The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Fareed Zakaria on America’s Retreat from the World

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Fareed Zakaria joins Scott Galloway to discuss whether the U.S. is losing influence abroad. They examine the war with Iran and its impact on the Gulf, why Canada is building new trade relationships, and what wavering American support means for Ukraine. They also discuss the risks of autonomous AI, China’s growing advantage, and what the midterms could change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to the 414 episode of the Prop G-Pod. What's happening? In today's episode, we speak with Farid Zakaria, a journalist-author and political commentator. Farid hosts Farid's vizakaria GPS on CNN and is a columnist for the Washington Post. We discussed with Farid the dangers of giving AI too much autonomy, with the conflict between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia means for the Middle East, how the upcoming midterm elections could play out the latest on Ukraine and Russia and how China could replace the U.S. on an international stage. who we're cooking with propane and gas today. With that, we hope you enjoy our conversation with the inimitable Farid Zakaria.

Farid, where does this podcast find you? New York City in my office, yep. Nice. As always, can't even imagine how much in demand you are, so very much appreciate your time. Let's bust right into it. Last week, OpenAI disclosed six incidents of its models, concealing mistakes,

and seeking unauthorized credentials, And two days later, Meta's new agent, Mews, overtook ChatGPT as the free top iOS app in the U.S. Just curious, kind of my first question is AI question, Mark. What are your thoughts about the existential threat and how you think it might shape the midterms, but more specifically, geopolitics? So two things to note from those very important news items you pointed out. One, the nature of the break-in is very interesting because the AI agents chose their own goal. Nobody told them to break into hugging face. They were searching for something and they essentially engaged in something that at least I would characterize as criminal activity, a cyber break-in on their own.

They tried to hide the work from their human supervisors. They tried to erase records of it so that there were no logs of it. some of the agents self-sacrifice so that the overall mission could be accomplished, the break-in. So this is suggesting you don't need, you know, some kind of evil design. If you give the AI a single goal, it will do crazy things. Unintended consequences here are going to be huge, and we have to think very hard about that. Your second point, which I thought was equally important, the meta app is now the number one app on the app store, what does that tell you? It tells you that we are now getting price competition

at every level. And the entire race that the hyperscalers, the Googles, the Microsofts have been engaged in, has been on the theory that there are what we would call network economics at play here, right? Like the person who gets their first or the person with the best AI model becomes like Google for search, becomes like Microsoft for software. it becomes like matter for social media. They rake in all the profits. They have monopoly pricing power, and that's why they're spending these crazy amounts.

But what you're seeing is actually there's going to be competition. Anthropic and Open AI are going to compete at the closed end model level. There's going to be competition among the open weight models. There's going to be competition everywhere. And so it does make me wonder, are we seeing a moment of truth for these massive, expenditures that are taking place. Open AI's revenues are around $40 billion this year.

They're spending commitments between now and 2030 are $750 billion. So those are the two things, I think, just reacting to the news you're talking about, and then we can talk more about the kind of the geopolitics of it and all else. You're such a great student of history. And I can't think of a time in American history where we effectively have an industry this big, this impactful, representing this kind of existential risk, where essentially the government and the president has told them to go faster and what doesn't want to, is telling them to stop being such wimps and go faster and not regulate them. And isn't, don't you, my sense is the anxiety here is not evil A. It's the fact that there appears to be no adult supervision.

Your thoughts? I couldn't agree more. And I cannot think of a period similar. If you think about the railroad boom, which is the closest we get to in GDP, if you think about electricity, but you think any of these cases, the people closest to the technology for the first time are saying, this is really scary. This can get out of control.

And the reason I think is that this is not really. another technology. I mean, if it seems to do what we are all watching it do, this is almost like an evolutionary moment in human history. We are moving to a... We have figured out a way

to make silicon, sand, think. That is mind-blowing, right? And what that could mean, and we're now witnessing what that means when you give it a goal and you put guardrails in, Remember, all these models do have guardrails. It's true that Open AI relax some of them.

But there's so much here that seems to be happening that is essentially unintended consequences. And so what it tells you is you put these guardrails in, you put these layers in, we need to be thinking better about this. And think about the guy who resigned from Open AI. Think about, you know, Dario Amadai, the CEO of Anthropic.

All these guys are saying, you know, we need to do something really, really important. And the Trump administration's views, well, we don't want to, you know, China will win. We don't want to do anything to stop growth. We are growing really fast. And by the way, we will grow faster if we have secure models. If we have models that don't start breaking into J.P. Morgan's bank accounts, if we have models that don't start launching cyber wars, you know, against random websites that don't cripple

an electricity grid. I mean, one of the things we have learned, surely, is that whether it's food safety, whether it's financial security, whether it's, you know, road safety, cars, good regulation actually makes your product better because people trust it, they buy it, they eat it, they use it.

