For two decades, SaaS companies built empires on a beautiful, locked-in logic: make switching painful, make customization limited, make implementation expensive. The lock-in was the product. Now AI has destroyed that calculus — and over half a trillion dollars in market value has quietly disappeared to prove it.
There is a metal that has outlasted every empire that ever touched it. The Sumerians buried it with their dead. The Spanish murdered a civilization to possess it. And in 2016, Canada — a G7 nation of serious people making serious decisions — sold its last bar and walked away with zero. What they left on the table wasn't just $125 billion. It was six thousand years of hard-won wisdom.
Canada sent its athletes to Milano Cortina in a maroon quilted vest that converts into a pillow. A pillow. We're a nation of backcountry skiers, Rocky Mountain hikers, and November ferry lineups — and Lululemon dressed us like a Willy Wonka fever dream. We deserve better. We always did.
Denmark cannot defend Greenland's 2.16 million square kilometers with 25 warships while China and Russia circle the Arctic. The $100,000 offer insults Greenlanders; $250,000 per person transforms lives for $14.25 billion—less than 2% of annual U.S. defense spending. America secures the free world. This is the bargain of the century.
Notes Beyond the Map 