I wonder what Charles, son of Pepin the Short, king of the Franks and Lombards, thought as he made his way through Rome to be crowned by Pope Leo. Once a city of over a million souls, Rome had dwindled to between 50,000 and 100,000. Still, Rome was twice as populated as Paris and larger than the (by comparison) hamlets in the Carolingian empire. Most of Rome’s elites and maybe 1 in 7 ancient Romans overall were literate. In Charlemagne’s retinue, only a handful were literate. Almost certainly none of his rank and file soldiers. The great city in the year 800, Constantinople, was roughly half the size Rome was at its peak.

People no longer care for the term “Dark Ages” for the period between the fall of Rome and the more orderly middle to late Medieval period. But it was a step backward. Art, literacy, trade, and culture became smaller, more rare, and simpler. When Rome was briefly re-invaded by the Eastern Roman armies, reestablishing Roman control, it might have seemed that things were on the mend. During those centuries there were good years and bad years. From the summit to the nadir, it would be surprising if people saw the fall of Rome for what it was. I imagine many could not spot the rot from within, and of those who did, some exploited it for their gain, others refused to believe it, and the rest failed to act.

What does this have to do with technology?

Everything.

An empire provides two benefits. The first is trade and the second is communication. Trade allows for greater well-being. You can sell your stuff in more places and you can buy stuff from other places. Your quality of life, including your diet, are much better as goods flow freely through trade networks. Second, is the flow of ideas. You have access to many more thoughts and ways of thinking. Your progress is no longer limited to the smartest person in your village. You have access to the thoughts of the smartest people as far as technological reach allows.

The modern micro-processor the product of vast trade and communication networks. Designers from California, fabricators in Asia, sand from North Carolina, machines from Europe, and tens of thousands of companies. Hundreds of thousands of individuals are necessary to provide you with one modern CPU. Millions more provide the support chips, mother boards, assemblies, designs, and software to make the chip do something useful. The collaboration is possible because of safe networks (ASML can ship a machine to Taiwan without worrying India will steal it on the way), and intellectual goods (you can speed the design of a chip by licensing parts of it from other vendors).

But wait, didn’t the United States make its own chips? Yes, it did. But it wasn’t necessarily cost-effective. When the micro-processor had tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even a few million transistors, they were fabricated in Texas, Washington, or California. But modern CPUs are at the very edge of physics, along with the much larger demand. Complexity and demand have made chip fabrication a highly refined and specialized industry. TSMC amortizes the insane costs of making a modern chip over many customers. Intel cannot amortize the cost of producing Intel chips just over Intel customers. Running a fab profitably means running it near capacity. Intel understands it’s competition is TSMC, not AMD. It is unlikely to succeed.

The modern world that produces an EPYC processor with 128 cores for a reasonable number of thousands (or hundreds) dollars may already be collapsing. We won’t know until we have the benefit of a few hundred years of hind-sight. The United States has been the guarantor of safe trade in goods. The US is stepping back from that role, focusing on a more narrow problem of one island in the Pacific. The Island that fabricates most processors. At the same time, the US has erected trade barriers and tariffs, slowing international trade. For the first time in a long time, there is a prospect the free flow of commerce may become less certain. It won’t be sudden. Like the fall of Rome, it will take decades. For example, the start may be increased insurance, or no insurance. But slowly routes will close.

The current administration is also attacking the free flow of information. This includes an assault on the statistics and information provided by the government itself. Data considered “DEI” related has been scrubbed, and the researchers and teams providing that information fired. We see an attempt to control Universities, which are parts of the flow of information. We even have the prospect that government statisticians will be fired if they announce unwelcome information. Information and research provides our modern life (electronics, medicine, arts, and culture), and freely disseminating that information makes us richer. Along with an attack on research, through lawsuits against news outlets, we are seeing private sector organizations self-edit if not self-censor. Over time, quality information will be more rare and more expensive.

But the current administration won’t live forever, right? Even if repudiated in the next series of elections (and putting aside the slim but credible notion of a coup to stay in power), the population supporting that administration is still there. They are cheering as the existing system is ripped apart. The breakdown of foreign trade and stifling information is a feature. For some it is because parochial, xenophobic, or tribal loyalty is more important than even their own well being. For some it is because the current chaos is hurting the parts of society they don’t like. For some, it will because they profit from the chaos. In that chaos they are free to pursue policies that make themselves richer.

After this administration the people who made it possible are not going away. Charlemagne rode into a long-defeated city not because the invading barbarians were superior to Rome in technology, society, economy, or government. Rome rotted from within. Because the rot was too profitable for some, or the cost of fixing the rot to great for others, or they preferred the rot for other reasons. Once it sets in, the rot may be ultimately irreversible. Nothing else I say will make sense unless these ideas are understood: that the fall is largely invisible to those falling; the fall results in a smaller, sicker, more parochial, less developed world; and that some are incentivized to participate in the fall. I’m not altogether sure any more than a handful (if any) of Charlemagne’s subjects understood how much poorer and smaller their world had become. Or that it would be hundreds of years more before real progress returns to Western Europe.