Every few years, going back to at least the 1980s, there's some new feature-length article about how $new_thing or $different_old_thing will make de Beers irrel

Every few years, going back to at least the 1980s, there's some new feature-length article about how $new_thing or $different_old_thing will make de Beers irrelevant within the next few years. I'm not old enough to know about earlier ones but I wouldn't be surprised if it went back to at least the 1950s and the flood of Soviet diamonds. de Beers is still around, and doing well, having taken care of every threat that's come along, including the Soviet diamond glut. Some of the publications that speculated on their imminent demise are no longer around.