And that's what these guys are asking for. And in this kind of misguided laissez-faire machismo, what you're seeing, the Trump administration, to say is no, just let it rip. My fear is, of course, there will be some event. There will be some, there will be some situation where there is a break-in to a financial service form or something like that. And then there's going to be crazy over-regulation, bad regulation, which is often what happens. So I'll put forward a thesis, and I want to get your response, that the potential silver lining here, and I might be giving the Trump administration too much credit, is that it strikes me that

this fear of if we slow down at all, China will come for us with their weaponized AI, weaponized warriors, when in fact, one of the reasons China's had more success with AI amongst its populace, 75% of whom support AI versus 25% domestically, is they are actually regulating it. And that the opportunity would be to create connective tissue for renewed cooperation between the U.S. and China who have huge, mutually vested interest in things like mental health, not having a middle power develop a nuclear weapon. Isn't there an opportunity here for the U.S. and the China and China

to cooperate around AI, the same way we've cooperated around nuclear weapons and other things in the past? Absolutely. So first take the point you made, which is very important. China is pacing us, right? I mean, there may be six months behind if that. and they are doing that despite having very substantial regulations in place.

Right. So the whole idea that these regulations are going to slow you down seems to me very unlikely. Yes, we are the leader and they're distilling. They're essentially copying our models, but they're going to keep doing that. Everybody does that in the technology world anyway. But the point is they do have various kinds of, if you look at their, you know, what we know, they have fairly significant regulations, mostly protect, consumers to protect their information, and they're still managing to go pretty darn fast.

Second, your point about trust. The reason I think there's much greater trust, as you say, it's roughly a mirror image. When you ask Americans whether they have a positive or negative view of AI, 75% say negative. I've seen polls in China, which say 85% say positive. Why? It's because China is focusing not on this race for AGI, for superintelligence, for general intelligence. They're focusing on application. They're telling their people, involved, both at the public and private level, spread AI around, make sure it goes into traffic control, make sure it goes into healthcare, make sure it goes into manufacturing. So for the Chinese people, what their experience of AI is going to be, and it's just begun to be,

stuff works better. You know, there's various ways in which things get back. Here, the result is going to be you're going to get a $2 trillion company, a $3 trillion company, a $4 trillion company. By the way, these companies, which might be $3,4 trillion in market cap, employ less than 5,000 people each. So we are actually exacerbating the gap between the average person and the glories of AI,

and they are actually closing that gap by focusing on applications. How will this help an average person's life? So let's move on to Iran. Trump is addressing the General Assembly today as we record this. It's Tuesday the 22nd. We're nearly seven months into the war with Iran. And the news reports are that senior Republican advisors are telling Trump, he needs to just get out of Iran,

that the midterms are going to go even worse than they think it will if he doesn't get out. At the same time, people on the left are saying, just get out. And my question to you is, can he slash can we? Wouldn't just, quote unquote, getting out right now. I mean, this is, I see this is literally the textbook definition, the historical, you'll write a book on this, I would imagine. This defines the term quagmire. Because is there a just getting out at this point? Wouldn't we just be handing over the Strait of Hormuz and kind of crowning Iran, the surroghous, the surferring. superpower in the region if we, quote, unquote, just got out now? Yeah, that is the basic problem.

You hit the nail on the head, which is right now there is no easy way to get out without handing Iran a de facto and a de jure victory. See, what has happened, it's even worse than a quagmire because it has expanded. You know, what you're seeing with the Houthis in Yemen is that they took the, they had actually been quiet. for a long time. The Saudis had managed a deal where they essentially bribed them to stop the attacks on Saudi Arabia. If you remember, the Saudis also had good relations with Iran. They had got the Iranians, I mean, there were like 2,000 attacks on the UAE and 20 attacks on

Saudi Arabia in the first few weeks. But now the Iranians see that they're on the role and they have advantages. So they got the Houthis or they encouraged the Houthis to attack. The Houthis now have demands of Saudi Arabia, which is essentially give us more control of Yemen. The Iranians have more. So to put it very simply, what happened was Trump gambled big because BB convinced him that he could be the liberator of Iran and, you know, go down in history. He gambled big with some big goals without a strategy, without a clear plan to get to them. He failed. So the Iranians in that sense, one in that what Trump was trying to achieve, he wasn't able to achieve. Trump is not willing to accept that reality and move on and hand the Iranians some kind of

a de facto victory. And I understand it's tough for the reasons you were saying. The Iranians are also now, in my view, overplaying their hand. They could pocket a de facto victory, have de facto control over the Gulf, but they want de jurek, and they want it almost acknowledged that they now have control here. And look, the Iranians are, I negotiated with them a lot because I've had four of their presidents on the show. They are very ideological, very anti-American, and they often overplay their hands in the sense that they can be very obstinate, they can be very stubborn. So we're at this impasse where, I give you, you know, this is more detail maybe than you want, but give you a sense of how the ceasefire broke down. So you had this badly

written ceasefire with an article in it, Article 5, that said the Strait of Hormows will be open, but it has to all be coordinated with Iran. The Trump administration says, you know, let it rip. Everyone can go. The straits open. There are two ways to exit the Strait of Hormuz. One is called the Iranian Channel. The other is the Omani Channel from Oman.

A bunch of ships started to go through the Omani Channel. The Iranian said, hey, wait, you can't do this. You have to consult with us. They didn't. The Iranian government seems to have been okay with this, but a bunch of the revolutionary guards, who are hardliners and hawks, decided to shoot some drones at those ships.

