I believe there were pieces of a plan. This global energy shift gambit being one of them. I don’t think there was a unified strategy with contingencies etc though (if there was it certainly wasn’t very good).

I observe mostly short term opportunism. Powerful people deliberately injecting chaos for financial profit.

Negative externalities:

- loss of trust

- loss of evidence based policy

- loss of long-term planning

- loss of talent

- financial loss for almost all except the rare insiders

>some sort of plan

George Friedman, The Next Decade

Short-term benefits seem to be good enough for America in this new age.