None of the forum videos explicitly discuss my topic — which is how wealth predicts war outcomes — but one that touches on some interesting topics that could be related to it is the behavioral economics interview with David Laibon. More specifically, what he says about rationality and repetition. He mentions that some behavior can be more or less optimized with enough experience, such as investments in the stock market with enough experience. Other things, however, take a lifetime of trial and error and we never fully end up being able to predict outcomes. I think war outcomes would be applicable to the latter. Humans have fought each other for as long as humans have existed, yet the outcome of war has never been fully predictable. There will always be upsets and entities with small monetary resources impacting outcomes of conflicts in grand ways, prohibiting us from predicting war outcomes solely on wealth. Never-ending warfare has not made war prediction more accurate, instead an argument can be made that the outcomes of modern war are harder to predict than ever before with new technology, strategy, and dynamics.
Lynch, J. (2015). On Strategic Unpredictability. Modern War Institute at West Point. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/2015223on-strategic-unpredictability/