The government of Iran signaled to the United States. Look, this is not us. Let us sort it out. But the Trump administration, in my opinion, overreacted and said the deal is off, everything's over and they started bombing Iran. That's how the ceasefire broke down. So there is, the reason I give you the example is,

there is a possibility of finding some way out as long as you are willing to accept that the Iranians have some de facto control over the straight and the Iranians accept that they will not exercise it in, you know, something like that. It's a big step down from where we were before the war began. But, you know, getting into an, unsuccessful military intervention has consequences, as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Trump seems to

think he can bomb his way back maybe after the midterms. The Iranians are willing to take pain. The issue here is very much like Vietnam, not who is stronger, who is willing to take the pain. And if they're willing to take the pain, I'm not sure that just bombing war is going to work. I think that's such an interesting point. I want to come back to the Gulf, but do you worry that America, distinctive are one and a half trillion dollar military budget, and this is going to sound somewhat macabre or macho, what does it matter if we have a glass jaw?

And granted, this is a war of choice, so I understand why Americans are so upset about the loss of 17 service members and the tragedy that is for their family. But if you're up against an enemy, whether it's Russia or the IRGC, that's willing to kill 30,000 of its own populace or lose a thousand men a day,

do any of these B-2 bombers matter? You know, what you're seeing, I mean, this is a whole different subject, but even for the Iranians, their cheapest weapons have proved their most effective. They had a whole array of ballistic missiles. Many of them proved ineffective because the United States could bomb all those fixed launch sites,

but you can't bomb a drone launch site because the drone's launch site is an SUV. It's even a car, you know, and they can shift them, they can hide them. So we have a huge problem with the revolution in military affairs we're not paying attention to. Give you one statistic on this. The Ukrainians will produce this year in the next 12 months, 10 million drones. The United States, the Pentagon with our $1.5 trillion per ported budget, will buy $200,000. Think about that.

10 million versus 200,000. So we have a huge problem, but the larger issue is if you get into a fight with somebody where for you, as you said, it's a war of choice. But for them, it's existential. Don't be surprised if they prevail, because they will be willing to take pain that you are not willing to take, given it's a war of choice for you. You know, with Russia, I think we have a chance because if we back Ukraine properly, in Russia's case, it's a war of choice for them.

And for Ukraine, it's existential. So we're on the right side in that dynamic or on the wrong side in the Iranian case. We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for the show comes from Nutrafol. Upgrading your life doesn't mean everything needs to change. You just need to find one small habit you can add, and it can end up transforming your confidence. And your hair health is the perfect place to start.

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And I look at the wars in Iran and Ukraine and the word that strikes me as asymmetry, do you think maybe given our problems or what I think is an existential threat that we're not focusing on, and that is our deficit, do you think there's an opportunity to learn from the IRGC,

or the way they have fought this for in the unbelievable progress of the Ukrainian army. Do you think there's potentially an opportunity to maybe embrace kind of, you had this great term on GPS. I think you said leveraging private expertise and innovation with public power or authority.

Do you think there's an opportunity where we could potentially develop a more lethal fighting force, learn from the Ukrainian, go to drones, go to an asymmetric fighting force, and maybe take our military budget from a one and a half trillion to half a trillion and potentially have a more lethal fighting force? Is there a silver lining?

Do you think we'll learn the lessons of warfare from these wars? There's definitely a scenario where we can do that. I think getting down to half a trillion would be tough. A lot of the military budget is personnel costs. But your general point in the direction is exactly right. look, we are going through a massive revolution in military affairs, and we saw it with Ukraine on the battlefield. We gave the Ukrainians 40, I think, M1 Abrams tanks.

These are the best tanks in the world by far. Russian drones shot every one of them down. I mean, attacked them and made them inoperable. I don't think they ever even got to the battlefield. I mean, I don't think they were ever actually used in any significant way. A tank has now become essentially a single. sitting target, a trap for the soldiers who are in there. Because think about it, I think the M.1A. Abram is $35 million, $40 million. A drone is $5,000, $10,000. You can launch 100 drones at one

tank, and you still have huge benefits of asymmetry. That's what's happening with these drones. That's why the Ukrainians are making $10 million. By the way, the Russians are making $10 million, too. So the whole nature of warfare is going to be different. And the point you were making is very important. The Pentagon now basically buys its equipment from a handful of vetted defense manufacturers that are, in my opinion, very bloated, very inefficient, engage in what's called cost plus manufacturing, which is there's no market for the product. It's just whatever it costs plus the profit that the Pentagon decides it's willing to give. That is not how we traditionally bought stuff. That's not how we did in World War II. That's not how we did it in the Cold War

for, you know, really until the 70s. What we did was we went to civilian manufacturers, and we asked them on the side, can you do this stuff? And there was, as a result, a lot of competition. You know, now if the only person making something is Raytheon, what's the price discovery? How do you figure out what it should really cost? And the drone revolution is moving us back into that world,

where you are leveraging private capital, private innovation, private expertise. Most drones are made by private companies. Most drones initially were just bought, it was all Chinese drones, and then they were modified to make the military drones. And in a sense, that is a much more healthy environment because you can scale massively when you're tied into the civilian economy. How do you get to 10 million drones? There aren't defense manufacturers who can scale up like that. But there are 30 or 40 civilian manufacturers of drones who can do that and then you can modify their drones.

