The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Episode 52

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. The program provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. The last Munk Member's podcast for 2022 pulls out the crystal ball, polishes it to a fine gloss and make a series of bold prediction about the events and issues that will shape the year head. Will Russia invade Ukraine? Is Iran likely to go nuclear and unveil an atomic weapon? Is a universal vaccine for COVID in the cards that would finally put an end to the pandemic? And, how will cyber weapons and cyber warfare shape international relations and global security in 2022? Janice and Rudyard discuss it all. To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the full length editions of Munk Members Podcast. If you like what the Munk Debates is all about consider becoming a Supporting Member. For as little as $9.99 monthly you receive unlimited access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, monthly newsletter, ticketing privileges at our live and online events and a charitable tax receipt (for Canadian residents). To explore you Munk Membership options visit www.munkdebates.com/membership. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, Monk podcast listeners. The following is a sample of the Monk members-only podcast. To access the full-length edition of this episode and all of our regular Monk members-only podcasts, go to our website, www.wmunkdebates.com, and register for membership. Membership is free, and it's available for you right now at www.munkdebates.com. Hope you enjoy the program. Well, hello, Monk listeners. a early happy 2022. Getting ready, I hope for your New Year's celebrations.

Let's hope 2020 brings in all kinds of change that we're hoping and wishing for as this Omnicon surge plays itself out. We're here at the Monk Debates podcast, the Monk members podcast, coming to you with a special year-end show. We're going to be making some bold predictions on 20. 2022. What are likely to be the big events and trends that will shape the year to come? Ready, as always, with her crystal ball polished, polished to a fine, fine sheen is Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, International Crown, renowned author and scholar.

Janice, are you ready for this? Well, the fun of this one, Richard, is to be bold and to be bold. to go way out on the land and to be comfortable with being wrong when we listen to this show a year from now and we say, oh, my goodness, how could I have said that? Right? Absolutely. Okay, we're going to do a series of lightning rounds here in the next half hour. We're going to try to get in as many predictions as we can.

Janice, you're up first. Here's my first slide. China is going to be swamped by COVID in 20. 2022 with huge consequences rendered for global supply chains and the global economy. Now, that's way out on the limb. I don't know if that's too out on the limb. I mean, it's crazy they've had this COVID-Zero policy. Now Omnacron many times more infected than Delta.

I mean, isn't it just inevitable that this genie gets out of the bottle in China? So what happens? So what happens next? So here's why it there's why I said. It's not just crystal ballgantzine. Their vaccine is totally ineffective against Omicron. So you have, think about this, you have 1.4 billion people functionally unvaccinated against Omicron.

And low levels of background natural immunity. Almost nothing. Right. So that's a major issue. Almost nothing because, and you can argue this is a strategic mistake in. respect, they went for a tough COVID-Zero policy. One case, locked down the city. That's the kind of stuff that can happen in authoritarian societies where you can actually

do that, whereas in messy democracies like ours, that would have been impossible. So we actually have some background in the unity as well as better vaccines. It's entirely possible. Omicron rips through China. and cannot stop. Now what would that mean? Factory workers would get sick and would have to stay home for two weeks or so,

whatever it is. Ports. Ports. Shipping containers. So if I certainly have complained about delays in products and services that I want in this year, wow, that could be short compared to what's coming at us. If, in fact, I'm right, that Omicronic is going to rip through China.

I think of the larger consequences for the global economy. Inflation, Janice. Isn't this hugely inflationary? Yes, it is. So I know I've been reading as probably everybody has the year-end reviews. And people are making predictions about inflation. I know you well, right? It's your turn in a minute.

But I don't think those inflation predictions are taking account of supply chain bottlenecks that could reward anything we've seen in 2021, if I'm right about this. Okay, wow, great prediction. I'm under pressure here to come up with something big. So I think I've got one that you're going to like because it's a topic that we've discussed a lot over the course of 2021. I'm going to predict that there will be an interstate cyber war in 2022. So no more shadow cutout groups going at each other.

