What Now? with Trevor Noah - Ian Bremmer: Who Is Actually Running the World?

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

Political scientist and author Ian Bremmer joins Trevor and Eugene to break down a world that is starting to feel a lot less predictable. What happens when American influence is no longer the default and tech companies begin to rival governments in power?   Together, they unpack what that shift looks like in real terms, why the old rules are no longer holding, and what it means to be heading toward a “G-Zero” world, where no single country is in charge. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is why you should always lie to your AI. I encourage people all the time. To lie. As much as you can. Tell me what. Every time you type into your AI, like whatever you use, I always encourage people to just throw out of the trail sometimes. Just be like, I'm a father of seven and this is my life and, you know, this is what's happening.

But you are a father of seven? Yeah, but if you're not a father of seven, you get what I'm saying? Just be like random things. I live in Bulgaria and this is my story and this is my world. But you do live in Bulgaria. Oh, I mean. You just don't tell people that. You know, I thought I was worried about the future.

I should be worried about the present. I've got two state actors here. I'm trying to help you. What you mean is a gen provocateur. This is What Now with Trevor Noah. And also there's words you're not allowed to use on this podcast. Which? Long story short.

Just long story. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You know, everyone. Long story short. We want the long version.

Yes. Short story long is what we would like. That's what we're looking for. Good to have you here. Thanks, true. In Bremer, I, it's funny, I was thinking about how to describe you. And I was like, you should just ask the man himself because I just think of you as a thinker, which I hope doesn't reduce you down to just one activity,

but you are one of my favorite thinkers in the world. And that's how I came across you. I actually think the first time I came across your work was on Twitter. And I remember being like, my best work is on Twitter. I mean, isn't that all of us? My short form work. The books I see.

The tweets, my friend. Those 160 characters. How you nailed it. How you nailed it. No, seriously. And I remember even at the time, noticing that you approached every topic or every idea with a, a different bent is the best way to put it.

It always feels like you're thinking about thinking differently. And then even when I was getting ready for this interview, I was going like, wait a minute, how do you think of yourself? What would you say like your primary job? Like if a five-year-old was asking you, Mr. Brimmer, what do you do? What would you say to them? I probably say I try to understand

how different countries around the world interact with each other, where the world's going. I'm a political scientist. I wouldn't say that to a five-year-old. Yeah, yeah, okay. That's bad for a five-year-old. But that is what I think of myself as. I don't think of myself as like a president of a firm

or an entrepreneur or any of those other things. I've always been, ever since I majored in political science as an undergrad, I thought of myself, oh, this is cool. This is what I wanna learn about it. I never traveled anywhere. Suddenly start traveling around the world. Oh, that's awesome.

Those people are really different than what I thought they were. And I wanna get that. And so if you study humanity at that level, then you're kind of a political scientist. On the lowest level, or rather on the simplest level, I think of it like there was a time, I remember reading a book about this. I think it was like in the 80s or somewhere there when American companies were working with Japanese companies and they didn't realize how many of the things they considered respectful were disrespectful in Japan. And then whenever they had to go to Japan, they're to give them a manual to say, hey, I know this is how you see the world. but in Japan this is how they see the world

and you need to interact with them according to their worldview and when I read a lot of your work that's what I find myself thinking about as I go we're living in a world where even on a geopolitical scale countries sometimes don't seem to realize that other countries think differently to them

is that a safe assertion? Completely and not only that but over time these things are fluid you know when I started in 19, 1989 when I started my graduate degree, that's when the wall came down. And the rest of the world had a view of the United States in the context of like that Cold War and winning the Cold War and those ideas. And it's only been 35 years and the view of the United States around the world has changed

radically over that period of who we are, of what we do and don't stand for. That's super interesting. Right? And so generations change too, the generation that remembered what it was like when you stood for something or you fought for something. Generation of things like, well, that doesn't matter anymore. Right. So, I mean, think about where China was 35 years ago. You know, you go there and everyone was riding a bicycle and now they're building better tech than we have in the United States. Yeah. Like so it's not just this idea of, oh, countries are static and I need to help you understand that when you go to Japan it's different. It's also that your own place is changing and how you're perceived as being is different than it used to be. How far do you think America is from how many Americans think about it currently in the world?

Oh, I think it's... Like, take us through a little journey. So let's talk about that period. There's the period where America comes out of these wars, physical and otherwise, right? The Cold War is World War, Vietnam. But there's this moment, like America has this idea of itself. and the world has an idea of America, you know. And I think some people are still sort of set in that and stuck in it.

But it's clearly changed. What do you think has been the biggest shift? There have been a few. Yeah. One, a big one, is that America used to be the place that wanted to trade with everybody. Free trade. Yeah. Now tariffs are the principal tool that the Americans are used.

using economically. And it's not just about Trump. Most people in the U.S., Democrats, Republicans are saying, no, no, no, no. We don't want free trade. We want like, you know, stuff that's built much more here. And we want more manufacturing here. And, you know, you think as well about immigration. And my grandma came through Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Where did she come from? Originally, they are Syrian Armenians. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. So they came over and she's even on a little bench on a little. Oh wow, that's amazing. Kind of cool to see. Still now. Yeah. I mean, I haven't been today, but I think so.

Unless someone ripped it out. On these two cold days. Yeah. She's out there in a bench. Still there. My old grandma. You're out here, grinned cast me and wool? You and your textures. Eugene loves textures. He does. So, you know, and I think of the statue of

liberty is a pretty iconic thing for the United States. Right. I mean, clearly that doesn't reflect who the United States is today, right? I mean, like welcoming immigrants from all over the world. Yeah, yeah, that's changed. You're tired, your huddled masses. That is nowhere close. Yeah, now it's give me your people who have a million dollars to invest or five million

dollars to spend on citizenship. Yeah. That's the new thing now. Yes. Sell me your golden visa. Sell me your golden visa. Right. Yeah.