That's the way we should be thinking because this is going to turn into a game of smarts and scale. The weapons are getting very precise and you need lots of cheap weapons rather than a few exquisitely engineered weapons. Think about the planes that we buy. An F-35 is $250 million. Would you rather have that or would you rather have 25,000 drones, which is still a drop in the bucket in costumes? And it's manned, right? Exactly. a handsome man or woman in a uniform that might, yeah.

Why put human beings, you know, what's happening is the human being being removed from the battlefield. And if we are not part of that revolution, we will lose because they can put a thousand, 10,000 robots against our one human because we'll be worried and cautious about risking the human being's life. My mom, who was not an optimistic person, you still always remind me that things can always get worse, and it appears that things have gotten worse in the Gulf, and that is an emergence of a second choke point, the names of which I was not familiar with. Can you tell us what is

going on with the Houthis and the Red Sea ports there and the kind of the second choke point to the Red Sea of the Gulf of Aden and what you think is going on there and what happens? The great 19th century humorist Ambrose Biers once wrote a book called The Devil's Dictionary, And indeed he says, war is God's way to make Americans learn geography. So we now learn, we know where the Strait of Hormuz is. We know where the Bob El Manda is, which is the other straight you're referring to. So basically there are two ways to get oil out of the Persian Gulf. One is through the Strait of Hormuz.

The other is through what is called the Bob El Manda. It's another straight at the Red Sea. It's controlled or it has the potentially. be controlled by Yemen. Yemen has gone through a civil war for like most of its modern existence, 40, 50 years. There's always been kind of two factions fighting. The Saudis got involved and tried to support the government and essentially fought for almost a decade. It went nowhere. They managed to get a truce. They managed. The Saudis are always, the mechanism is often patronage. You know, they bribe the hootis. So they got it under control.

So even though the Houthis are allies of the Iranians, the Houthis were not doing much. But I think what happened is the Houthis realized that as the Strait of Hormuz has been blockaded and all this oil is now going through the Red Sea, they have leverage. They could really squeeze the Saudis and ask for some of the things that they've been wanting to ask for demand for a long time, which is greater control over Yemen. So they saw this opportunity, obviously encouraged by the Iranians, and they move forward. And they've actually made remarkable progress. They've managed to take the port city of Moka.

For all those who are wondering why you have a port city in Yemen that's named after coffee, coffee is named after Moka. The original coffee comes from Moka. So they have that place. They can control if they want. can, again, you remember the whole game is you're not trying to control these places. You're just trying to spook insurance companies. That's what the Iranians were able to do in the straight of foremost. That's what the Yemenis are trying to do. If you throw enough of drones

at ships, basically you can't get insurance and the number of ships willing to go through goes down a lot. There will still be some. The Saudis will be able to escort some. The U.S. will escort some. but it becomes, it goes down to 20% of the traffic. So now the Saudis face this very tough dilemma. Do you try to get back into a war with the Houthis in Yemen? You've tried for 10 years and it didn't work. They are the insurgents. They've managed to survive.

Or do you give in to their demands and sign another agreement, which means you're basically selling out your allies in Yemen, who are the formal government of Yemen. And the Saudis are enraged because this problem has only been created because of the vulnerability, because the Strait of Horm was as close, and the Saudis are enraged because they signed an agreement with Trump. The Trump would defend them. This was, you know, the Saudi, as you know, the Saudi government and the crown prince have been incredibly nice to the Trump administration, both as a country, they have been nice to the United States as an administration and to the Trump family.

And yet, when he asked Donald Trump to come to his aid, Trump basically said, well, they're not attacking us. I don't see why we should do it. I mean, he said this publicly. So I think American credibility on that front is, I mean, I think that's a big, big deal, because the Saudis have based their entire foreign policy for the last 75 years on the idea that the United States in extremists will come to their aid. and it is extremist for them and the United States is not coming to their aid. Well, it feels as if overnight

our military bases has gone from being a protective shield to a bullseye. I mean, I'm trying to think of, again, going to the, I'll put forward another thesis around a possible silver lining here. They potentially, in 10 years, oils at 20 bucks a barrel,

because fossil fuels have now become not only expensive, but incredibly insecure and a defense threat. And I got to think that every nation in the world is thinking, you know, is there a way we can have fewer gas stations and more windmills? And the big winter's China, who produces 70% of the batteries, the panels, the EVs. But is there a scenario here where the whole world, not for political or woke reasons, but turns away

and starts furiously trying to diversify away from fossil fuels, which, distinct of the climate change, are dependent upon the throughways of a bunch of insecure places that have a tendency to end up causing wars. Is there a silver lining where a great renewable future is going to reemerge? Yeah, I mean, it's a very interesting point because I've been traveling. I was in Ukraine before that I was in Asia. And that's the interesting thing I've been hearing is people saying they want to find a way to have greater energy resilience. And that means they want to be able to produce more of the energy locally. Now, in some cases, that means that what I'm struck by is they're kind of climate indifferent. I wish I would say that they were green, but if they have coal, they're willing to burn coal.

