On with Kara Swisher - Ian Bremmer on Putin, Xi…and Elon Musk

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Kara and Nayeema are taping from Europe this week, so today we decided to tackle all things international with Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group and the man Fortune 500 CEOs seek out to make sense of political risk and exposure. In the interview, Ian projects the Top Risks for 2023 -- from a rogue Russia to a global energy crunch. He breaks down recent developments in Brazil, Ukraine, Iran and China. We double click on the risk of disinformation, divisive social media and other “weapons of mass disruption” rampant in a digital age. And Bremmer makes a bold comparison between CEOs in Silicon Valley and autocrats abroad saying: “Xi Jinping increasingly rules China the way that Putin rules Russia, the way that the Supreme Leader rules Iran, the way that Mark and Elon rule their companies.” You can find Kara and Nayeema on Twitter at @karaswisher and @nayeema. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today. Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial. ConstantContact.ca. Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is GPS with Fareed Zakaria with far less Davos. In fact, none at all. Just kidding. This is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Naima Raza. Kara, are you sad you didn't get invited to Davos? I never get invited to Davos. Is that a shame? No, I think it's actually good that I don't. I went once as a wife of and I hated it. Oh. As you know, it's a lot of rich people looking each other up and down, except in the snow, and I hate cold weather. It's just awful. It's like a lot of wine parties by VCs, and it's so

ridiculous. Well, we should ask our guest today about this, Ian Bremmer, because he is headed. He loves Davos. And we are international right now. We're in Germany right now, and we're headed to London, and that's what we're doing. So we're here. We're being international-ish. We have spent some time at DLD in Germany. We're headed to London just in a little bit. You were a real pleasure to fly with, Cara. Was I? I ignore you completely.

Well, no, because I saw that they first had us sitting next to each other on the flight, and I moved my seat up. But I think you moved your seat as well, because neither of us fly to sit next to each other. That's true. I don't like to talk to anyone on a plane. I don't like to talk to anyone on a plane. I don't like to talk to anyone on the plane except perfect strangers who are handsome. I'm happy to talk to them. I just want to watch movies.

I slept the whole way. Yeah, I don't have a lot of alone time. So when I get it, I go for it. Well, I'm glad you could enjoy the alone time on my dime, Kara. Yes. You did ask me to pick up snacks for you before the plane. Well, that's because of the FAA thing, the problems with their shitty vintage systems. They call them vintage.

I usually get through airports very fast. I have all the things clear and TSA, but it was a long wait. It was crazy. And yes, that meant that you asked me for snacks on the plane and I brought them to you. Yeah. And you said, oh, this has blue cheese, which I hate. And I said, I know that. I knew that when I packed it for you.

Oh, that's so kind of you. So weird. So Elon of you. I'm just waiting to poison you. Oh, that's so kind of you. So weird. I'm just waiting to poison you. Poison you. Okay. Anyways, what have been your observations from our time abroad? You know, I still think the world has become so global that whatever major capital you're in, they're a lot like the others.

That said, you know, there's a lot of more concerns here with what's happening in Ukraine. It's a little closer, obviously. I think they're sort of struggling with the issues around Russia and oil and gas. And, you know, those same things we're struggling in the U.S. with, with partisanship and issues around making politics work. And, of course, I think they're more concerned here with environmental issues and climate change. Whenever I'm in Europe, I'm always like, oh, they're so ahead of the curve on certain things.

Like London's congestion tax, for example, was introduced 20 years ahead of the New York tax, which still hasn't been introduced to private vehicles. And in terms of social media, the EU now has this Digital Services Act. Yeah, Europe has been ahead of regulating tech. They had GDPR at first, and then now they have these two digital acts that are around privacy and what they can use. There are different things in terms of marketplace. It's essentially an antitrust bill. The fact that now if social media platforms,

which this bill calls gatekeepers, are in violation of the EU bill, they can be fined a percentage of their global revenues, that's the game changer. I think it could be 6% or 10% of global annual revenues, which is a huge difference from what I think you called the multimillion dollar parking fine tickets on Facebook. Yeah, and that's what it is.

They'd rather be in lawsuits or stuff like that. That's actually an Elon technique. He'd rather be in lawsuits because it's a cost of doing business. Same thing with these tech companies. We really have to start to do it in a way that doesn't hinder innovation. I think that's one of the issues you do have to think about. There is a reason U.S. companies have more growth because there's less regulation. And at the same time, at some point, we really do need to regulate them when they get certain power.

I am like a Europhile and an Anglophile. And actually, a person came up to me at the conference who's a big fan of the show. His name was Antoine Le Boyer. And he listens to the show religiously. And he said he really appreciated my international perspective. And he loves listening to us and our chemistry. And he said in our critique, and I think he meant my critique of how in the United States, there has been so little regulation and so much kind of this emboldenment of the egos of Silicon Valley and otherwise. He said, you know, I wish we had more of that problem in Europe. I wish we had the

companies these people made. There's a reason they don't have Google, Amazon, Facebook. And it's not just because we're so clever in the United States. It's too much regulation and too much interest in minimizing risk-taking. That's always been an issue. Yeah. It's also a much more fragmented market. But I think it was fair feedback from him because I am sometimes guilty of thinking about what's wrong in the States.

