“It was a proposition that promised not just wealth, but unassailable dominance.”

The oil cabal had come knocking with an offer too tempting to refuse: an inflated stock price, buoyed by billions of dollars in future product and service contracts. Contracts that would ensure their products remained mandatory for the next century. It was a proposition that promised not just wealth, but unassailable dominance. The federal government would do its part—cracking down on piracy and enforcing international intellectual property laws with surgical aggression, using militarized enforcement to shatter international rivals under the weight of sovereign law. A global monopoly, underwritten by oil kings, sanctioned by the state, and cloaked in the flag.