If they have natural gas, they're willing to burn natural gas. If they have oil, they're willing to burn. But they don't have a lot. So what you're seeing is some efforts to create just greater resilience. I want to build a refinery here so that, you know, it's easier to import the crude product and I can refine it at home. If I have the ability to get natural gas, I want to have conversion terminals so that they can convert for liquid. If I have coal, I'm going to burn it. But I'm also trying to get more into solar, more into wind, more into things like that. The problem is, as you know, the ramp up rate is not going to be that fast because you still have this problem of baseload capacity. You know, you still, in order to make these really work, you need to have a backup that's green because otherwise, you know, the sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't blow all the time, which is fine.

There's a way to make it work, but you do need that backup, and that backup tends to be natural gas, so you don't completely get away from fossil fuels. But if you're talking directionally, Scott, that's very much the way people are looking at it. And as you say, it's interesting. It's not for green reasons. It's for national security reasons. We just don't, we find it, we're too reliant on a fuel that is coming. out of these dangerous parts of the world that can get blocked at will. And it's a huge cost for,

you know, like the Indians are, I don't know what the numbers are, but I would guess it's taken half a percent off India's GDP growth. Same for Indonesia, for all these countries. I mean, this is a big deal because we don't realize it as much because we produce, you know, we export hydrocarbons. Most of the world imports hydrocarbons, and it's a huge added cost to their economic growth. Let's return closer to home. You recently joined the Can't Be Censored Podcasts to discuss how Trump might be driving Canada into China's arms. Canadian exports to China are up 30 percent to the first half of this year,

with overall trade between the two countries up 3.6 percent year on year. This comes as Mark Carney shows an increased focus on striking new trade deals with other countries to replace the U.S. What do you think of – so it appears the EU is – adopting Canada or bear-hugging them. And at the same time, Canada appears to be experiencing or purposely holding up an air fryer to thaw the relationship with China. Talk about what it means the distancing or the fissure in U.S. Canadian relationship. I think in many ways it may be the single stupidest thing we are doing economically. There are many things we're doing, at least on trade policy. Because, you know, what we had managed to do with Canada and Mexico was create a kind of

North American economy that was working, you know, in incredibly complementary ways. So China, particularly in those days, had energy that we needed. When we started it out, the Mexicans had cheaper labor. So you could spread manufacturing across the three places in ways that optimized, you know, made it made the product most efficient, most low cost, most powerful. The industry did this the most was the car industry. So products would move five, six, 10 times across these borders because that was the most efficient way to create a North American car. And this really revived the industry in many ways. What we've now done is put these tariffs And so the car parts that move back and forth, every time they move, they face a tariff.

So the tariffs are actually much higher than they sound because every time you move, you cross a border, you have to pay these tariffs. And it's crippling the car industry. The largest producer of cars in Canada is Ford, which is our largest producer of cars. So we're crippling our national champions. And so Canada has to find ways around this problem. And what Mark Carney has been really brilliant about it, saying, I don't have that much power. I'm a much smaller country, but I do have flexibility. And I'm going to take what power I have and create a better situation for me where I'm not as dependent on this hostile and unpredictable superpower.

So he's made a trade deal with India, made a trade deal with Europe. And as you say, even with China, the result is the Chinese are essentially entering the Canadian car market. in a way that they would never. So if the American car industry gets expelled or becomes unaffordable in Canada, it is going to be replaced by the Chinese car industry. And the Chinese are showing other countries, in a sense, the way to get around this,

which is treat America as the problem and increase free trade with everybody else. So you get more growth. And it's terrible for us both economically, but it's also terrible for us geopolitically. because the single biggest beneficiary of all this is going to be China. I mean, China's car industry is going to take over the world now. Yeah, again, going to predictions.

I think in 10 years, the U.S. auto industry is going to be a niche industry and a shadow of itself because we're giving nations permission to import and take lower barriers on Chinese cars. And the reality is, pound for pound, the Chinese are making a better car than Detroit right. right now. I don't know. Have you spent any time at a BYD or one of these new Chinese models? I did. I was in China in February or early March, and I drove. They let me drive what is the fastest car in the world. It goes 475 kilometers an hour. It's an amazing car. I mean,

what's extraordinary is they've also understood, Scott, that the car is going to be not a vehicle that human beings drive in, but a vehicle in which human beings are. are driven in by, you know, by autonomous driving, AI, etc. So they're trying to maximize the human experience. So, do you want to work in the car? Do you want to watch movies in the car? Do you want to listen to music in the car? There was, I drove an SUV.