But actually being outside, you hear people who are really appreciative of the innovation and the entrepreneurship. And certainly it was helpful to hear that. Both of them have their costs. Anyway, let's get to talking about global things since they like your global perspective. We do have a global person today. In addition to myself. Yeah, right. I'm not as much as you are. Ian Bremmer, a man who has more than a few observations

about what's happening around the world. Yes, Ian is the president and founder of the Eurasia Group, which advises Fortune 500 CEOs and many more on political risk. He is a highly sought-after thought leader. And they recently published their Top Risks for 2023 report. Obviously, it's not particularly uplifting reading. He talks about everything from climate change and energy crunches to a rogue Russia, which sounds like a movie I don't want to see. It's like Noura Roubini, mega threats, top 10 threats. Mega threats. Yeah, well, they're selling it. They're selling the drama. It's like we just started a new year and everyone's telling us what's going to go wrong. But there are two risks in the report that I'm especially excited for you two to discuss.

Which ones? Maximum Xi, which of course refers to the emboldenment of Chinese leaders, Xi Jinping, and Eurasia Group had ranked that as I think their second of the 10 global risks. And then weapons of mass disruption. This is obviously a play on weapons of mass destruction, but in this case, Eurasia Group is not talking about nuclear or chemical or biological warfare. They're talking about social media warfare, which is kind of your turf, Cara. It is. God, I wonder who's been talking about that for a decade. I don't know. A decade? Try two. Two decades. Why are you trying to make yourself younger? I don't know. It's just a long time I've been saying this. Basically how tech,

especially when powered by AI, can fuck up a democracy near you. Yeah, I'm not a foreign policy expert, but it's very clear this is a global problem. And it's increasing with more and more investment in AI and everything else. As the tools develop, it's going to get a lot worse. That said, there's a lot of possibility for some really cool innovation. So you have to look at it as tools and weapons. I mean, you can go from January 6th and what's happening in Brazil where thousands of right-wing Bolsonaro supporters stormed the government buildings, crying a stolen election, some of which was pumped up on social media. And then you could look at some things that have been really fascinating and interesting what's happening, which social media does. So it's a two-way street, but a lot of the negative stuff is very important to talk about. And look, this conversation you're about

to have with Ian Bremmer is such an important one for us to have right now. Not because we're abroad with our suitcases and whatever, but because it is a crazy moment for the world right now. There's this technological threat to democracy we just discussed, and U.S. dominance is waning. There's a whole new alliance structure potentially building up around China. You know, they've got North Korea as a rogue state that's propped up by China. You have Iran cut off. It's got relationships with China. Russia has this unlimited friendship with Xi, which, you know, it's helping embolden Putin, I think.

Africa, China, Pakistan, China. We tend to live in this happy-go-lucky kind of U.S. is a superpower world. And I think we're just really looking ahead with Ian Bremmer in a way that will be fascinating and so important. Yeah, it's really important. We'll take a quick break and we'll get to the interview. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see? For the longest time, we have these images of somebody sitting crouched over their computer

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It is on. Ian, thanks for joining us. We're catching up right as you head to Davos for the World Economic Forum's annual forum on political media and business elite and those who pay to be around them. I'd love you to explain what that is for people. I think people kind of know I call it a place where rich people lick each other up and down. You may have a different definition of the place. Well, look, you're talking about almost 3,000 attendees, you know, probably 30, 40 heads of state, the heads of all the major international organizations, a lot of CEOs, a lot of hedge fund types, a lot of tech types, and influencers. They're there for about five days, and most of the people I know that go go that are on that list, think that they

can get more work done in those five days than they could in five weeks. Meaning, you know, buttonholing people, etc. Like having meetings, etc. Yeah, I mean, you know, it typically almost every CEO that's there has half an hour meetings, bilats, as they call them, that will fill their entire day. So the level of productivity that comes out of, you know, eight or 10 bilats in a day will be so much higher because they just don't want, I mean, this is not a catch up and let's talk about the state of the world. I've got something significant that I want to get done with you, understand from you, so on. So, I mean, you could say that it's deeply transactional, strategically transactional, but it moves the

ball, right? And otherwise, I really think these people would not be spending, would not be giving up a week of their life. And it's not like the CEO is saying, oh, I can't wait for Davos to be so much fun. No, I mean, it's a lot of work. And going to conferences is not your whole job. Explain what your group does. People pay you for advice on Outlook. So you're collecting information and then analyzing it and bringing it back to them, correct? Yes, I'm a political scientist by training. And we have over about 200 plus folks.

And they're mostly political scientists. scientists. And they're trying to understand how politics in the world is affecting the global marketplace, global technology, where it's creating inefficiencies and outcomes that are other than you would otherwise expect if you were just focusing on the economy, the business, the technology, the environment, what have you. So I spend my time trying, reading, trying to understand, trying to meet with people that have expertise and are making these decisions, and analyzing it and assessing it. So that's really what I spend my time doing. So let's get specific then, because you also put out this report, which is a sort of broad brush of what the top risks are in 2023 going forward. Let's start with Brazil, because that's the most recent thing in the news. This

is the rating of Congress and other government buildings in Brasilia. A lot of people are comparing it to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. Well, I mean, first, one of the sentences that I wrote in the top risk report, which I don't have in front of me, so I'm going to paraphrase it, is that, you know, a country like the U.S., which back in 89, when the wall fell, was the principal exporter of democracy in the world. Right, the beacon of democracy. Yeah, I mean, frequently hypocritically and not well applied and with bad outcomes. But nonetheless, we did do that.

