The magnificent Viktor Schvets of Macquarie with the note:
No decoupling but supply chains will focus on competing blocks
•In Oct ’57, Soviets surprised the world by launching the first satellite (‘Sputnik’). While the US defence secretary dismissed it as a ‘useless hunk of iron’, Edward Teller (father of the hydrogen bomb)was more prescient, describing it as the technological Pearl Harbour. It did not help when early attempts to launch US satellites had all failed, and one of the more popular Soviet comic acts at the time involved an actor walking onto the stage with a small balloon and then exploding it and declaring it to be a Sputnik. When the Soviet audience gasped, he clarified-an ‘American Sputnik’.