Gauge/string duality applied to heavy ion collisions: Limitations, insights and prospects

Over the last decade a fruitful interplay has developed between analyses of strongly coupled non-abelian plasmas via the gauge/string duality and the phenomenology of the quark-gluon plasma created in heavy ion collisions. I review the reasons why the gauge/string duality is not a precision tool for QCD physics at present, with emphasis on conceptual issues. I then argue that, nevertheless, the duality can provide valuable insights at both the quantitive and the qualitative level. I illustrate this with a few examples, and conclude with a brief discussion of future prospects.