And today, we're the principal exporter of tools that destroy democracy, that undermine democracy, something that you spend a lot of time talking about, Karen. And there's no question in my mind that even though that may not be the intention of the political participants in the U.S., it is happening. And Brazil is a very significant piece of that. Now, the good news is that the Brazil institutions are not about to fragment. This coup was never going to work. Even Bolsonaro had to, you know, sort of stay at arm's length from it from the moment that it started. In that regard, softer than Trump's support. Bolsonaro was denying support. There was no speech right before it.

I mean, he said things about election denialism, but it wasn't a very direct, let's go to the Capitol and tell them what we think. That's right. I mean, he has promoted, as has his son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, yet another analogy with the United States, has promoted a lot of conspiracy theories around how the establishment, how the judiciary has made it impossible for a fair election to transpire. There have been thousands of Bolsonaro supporters that have been outside of major police and military barracks demonstrating, calling for the military to engage in a coup, and Bolsonaro has not told them to disband.

Right. They were counting on the military to come with them. Let me read the quote from the report. The U.S. is now, quote, the leading exporter of tools that undermine democracy, the result of algorithms and social media platforms that rip at the fabric of civil society while maximizing profit. Talk about that, because it's something I talk about for years, you know, and it helped fuel disinformation and anger. It helped people organize. Twitter had laid off content moderation staff, including teams in Brazil, at least. Which feels insane, right? Yes, it does. But they laid off the moderation staff, including teams in Brazil, at least. Which feels insane, right? Yes, it does. But they laid off the team in Brazil.

Accounts supported Bolsonaro and supported some of his conspiracy theories were reinstated. It's not just Twitter, Telegram, the messaging app where extremists organize. Meta owns WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook, very popular in Brazil. Can you talk about this, this idea of our tools helping do this, which it had done here and now is being exported there? Absolutely. I mean, the fact is that without Facebook and Instagram, Bolsonaro does not become president. His supporters do not become as radicalized. The Brazilian population, when you ask them in basic polls and their views on all sorts of policy-related questions, represent the bell curve, just as Americans do on issues like abortion. And you

never know that from social media driving this extremism and polarization, which of course then feeds into the media and is used by the politicians because they see that they can exploit it the most easily. That's exactly what's happening in Brazil. And even though Lula has been able to clear out all of these demonstrators, they're not going away. And as Lula and the judiciary pursue investigations against the organizers, the funders, all the rest, that will be seen as, what do you think, a witch hunt, which will make them feel stronger in their grievances and needing to overthrow this legitimately elected government.

I mean, it's such a deep and pernicious problem that these countries are facing. Right. It's like digital mold. This was one of the top risks in the report, which is weapons of mass disruption. So talk about how these weapons of disinformation evolve, especially you noted artificial intelligence, which is getting a lot of focus this recent weeks with chat GPT. It's pretty basic right now, but we're sort of on a precipice of AI that seems useful. I was just having a conversation last night with someone where, you know, cryptocurrency, you never really had a use for it. But this, you can see how it works, much the way you saw how the internet worked very early on. So where does it go from here? We know what it's done. Where does it go from here?

And I used it because it came up with that title, Weapons of Mass Disruption. That was ChatGPT. We just put in what the risk was about. It said, what do you think would be a good title? It said, how about weapons of mass destruction? There you go, right? Fire half of my people. There you go, right, yeah. Did you fire half your people? No, I mean, you know, there's no question.

We're not going to need headline writers going for a New York Post. What the hell are they going to do? But I go beyond that. We're already seeing that chat GPT is being used in developing malware, right? And so, I mean, bad actors, it's going to be a lot easier for them to be disruptive as a consequence of these AI tools. Also, the fact that within probably months, you're going to have human beings that are going to have a really hard time differentiated between who is a human and who is an AI bot online, at least in text,

and even fake real human beings that are, you know, stock analysts or involved in some of these companies. I mean, I don't think we're remotely prepared for the political disruptions and the market disruptions that will come from these tools. Because it can really iterate itself. But have these companies learned everything from the scrutiny? This has been going on since 2016. I mean, you know, asking that question as a political scientist, you know, you can ask always, have the politicians learned anything? And you have to ask, what are the incentives of the politicians? And as long as the incentives are, we've got to raise a lot of money from people that support these issues, and therefore we need to stay in power, then you're going

to have a majority of Republicans on January 6th refuse to certify the election. And so, you know, what are the business models that are incentivizing the shareholders, the owners, the CEOs of these companies? And the answer to that is they need clicks, they need eyeballs, they need to monetize their product. And as long as that remains the case, they're going to behave in that way. Are they better or broader in the U.S.? So I think they're more of a danger outside the United States. Yes, agreed. I agree. Because these institutions are weaker and because there are true authoritarians, not just one guy who is trying to break stuff, but actual movements that are entrenched. I mean, when you

look at Viktor Orban, and those around him in Hungary, when you look at the old regime of Duterte, and what they were trying to do, I mean, on and on and on, it's an enormous danger. Yeah. And it's one that you're not going to have many internal actors that are capable or willing to fight against. I say there's nobody loves the internet, like a dictator. They love it. It's not just mass destruction. It's mass control or mass influence, mass surveillance, mass control. Yeah. One of the things that got lost in the Francis Haugen revelations was she was mostly concerned with abroad, concerned about this influence.

