The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - The State of the World — with Ian Bremmer

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

Ian Bremmer, the President of Eurasia Group, returns to the pod to discuss the latest around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including what it means for the rest of the world. We also get an update on US-China relations, the protests in Iran, and how Ian thinks about social media regulation. Follow Ian on Twitter, @ianbremmer.  Scott opens with his thoughts on the idolatry of innovators.  Algebra of Happiness: the death bed test. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Episode 201. 201 is the area code of northeastern new jersey did not know that in 2001 the first harry potter movie released apple released its first ipod nicole kidman and tom cruise got divorced and justin timberlake and britney spears were still together true story i call my penis tom cruise it does true story i'm writing an hbo show it's about a group of rich moms who get shaken up when another young mom shows up and gets a job. Also, Nicole Kidman as the emotional lady. Go, go, go!

Welcome to the 201st episode of The Prof G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group and the author of the new book, The Power of Crisis. We discuss with Ian the state of the world, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine, U.S.-China relations, developing countries, and why he still believes in a G-Zero world. Okay, what's happening? Elon is supposedly moving forward or plans to proceed with the acquisition of Twitter. Why? Because he had no fucking choice because he signed an agreement and it was about to be upheld in the Delaware Chancery Court. And he tried to bluff and Twitter called his bluff, or at least Twitter's board, and sued him. And his lawyers, a few days before the trial was set to begin, likely sat him down and said, boss,

you're going to lose. And rather than endure that humiliation and more revelations about what went on behind the scenes, which make him look bad and make his friends look worse, he's decided to move ahead with the deal. What also probably helps is that even despite its check back recently at 5% or 10%, Tesla stock still is massively overvalued. So he has the capital. He doesn't want the embarrassment. Is this a bad thing? I don't think it's as bad as people think. I don't think he has time to run the thing.

He has these kind of opaque, strange, cloudy, make-no-fucking-sense views on free speech, which he will soon put to the side. Maybe he lets Trump back on the platform. I think that's probably the biggest change. views on free speech, which he will soon put to the side. Maybe he lets Trump back on the platform. I think that's probably the biggest change. But we should have, as Ian Bremmer says in our interview, platforms that anyone can own that are not a threat to society. And I don't think it's that big a deal. I believe people who think it's a threat or an existential threat of Elon owning Twitter are probably overestimating that threat. But where are we? He was about to lose.

He didn't want to lose publicly. So he's going to move forward with something he did not want to do. And that is acquire Twitter. It's going to be interesting. Okay, in other news, there's a lot happening, speaking of Elon,

around the idolatry of innovators. What's the idolatry of innovators, you ask? It's our society's obsession with entrepreneurs who have best exploited our faith in technology. Who could that be? Anyways, we thought we'd go a little longer without talking about who, but here we are again. The texts are just crazy. It's rich people porn. The texts include

unproductive messages to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, including, what did you get done this week? I'm an asshole and I'm just going to start, I don't know, being critical of you for no reason. Gayle King noting that Twitter takeover is a gangsta move. Oh, Gayle, you're so down with the youngins. Jason Kalkanis admitting that he was out marketing securities without the permission of Elon and then dropping to his knees like a cheap whore

who's just been caught stealing his John's watch to fillet him, hoping that he'll forget he was stealing from him. I don't know. What's the term when you're out marketing securities you're not supposed to? He said that you need to stop it, Jason. You're embarrassing me. And the bankers think you're exploiting our friendship. With friends like Jason, who needs total fucking sycophants? IEC above Jason. One of the more ridiculous texts came from Larry Ellison, who casually offered Musk a billion dollars to get the deal done.

I mean, who hasn't had a friend text them and offer them a billion dollars? Anyways, what kind of society are we where we have billionaires who are able to throw around that amount of cabbage as if it's pocket change? Well, we're in a society with income inequality, and we need billionaires. It just seems, I mean, this just seems strange. And supposedly Sam Bankman Friedman, I can never get this right, the crypto guy, the, but I think if you get a room together of people making average livings and then a group of people who are very wealthy in a room, you can discern the difference.

One group of people are more creative, harder working, and granted luckier. If you get a group of wealthy people together in a room and a group of billionaires, my experience is you cannot tell the difference. I know a lot of billionaires. I know a lot of very wealthy people. And for the life of me, if you line them up and did a full interview of them and their backgrounds, you would not be able to discern the two. Why? Because billionaires are very talented people, similar to most professionals or most uber-successful professionals who are just really fucking lucky. The only problem is that they like to credit their grit and their character and not recognize their blessings. I find there's a virus that infects, especially the Valley, where they conflate luck with talent. And also something happens where they decide to start

shitposting America and don't realize that their luckiest or their smartest move was bringing their rocket companies and their SPACs to the United States. There aren't a lot of people using SPACs as vehicles of transfer wealth from retail investors in Brazil or in Norway to people who can go on CNBC and pump and dump their stocks. There's no one firing rockets out of Seoul, South Korea. There are people firing rockets out of North Korea, and we'll talk to Ian about that. But anyways, in 2021, income inequality increased for the first time since 2011. It's actually getting worse. The income share of the lowest 80% declined in 2021, yet increased for the top 20%. In a pandemic, typically in a crisis throughout history, what you've had is a crisis is sort of a leveling effect.

