The “Dot-Com Bubble”: A Mislabeled Sobriquet or Malfeasance?
Part 1: The mislabel, the proof, and the damage
The term “internet bubble,” aka the “dot-com bubble,” now twenty-five years after the proposed period in time, appears to me as a mislabeled deception. How does the term “dot-com bubble” continue to circulate despite the realization of its impact on technology stock prices between then and now?
The reason it persists is that it is a convenient label that collapses two radically different things into one headline. It takes industrial globalization infrastructure and throws it into the same bucket as junk internet issuance, then pretends the wreckage proved the infrastructure was never real.
Three-stock reality check
Look at these facts for three major technology companies purported to be part of this bubble. We will look at the year 2000 time frame, price and compare it to today’s price. Keep in mind that these values are inherently stock split adjusted, and the numbers for legacy and current stock prices per share are as follows:
Apple “Dot-Com” Low, 12/1/2000 = $0.24
Apple compare now 10/30/2025 = $277
Microsoft “Dot-Com” Low, 12/21/2000 = $20.16
Microsoft compare now 7/31/2025 = $555
Amazon “Dot-Com” Low, 9/27/2000 = $0.28
Amazon compare now 9/7/2025 = $258
Now for the math of dividing today’s stock price per share by the price of 25 years ago during the purported bubble time period:
Apple 2025 High $277 ÷ Apple 2000 Low $.24 = 1,154 TIMES return on investment (ROI) in 25 years
Microsoft 2025 High: $555 ÷ Microsoft 2000 Low $20.16 = 27X ROI in 25 years
Amazon 2025 High $258 ÷ Amazon 2000 Low $0.28 = 921X ROI in 25 years
Here’s a redux for every $1 million you bought:
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If you purchased $1 million of Apple stock you now have $1,154,000,000.
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If you purchased $1 million of Microsoft stock you now have $27,000,000.
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If you purchased $1 million of Amazon stock you now have $921,000,000.
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In aggregate, for a $3M investment that is $2,102M for an average of 700X rate of return in just 25 years
Was there really a bubble?
How many shares of Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft would you have bought in 1995–2000 if you knew they would be at their current values today in 2025? And you would be realizing 1,154X, 27X, and 921X your return on investment?
Well, that is exactly what everyone who was investing in technology stocks was doing at that time. It was obvious to some of us that technology stocks were, at minimum, reasonably priced for the time and had magnificent imminent growth potential due to the solutions and market opportunities they were representing and pursuing.
Services that were solving previously unsatisfied global issues of human communication and commerce would dominate financial valuations in the future, without question or discovery. Looking back, the “dot-com bubble” time period was the most undervalued opportunity to invest in modern financial history.
The core misunderstanding: globalization is not Coca-Cola distribution
Telecom and technology, especially for national security and eCommerce, is not Coca-Cola and sales stats from Walmart.
Globalization is not blending, bottling, and regionally distributing a consumer product.
Globalization is the construction of a worldwide operational fabric that makes communication, commerce, and secure transactions routine across continents. This is not marketing. It is physical and operational reality:
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Fiber plant and conduit
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Carrier interconnect, peering, and transit
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Routing and DNS reachability at global scale
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Repeatable performance and predictable behavior
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Security and end-to-end transaction viability
This is long-cycle industrial infrastructure. It does not behave like a short-cycle retail business. Valuing it by 90-day earnings is the wrong model. It misprices the asset and then, after a crash, mislabels the era.
A physical proof: the fiber buildout was real
The “bubble” caricature implies the late 1990s were mostly fantasy.
But you cannot fake physical industrialization.
The world laid optical fiber at industrial scale because demand for global connectivity and commerce was real and accelerating. That buildout is a dated, physical record. It is glass in the ground, not a story.
Two buckets: industrial globalization vs junk issuance
The “dot-com bubble” label commits a category crime. It collapses two very different buckets into one headline and then pretends the headline is history.
Bucket 1: industrial globalization infrastructure (real, measurable, long-cycle)
Bucket 2: junk issuance (real too, but not the same thing)
Yes, there were dog food websites and ad wrappers with no customers, no durable revenue, no unit economics, and no infrastructure relevance. That was not eCommerce. That was not national security infrastructure. That was junk. It deserved repricing.
But that junk is not the definition of the era. It was a parasite riding a real industrial wave.
The term “dot-com bubble” became a lazy story that used Bucket 2 to smear Bucket 1.
Digital Island was Bucket 1, not Bucket 2
Under the false label of a “dot-com bubble,” Digital Island shareholders experienced a catastrophic market devaluation and stock sell-off. Digital Island was not associated with or comparable to a “dot-com” company. If you have read this far you are clearly aware that Digital Island was the backbone of the global internet, and had nothing in common with online shopping companies that were without customers nor revenue.
Digital Island was infrastructure for global internet commerce. It was the substrate that made repeatable worldwide behavior possible. It belonged in Bucket 1 with the industrial globalization buildout, not in Bucket 2 with novelty websites.
Greenspan and the policy debacle
If you have studied economics and know who Alan Greenspan was during this time (Federal Reserve Bank Chairman), and you have read his testimony to Congress about his concern about too much wealth generation for the country during the late ’90s, then you will understand why he raised the federal funds rate to kill the economy’s momentum.