Are they unlearning this? You know, last year you reported that Elon had spoken directly to Putin and was trying to insert himself actually in power. You know, the funny thing is that I actually believe, Cara, there's a good chance Zelensky isn't in power today if it wasn't for Elon and it wasn't for Microsoft. Oh, explain that. Well, those organizations, far faster than Western governments, came in to support the Ukrainians in defending themselves. You know, first of all, the first attacks against Ukraine

were not on February 24th. They were on the 23rd. And they were all these cyber attacks and then Microsoft was standing up the clouds. So they were hitting Washington state. And I remember in the first couple of weeks of the war, every pundit and the U.S. defense establishment, NATO, they were all saying Zelensky is going to fall within weeks. And so they weren't willing to provide a lot of military

support because they thought this was an inevitability. And meanwhile, you know, as the Russians are threatening the communications capabilities, Elon is saying, I'm going to turn on Starlink. I'm going to turn on Starlink. I'm going to give you people an ability to defend yourself. That's an incredible thing. Yeah. But when he did that, it reminded me of when Twitter threw off Donald Trump. And on the one hand, maybe I liked Elon's decision and maybe I was more uncomfortable with Twitter's previous decision. But I know that I don't like the idea that these decisions are being made arbitrarily

by individuals with relatively little thought process on the second and third order impact of what they're doing. And certainly no alignment with rule of law or anything other than their business models. No, it's just their whims. Right, their whims. And it's a very dangerous environment when that is true, because the Ukraine issue was a relatively easy one to make that decision. But as you say, this is happening all over the world. And the business implications,

for example, in saying something like that about China, when you're doing tech development there. This is Elon Musk. And others. Yeah, and others. They're not going to say that. Right. They'd never say that. Right. That's a serious problem. This was your little to-do with Elon. What happened there? You had said he talked to Putin. He was doing Putin's talking points.

It was quite obvious. He was doing China's talking points at one point. The whole idea that he could geofence Crimea or anyone else was disturbing to me and many others. And I'm not even a foreign policy wonk. Look, I think the thing that was most problematic, I mean, of course, he was posting on Twitter things like Khrushchev's mistake when the Ukraine was gifted Crimea by Khrushchev in the 50s. And basically saying, well, you know, these territories, they really want to be a part of Russia. And so there should be a there should be a vote. And it's Ukrainian territory that was illegally stolen. So he obviously had no idea what was

going on in these places and was getting that information directly from the Russians. And I don't want to talk about the private conversation that I had with Elon because, I mean, you know, frankly, I just don't want to make any more of a to-do of it already please do but go ahead but i will say that um one thing that was really problematic is after all of this good work that was being done with starlink suddenly you had ukrainians in the front lines um in the occupied territories that trying to take their land back and suddenly starlink didn't work and the ukrainians didn't know why they thought it was a tech problem the americans didn't know why ukrainians were getting killed they had to pull back from some of those territories and it's

because after the russians annexed them um you know elon decided that uh starlink needed to be geofence yeah it need to be geenced. And that never should have been a decision that was being made. You can't be in a situation where the only countries that are recognizing Russian annexation are the North Koreans, the Syrians, and Elon. That's not okay, right? No. I mean, Elon's business model, on the one hand, you've got SpaceX, which is a U.S. national champion that gets contracts from the Pentagon and NASA. You've got Tesla, which is finds China to be its most important future market, does AI development there, needs access to that data, all the rest. And then you've got, you know, Twitter, which is free speech for everyone, at least in the countries that we have some influence over. Like, it's pretty clear that geopolitically, those things do not work together. No, they do not. I think the government itself got itself into trouble by not having options either with Starlink or with SpaceX. That's the problem. He's the

option for many of these things. He's the only option. I mean, there are Australian companies that are developing their early stage, but there's nowhere else to go that was anywhere close to as effective. And what I think what should have happened is the Defense Department should have paid them for Starlink, and the Defense Department should have been deciding who does and does not have geofencing. And Elon needs to have plausible deniability when the Russians and the Chinese are pressuring him, which they were. Right. I mean, he needs to be able to say, hey, this is not me. I'm not the person. And instead, he's inserting himself. Right. Right. So the process is a very dangerous place to be. Absolutely. No, it's not just Elon. You know, right now when Facebook

pulled Trump off, you know, Trump made the argument that he was kicked off and Iran's foreign leader has not been, for example, they're about to either put him back on or not. Again, a position of great power, not Mark Zuckerberg. It's going to be Nick Clegg that's making this decision, talking to people. Have you spoken to him? And how do you think about this risk? I know Nick well. And, you know, I'm sure he's not looking forward to being the public face of this decision. This is the reason that they created this oversight board, and they wanted them to make the decision, which they wouldn't, and it got punted right back to the good folk, the meta, right. And when I wrote about this risk,