And that is the factories get bombed and you need workers to rebuild the factories. So the guy who owned the factory, and let's be honest, it's always the guy, gets a lot less wealthy and workers kind of level up, if you will. What was different about this pandemic is we decided that a million Americans dying would be bad, but the NASDAQ going down would be tragic, that we have to make sure that rich people stay rich. So we pumped 27% of GDP into the economy. Three quarters of it ended up in the top quintile of economic earning households. That's right. We decided we didn't want rich people to get any less rich. America used to be the best place in the world to get rich. Now it's the best place in the world to stay rich. Why am I economically secure? Because in 2008, when recession hit, and they always hit, and that's

okay. That's a natural part of the cycle. We let the gale force winds of disruption blow. We let them wail. And what happened? Apple and Amazon stock dropped to 10% of where they are now. And people who were coming into their income-earning years, i.e. years truly, got to buy Apple and Amazon stock. That doesn't mean there's not pain along the way. But when you bail out a baby boomer who owns a failing business, all you're doing is robbing opportunity from the younger person who would like to come in and buy that restaurant for pennies on the dollar. So maintaining the status quo, entrenching the incumbents is nothing but a transfer of wealth

from young people to old people. We need churn. We need disruption. Of the G7 nations, the U.S. has the highest level of income inequality and is comparable to developing nations. And some, the wealthy in this nation have weaponized government and have decided it's capitalism on the way up with our rugged individualists who deserve all their millions and billions. But when shit gets real and they might lose their money or Delta might go out of business, we're all in this together. No, we're not. Fuck you. We weren't in it together on the way up. Why are we in it on the way down? You should incur the same disruption that rich people have incurred for the last two centuries. We have decided it's more important to keep people rich,

which, by the way, robs people of the ability to get rich. According to a report by Bloomberg, the CEOs of the thousand biggest publicly traded companies in the U.S. garner 144 times more than their median employee, and it keeps going up. So back to the texts. What can we really take away from these texts? I think the biggest takeaway in the learning for a young person is that people need guardrails. Try and find people in your life who are inclined to disagree with you. Your kitchen cabinet needs to be stocked with people who are going to push back on your ideas. They're going to question. You're thinking they're going to see the issue from another vantage point. They're going to offer you guidance and have

your best interests in mind. How are they going to have your back? By disagreeing with you to your front, by saying, well, have you thought about this? Or maybe that's not a good idea. Or boss, boss, you are fucking up. And guess what's going to happen? You're going to get angry and you're going to like them less for a few minutes. And then a few hours later, you're going to realize that that's what good friends do. They offer guardrails. We'll be right back for our conversation with Ian Bremmer. The Capital Ideas Podcast now features a series hosted by Capital Group CEO, Mike Gitlin. Through the words and experiences of investment professionals, you'll discover what differentiates their investment approach, what learnings have shifted their career trajectories, and how do they find their next great idea?

Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average US company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers

to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future? In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group and the author of the new book, The Power of Crisis. Okay, and I have a very thoughtful question

to kick us off. What the fuck? Even I'm freaked out and I usually ignore most of this stuff. Is my freaking out justified? What is going on here? I think your spidey sense is tingling. Yeah. Say more.

Are we on? Yeah, we're on, boss. We're on. Yeah. I actually speak that way on the podcast. No, I know that. I know that. I just couldn't quite tell. Well, first of all, when you have leaders writing you saying, how will the West respond if Putin uses a nuclear weapon? I have never gotten inbound notes like that in my life. I mean, people are really concerned that the last week, the war in Ukraine has escalated more than at any point since the start of the invasion, February 24th. Putin is in a horrible position and it's not clear that he has any good ways to respond. And so people are starting to think the unthinkable. So let's talk about that. What are some of the vehicles or means of escalation? Well, one vehicle is that he's more likely to take this fight to NATO. There's almost

certain that the Russians will not be providing any more energy to Europe going forward this winter. They've already just over the weekend, they cut off the gas going to Italy. I suspect they will cut off the gas going through Ukraine that believe it or not right now, there's still Russian gas being pumped through Ukraine that goes into Europe and everyone's paying for it. I think that stops real soon. TurkStream, which goes through Turkey, is the only remaining pipeline. I suspect the Russians cut that off too. So the economic impact of all of this on Europe is going to be very sharp, very severe, and is coming real soon. The likelihood that the Russians would engage in strikes against pipelines, sabotage against fiber optics, that they would even perhaps engage in strikes against weapons depots and the like

in NATO countries as opposed to just in Ukraine. If you look at Russian state media over the past two weeks, they admit that they're losing territory. They're no longer pretending that they're winning everything, but they're not losing to the Ukrainians. They say they're losing to NATO, that NATO is fighting them. It's NATO intelligence, NATO weapon systems, NATO training. Sometimes they even say that there are NATO soldiers on the ground that are infiltrating, depending on who you watch. It is clear that Putin is setting this up to be a much broader fight than just Ukraine itself. And look, if Russia uses a nuke, the United States is going to start attacking. They will enter the war. They will start attacking