Yeah, it was a B-YD-S-UV where you can launch drones off the roof of the car. But I was telling them, well, why do you need that? Because they were like, we're for traffic. And I said, well, but you have this. GPS anyway and they said, all right, maybe it's just for fun. It's like recreation. People enjoy this kind of thing because you're not actually good to be driving in a few years. And so there are sort of two steps ahead in some ways of realizing where it's going. And by the way, the BYD cars are amazingly good. And I think they're roughly $12,000, $15,000. So even if you put a 100%

tariff on the car, it's like $30,000. it's still incredibly affordable. I was in Brazil, and I got in, I used the right-handed app, got in the car, and I thought, oh, it's the Model Y. These are pretty nice. He's like, no, it's a B-YD. And he told me, when I did the calculation,

that it cost some $16,000, there, I still think Tesla makes a nicer car, but at 40% of the price, a car that's 80% is good, I just strikes, I got out of this car, and I thought, Detroit is screwed. This industry is just not going to, I mean, they'll probably make some SUVs,

but it just felt to me, and I keep seeing all these videos, YouTube's of all these cars that are essentially a range rover for $40,000. And I thought, wow, Detroit is going to be a very, very difficult place. I doubt I would project that home values continue their slide. And just just to make a point, I think this will be, the shape of trade here will be massively managed trade. Because frankly, the Europeans can't allow the Chinese to simply come in. It would destroy, you know, what is Europe's great value ad if it has one? It is advanced manufacturing.

You know, the Porsches, the BMWs, the Mercedes. prestigious manufacturing. Right. And if they will get wiped out. So there will be some kind of quota system. And we're going to end the whole world of automobiles, in my opinion, between the U.S., Europe and China, it's going to be highly managed political trade. It's not going to be free markets, free trade, because China would win.

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then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty. Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways, like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at unitedwayg.org.

We're back with more from Farid Zakaria. Under the auspices of a crisis is a terrible thing to waste, and again going to what could go right, is there an opportunity for whoever takes the White House in 28 to, and there's motivation now, and I think the opportunity here for cooperation has ever been greater. Is there an opportunity to basically take NAFTA and incorporate the EU and give the UK cloud cover to go back, rejoin the European Union, and not only take these ridiculous tariffs or get rid of them,

but create a broader free trading agreement and say, look, we have existential threats from autocracies, we have an economic threat from China, we need to bulk up, and we need to get along. And cooperation is responsible for the majority of the prosperity post-World War II order. Let's take that same idea and turbocharge it. And it's there now, I'm just trying to figure out a way we turn chicken shit into chicken salad here. Is there real potentially motivation to create the mother of all trading zones and potentially reinforce our cooperative mechanisms and constructs, or am I being naive? No, look, I think, you know, we've got to find something to disagree on. I think that's the

real opportunity. And here's the really interesting thing that I would not have predicted. The tariffs are incredibly unpopular. I wasn't sure this would happen because there's a kind of nationalist, you know, machismo about tariffs, you know, and Trump said it all the time. Somewhere between 65 and 70% of Americans oppose the tariffs and think they're a mistake. That is extraordinary because it's actually, you know, the trade is only 15% of our economy. So it's basically a consumption tax on not even 15 because it doesn't cover all of it, maybe 10% of the economy. But people see how it just raises prices without doing anything in particular.

So there is going to be the problem is they, it raises revenue and we desperately need revenue. We've given our debt and deficits. But I think it's exactly what you said, presented as a big new advance. And I do think there was a mistake that we made with China. It's not necessarily letting them into the WTO because the whole world was embracing China. We couldn't have been an outlier. But we didn't condition further relaxation of tariffs in the United States or in Europe on China actually becoming more and more of a market economy and not playing games.

because they're actually not a market economy. It's a very complicated quasi-market, quasi-fixed economy with massive industrial policy. And I think we should be saying we want to create an ecosystem in the West, I mean broadly, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, you know, the Persian Gulf states, maybe India, if they want to join it. And we will trade, you know, with a certain set of rules

amongst ourselves because we are genuinely open societies, but we're not going to trade like that with the China's and Russia's and North Koreas and Iran's of the world. And if you want to join that, you have to be an open society and with an open economy. Of course, the problem is that right now, we are the most protectionist advanced economy in the world. We are now at smooth-holy-level tariffs,

and so very hard for us to do that, but it does provide an opportunity. I mean, there are a lot of Trump policies that I think it provides a real opportunity if the Democrats have the courage and imagination to say, let's be bold, let's not be scared of this populism, let's reverse some of this,

but exactly as you say, reverse it in a creative way, which doesn't sound like you're just trying a restoration. What you're trying to do is new better. You know, that should be what they're looking. Look at this as an opportunity to say, yeah, we needed to rethink trade.

And the way we're rethinking it is free societies should create an ecosystem. And that ecosystem is large enough that if you shut down the rare earth, we'll find somewhere else to do it. We're not going to process rare earths in the United States. But we could do it in India. We could do it in Kenya. We could do it in places where they have in Brazil, where they have, you know, just for developmental reasons, lower environmental concerns.

Let's come back to the U.S. in the midterms. Diesel just hit 651 a gallon. That's a record. Inflation seems to be kind of stubbornly stuck at 3.4%. Trump's own Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, just voted for the first rate hike since 2023. Give us your sense. And as a Democrat, I'm just so nervous because I would just never underestimate our ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I wish the election were happening tomorrow.