I wasn't talking about Elon at all. I was talking about the technologies and the reality that suddenly a small number of individuals just have sovereignty over these issues. I'll add on unqualified to make the decisions, but go ahead. Yeah, no, unqualified, completely unqualified. Like, I mean, I have, I've historically had an enormous amount of respect for Elon as an entrepreneur. I mean, some of the stuff he's done, I think is world changing, but he shouldn't be making geopolitical decisions. No, no. But what about Facebook and this decision? Is this a big decision from your perspective? I think it's a big decision because, I mean, like inviting Trump back on Twitter was a decision without consequence as long as he's kind of conflicted out by Truth Social and otherwise going to be sued out the yin yang unless unless Twitter can cut a deal with them and and spend a lot of money i assume you could buy them i guess but that's the only way you're

going to fix that in case of facebook suddenly i mean trump would have principal platform available to him for tens and tens of millions of followers in the united states overnight and i think that's a big deal because we're already seeing the levels of discomfort despite Trump has lost an awful lot of influence over the past months. But you still see very few Republicans in leadership that are prepared to publicly take him on. And so I think it's still very much plausible that he can get the nomination. And I think the Facebook decision is quite meaningful in helping to determine that one way or the nomination. And I think the Facebook decision is quite meaningful in helping to determine that one way or the other. I think the enormous implications of that on the shoulders

of Nick Clegg, it's just, it's crazy. Where do you think they're going to decide? I suspect they're going to bring him back on. I agree. I mean, look, Twitter, because Twitter already basically has. I think it's hard for facebook to want to be out there by themselves right right you know i mean the fact that they're already saying oh we don't want to have you know we don't want to do as much news we don't want to do as much politics we want to go away from it i think this is kind of aligned with that it's like hey hey hey like we don't not us not us it's him yeah yeah yeah yeah will you talk to him about that? You don't think Trump should come back onto the platform.

I don't think he should be kept off. I kind of want him kept off because I think it's more stable for the United States. But analytically, I don't think he should because I think they're so inconsistent with the way they apply these rules, not just inside the US, but especially to other leaders globally.

And I just don't like that American exceptionalism. I like the fact that we just don't care about these leaders, leaders of governments that represent, you know, revenue in Iran, in Iran and Malaysia, all sorts of countries that are saying things that clearly are vastly worse than anything Trump said. And they are not being taken down. And these companies don't want to have the responsibility. They don't want to be forced

to make all of these editorial decisions. We'll be back in a minute. Support for this show comes from Indeed. If you need to hire, you may need Indeed. Indeed is a matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data. And a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Listeners of this show can get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to Indeed.com slash podcast right now and say you heard about Indeed on this podcast.

Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Support for this show comes from Grammarly. Indeed, indeed. your team gets their points across the first time, eliminating misunderstandings and streamlining collaboration. It goes beyond basic grammar to help tailor writing to specific audiences, whether that means adding an executive summary, fine-tuning tone, or cutting out jargon in just one click.

Plus, it surfaces relevant information as employees type, so they don't waste time digging through documents. Four out of five professionals say Grammarly's AI boosts buy-in and moves work forward. It integrates seamlessly with over 500,000 apps and websites. It's implemented in just days, and it's IT-approved. Join the 70,000 teams and 30 million people who trust Grammarly to elevate their communication. Visit Grammarly.com slash enterprise to learn more. Grammarly. Enterprise ready AI. All right, I'm going to move on to your other top risk, which is Russia going rogue. Putin is not seeing swift success he wished for in the Ukraine. It's obvious to one and all.

You seem to think the failure makes him even more of a risk. Now, I agree, he's a cornered, vicious dog, essentially, in some fashion. Yeah, because there's no way back to Russia being a global player again. That's the real issue. And he's not going to be forced out of power in the near term. I mean, it can be a hope. It's certainly not a strategy. We've got an expanded NATO. You've got massively more defense expenditure from all of these countries, not to mention Japan and also on Russia's border going up to 2%. That's related. You've got forward deployments. You have Ukraine being the most capable military fighting force on the ground in the European continent, which is crazy to think about, but a reality and a very significant threat to Putin. You have Russia completely cut off from

being able to trade with Europe. That's never coming back. The gas is never coming back. They're getting it from other sources. They're not going to rebuild that with the Russians. You've got their assets being frozen and the Europeans talking about using those assets, seizing them to help rebuild Ukraine because there's not enough European or American money to rebuild an economy. It's only going to get worse. Yeah. So use the billionaire money. Yeah. So no matter how you look at it, Russia is basically becoming a rogue state, kind of like Iran is a rogue state where it's truly cut off from all the developed countries. So let's look at what Iran is. Israel and the Gulf states came together with the Abraham Accords because they were most concerned about Iran. So

you created this geopolitical alignment against them, just like you see with NATO revitalizing in the G7. But now Iran is engaged in terrorism and proxy strikes and espionage and disinformation and drone strikes. I mean, everything that they can possibly use against these countries they're doing. And I believe that that's what we're going to start seeing from Russia. We'll see fiber attacks and pipeline attacks and cyber attacks and espionage and disinformation. Some will be effective, some won't be effective. But this is going to be a serious fight, particularly for frontline NATO countries. This is not going to be just contained with Ukraine. And so the peace dividend that we've had for 30 years is over.