Russian troops on the ground in Ukraine. That message has been delivered directly to Putin. If the Russians were to blow up a pipeline or two or fiber optic networks, I honestly don't know what the West can do to respond. I mean, you know, short of war, you've already got maximum sanctions against the Russians. I'm just not, there aren't many levers left. But if you, so imagine they cut off all the energy. In the middle of the last century, we sent frigates and P-51s and battleships and gasoline to the allies. Couldn't we do the same thing here?

I mean, it'd be a terrible winter, but at the end of the day, wouldn't this be medium and long-term, kind of like taking an addict off of crack, the crack cocaine of cheap Russian energy? I mean, haven't we sacrificed more before for lesser outcomes? Long term, I think you're absolutely right, Scott. The question is what happens in the short to medium term. Right now, the Germans are already prepared. Even the Green Party in Germany is prepared to accept fracking gas from the United States to LNG terminals

in Germany. That was unthinkable seven, eight months ago. Unthinkable. So absolutely. And the Americans are doing a lot for Germany, and I suspect they're prepared to do more. Let's keep in mind, the Germans, this winter, they're up over 90% storage in terms of the energy they'll need to get through it. But that's because the Russians have been providing gas to Germany and to Europe all this year. This winter, they'll drive down all of those stores.

Next year, they won't have the Russians to refill it. The Americans will do a lot. It won't be enough. If you talk to the German leadership, they will tell you that they do not have confidence about next winter because the hole that they'll be in will be too great. And so, look, again, if you ask me,

in three to five years' time, can the Europeans get through this? The answer is absolutely yes. Will there be economic carnage in Europe as a consequence in the short to medium term? I fear the world and now is contracting by 5%. So this year has been a big hit, but nothing like the hit they're going to have over the next three to five years. So as the Europeans get through this with pain, the Russians are going to contract by 30 to 50%. What happens to the G20, this G20 economy, as they are no longer able to build anything?

Their auto manufacturing is 3% of what it was a year ago. They've got no semiconductors to build their military capabilities. They were the second largest defense exporter in the world. What happens to Russia as their economy literally collapses? What do they do? What do we want to have? What's the end game? I mean, right now, everything is pointing towards escalation. And for good reason, the Russians have invaded Ukraine and the Ukrainians are defending themselves. But at some point, you want this war to be over. And right now, nobody has good ideas about how that's going to happen. So Sun Tzu, and I realize this is sort of, I don't know, pretty retail strategy. Is this Golden Ridge you're going to give me? A hundred percent.

So predictable. And I realized, I mean, this is what I read in the 11th grade. So I'm a little bit embarrassed bringing it up. But is there a Golden Bridge here? How do you give, I mean, what was it? Unless you want to totally slaughter your enemy, you always give them an out. Is there a viable out?

Or are we just saying his era is over? It's time for the people around him at some point like they did with, I don't know if they did it with Stalin. At some point, the people around him go, okay, this guy's a liability and they kill him. So let me say two different things to respond to that, neither of which are going to be very popular. The first is that if this were a war going on in some other part of the world, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, the international community, and by that I mean the U.S. and its allies in the G7, the rich countries, the rich democracies, the response would be condemnation, ceasefire, stop the fighting immediately, and then start negotiations, right?

That is not what we are doing right now. We are saying, no, we absolutely support the Ukrainians. We want the war to continue so that they can take this land back. We're not saying we want the war to continue, but the reality, that is the American policy, the NATO policy, the entire G7 policy on the ground. And it's understandable why, given the war crimes, given the complete lack of justification for the Russians to invade. But I want to be clear that part of the reason that the U.S. does not have support from the developing world, from India, for example, on this issue, from China on this issue, from South Africa on this issue, from Brazil, is precisely because they see enormous hypocrisy and double standard in the way Ukraine is being treated compared to the way we would respond to other such crises

in other parts of the world. That's number one. Number two, I have been saying over the past months that while it is important to do as much as possible to support the Ukrainians to defend themselves and to stop the Russians from taking over their territory, it is also important insofar as it is possible not to humiliate Putin. Now, Putin has made it very hard to avoid humiliation because in any circumstances, he's going to be in a radically worse economic, geopolitical, and security position than he had been before he invaded. That is just the reality. So there is a level of humiliation that is unavoidable here. But I want to be clear,

I would not support Versailles-type behavior towards post-Ukraine invasion Putin. I would not support massive war reparations that would bankrupt the Russians. I would not support an effort to try to try Putin as a war criminal, even though those things are completely justified in terms of international law, completely justified in terms of what the Russians have done to the Ukrainians. And the reason I don't want to do that is because these guys have thousands of nuclear weapons and have the capability to absolutely ruin everybody's day. But, you know, the fact is that I do believe that the Ukrainians should be able to take all of the territory that was lost since February 24th. I think those are minimum table sticks. I also think that Crimea is a different story. Crimea was autonomous under independent Ukraine. I've spent time there. It was run by local Russians.