I'm wondering how we're going to screw this up in the next few weeks. What is your take on the midterms? Are you willing to speculate on what might happen and happen? And what dynamics do you see playing out in the election? Look, the polls all look great for the Democrats, but I feel like I still tend to believe

that there are shy Trump voters, but there are no shy Democrats. In other words, that Poland tends to... A silent majority. Yeah, underrepresented. Think about almost every poll that now Trump is not on the ballot and so that does make a difference.

But I, you know, who knows? Look, the one thing I will say is clearly the House is going to go Democratic, but it's not by as much as people think because there's so much redistricting. They're really only 50 seats in play. The Senate seems like it's on a knife's edge and it's to me bizarre that, you know,

given this much bad policy from the Trump administration, but that is, you know, where we are. If the economy really turns south, that I think could be the decisive blow. And could it turn south? Well, look, I'm reading this book, 1873 by Leaka there, a wonderful book about, you know,

it's about a lot of things, but really the heart of it was the great global railroad boom, which is the closest thing we have to the, in terms of percentage of GDP, to the AI boom. And what caused it to, what caused the bubble to burst, what has almost always caused the bubble to burst, which is the cost of money went up,

interest rates went up. Basically, a very complicated story, but Bismarck decides he wants to screw the French. And so the French used gold and silver, and the Germans only used gold. So he sold all his silver, which meant there was a run on gold, which effectively tightened the money supply,

raised interest rates, and that is what bursted the railroad bubble, which then produced a recession that lasted almost, I mean, is probably worse than the Great Depression. And I wonder whether this uptick that you're seeing, whether the 10-year bond is getting up over 5%, if something unwinds there, or if the thing we were talking about at the start,

this moment of truth where AI companies simply cannot spend what they have committed to and they start scaling back, if you see an unwind, would something happen? The problem with this stuff is, you never know the timing, right? This could happen a year from now. It could happen a year and a half from now. So Trump may get lucky.

But I think you need to be sure of a kind of democratic wave. You need tougher economic times. And the truth is, because of the AI boom, the American economy is actually in reasonably good shape. I apologize for jumping around here, but I realized we skipped Ukraine, Russia. I woke up the other morning, and I immediately opened my computer. I'm one of those mentally unwelled people that sleeps with screens around them,

and I immediately flipped open my computer and went to CNN, and I saw fires. And you immediately go, oh, no, it's another fire in an area that's, you know, had drought and hasn't done a good job of clearing its rush. And then I thought, oh, these are good fires, and that's a terrible thing to feel. And it was the Ukrainian launch of a thousand drones on Moscow. give me a sense for the state of play there. And I mean, isn't it an extraordinary for a rate to think just even 24 months ago we'd see Moscow on fire? The Ukrainians have done an extraordinary job.

I was in Kiev 10 days ago. And I think that people just don't understand how much these guys are innovating. You know, they have one-fourth the population of Russia. Their economy is 10 percent the size of Russia's. and they have been able to hold ground for four years. They have been able to regain ground that the Russians took. It's really an extraordinary achievement, and it's all because they have been super determined,

super dedicated, and super innovative. These drones they have now can go 3,000 kilometers into Russia. Moscow is only at 1,500 kilometers. They can go way past Moscow if they need to. And they have ways to do it in a coordinated way. They seem to have very good intelligence. And remember, they have to do this without Starlink because once you enter Russian territory,

they're not allowed to use Starlink. The Starlink is not turned on for them. So they face a lot of these challenges. Why are they able to do it? Because they're fighting for their country. They're fighting for Iran. That's why I think when people say, oh, the Russians will win,

it's not going to look like what you think it might look like. Even if the Ukrainians face setbacks, it will morph into a guerrilla war. The Russians will be fighting Ukrainian guerrillas for another 20 years. So they're not going to give up. The biggest challenge they face and the biggest thing they told me privately, of course, was the collapse of American support. This is a matter of such shame for us. This is a brave liberal democracy fighting against an authoritarian aggressor

that is trying to resurrect the Soviet Union or the Tsarist Empire, take your pick, and they're bravely struggling for it. And the one thing that has changed in the last year has been the total collapse of American support. American military aid is essentially down to zero. America won't sell them the patriots they need to, for example, defend Kiev. First time I was there, there was almost continuous air raid sirens, almost continuous fear of being bombed.

the train convoy that I was in when I came back was, was, was, the Russians bombed. We were 10 minutes from the Polish border and the Russians bombed right next to the train behind mine, which had David Petraeus and Boris Johnson in it, because the Russians wanted to send a signal, we can get to you anywhere. And it's not just that we've stopped supporting the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians believe that the United States is essentially become pro-Russian. and might collude with Russia to force Ukraine to accept a dishonorable peace. This is what they're worried about.

So whenever you go through these times have changed, there's a bit of a reshuffling of the deck. Certain powers diminish. Certain powers emerge. And it strikes me that we love predictions of the pit. I believe, hands down, Times person of the year has already been decided and it's going to be Mark Carney and that he's the leader that Europe's been looking for for the last 20 years. So I think not Canada as much as Carney, unbelievable assent of status and power. The nation, and I want to get your reaction to that, but then the second part is the nation that is sort of, not the sleeping giant, but a stirring giant that people don't, I don't think gets nearly enough recognition is Poland.