And so they've returned to sort of the Boris and Natasha version of themselves. It's always up to tricks. Yeah, but much more powerful and much less stable. Yes, lethal, obviously lethal. I'm making a joke there, but he certainly has leverage as an energy producer, but is that leverage gone? He seems to be cozying up to Saudi Arabia, especially during

the OPEC Plus talks in October where they were cutting daily production. Does that help him in that regard? The leverage on gas is gone because the Germans now get 0 percent of their gas from Russia, literally zero as of this last week. And those pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, have been blown up. We don't know by who. If it was by the Russians, they blew it up and they got

away with it and they can blow up more stuff. If it was by the West or by Ukraine, they blew it up against Russia. So clearly that means you can blow up critical infrastructure. Either way, that's bad news. It will take a minimum of probably 10 years to build gas infrastructure and pipelines that would allow the Russians to physically sell it to other places. So it's years before they have that gas. So they've got gas just sitting there, right? They've got gas sitting there. They have oil that they can sell, but the oil they're selling now comes at a 30 or 40% or more discount

to countries like India and China because of the sanctions regime and because the Europeans aren't buying. And let's move to China because your second one was Maxim and Xi and China, this is, I think, the most important. I think this is number one, honestly. I get your point of making Russia because he's a troublemaker.

But this is a much more significant thing. And you talked about this. So talk about Maximum Xi. Xi Jinping himself is another, you call him a modern-day emperor. Talk a little bit about where he is now. Because obviously the zeroed COVID policy has not been good for him. And the economic performance, which he puts a lot of weight in. A lot of people in China do, are at odds with this policy. He can only stay in for as long

as he maintains economic growth. That's my, control can only go so far with this country. But maybe you think differently. Look, I certainly think there are reserves of very significant stability in China. But I think that the risk list we do, it has a conceit of only looking at 12 months in the future. So if this wasn't just 2023, but was the next five or 10 years, then China would be number one. I mean, the only strange thing about Maximum Xi is that it's only number two on the list. I agree with that completely. But they're very similar risks, and they shouldn't be. Because the fact is that Xi Jinping increasingly rules China the way that Putin rules Russia, the way that the Supreme Leader rules Iran, the way that Mark and Elon rule their companies. And that's where the risks are.

They cannot be fired. They cannot be fired. They can't be fired. They don't get great inputs. There are a lot of yes men surrounding them. And as a consequence, you can get really big sudden mistakes that come out of them. Putin's decision to invade Ukraine was a colossal misjudgment. Xi Jinping's decision to go from zero COVID to maximum COVID, there was no plan of preparation around that because he wasn't getting

good information. And so suddenly he just, he saw the demonstrations and he said, okay, that's it, let it rip. And now everybody has COVID. Everybody has COVID. And we're not going to get information from China on new variants until they come to us. And that's a horrible position for the world to be in. Right. So the CHIPS Act, obviously, you know, I've talked to tech companies, they're trying to run out of China or find other options like Apple in India and Vietnam.

Biden has been pushing the CHIPS Act, which leading tech companies look to replicate their Taiwanese semiconductor plants back home. It'll take years. Is it too late or is this a good thing that the CHIPS Act was packed and these companies are trying to find other alternatives? It's late, but it's not too late. We allowed our semiconductor industry to all be offshore to 100 miles off of Chinese mainland, which was an incredibly short-sighted, cheap thing to do. And now we're addressing it. And I think the CHIPS Act is way overdue,

but it's a great piece of legislation. Now, the important thing is that the CHIPS Act by itself does require an ecosystem. It requires that we get the workers with the visas to come and be able to actually have these jobs. We need to invest in STEM education more broadly where we underperform. But it's a big start. And the money is real.

And it will attract a lot of private equity investment as well. And furthermore, we are coordinating with core allies like Japan, like South Korea, and like Taiwan, which we don't call an ally, but nonetheless, I mean, TSMC is the strategically most, it's the most important company in the world. And they're critically important to the US and also to China. It's interesting that during his three-hour meeting with Biden in Bali, that during his three-hour meeting with Biden in Bali, Xi Jinping did bring up the export controls, but he wasn't particularly critical or bothered by it. And I think for a couple of reasons. First of all, because the Chinese have already announced that they're investing in their national champions, that they want to be, you know, sort of world-class. And so, frankly,

I mean, even if we were to say, TikTok, okay, sorry, you can't operate in the US going forward. Well, you know what, I mean, Facebook can't operate in China. So I mean, if you have mutual interdependence, and therefore mutual destruction, like we get their data, they get our data, okay, but if we don't get your data, why do you get our data? Like, it's perfectly reasonable for us to say no. So I think that the fact is that we are presently fighting with China on issues with a vocabulary they're comfortable with. Industrial policy, state capitalism, that's what we're doing. They do that. The French do that. The Japanese do that. Where when we hit them on human rights and the Uyghurs, in part, they get really angry about that because they say, well, wait a second.

Like, you know, we know how you guys have been involved in human rights historically. And when we hit them on Taiwan, they go, wait a second. Like, you know, we know how you guys have been involved in human rights historically. And when we hit them on Taiwan, they go, wait a second. Like, if this were in your backyard, you'd feel completely differently about that. So, you know, actually, this is an area that's of critical national security importance to the United States, but doesn't really rip apart the U.S.-China relationship. Which is why you called Taiwan a red herring for 2023. That's right. Again, for this year, I think long term Taiwan is a big problem. But right now, the Chinese and Americans deeply need these guys. So you're not worried about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan? No. In fact,

I what I'm worried about, I think there will be greater decoupling. But Kara, it's the way you put it. It's that Apple's making this decision. It's not Biden who's putting legislation in place that's driving companies to leave China. Suddenly they realize that, oh my God, the Chinese are looking less attractive as a place that I know that I can consistently do business and have a return. And so that's what's going to drive the decoupling. It's not the American government. Do you think the TikTok thing has been overblown? There's a lot of political attention towards, and the parent company ByteDance recently confirmed they use the app to track those journalists at Forbes. Is it as big a crisis as one of our, I think Mike Gallagher, Republican, said it was digital fentanyl, which I push back on. I'm like, fentanyl is, let's use a comparative like Twinkies and not fentanyl, but all right. What do you think about this? Is it overblown? I think it's in between Twinkies and fentanyl because, look, it's addictive. Right.

