to post here:

1. Baby Boomers are retiring to use their Social Security benefits.
2. Fewer workers are left to pay for Retirees on the Ponzi Scheme I mean Social Security. So Taxes must rise to pay for Social Security.
3. With less take-home pay left, less money is left to pay for luxuries and essentials, killing the growth of small business and cutting into profits of big business.
4. With less money for VAT taxes, businesses will be taxed more, driving down employment and causing many to go overseas to avoid American taxation.
5. Higher unemployment leads to even higher taxation on the remaining workers to pay for retirees and unemployment benefits for the rest. This can potentially death spiral into nobody working because the taxes will end up so high there's no point in trying.
6. Official Socialism continues to rise, but there's nobody to pay for it, so Socialism is already doomed from the outset.
7. US currency is backed by the arab oil, not our pitiful gold reserves. Should the Arabs refuse to sell oil in dollars, realizing that Timothy Geithner is running the Treasury printing presses day and night (seen a $100 bill recently? Smeared ink, looks fake, and most are shipped to Iraq to pay off contractors, spies, and extortionists) with nothing to back them. At some point, China, India, Saudi Arabia, and everyone with a dollar is going to say "The Emperor Has No Clothes" and our currency will plummet. Based on REAL US exports, agriculture, we should see it collapse 95%. Our other export is weapons, and that's a billion dollar business right there, but not as valuable as grain.
8. The world is pissed at the USA. The last 3 presidents have been an embarrassment and cost the USA a lot of points on the world stage. China has quietly invaded Africa with convenience stores and loan officers and they're going to end up owning, privately, most of that continent given enough time, and they have time. China is the 2nd biggest holder of US bonds, which is the other way the USD$ is valuated. If they dump the bonds, either because they decide we're worthless or because someone else does and they're trying to save what's left of their investment, well China won't need us anymore. They won't have to attack, just support a blockade to prevent US violence over our collapse from spreading.
9. A retaliatory blockade against the US by the UN is likely, once our currency goes. Grain will likely be an allowed export. Arms will probably not, if the world can get its wherewithal together and agree they're better off without our sleazy businessmen from destroying them like they've been doing for the last century and a half. The US govt protecting sleazy businessmen overseas? Bad idea. Its going to cost us too.
10. A completely internal US with no real exports but plenty of food and no real manufacturing capacity is one with a lot of change possible. Some regions may undergo riots... or not. It depends a great deal on whether the federal govt tries to manhandle us or does nothing like in Katrina. An incapable federal govt in crisis will be an excellent reason for states to take up the banner individually and result in de facto secession. A state that ignores federal unfunded mandates or brings in its own laws which violate federal law but the feds can't enforce without state agreement/support (like Medical marijuana in California or Gay Marriage in Massachusetts or strict Immigration ID laws in Arizona) means there are increasing REAL WORLD examples of Federal weakness. States can literally take over from the Feds and just ignore Washington DC as an annoying brat, particularly in the Western USA where the Feds have little real power anyway. They closed most of the Bases here in retaliation for Blue State voting, and the Democrats have always been anti-Military so now there's nobody to enforce Federal demands. The states either agree or give the President The Finger. And the governor and legislature become more powerful. This is change made manifest, and requires no violence or bloody revolution. Its secession by apathy.
11. Since the USD$ is almost certainly going to fail by international agreement in the next few years (perhaps as soon as 2011 but don't hold your breath) local or regional currencies will develop to replace them, probably issued by the State govt or in agreement with multiple states. Paper currencies backed by something physical, such as rice or tobacco or hashhish or opium or cured salted-dry bacon or soybeans, whatever commodity you like, something that won't hurt the economy if its withdrawn because its a renewable resource. California will probably go with Rice, since we produce so much of it. Idaho will have potato bushels, and Kansas will offer bearer bond coupons for bushels of wheat. The Bearer Bond, cut to the size of a dollar bill, makes the most sense and is the most able to adapt to real backed currencies instead of the Fiat currencies of imaginary un-backed money that got us into this mess. "Please pay for coffee with a tenth bushel of rice, here's your change sir." That's adaptation and it doesn't even violate the federal law against competing currencies since these are just bearer bonds, after all. Up yours, Treasury Department.
12. States which provide replacement agencies and personnel to all critical Federal services will find themselves able to raise tax revenue and have even more reason to ignore the Eastern establishment. The distance involved will directly impact respect for Federal demands, and the collapse of the dollar will also cause most federal employees to quit anyway since the feds will likely freeze their wages, by law, so massive absenteeism until termination is the most plausible outcome. Stop paying your tax collector, he stops coming to work. Same with the Ag inspector, the FBI agent, the Weights and Measures guy from Commerce and the accountant at SEC.