Everyone there speaks Russian. The majority of the population was ethnic Russian. They had a local parliament with a Russian tricolor flying on top of it. The Ukrainians didn't really consider it to be the same as the rest of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government was prepared to negotiate on Crimea before the war started. They were also prepared to negotiate some level of neutrality as opposed to NATO membership before the war started. So if the Ukrainians were able to take all of the pre-Feb 24 territory back, I would then support negotiations that would include those sorts of topics. But the point is that now that Putin has annexed these four territories and said that they are Russian territory, some of which he didn't even occupy at the time he annexed them, which has never happened before in history, and some of which he's lost in the last few days, I no longer think that that bottom line, basic, you know, minimum standard of

negotiations between the two countries, it doesn't look at all feasible right now. So this is, this has become much more dangerous as a consequence of what Putin has done in the last two weeks. Much more dangerous. Doesn't the EU and America say, OK, we're kind of more unified than we've been in a while? We finally found that common enemy that we've been searching for, right? That's not us. That's not another political party within our own borders. And Europe's more of a union than it's been in a long time.

Every day, this just gets worse for him. You know, why stop? Why give him an out? And I recognize, okay, nuclear war is a pretty good reason to try and bring this to an end. But it just feels as if every day it gets worse for him.

And I don't understand, or you're of the mind that, look, this is, I won't put words in your mouth, but the existential threat that exists every day when you have a nuclear power being humiliated and getting increasingly desperate, that risk is worth saying, okay, at every possible term, we have to try and negotiate a settlement and give him to save face. No, no, no, no. Again, what I just said is that I think what Putin has done has made the possibility of an out much, much harder. My suggesting that we not create a post-World War I Germany situation

is what I'm talking about. But what about your idea? What about saying, hey, safe face, you can now string the flag up on all of Crimea. And we'll, I mean, even we pulled missiles out of Turkey, right? We declared victory around with Cuba and Khrushchev. That was a secret codicil at the time. It wasn't known that we were doing that with the Soviets, but it was the deal that was cut to avoid nuclear war. And thankfully so. Turned out that we had to

give something. And I think at the end of the day, we probably have to give something. But Putin has made the maximum that the US can plausibly give that would be acceptable to the Ukrainians. He has made it much, much less likely by by adding 300,000 troops and annexing these four territories. Because I just don't think you can get from here to there. I mean, so Elon Musk basically promoting Putin's talking points, the talking points he's been giving to the Indians, the Chinese, the Kazakhs, back during that Uzbekistan summit a couple of weeks ago, Elon Musk basically said, okay, here's the deal that you need to cut or else there's going to be nuclear war.

I'm deeply disappointed that Elon would come out publicly carrying Putin's water like that. I think it was deeply irresponsible. I know that he's not known for acting responsibly outside of his core areas of business, but still, when he starts hitting geopolitics, he kind of makes me want to start designing electric vehicles, right? I mean, because I'm roughly as capable. Yeah, the must we, I almost feel like, I hate to even give it more oxygen because I just see it as, you know, I'm one of those guys that's constantly, you know, not staying in my lane.

And I think people should be able to talk about things that, you know, maybe they don't have domain expertise in. But when you have 90 million followers, and I also want to acknowledge he's been very useful in terms of providing Ukrainians with communications with, what's it called, Starlink? Yep. Very important. But I just don't, I can't figure out. I'm convinced he just has a psychopathic need to be in the news every day or be the subject of the news every day, regardless of what he says or the reaction he gets. Look, I think he's relevant, right, here,

because of the Starlink connection, because the Russian government has threatened his satellites in recent weeks, in part because of Starlink and because how poorly they're doing. And I think it is important when someone with the level of reach that Elon has is prepared to say, we need to stop supporting the Ukrainians the way we have. And the reason I say that, it's relatively easy for Elon's followers to say, okay, he's not relevant on this issue. But we are watching right now a small version of what will happen if Trump becomes the nominee for the Republican Party

and starts saying the exact same thing, which he will. And you can't turn him off on this issue. And it will fundamentally divide and undermine U.S. policy and leadership of NATO on this Ukraine issue. Possibly Putin's best out at this point is holding on, hoping that that's the outcome. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately Thank you. AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from Alex Partners. In business, disruption brings not only challenges, but opportunities. As artificial intelligence powers pivotal moments of change, Alex Partners is the consulting firm chief executives can rely on.