Two nation states on this globe will engage in outright cyber conflict in the open. They'll do it one or the other initially to pursue a national, a strategic security goal in the same way they would have through the use of military force. In fact, it may accompany or parallel military force. I think the most likely two actors to engage in what would in effect be the world's first open, explicit interstate cyber conflict will be Iran and Israel. The threat of an Iranian bomb, maybe this is going to be one of your predictions in 2022, I think will cause Israel to act, and we've already seen a ramp up in cyber conflict between these two regimes.

But I also wouldn't necessarily discount the extent to which Russia, in the context of Ukraine, either directly in parallel with an invasion or as a substitute for an invasion, engaging in explicit open cyber attacks on the Ukraine and or infrastructure in Europe. You know, Janice, we've talked a lot about this. I think it is the future of warfare. There are just so many tempting features of this cyber conflict because it's non-connected. So I think initially right now there's an illusion that you can get a lot of the same things you would have gotten out of a hot war, you know, intimidation, a change in a policy direction or absence of a policy response on the part of an opponent. And you can do this all with the velvet glove of cyber. What do you think? Is that a valid prediction for 2022? I think it's a bold prediction. Richard, my sense is that the only candidates really to do that in a serious way are Iranism.

There, I agree that it is wholly likely that that might happen because they are really engaged in a state-to-state conflict. And as Iran continues to enrich Iranian, even stopping short of a bomb, and so let me make a prediction. Right there that Iran will not predict. They will not. They will not proceed to develop a nuclear law. Is that is that because the J's, what's the J.C. The J.C.OPA. Another acronym we gotta learn.

No, that's not because that agreement is going to get renewed. I think that was on life support. But I think, and here's the irony, and I'm going to come back to your cyber prediction a minute, I think the irony is that Iran can get virtually all the benefits. if it stays what we call a threshold nuclear state, stays just below the threshold. Israel's done that for more than three decades, and it's been a very successful strategy.

And I think the Iranians are going to mimic. Well, Israel Janus, has gone further. I mean, they have 60-odd thermonuclear weapons. Never declared, Roger. Never declared. We know that they're there. But never declared. And they've always said,

we're not going to be the first state to introduce the nuclear weapons into the Middle East. But really what that tells you and the Iranians are, I think, following the same strategy, but far more difficult for them because we can see much more what they're doing. There is real advantage in ambiguity. You get a lot of coercive benefits out of ambiguity. You don't have to come out. You don't have to declare. So how does that affect cyberstrap?

Cyber warfare is so attractive. to some of the country, not only through Iran and Israel, but to Russia, to the United States, by the way, which is deeply embedded in Russian networks, and the Russians know it. It's so attractive because it's just below that threshold. It stays ambiguous.

If you're right, we would have to see a major attack against critical infrastructure that saw hospitals, electricity grids. Power grids. Power of it, which would really bring a country to its knees and a huge sense of panic and crisis would develop in that society. Not clear to me what Russia would gain from doing that, and it might lose a whole lot if it did that to the Germans no chance with Nord Streams through, or if it did that to the United States, which would be the only really attractive target. So my sense is, short of the Iranians and the Israelis, who are maneuvering around this nuclear threshold,

and there really is a reason to go ahead and inflicts significant damage on the infrastructure. Cyber warfare is attractive because it stays below a threshold. I don't think we're going to cross it among the – I don't think the great powers are going to cross it in 2020. So we'll have to replay this next year this time. Absolutely. So we've got a prediction there for no breakout on the part of Iran in terms of an atomic bomb. You've been listening to a sample of the Monk Members Only podcast.

To access the rest of the episode, consider becoming a member. Membership is free and available at www.w monk debates.com. Once you've joined as a member, go to your membership profile to access the rest of this episode and all of our Monk members podcast. Thanks for listening. Thank you.