13. An Unregulated Wallstreet that's seen its share "values" jump 20X but fall steadily against the Euro will be very chaotic. Stocks in NYC will stop seeming like such a safe investment, particularly as they start trading in other currencies since the USD$ will probably be doing its impression of the Weimar Republic circa 1932. The Pacific Stock Exchange is comfortable working with the Pac Rim asian trading countries could easily act as a stabilizing influence. The West Coast of the USA has closer ties to Asia than it does to Washington DC and Wall Street, particularly once the dollar fails.
14. Falling tax revenue will cut into road repair, thus driving further the wedge between West and East.
15. Coastal West will revert to sail boats and ferries as they did until 1945, restoring docks and marinas, rebuilding warehouses, and providing rail spurs to bring goods back and forth from the ports. As trade improves, deepening ports will be needed and sail-powered shipping container vessels and solar powered (with sodium battery backups) dock cranes to handle the containers will become more common. This will likely take decades before things stabilize and standardize so things will be very... interesting until then.
16. High speed coastal transit has long been the helicopter, particularly in emergency situations. Helicopters are very inefficient vehicles and suck down lots of fuel since most of it goes to holding it up. Higher efficiency seaplanes such as Class 2-3 Ground Effect vehicles would make up the difference for high value transport and Class 2 does not require FAA (soon to be replaced anyway) involvement, while Class 3 does. Both types, while close to the water, can run on conventional gasoline (or diesel) engines rather than more costly airplane engines and are about 90% more fuel efficient per pound of cargo carried. They can also carry much heavier loads than airplanes using the Ground Effect, which means that provided there's adequate fuel they could be a serious luxury or emergency transit method. Expect to see many of these on both coastlines and around the rest of the world. Also expect to see them running biodiesel, as some already do in Oz.
17. Should states enact laws to insist goods consumed in that state either pay a luxury import tax of some 25% OR require them to be manufactured within the state lines (with special regional discounts such that Mississippi discounts that luxury tax by 21% if its made in Alabama or Georgia). As trade protectionism is a double-sided staircase to the opposite sense that Globalism is a double-edged sword that's hurt America, protectionism will help restore America and cut unemployment and thus increase tax revenue and potentially lower rates on payroll and VAT. The only people against trade protectionism are the @$$h0135 responsible for the current wars and should we really do what they say?? I don't think so.
18. Collapse of the USD$ also leads to international pullout from all our overseas bases and wars currently engaged in. This withdrawal won't be by choice. It will be because the bribes that kept us there just won't amount to anything and we'll be evicted. Losing the US Military dominance in the world will have some interesting consequences. The refereeing provided by the USA between Israel and its neighbors will be over, and they may go hot war. I implore readers here to remember Israel is nuclear armed and has the ability to bomb its neighbors with nukes, including Iran. I also point out that a regional nuclear war in the Middle East will mostly only affect the Middle east and possibly India with fallout, thanks to the winds. In 10 days most of the really nasty fallout is decayed, and it takes 12 days, on average, for a pollutant in the Middle East to flow around the earth to the Americas. India and China should care. Indonesia should care. We don't have to. It is not our problem.
19. Any blockade or trade tariff war between the USA and the rest of the world will have the interesting mental consequence of making Americans stop giving a damn about international politics, so while things will probably get really crazy, the True End Of The Cold War (America's Withdrawal) will mostly be one of international politics apathy. When it stops being your problem you will find other things to care about, mostly things closer to home and of actual value to you and your community. This is a huge shift from the World Socialist/American Empire model previously practiced by the Baby Boomers running this country. Apathy is a younger generation thing and refocusing our efforts to local/regional issues is hard to measure the long term consequences.
20. The breakup of the former USA by apathy and economic crash will cause the former Social Security recipients to plead for support by their state governments. Whether these pleas are answered and how is another question entirely. Caring for the elderly is tricky and expensive and many cultures prefer ancestor worship and a family bond to require the youth to care for the elderly and provide a family manor to accomplish this. In today's times that won't work, but in a post-oil world it might again, depending on selfishness of the parties involved.
21. Cities based on cheap gasoline-powered transit must either adapt to renewable fixed-electric train systems and streetcars or die.
22. Cities based on cheap oil pumping water to them hundreds of miles away (LA, Phoenix, San Francisco) or over mountain ranges will either tax their citizens for renewable based pumping (expensive) or die.
23. Cities who tax more than the citizens can bear will die when those people move somewhere cheaper and more economic. Ergo, San Francisco and LA will die but Portland and Spokane and Sacramento will bloom. The California Central Valley will gain a lot of population, provided they can tolerate the high summer temps without air conditioning.