And Twinkies aren't addictive. Not to some. Nor do they make you shoot people, though I remember in that case. When we talk about TikTok, we're talking about, yeah, they can have data that they can use and it'll be a competitive economic advantage, but we don't think there's a national security threat to it. I mean, Grindr was potentially a national security issue. I mean, I discussed this with Scott. That's right.

That was owned by the Chinese. I was like, you know, hey, if Lindsey Graham is on there, do we want the Chinese government knowing that, right? The answer is no. No, no. Allegedly. Allegedly. I didn't say it was.

I said if. No, allegedly. I'm just going to throw it in. Allegedly. I get your point completely. You take my point. Okay. So do you think they're going to ban TikTok?

I mean, it seems like it just inflames both Democrats and Republicans. It seems ridiculous on some level. No, I think they're going to put all sorts of rules on TikTok that government officials can't use. Use it on your burner phone. it, use it on your burner phone. But I also think it's possible that they could force them to spin off sort of TikTok

US. Yeah, that was a Trump idea. Of course, he was trying to help his friend. But what I've been trying to say to the Biden administration on this is if you do that, don't do it by yourself. Do it with your allies. There's no reason the Americans should

be unilateral on this. This is actually a coordinated problem. I mean, that's where the U.S. has succeeded in Ukraine, is that they've coordinated so effectively with all of the advanced industrial democracies as allies. They don't do that as well on China. They need to. So a couple of things. We mentioned weapons of mass disruption, rogue Russia, energy crunch, Iran in a corner, maximum Xi. Run through your other top risks quickly and sort of give a very quick synopsis of the rest of them. Well, there's one more grouping that we haven't talked about. And that's a few of these risks, inflation, energy and arrested human development,

all of which are about the fact that the developing world, of which are about the fact that the developing world, the five, six billion people out of the eight on the planet are taking all of these trends in the teeth. It's so much worse for them than it is for us. You know, 50 years we had globalization and it wasn't perfect and it wasn't great for everyone. And the American working class got hollowed out. But there was a global middle class that was growing. And people were being taken out of poverty. And women were getting real jobs. And people were getting urbanized.

And life expectancy was increasing. And for the last three years, all of those indicators have turned around. Right. You call this arrested global development. Did AI write that, too? Did AI write that? AI did not write that. No, I wrote that.

It's a good one, okay. It probably could have. It probably could have. Yeah, yeah. But it's that, it's on the back of this energy crisis. So who's going to keep going with coal? The Indians, the Indonesians, because they can't afford to move towards renewables.

The Europeans can get more efficient. The Indians, the Indonesians, Sub-Saharan Africans, they can't. Inflation, the Europeans, the Americans, we can ensure in high level inflation, we can pay for our poorest people to get through this, right? But these other, the developing countries can't. They're going to have financial crises. They're going to have capital outflows. They get massive indebtedness. It's a real problem. And as a consequence of that,

the people are going to, larger numbers of people in poverty, more women forced into the informal economy, fewer kids getting educated. This is globalization in reverse, and these people are going to be very angry. So we're going to see a much faster growing West-South divide. That's bad for all of us. So I have two final questions. One of the themes of the report in this conversation we just had is concentration of power in individuals' hands, and it's something I completely agree. You may think it's good to throw Trump off of, say, a Twitter, but one person decided, which was always a problem. And again, one person decided to bring him back on. Anything put the brakes on that? Or is there just a love of the strongman, this idea of one person? Well, it's funny. You said earlier in the interview that, you know, authoritarians love the Internet. Love it. And, of course, that's true now, but that wasn't true 20 years ago.

It was not. And, you know, we had—the wall came down in part because information flows around the world was very dangerous to authoritarians. That's how we saw the Arab Spring, and that's how we saw the colored revolutions in places like Georgia and Ukraine. And the problem is that with data and surveillance revolutions, it's all top down. And that means that authoritarians, whether those authoritarians are in government or in their companies, they have the exercise a great deal more control. And so there are two ways I see that that could potentially change. One is you have a crisis, which is big enough that actually forces governments and other actors to come together and say, we're just not going to take it. And we're not close to that level of crisis. And the second way it happens is the

underlying technologies change. So, you know, you get new AI bots that are so powerful, but they're not linked to Google or Microsoft, but they're actually sold directly to individuals. And at least among wealthier people, they have the ability to subvert top-down surveillance models, or the blockchain allows for that over time. And that's not a two or three-year issue. So unfortunately, as we're looking ahead three, five years, this feels like momentum is only in the wrong direction. Yeah, I would agree with you. It's interesting because when the internet had its first tripping in the 2000s, I had a Hollywood guy tell me, oh, thank God that's over. I'm like, over? It's not over. It's just started. Are you kidding? Are you kidding? And I was like, it's over for you,

but it's just a slow death. In any case, this is all about risks. It's a little gloomy, to say the least. We didn't even bring in water crisis and climate change. But I want to end on something optimistic. Do you see causes for optimism? If you were doing a list of optimism, what would be number one for you? Number one would have to be the fundamental resilience of democratic institutions, despite all this damage. But one of the reasons why we haven't taken greater action is, you know, it's sad, but it's true. It's because we don't feel really threatened. We don't think it's existential. And we're right. And our leaders understand that, too. So, yeah, maybe we have too much rope to hang ourselves with.