Note that at this time in 1999, inflation was 2.2%, which is the target goal of the Fed. Thus, Greenspan’s position was simply based on theory, but in reality, it was totally invalid. During 1998–1999, Greenspan raised the federal funds rate to 7.0%. Greenspan’s .5% rate increase in March 2000 was the event that started the collapse of the securities markets, and internet-centric stocks suffered the worst.
In summary, government overreach killed the technology momentum of the 1990s, not the over-exuberance of investment in the services that ultimately shaped the new foundations of human communication and commerce.
Deja Vu All Over Again
Part 2: The same raid, upgraded with 2025 plumbing
If you are reading this in 2026 and thinking “why should I care,” here is why.
It is the same thing again today, except the weapon is better.
In 2000, the collapse was accelerated by a narrative label and a policy and liquidity shock that dumped infrastructure with junk.
In 2025–2026, the dump is engineered through market plumbing: ETFs, fund sleeves, internal reallocation, options-driven hedging, and automated rumor cascades. Price movement is often a flow event, not a truth event.
Tech stocks are now defense stocks
The world is not primarily about steel, airplanes, ships, cannons, and soldiers anymore.
The world is about chips, and control of what the chips are in.
Control of fabs, tooling, packaging, firmware, and deployment platforms is national power. Compute is the new arsenal. The systems that contain compute are the new battlefield.
So when Wall Street raids strategic technology equities, it is not “just a market event.” It is national capability being attacked through our own financial system.
The modern weapon: ETF and sleeve mechanics
Today, a huge amount of capital is held through ETFs and mutual funds with internal sleeves. This means price can be driven by flow mechanics more than fundamentals in the short run.
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Money flows into a tech or semiconductor sleeve, the vehicle buys everything in the basket.
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Money flows out, the vehicle sells everything in the basket.
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Internal sleeve moves can create supply-side pressure without transparent public accountability.
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Options activity can force mechanical hedging that intensifies the move.
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Rumor cascades can trigger algorithmic sell pressure that becomes self-reinforcing.
A flow event looks like a fundamental verdict. People capitulate. Then flows reverse and the price snaps back, leaving the retail investor permanently damaged.
That is the modern version of the dot-com era mislabeling.
NVIDIA, Applied Materials, Micron, Broadcom, KLA, ASML, Lam Research, and Taiwan Semiconductor are not Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Walmart, Chevron, McDonald’s, Home Depot, Procter and Gamble, and Nike
Part 3: The category error that is weakening America
This is the category error, stated plainly.
NVIDIA, Applied Materials, Micron, Broadcom, KLA, ASML, Lam Research, and Taiwan Semiconductor are not consumer brands.
They are not priced like soda, coffee, retail baskets, gasoline, hamburgers, home improvement, household products, or shoes.
They are the industrial substrate of national power.
They build and supply the compute stack that now governs:
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defense systems and intelligence
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critical infrastructure and communications
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industrial competitiveness
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AI capability and economic dominance
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the platforms embedded into everything else
When the market treats these companies like short-cycle consumer businesses, and then raids them through vehicle plumbing, it is not harmless. It is national weakening.
If we allow strategic tech equities to be raided and devalued in the United States, we will accelerate China’s rise and our own decline using our own markets as the weapon.
The fix: Trump administration actions to stop raids on sovereign tech
If technology is defense, then strategic technology equities are sovereign treasures. They are national capability in public markets. The government has a duty to stop structural extraction and predatory tape raids against these companies.
Here is the fix set. Not slogans. Actual levers.
1) Declare the national category: Strategic Compute and Network Equities
Issue an Executive Order that creates a defined class of publicly traded companies treated as national capability infrastructure, not ordinary consumer cyclicals.
2) The Besant Protocol: Treasury stabilization purchases for strategic equities under attack
Create a Treasury mechanism to temporarily stabilize strategic equities during defined raid conditions, with a structured option to sell shares back to the issuer when conditions normalize.
3) Strategic equity circuit breakers that match the weapon
Create single-name drop bands and mandatory cooling windows for protected strategic tickers, with automatic abnormal volume and options triggers.
4) Kill the sleeve raid: disclose internal fund transfers that manufacture tape pressure
Require near real-time disclosure, SEC notification, and shareholder notification when large internal sleeve transfers occur above defined thresholds.
5) ETF plumbing transparency for strategic-heavy ETFs
Require standardized public reporting of creation and redemption volumes, securities lending tied to baskets, and authorized participant concentration when systemic.
6) Restrict predatory short attacks without banning legitimate shorting
Tighten locate and delivery enforcement, intraday reporting for large short changes, penalties for persistent fails-to-deliver, and rapid enforcement for coordinated “short and distort.”
7) Stop the rumor cascade: algorithmic cooling triggers
Trigger cooling and review when price collapses exceed thresholds without disclosed fundamentals and align with abnormal options and rumor spikes.
8) Put checks and balances around Fed debacles that destroy capital formation
Install oversight triggers that require rapid hearings and formal national capability impact review when policy shifts materially impair strategic infrastructure financing.
Closing
The “dot-com bubble” label remains in circulation because it is useful. It lets people pretend industrial globalization was fantasy and that long-cycle infrastructure was correctly punished.
It was not.
Now the same category error is being applied to strategic technology and semiconductors. But today the stakes are higher. Technology is defense. Chips and control of what chips are in is national power.
If we allow raids on sovereign tech to continue, we will weaken America using our own capital markets as the weapon.