By owning both the launch capability (SpaceX) and the network (Starlink), Musk could exert ultimate control over internet infrastructure. This creates a scenario where he could deny network access to rivals, like OpenAI, representing a powerful and unprecedented form of vertical integration.

With roughly 100 undersea cables cut accidentally each year, the internet remains stable due to immense redundancy. This is achieved through a form of 'coopetition,' where rivals like Google and Meta will purchase backup capacity on each other's proprietary cables to ensure their own services never go down.

As tech giants like Meta fund critical internet infrastructure, they gain immense leverage over developing nations. These countries face a dilemma: accept the cable and potentially cede control over citizen data, or refuse and risk being left behind in the global digital economy.

Due to inertia and the high cost of building new landing infrastructure, today's fiber optic cables often terminate in the exact same coastal cities as telegraph cables did over a century ago. This historical path dependency creates concentrated points of failure instead of a more distributed, resilient network.

The largest tech firms are spending hundreds of billions on AI data centers. This massive, privately-funded buildout means startups can leverage this foundation without bearing the capital cost or risk of overbuild, unlike the dot-com era's broadband glut.

Beyond its original meaning of refining data, the "data is the new oil" metaphor now aptly describes the tech industry's capital structure. Tech is adopting a massive, trillion-dollar debt model, similar to the oil and gas industry, to finance its infrastructure boom.

Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are collectively spending $660 billion on AI infrastructure in one year. This sum, equivalent to building the US interstate system, creates a capital expenditure moat that no startup or smaller competitor can cross, cementing their dominance.

Unlike past tech booms funded by venture capital, the next wave of AI investment will come from hyperscalers like Google and Meta leveraging their pristine balance sheets to take on massive corporate debt. Their capacity to raise capital this way dwarfs the entire VC ecosystem, enabling unprecedented spending.

The country that controls the physical internet infrastructure (hardware) can compromise everything running on it. This makes hardware the decisive battlefield in the global technology war, more critical than software-level information operations.