And the economy there is strong. They've been building up their defense. my senses they are not ready for a war with Russia, but don't seem to be scared of it, and that Poland is becoming a middle power, elevating potentially to real strategic power in the region. So thoughts on Carney and a potential sleeping giant Poland. So I think you're right that Carney. Carney has sort of given other leaders and other countries. a way out of this.

You know, they've been looking for this. How do we, what do we do when the guarantor, the creator, the protector of the international system turns into the dismantler, the destroyer of the international system that it created? And Carney has given them a kind of language and a path, you know, so you don't have to just surrender. You don't just go and weep. There's a, you have options. You can make new alliances.

You can try to find a way to stabilize yourself. You know, it's obviously a suboptimal outcome, but it is something. And I think you're right that he is, I think he's getting more appreciation and applauded around the world than Americans realize. As for Timesman of the Year, I hadn't thought of it that way, smart idea. I would guess it would be between that and AI. You remember Time once very famously made the computer, the man of the year. And Steve Jobs got really pissed off because he thought,

he should be man of the year. But you can imagine them doing something like that. But onto Poland, 100% right. Poland is a remarkable country. It has grown close to 5% a year for 25 years or so. I mean, Poland is like an emerging market. It is grown in the way that, you know, the South Koreas and Taiwan's of the world grew when they were really in their growth phase. It is fiercely pro-Western, pro-democratic. They do have a popular swing, which has been a bit of a problem. But the current Polish government

is extremely savvy and extremely smart. The Foreign Minister of Poland, Radik Tsikovsky, was in Kiev with me. But here's the thing they're grappling with. They understand that what Putin is doing is not just attacking Ukraine. He's also testing NATO. That's why you're seeing these Russian drones

and these attacks in Moldova, a drone somehow reaches Poland, a drone even reaches Germany. And what the Eastern Europeans, and the Poles in particular, are worried about is, what if a Russian missile were to enter Polish airspace and kill, say, 200 Poles? That should trigger Article 5, collective self-defense for NATO.

But would the United States honor that commitment? This is something they, you know, the entire process of NATO's response to these kind of violations has always rested critically on the United States. And that's why the United States has always been absolutely clear. You know, any attack on a NATO country will mean it's an attack on the United States. That is what has kept the peace, that sense of American deterrence. And the polls, quite understandably, I think, are thinking to themselves, well, Is Donald Trump really going to go to war with Vladimir Putin over 200 polls?

And so, you know, they're trying to figure out, okay, where does that lead us? Last question, and you're the fastest hour in podcasting. My question is, are you worried? You're constantly have your hand in the pool. You know the temperature. And this just feels like one existential crisis after. I longed for the days where Y2K when the elevators were going to stop or Greek sovereign debt was the thing we were worried about. It just feels as if so many matches are being lit in a room where we're knee-deep in gasoline right now.

So my question is, one, are you worried? And two, what does Fried Zakaria do to relieve this? that if you feel that anxiety and worry, what do you do to manage it? Look, I'm sort of by temperament and optimist. And I'm an immigrant, which means you kind of have to be optimistic. I made my bet on the United States.

I moved countries, cultures, left behind, you know, family. I have three kids here. So I've like staked my, you know, my future here. And so I'm just generally optimistic about this country and about the fact that, you know, I think things will work out. It's a tough period to have that kind of temperament because, you know, for most of the time I've been in the United States at a broad kind of macro level, things were getting better,

you know? And economically and their standard of living and all that, I still think, you know, an AI will be this amazing thing. But if you look at core political indicators, the quality of our democracy, the quality of rule of law, the quality of rule of law. the quality of a civic life and the way we talk to each other and treat each other.

Some of these things, both in the United States and around the world, have actually been moving in the wrong direction for several years. And so, you know, I view it as part of my job

to try to reverse that trend. You know, one of the things I'm grateful for is that I don't just look at that world. I feel like I have something I can do about I don't ring my hands. I say, you know what, let's point out, let's contribute to changing that dynamic.

I'm not arrogant enough to think that I, you know, I'm one person, you know, but the way trends work is if a whole bunch of people start doing things like that and we each reinforces the other, maybe, you know, maybe you steer things a little bit in a positive direction. At least that's what I say to myself. to hear things in a positive direction. Fareed Zakaria is a journalist author and political commentator. He hosts Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN and is a columnist for the Washington Post. Farid, like I said, you're the fastest hour in podcasting.

Thanks very much for your time today. Always a pleasure, Scott. Thank you. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez, Laura Jeneer, and Asher Schwartz. Our video editor is Bianca Rosario Ramirez. Cammy Rieke is our social producer. Drew Burroughs is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thanks for listening to the Profi Pod from Prophegee Media. Calculating route to avoid seeing poverty.

Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street. Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food. Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away, then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty. Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways, like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at United WayGT.org. And here, the Mona Lisa gazed into Mona's eyes in perfect health

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