So Biden, or any president could essentially start a conflict/war/whatever between the election and inauguration has been my take away.

If a President wants to fart on the way out, they have a lot of authority. The President alone has sole authority to launch a nuclear strike, with no need for oversight by anyone else, so there are certainly bigger plays than “merely” authorizing ground forces to partake in a conflict.

I am fascinated by the minutae of hypothetical government actions, because it seems like at this point we are going down a road where they are more likely.

Recency bias makes everything in the now seem more important, and more uncertain than things in the past were at the time. There are many mitigating factors in a President who is on the way out who orders military intervention out of spite that will make it likely much less catastrophic than you might imagine.