5 Efficiency Gains: How the World Ticked Out the USA-Iran War

How the world survived the war by cutting the surplus, decoupling from sulfur, and building a new baseline.

Professor Jiang predicts the US Empire going to end on Glenn Diesen’s podcast.

Professor Jiang has famously called the current global state a “Bronze Age Collapse,” but for those watching the gears of history turn: This is nothing new. Since the Rich Dad Poor Dad, Donald Trump has already told everyone the 1% is going to extract the 99%. The debate when the America going to enter that stuttering chapter of a 50-year-old extraction model is no longer relevant to the world. Because after America announced announced the new defense strategy, I think they are effectively just building the whole world against them. While we are still listening to how bad the American system will evolve, the rest of the planet has quietly moved on.

Earlier I wrote about how the world will move on from the 9-million-barrel-per-day (bpd) shut-in, and now the world has proven we have moved on to the new baseline. We were told that a 30% drop in fertilizer exports would lead to global famine. Instead, we adapted. In May 2026, we proved that at least 3 million bpd of demand was nothing more than “excessive” leisure flying. It is a luxury we never actually needed for survival. Even in Australia, gasoline prices have already retreated toward pre-war levels, thanks to a mix of halved taxes and aggressive demand destruction.

We are adjusting fast to a leaner, more efficient “New Baseline.” Once this baseline is set, the old metrics of “Control” become irrelevant. USA and Iran can tangle in the Strait of Hormuz forever; the world has already built a bypass.

Let me show you how these 4 major highlights of what has already moved on:

1. The Jet Fuel Deletion: 3 million bpd of “leisure flying” was never real demand.

The world didn’t just “buy less” oil; it learned how to function without the waste. The 3 million bpd of “unnecessary” jet fuel demand from 2025 isn’t coming back. Only 120 UK flights were cancelled in May, representing 0.53% of scheduled services and within the typical 1% cancellation rate seen in normal years, The Department for Transport said in a statement. Most UK cancellations involved Middle East routes, the department said.

Corporations have replaced short-haul business flights with permanent digital infrastructure, and the “weak sentiment” of 2026 has forced households to optimize their lives around local utility. The “King” can no longer threaten to starve a world that has already pruned its own appetite.

2. Australia’s Proof: The $1.86/liter baseline is the new norm

In May 2026, Sydney petrol prices dropped below pre-war levels. Australia proved the “American Logic” wrong. By halving fuel excise taxes and allowing demand to naturally contract, the Australian market stabilized at a new baseline while the U.S. was still preaching doom.

This demonstrates that when a government prioritizes Resilience over Revenue, the 99% can survive the 1%’s wars. Australia didn’t wait for the U.S. to “win”; they simply re-indexed their economy. You could argue the government will then before poorer in projects in coming years, but don’t forget this is also part of the deflationary adjustment we should get (as explained) as all government is the biggest spender of the world.

Result: Now Shipping and trucking have moved to “Full-Load” mandates. We no longer move empty air around the planet.

3. The BRICS+ to by pass Iran War limits

Under India’s 2026 BRICS Presidency, the expanded 11-nation bloc has stopped talking about “reforming” the U.S. system and started deleting it. After the Iran War, massive of new re-alignment on trade deals and routes has appeared.

With the creation of independent payment rails and “Energy Security & Sustainability” tracks, the Global South is trading in a “Common Destiny” framework. They represent 45% of global energy consumption, it is enough to ensure that if the U.S. wants to blockade a strait, they are only blocking themselves.

4. Out of the “Sulfur Trap”

The 30% drop in fertilizer exports from early 2026 was supposed to be the “killer shot” for global stability, yes for short term indeed. But it also triggered a massive, decentralized shift toward organic soil management, modular ammonia production, and regional agricultural loops.

Now China has already made major push into new fertilizer technologies, including

• Coal gasification to create the necessary ingredients for urea
• Nitric Acid Process: Guizhou Batian in China, has been running a global-leading industrial scale production in making Phosphate Fertilizers by using nitric acid.

Don’t forget the fact that we actually had over-grown rice globally for years. In 2024/25, we have a massive global rice stocks of 180–200million tons (with global annual rice consumption of 530million tons) and a surplus production of 10million tons a year. Now we have the freedom to readjust the rice production back to more realistic level. These ways above are proven to be able to supply in large industrial scale, and if Iran war stays on, in 2–3 years time, we won’t need to beg for oil from the Strait of Hormuz because our “Baseload” will be built on local efficiency and high-tech nutrients.

Nitric Acid Production could replace the need of Sulfur.

The “Sulfur Trap” failed. The world is moving toward fertilizer production that doesn’t rely on oil-refining byproducts, making the “oil-for-food” threat toothless.

5. The Plastic-to-Food Pivot: Rerouting chemicals from junk to fertilizer

By the end of 2025, global overcapacity in the six chemical building blocks (including ethylene, the father of plastic) reached 226 million tonnes. This is the highest level of overproduction since records began in 1978. China alone added nearly 19 million tonnes of capacity in 2024–2025. They were producing so much plastic that they were literally running out of places to put it.

Now Petrochemical plants are shutting down the “excessive” plastic lines and countries like India, China, and even Saudi Arabia are redirecting that energy into Ammonia and Urea production, which will helps food production.

There are also real incentives now to minimize toy packaging and also recycle plastic as virgin plastic are no longer cheaper.

Over-production of plastics was a headache in 2025 and now corrected via the Iran War

We just stopped wasting. We could just remove 1.5 million bpd of oil demand from the collapse of the single-use plastic glut.

It’s not a crisis. It is a correction. The world will be more diversified in trades. We will find a world that is Lean, Plastic-Light, and Locally Powered.

Verdict: The Trade Bypass: Trading through Mandarin/Hindi nodes, ignoring the dollar.

The youth have already seen English is no longer giving them an advantage. Peer-to-peer trade has bypassed the old “Control Rails,” rendering the USA/Iran tangle a side-show. The youth are shifting to learn non-western languages and cultures: Mandarin, Hindi, and Spanish. These are the fundamental languages of the nodes where the physical world (grain, batteries, minerals) is actually managed. The “Key to Survive” in the new world is no longer a Western finance degree; it’s the ability to participate in the Building Real Relationships and Trade in the new world.

The USA and Iran can stay locked in their 20th-century dance of dominance, but the floor they are dancing on is being dismantled. The 1% told us that 9 million barrels was the line between civilization and the Bronze Age. They were wrong. It was the line between their profit and our efficiency. By deleting the fat and upgrading the engine, we haven’t just survived: We’ve evolved. In two years, the ‘King’ won’t just be powerless; he’ll be a history.

Welcome to the New Baseline.

The next article I will show you why the war is a cure in our daily life.

☕️ Let me know what you think! Hope the article allow you to breath, pause, and better feeling about the possibilities.

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