So that's what I've got for you. This isn't post-technology, just a different framework. Not flying cars but flying boats. Not a strong central govt but a very weak one with strong regional governments and multiple competing currencies.

Not enough wave clearance for the Pacific but valid for the Great Lakes during calmer weather and the Mississippi, various Swiss Lakes and the Med itself.

So I have good news. The original cyberpunk movement was born from the feelings of dehumanization brought about by the Cold War, by elitism separating people from basic human rights due to lack of available resources, and by the rapidly advancing technology (of the computer age) countered by the declining and decaying infrastructure of the various failed technologies the rest of us had to live with. It was popular, due to games, to picture Cyberpunk as around 2010-2030, with 2020 being the start point for any campaigns in an RPG or novel. Naturally, it really started in 1995 with Windows 95, the Internet that's become so endemic, and then cellphones and now iPhones everywhere. Next is the iPad and 4G data services (or WiMax, whichever ends up more practical).

And then Peak Oil came to attention and eternally ended the dream of the flying car, and most militaries took notice too in their long term planning. The US military, for example, wrote up an extensive paper on this and started acting towards dealing with its own limitations on the subject so we won't lose an engagement due to lack of fuel. Supersonic jet running on synthetic biofuel. No, really, it was done in 2006. As for flying cars... how do you feel about Ground Effect planes? They only go around 30 feet off the deck, but they're surprisingly fuel efficient and fast, so long as they launch and land on water. Think of them as Albatrosses, close to the water surface, sipping at biofuels and running contraband or grey market goods up and down the coastline. Another little surprise is the return of the train. While work is being done on electric cars, and every manufacturer has one in the works (Chrysler-Fiat is selling one based on the 500 Fiat in 2012).

Why do I think its making a comeback? Two main reasons:
(1) the Two Tier Health System thanks to the new health care reform law, a slippery slope of funding boondoggle if ever there was one, is separating the rich and poor in the way described by Gibson et al. We may not have space resorts, but plane trips will soon be so expensive only rich people can afford to fly.
(2) Electronic leashes and personal data reflection is now so endemic all the people you wouldn't expect to bother with it are doing so, portably, slipping them out of their pockets, backpacks, online accounts and back that they seem to be doing it all the time. This is a cyber society.

I never thought Gibson's vision would survive the end of the Cold War but it has. Now the USSR is sort of capitalist, more than we are, and the Chinese are looking at a major economic crash thanks to their own bubble and we're becoming socialist, but only for the people rich enough to afford it. The Europeans are in the position to aggressively convert to solar to avoid getting stomped by the Russians controlling their natural gas for winter heat, and the fuel supplies are still running out anyway. Its a rapidly evolving world, one that's going all electric, with trains turning into the main way of getting around, not private cars. Electric trains, like the French and Japanese.

I'd like to say we won't see things get so dirty as Gibson's Sprawl but I'd be kidding myself (and you). Economic bubbles, tax base, White Flight, and Fleeing bad economies in general is going to lead to some very unsalvageable economic situations and some very odd planned communities in places you wouldn't expect. Western Sahara (the country) is on the West coast of Africa, south of Morrocco and north of Nouakchott. Its an empty coastline next to the cold clear Atlantic, a place where the sea is heavy with fish and upwelling currents. This is a destination for the rich to build club Med resorts. It won't happen until Renewable energy reaches high enough to offer free desalination (like vaccuum pump driven seawater desalination) and the money is there to buy the land (which is cheap), develop the land (also cheap), put in the ports, setup the water supply and electric grid, hire the security to keep out the fanatics and kidnappers, and then start selling off plots of land for mansions and condos in the warm seaside where the fish is fresh and sweet. The girls come later, with their rich parents. And since there's no govt to oppose your Club Med setup, there's fewer problems than you find in say, Mexico.

Mexico, ironically enough, is so close to going "Somalia" that the US military has written up an extensive paper analyzing their situation and while the recommendations to deal with complete failure of that state with the end of their funding source (cheap oil there is mostly depleted), they don't share that particular detail in the de-classified version online. Its looking more and more like Mexico will end up the way it was depicted by Masamune Shirow in Ghost In The Shell (anime season two). Burned out buildings, SAD missions, invaded by the USA hunting drug lords, mercenaries fighting for both sides of the conflict and weapons and tactics tested out. If you're a GITS fan, you can honesty use that, so long as you leave out the cyber implants and focus more on biotechnology. Biotech is making strides, however any story using a lot of synthetic biology needs to be looking at least 80 years into the future, and for it to be cheap and twisted into a frequent chimera forms, think 150 years into the future. Its very expensive to work with, and the primary research, best case, is at least 60 years away, and far more likely to not finish until 2100 due to the 2-hour-lunches of the techs and researchers working on them. I have a personal view of this from inside so I can unfortunately speak on this with authority. Mexico is pretty well doomed from the get-go because of their seizure of infrastructure they doomed themselves to no-investment hell, and its their own damned fault. At least Brazil lets you keep it. Mexico just takes it if they want it, and kills you if you complain. F-d up place and won't get better. The upside to Mexico is you can win the South by bringing in clean water and sanitation and hospitals. That's all they really want. Any power that does so gets to see them recover. The North is more difficult, it being mostly desert to start with, and second because corruption is part of the culture, and only someone comfortable with using that against them could possibly manage it, and account for constant betrayal in their planning. War is more likely, and the drug cartels hire the very best mercenaries thanks to the crap economy for everything else.

Oh, and one last humorous note: marijuana legalization is on the ballot in California this November, but tobacco smoking has been banned at state parks and beaches and public places to the point it will likely be banned entirely in a year or two. Soon you will be able to walk into a store and buy a pack of spliffs, but you'll need a dealer in the underground to sell you some "brown" and possessing a pipe will probably mean a jail sentence. No, I'm not actually joking. Just horrified. California leads the way.