But also, no, these institutions are stronger than we think. There were so many people who had their brains broken by four years of Trump. So many people that thought that the U.S. was on the precipice of becoming an authoritarian state. That was not true. It is not true. Brazil is a much weaker democracy than the United States. not true. It is not true. Brazil's a much weaker democracy than the United States. And yet, it's very capable of keeping itself in place, the judiciary, the military, all of the political parties. And, you know, Bolsonaro can only do so much damage. And I think we need to take heart in

the fact that we've built these institutions. And ultimately, they still do reflect our collective will, even if there are lots of tools that we have to defend ourselves against. Does that require accountability, the jailing of Trump or Bolsonaro having some consequence? Well, I mean, let's put it this way. There's a level of accountability that seems to be coming for Trump, even though he's probably never going to see the inside of a cell. I mean, I think that indictments are coming. Our friend, your friend, my friend, Preet Bharara certainly does. And he's much closer to these issues than you and I are. I think that Bolsonaro, there's going to be investigations. They're going to find out who organized these demonstrations. They're going to find out who funded them. They're going to go

after them. And maybe that's not Bolsonaro personally. And hopefully it isn't, frankly. I kind of hope, like, I didn't want Trump to directly be involved with the Russians in collusion in trying to take the election away from the Democrats, from Hillary Clinton. But if it turns out that Bolsonaro is directly involved in it, I suspect he is going to face consequences. And I'm glad for that. On that note, thank you so much, Ian. Have a good time at Davos. And I'll see you on the other side.

All right. Thank you so much, Ian. It is on. All right. That was less gloomy than Dr. Doomy. Yeah, Dr. Doomy was worse. But what a smart guy. I love talking to him. People pretend they don't like international information in this country, but it's really important to understand all the global implications because as much as globalism is on the, you know, people are insulting a lot, it doesn't really matter

because we're all on the same planet, essentially. I totally agree. And what I really appreciated was his discussion of the Trump decision, because I agree with him. I like the idea that Trump is no longer in any of my feeds, and yet I hate the double standard that's applied to an American leader versus other leaders. And that said, what we didn't hit on in the convo is that Facebook, if Clegg puts Trump back on this platform, it's going to be a game changer for Trump in terms of fundraising, which Twitter was never. He noted that it's going to be really important for Trump to be on this platform. But he talked about followership. Fundraising is really the game changer of Facebook.

I don't think Trump has any problem fundraising. I think Facebook will help him. Yes, absolutely. One hundred percent. Yeah, it's a plus for Trump to be on Facebook more than any other platform. The central theme of that conversation was about the concentration of power in the hands of one person, strong men, usually men. Let's not say usually, all men in this case.

Yeah, all men. Sometimes. No, no. I'm trying to think of a female dictator. You're not going to. Oh, yeah. What about Indira Gandhi was a very strong woman. All right.

That's what, is it 30 years, 40 years? Imelda Marcos, Marcos's wife, who was also very powerful. No, not this. No. Side piece. Side piece. Side piece with an excellent shoe collection. But it was interesting to hear him say like Xi is to China as Mark Zuckerberg is to Facebook or Elon is to Twitter. Do you think that's true? Yeah, I do. They have unfettered power and they can't be fired. And they have incredible power. And it's not a little bit of power. It's a lot of power.

What is interesting is she and Putin like to use the power. So does Elon. Mark sort of is like, I'm not that powerful. And I'm like, stop it. Really just stop it. I think it's a really unfair comparison in some way. I mean, I think it's very sexy to say that, but I don't agree because,

no, because you don't get to control the narrative. Like if you work, look at Facebook, they have a huge loyalty problem right now. Facebook employees have shame about where they live. I've lived in these dictatorships, right? You can control what people see and what they know. And even though you say like internet, you know, they love the internet.

People still find a way in Russia. They find a way all the time. I think that you're talking about a certain cadre of people who do find a way. But I think there are swaths of people who are extremely loyal. And I think that what, you know, what we don't talk about enough is, like, how good the Communist Party is at getting resources to individual families in China. In Vietnam, I would see that all the time. The party shows up when you, you know, can't, your wife is sick or your kid is, you know, malnourished. They show up to fix it. And so there's a loyalty that I don't think Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk can ever enjoy. But they give us free stuff and cars. I don't, anyway, I think his point was larger,

which is that individuals are making too many of the decisions. How do you think we can put the brakes on that? I completely agree. We can't. It's the human nature. People love a strong man. They just do. All right.

Speaking of strong men and strong women, Cara, can you strongly read us through the credits? Yes. Today's show was produced by Naeem Araza, Blake Neshek, Christian Castro-Rossell, and Rafaela Seward. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan. Our theme music is by Trackademics. We'll be back on Thursday with more. Thanks to Huntress for their support. Keeping your data safe is important. However, if you're a small business owner, then protecting the information of yourself, your company, and your workers is vital. In comes Huntress. Huntress is where fully

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