I applaud the concrete predictions, but like all the sky-is-falling things I've read about Trump and the tariffs which haven't (yet?) come to pass, I think Stross's are over the top and business will continue as usual. We'll see, it's good he's stockpiling food and medicine since that's consistent with his worldview, but I wonder if we'll learn anything from the outcome since one of us will be very, very incorrect.

The Northern Ireland bit was interesting to me. Maybe I misunderstood the tone but it seemed to me that Stross wanted a customs border between Northern Ireland and Britain, and no such border between it and Ireland? That seems bizarre to me if you think of the UK as one country, and Ireland as a different one. Or am I misreading it? If it's untenable for the borders to work that way, it seems to me Northern Ireland isn't (not "shouldn't be" but specifically "isn't") a part of the British people's nation already, and borders should be re-drawn to reflect that.