Alex Partners is dedicated to making sure your company knows what really matters when it comes to AI. As part of their 2024 tech sector report, Alex Partners spoke with nearly 350 tech executives from across North America and Europe to dig deeper into how tech companies are responding to these changing headwinds. And in their 2024 digital disruption report, Alex Partners found that 88% of executives report seeing potential for growth from digital disruption, with 37% seeing significant or even extremely high positive impact on revenue growth. You can read both reports and learn how to convert digital disruption into revenue growth at www.alexpartners.com slash Vox. That's www.alexpartners.com slash V-O-X. In the face of disruption, businesses trust Alex Partners to get straight to the point and deliver results when it really matters. So outside of what's going on between Russia and Ukraine and its

impact on the EU and even America, how does this war change the world? A couple of ways. First, the impact on the developing world. I mean, after two years of pandemic, now you have a year of massive supply chain disruptions, particularly on food and fertilizer, massive inflation as a consequence that's hitting countries that have taken on more debt level and they can't afford to pay for it. This will lead to more collapses of those economies like we've seen recently in Sri

Lanka. That's a real danger. Those countries are not aligned with the United States or its allies on continuing to pursue a war so that Ukraine can take its territory back. These countries all want this to just be over and they want to be able to buy food and fuel. So the Americans and the Europeans

are going to have to do an awful lot more to provide international aid and support for these countries. There's something that is called the United Nations Human Development Index. And they put out a report every year that looks at all of these different measures of human development, like education and lifespan and hunger and all the rest. And what we've seen is for 50 years, every year, the indicators have been getting better. In the last two years, the world has lost five years of human development. Five years. We're going backwards. And those five years of human development lost has been experienced almost entirely on the backs of lower and middle income populations. So if you want to talk about how the world is being affected by Russia-Ukraine, with the exceptions of the Ukrainian people, the 44 million that have been most impacted by the war, overwhelmingly the impact has been on the poorest people of the

planet. And far more so than you would expect from war breaking out in Yemen or Sudan or Libya or any of those places, because a war between Russia and Ukraine, it affects so much natural resource that really matters for the functioning of the global economy. So let's talk a little bit about Iran, which would be on the front page, but it's on page two, right? What do you see? Can you attempt to summarize what's going on there? And what do you think the long-term ramifications and any thoughts on, could this actually involve regime change? I mean, it's very exciting and heartening to see what's going on there on some level. And I would feel like it's just too bad it's happening right now because it's being overshadowed by a war. What are your thoughts on what's taking place in Iran?

Well, I mean, some of it is very heartening in the sense that it's a whole bunch of women. It's thousands and thousands of women across the entire country, particularly in the Kurdish region of Iran, but across the entire country who are just impossibly angry at both the religious police's killing of this young woman who refused to wear a headscarf, but also generally the repressiveness of a conservative religious elite and police over a population that is far more secular. And it's a leaderless movement. It's completely grassroots. It's emerged, you know, sort of with just gravitational pull. And these women are demonstrating in all sorts of ways, some anonymously, some very publicly, some through

social media, though a lot of internet has been shut down, some in their schools and their universities, some on town squares. Over 100 have been killed. There's been a lot of brutality. There's been a lot of people that have been sent to jail, some of whom we might never hear from again. This is a danger for the regime. And we heard from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei just in the last 48 hours, his first official response saying that this is the fault, this was all planned by the Americans and the Zionist regime in Israel. Of course, that's a load of complete bullshit, but that has been his response. It implies an intention to continue to use repression to shut these down and delegitimize the movement. But at some point,

I do expect that there's going to have to be a level of reform, that the government is going to have to listen to these people and is going to have to loosen up some of their repressive religious control the way that we've seen, for example, under MBS in Saudi Arabia over the past five years. And so far, there's been no indication of that in Iran, but I suspect it will happen. Unfortunately, Scott, I think it is relatively unlikely that this series of revolts leads to an overturning of the Iranian regime. Is there a scenario where either Iran or Russia could go through a regime change and we could find ourselves, similar to after World War II, turning enemies into allies? Is there a possible silver lining that, all of the ideological trappings of that regime

would wash away very quickly. There would be immense diaspora engagement, but there'd also be immense engagement from all of these talented Iranians that are being repressed inside Iran, but are still there. And in the case of Russia, of course, there's just been this massive brain drain over the course of the past decades. And I mean, kind of every level of elite society in Russia has been affected by that. They just don't have, they haven't been funding that culture. They haven't been funding that education, those sciences for decades now. And so the country's really been hollowed out. I think in the case of Iran, it would be much easier to really turn around if the regime was suddenly overthrown. of how do we protect, preserve, and grow shareholder value? At least a for-profit company, I assume, is why they engage your firm. To be crass, is there a way to make money here?

