The State of California

The Hollow Logistics Chain The Navy wrote the book on destroying an enemy's fuel supply. The Pacific War's most decisive campaign was waged not against enemy fleets but against enemy tankers. Eighty years later, the adversary has read the same history — and the United States Navy's own logistics chain exhibits the vulnerabilities it once exploited. By Lt Stephen L. Pendergast, U.S. Navy Reserve, IEEE Senior Life Member The author is a former naval reserve officer and defense systems engineer with experience in Pacific Fleet logistics and force readiness. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and a contributor to research on defense-industrial energy policy. In September 1944, Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa's Mobile Fleet lay at anchor in the Lingga Roads, a sheltered anchorage in the Dutch East Indies south of Singapore, barely 400 miles from the oilfields it now depended upon for survival. The battleships and carriers of the Combined Fleet — including Yamato...

The Critical Coast in Peril National Security & Energy Policy Analysis — June 2026 California's self-inflicted energy crisis has created a genuine national security emergency — threatening the fuel supply, grid reliability, and operational readiness of the most densely concentrated collection of military power in the United States, at the precise moment the Pentagon is preparing for conflict in the Indo-Pacific. Drawing on Congressional testimony, DoD posture statements, Department of Energy fact sheets, Congressional Research Service reports, the California Statewide National Security Economic Impacts Study, industry analyses, and official legislative records. Compiled June 7, 2026. Third in a series on California's energy and fiscal crisis. This analysis is the third in a series. The first piece, The Inconvenient Truths of California's Energy and Fiscal Crisis , documents the EV mandate collapse, refinery closures, and transportation funding er...

California's governing class spent a decade envying the European energy model Companion Analysis — Policy & Geopolitics — June 2026 How California's governing class spent a decade treating the European energy model as a template for the future — and what it looks like now that Europe has abandoned the template itself. A companion analysis to "The Inconvenient Truths of California's Energy and Fiscal Crisis." Drawing on official California government press releases, EU legislative records, the Draghi Report, IEA data, industry analyses, and contemporaneous political statements. June 7, 2026. This analysis should be read alongside its companion piece, The Inconvenient Truths of California's Energy and Fiscal Crisis (June 2026), which documents California's EV mandate collapse, refinery closures, transportation funding erosion, and the 2026 gubernatorial race in detail. I. The Aspiration and Its Apostles In September 2022, ...