Is energy going to go down in price? When you look at the tea leaves of commodity prices, what firms win and lose here, what macro factors that your hedge fund clients come to you to predict, do you see any major trends in terms of creating alpha around investment opportunities or opportunities for certain business actors? Well, I mean, first, let me, I'll answer that question. But I also, I want to push back a little bit in the sense that I think there's a big difference between the way I try to approach what we do for big corporations and what lots of consultants do in the sense that

I really do believe that the global order is changing a lot. I think that, you know, coming out of this GZERO world, what, you know, Fareed Zakaria calls a post-American world, there's going to be a lot of fragmentation. We've got to deal with global climate change. There's no superpower. That's kind of the definite way you think of it. No superpower. We've got incredible disruptive technologies. And I think that there are a lot of corporations out there, a lot of businesses out there, a lot of people dealing with capitalism out there that are not aligned with where the planet is today and where the planet is going. And so in part, I really believe that you will ultimately make a lot more

money if you better understand the world and get your organization headed towards where the world is going, even if that involves dramatically changing your present business model and mission statement. And so it's not just about how do I make money with my existing mission statement right now. It's about how am I getting the world wrong that I need to change who I am, what my organization is, what they do. I mean, we're seeing that of course, in the most obvious way with fossil fuel companies today, but it goes much broader and deeper than that. Um, I think that, you know, a company like Facebook is going to have to come to terms with that, or they're going to be

in very serious trouble. Um, and the more And the more that we can play a role in helping them critically address their own mission statements, their own business models, and what the world really is, what a GZERO post-American world really looks like, I think we all end up in a much better place. Who are some role models for that? Who do you think's pulled that off? Well, I actually believe that, and so one of our biggest clients slash partners on the global stage is Microsoft. And I believe in part because they've been around for a longer period of time, they're more B2B as opposed to B2C. They also were almost ended as a company decades ago when they kind of went through all of the antitrust stuff. They are more aware of how much the world can change and can they think it is and what that might mean for who they are now and in five and in 10 years, I think is really interesting. I think it's very interesting, for example,

that if you were to ask political leaders in NATO, what are the countries that are doing the most to support the Ukrainians from a defense perspective right now, they would say number one, the US, number two, the UK, number three, Microsoft. I think that's really interesting. Yeah, and Poland would be number four.

I think that's really interesting. But there are other companies. And how is Microsoft supporting the war effort? Well, I mean, for everything on digital and cyber. I mean, the first attacks on Ukraine actually hit Redmond, Washington on February 23rd, not the 24th, because they were hitting the cloud and the cloud was being sourced and defended and identified by Microsoft, which they knew they had due after the original NotPetya attacks that came a few years ago. You remember the ones that hit the Ukrainians, caused 1% of their GDP to just go up in smoke, and then almost made Maersk go bankrupt globally, right? So that's not happening this time around, in part because those guys are involved. The last time we spoke, you didn't see TikTok at the kind of same threat level that I perceived it. Do you still hold that view? You know, yeah, I still, you're right.

And that was, if I remember correctly, the most tweetable portion of our last podcast. I remember that explicitly. I won't repeat that because it's not as much fun the second time around, but you can go back and see it. Yeah, look, I think that there is a level of decoupling between the US and China that is important. And it is where we can identify direct and definable national security implications for one or the other country that will be undermined if we allow for interdependence. So when I look at Huawei and critical infrastructure and 5G and their relationship with the Chinese military, I say I want them to have no part of U.S. critical

infrastructure. I want them out. And not only that, but I want the U.S. to use American power with American allies to do as much as possible to ensure that those allies aren't using Huawei either. I'm fine with that. strong AI algorithm driven social media platform that all the kids are on, which I'd rather them not be on. And I'd like to see the US government have a much more intrusive regulatory policy towards what is and isn't okay for young people to do online. I think we are abdicating responsibility for our kids, frankly, but I don't see much of a difference between whether that's TikTok or whether that's Facebook. I just don't. And I accept the fact that there is an enormous amount of data that the Chinese government will have access to as a consequence of that. But for me, that goes beyond the definition of national

security, where we need to ensure that there is no interdependence. I actually think that there is a level of robust interdependence between the United States and China, and also between China and the rest of the world's economies, that actually helps to ensure global stability, helps to ensure that we don't go to war against each other. I think it's valuable. So that's my pragmatic reason for it. And I also think that even if we were to say, no, we just need to decouple much more broadly from the Chinese economy, our allies like Germany and even Japan. And I was just in Japan last week and I met with the entire cabinet while I was there. I talked to them at great length and

I've known many of them for 20 plus years. They are much more threatened by China in terms of security than we are in the United States. They are also much more intentionally exposed to the Chinese economy than we are in the United States. And they very much intend to maintain that level of interdependence. And they tell the Americans, we want a closer relation with you on defense and security, including on things like Taiwan and the South China Sea, but we do not want a Cold War with China economically.

And they firmly believe that they can do both of those things. And I happen to agree with that. So let's acknowledge that nations that do business together are less likely to start firing missiles at one another. I always thought that the best defense for Taiwan was Apple, and that is the Chinese need Apple and Apple needs China. But do you see any threat that it would be really easy for the CCP, if you believe that there isn't a Chinese wall between the CCP and Chinese-owned companies, do you think the temptation for them to put their thumbs on the scales of content that is anti-American, such that the streaming platform that young people under the age of 18 spend more time on than every other streaming platform, that they could very elegantly, without us ever knowing, raise a generation of civic, nonprofit, business, and military leaders that just feel a little less positive about the country they're in.

Yeah, of course, I also think that American social media companies are doing that. They're just not doing it intentionally. 100%. 100%. Yeah, I agree. They're not as strategic about it. It's for money. It's not geopolitical. The fact that it's being done unintentionally, but is even more damaging than what the Chinese would do intentionally is, I think that we should be talking more about that. And I know that you do, by the way, Scott, which is, you know, this is not a slight. And you feel at least as strongly about this issue as I do. So we are confederates here, and I use that in the less historic use of that term. We just saw that the Chinese were involved in an operation to spread disinformation using fake American citizens on Meta. And it was shut down. Now, by the way, if you did any digging into who these people were pretending to be

and how badly they were posting on time zones that made no sense for the American kids that would be using it and with really bad English and the rest, it's pretty clear that this is only a nascent threat from China, and they are not yet good at this. But, you know, the history of studying China and technology is that they get good at stuff quickly. And so, yeah, I think we should be aware of that. We should actively be spending resources to prevent the Chinese from spreading disinformation. But I

think that's equally true on Facebook with Chinese citizens as it is on TikTok. So you opened my eyes to something, and that is you said that geopolitically, America is actually doing pretty well. The relative, if you benchmark us against our competitors and our allies, that America is actually doing well, maybe even great. But that internally, we're eating each other from the inside out. And it really opened my eyes to this notion that the call is coming from inside of the house. And I keep using that term. If it's a horror film, it's we're the enemy. That for some reason we've decided that people in the other political party are our mortal enemy,

not the people pouring over the border in Ukraine, which I think is not only wrong, but it's just not accurate. Do you have any thoughts when you look at other nations that managed to maintain a certain level of cohesion or trust between citizens? I think of Japan. My understanding of Japan is that there's a tremendous amount of trust between the citizens of Japan, regardless of the political party. Do you have any thoughts on how America restores some of that connective tissue, such that we again realize that America will never have better allies than other Americans? It's a lot easier in Japan, of course, which is a single party democracy. The LDP basically wins almost everything.

It's incredibly homogeneous. They allow in almost no immigrants. They have much less economic inequality. Social media, they're not allowed to do political campaigns on social media, for example. I mean, literally, I can point to like every single thing that drives inequality and Japan does none of it. So, I mean, part of it is you need to start addressing those issues inside the United States. But the problem is that this is not a new problem for America. This is a problem that's been growing over decades now.

So the solutions are going to take decades. I think that the biggest piece of the solution that we could do something major about in the near term is on the regulation of social media, the platforms specifically. We have to recognize that there is a responsibility. Some of it is by the companies, some of it is by the government, some of it is by the government, but a responsibility to regulate content and particularly a responsibility when it comes to access of young people to these platforms. The Chinese government literally shut down

an entire industry that was making a lot of money, video games. They said, you know what? We're just not gonna let kids on these platforms for more than two hours a week. That's it. How many American parents would love to have the U.S. government come in and do that? Right? No, it's not who we are. It's not what we do. I say this as someone who has kids. Keep in

mind, we let our kids on screen so we can have time on screens. I know. I mean, we like it in theory. I don't know how many of us would actually do that. I don't have kids, so it makes it so much easier for me. But Moose, Moose should not be on screens. It's very clear. And I would regulate that because he'd get up to no good. I think that we clearly have, so for example, I'd be all in favor at this point of just saying all accounts have to be verified. Just have to be. Okay, put a pin in that. I put out a blog post called Identity stating basically that, that we should have some sort of decentralized form of identity that maybe doesn't have your name and your address.

But at the end of the day, if an algorithm suggests you're promoting incendiary content or attacking people with multiple accounts, you should be unmasked or at least booted off the platform. And the level of pushback I got was immense. And it kind of summarized or distilled down to easy for a rich white guy to say. And when you talk about poor people and developing nations, if without anonymity, they get abused. And they also- We're not talking about, you and I have been talking about the United States. So let us, we're just talking about a regular, the EU has its own regulations on data and privacy. If you want to get onto, you want to be there, you have to like click and what kind of privacy do you want the rest? I'm talking about in the United States, we are a rich country. We have freedom of speech. We don't have the problems of authoritarian developing states, but we are heading towards having those problems. We have the ability to do exactly what you just said in the United States for American citizens. It would make a difference. So verified identity,

you want to post content on a social media platform, you have to have essentially a blue check and you have to show who you are, at least have your identity verified that you're maybe not even your full identity, but something that says we have checked that this is one person, not thousands of people or thousands of accounts being run by one person, but you're a fan

of some sort of identity enforcement. Absolutely. Now, I mean, I understand that that means that Twitter will have like, you know, only 50% of the actual users that they pretend to have and it'll kill their advertising model. You know what? I don't care. I don't care. These companies are inadvertently, but absolutely complacently helping to destroy civil society in America. There is a cost of that. And the fact that that cost is not reflected in dollars and cents means that our values are fucked and we've got to do something about it. So some breaking news, I want to get your feedback and I'm going to let you go because I know this is a big week for your book, The Power of Crisis, and you have a lot going on. It was just announced that Elon

Musk reportedly wants to proceed with the acquisition of Twitter and the stock is up, the stock has jumped. What are your thoughts on the Twitter saga and the idea of Elon Musk owning Twitter? I think Elon Musk is one of the most extraordinary entrepreneurs that our country has ever attracted and developed. I think it influence into areas he knows nothing about, he's enormously damaging. And we've talked about that already on Ukraine. And I think Twitter is the same thing. This is not a guy that has shown through, at least through his behavior on Twitter, that he has a great deal of interest for American civil society or knows how to really be a part of it. And I don't know if that's because he's on the spectrum in terms of his personality. I don't know enough of his

background on what his dad was like. I mean, people have written books about that. I don't actually care, but he's not the person I personally think will be useful in running that platform. But you know what? It shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter who runs the platform. It should matter that we have effective regulations that whoever runs the platform, the platform is not going to damage the country. And so ultimately, I think the answer is not in let's get an incredible $100 billion person mogul to fix America. It should be that we are a nation of rules and laws that govern people. It is a representative democracy, and we need to act like one. We're a nation of rules and laws and a democracy and need to act

like one. Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group, the world's leading political risk research and consulting firm. He's also the author of 11 books, including his latest, The Power of Crisis. He joins us from, Ian, where are you? I am in New York City, my favorite place. Oh, nice. There you go. Well, you are our first four-time guest and every time I learn something

and we appreciate your time and congrats on the book, The Power of Crisis. Ian, thanks again, my brother. I really appreciate your time. Scott, my friend, I'm so happy to be with you. Take it easy. As a group of happiness, the deathbed test. I am an atheist. I believe there will be a point in my life where I look into my son's eyes and know that our relationship is coming to an end. And that's okay because it frees me up to be more courageous around the

things I do, take little things less seriously, mostly because I know at some point, sooner than we all think, we're all going to be dead. And the person who you're worried about offending or the person you're worried about what they think of you, they're going to be dead soon too. And I know that sounds macabre and guess what? It's true. So I run almost every major decision through the deathbed test. And that is I try and imagine I'm near the end. I have it all planned out. It's true. So I run almost every major decision through the deathbed test. And that is I try and imagine I'm near the end. I have it all planned out. It's kind of strange. I realize I know what music I'm going to have, the pictures I'm going to have, where I want to die.

I've got it all planned out like people plan out their wedding or their 60th birthday party or their bar mitzvah. I have planned, put a lot of time into my last days because I'm going to get to relive my life again, and I'm excited about it. And I imagine myself, I put myself there, and then I look at the decision I'm facing now. I'm in London. We moved here, and my youngest is having a difficult time adapting. Nothing out of the ordinary, probably normal, or I should say it's normal that he's having a difficult time adapting because a sixth grader misses his friends and he misses the normalcy of his life and he misses living in Florida where the weather's warm and going to

the beach with his dad and doing what Florida kids do. And he's struggling. And anyone who has kids knows that when your kid is struggling, the whole household kind of wilts. And the reason we made this decision, and by the way, he's going to be fine. And the reason we made this decision is the deathbed test. Let's assume I hate it. Let's assume for whatever reason, my kids don't settle in. I don't enjoy it. I'm already losing a shit ton of money here. I make the majority of my money or about 50% of my income from speaking. I can't get back to Dana Point for a speaking gig for MasterCard. I can't get to Chicago. I mean, I could, but I'm just not going to kill myself and commute back and forth from Europe. So it's already taking a toll on us. But here's the thing. When I'm on my deathbed,

I'm not going to remember giving up the MasterCard engagement. I'm not going to remember, at least I hope I'm not going to remember those one or two months where my son struggled a little bit. What I'm going to remember is that I took the opportunity to live in a different continent. And even if we decide we don't enjoy it here and we move back to the United States, I don't think I'm going to be sitting on my deathbed thinking, oh, I fucked up moving to Europe. No, no. This is an incredible opportunity. So few people get to do this. Run your decisions through your deathbed tests. And I think you're going to find you're going to think longer term. You're going to do more interesting things with your life, and you're going to have greater

perspective around judgment and decision making. You never regret. You never regret telling people that you care about them. You never regret taking a risk around expressing your feelings with friends. You never regret trying to take care of your parents. You never regret any act of goodwill towards someone else. It might be embarrassing. It might be hard in the short run,

but do the deathbed test. When I'm at the end, when I look back on this decision, what will I think? Was it the right decision? Our producers are Caroline Shager and Claire Miller and Drew Burrows. Sammy Resnick is our associate producer.

Our team is growing, which means our expenses are going up and you'll see a dramatic increase in quality. Woe you team. Anyways, if you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prof G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

We will catch you next week. I find I only give advice when I'm dipping Oreos into whiskey standing naked. It just makes me more humble about who I am and whether I should be talking about this issue. into real-time connections across AI-powered email, SMS, and more, making every moment count. Over 100,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo.com slash BFCM. for growth from digital disruption, with 37% seeing significant or extremely high positive

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