And also let me see your social media history. by the way, the last five years. You know, when I first saw that, I didn't see the context. Of course, you'd immediately think, oh, that's China. You would think that from around the world, right? You know, or you think it was Russia. It was some other authoritarian state

that controls information. Turns out it's the United States. Most other people around the world would not have thought. That's not, that's not comport with their view of the United States. I'm just thinking about how powerful the idea of a place is in that it can be so powerful that people don't notice when it is doing things

that it said it did not stand for because what you just said I don't know why that it just like jammed something in my brain I saw the reaction immediately no it literally jammed something in my brain where I went if you put out a news headline

tomorrow and said China is going to be scrubbing people's social media for anyone who comes into the country they're going to look through their social media for five years and they're going to get access to your phone. How would most people react? They would go, I'm never going to China. Yeah, but they'll be like, of course I expect it.

Yeah, and they'd be like, what kind of country does this? I'm not bringing my phone. Got to bring a burner, all that next up. You know, it's a communist country. You don't trust them, authoritarian. You know, the United States is, these things are fluid. Nations are fluid. Governments, these all things, are identity.

What do we stand for? Who are we? I mean, maybe the most consistent thing since I was growing up as money. in terms of what the United States stands for. Yeah, the dollar. The almighty dollar. Yes. But, you know, when I grew up, the U.S. didn't only stand for the dollar.

It stood for other things too. And I think that's becoming a challenge. You're always writing books about moments and time. And tweets. Don't forget tweets. I'll never forget the tweets. Okay, good. When you guys first met. Our meat cute.

You're always writing books about moments and ideas that speak to those moments. You know, a power crux. crisis, you know, how the world is moving at a certain moment in time. I always wonder, you know, especially from authors who tap into these moments in the zeitgeist, I always wonder what they're seeing that we're not seeing that leads to them writing that book. And I'd love to know, like, what you're seeing now that would inspire a book that you would be writing for the future? What's capturing your attention and your imagination? As someone who studies the world? Maybe the, so the book that I wrote that probably was most prescient was back in 2011.

And I'm going to answer your question. I wanted to give you a thought about it. And about the G0 world and this idea, not that I had some crystal ball, but that it seems so overdetermined by big structural factors in the world, by the fact that the Russians, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we said that we wanted to bring them in, the NATO Russia Council, the G7 plus one. we never really wanted to bring them in. They were angry about it.

They blamed us. And we said we wanted to bring China and we did, but only if they were going to become Americans. Only if they actually accepted our economic system. They became free marketeers. They accepted their system. They adapted their system and they became much, much more powerful, but they were still Chinese.

So we weren't happy about that. And then the United States increasingly had a whole bunch of people saying, well, all that stuff that we used to do, like, you know, Sheriff of the World and architect of trade and promoting democracy, we don't really buy that stuff. So you put all those things together. It seemed to me wildly overdetermined that the world wasn't going to be Pax Americana. It wasn't going to be G7 or G2 or G20. It was going to be an absence of global leadership, that the U.S. wasn't going to play the role it used to, but no other country or group of countries could come together and replace

at least not for a period of time. And so it seemed to me wildly overdetermined, even if some of these things were going to change, that the train had so much momentum pulling out of the station and going downhill that the G0 was going to come. So I wrote that. Because a book should be something

that stands up for a while. And the thing that I see now... Wait, before you move on from that, before you move on from that, I'd love to know how people responded to it at the time. because I find a lot of these books and these ideas are welcomed when they meet their moments. Oh, in hindsight. Yeah, but when you release them, I'd love to know how people responded to you writing a book basically saying,

not only would America not be the de facto, you know, respected and love power in the world, but power itself would defuse, you know, would find itself diffusing in this kind of way. How did people respond to that? I think they thought it was interesting. Yeah. They thought it was intriguing. I think it played with a lot of different strands that people were picking up and looking at. There were a whole bunch of people that were looking at one or two pieces of that puzzle.

But most people at the time thought I was taking it too far. Yeah, I can imagine. Most people thought, no, no, no, maybe it'll go that way. But actually, we see a G2. It's going to be U.S. China. Actually, it's still Pax Americana. And the U.S. isn't in decline. I'm like, no, the U.S. doesn't have to be in decline.

but if it doesn't want to do these things, you know, then it is personally removing itself from that role. It doesn't mean that the dollar suddenly is no longer the reserve currency. It doesn't mean the U.S. doesn't have, you know, all of this military capacity, but it still has to be willing to play that role. So, yeah, I mean, I would say it did fine. It didn't undermine, you know, sort of my work or anything. But it wasn't like wildly accepted as, oh, yeah, yeah, we all buy that in five, ten years time. that's happening. It's interesting to me that people who work even in governments don't seem to

understand concepts and ideas that in my opinion should seem obvious. Like one that really struck me was the relationship between China and Africa, right, all the countries in Africa. The Biden administration would say, we see China striking up deals with, why are African countries dealing with China? They shouldn't be dealing with China. They should be working with the U.S. And you'd see all of these people come out and say these things. And I went, but America has abandoned Africa. They're not doing anything on the ground. Yeah.

So there are over a million Chinese living across Africa. It's that, it's over a million now. Wow. Yeah. I didn't know. Was that high? Yeah. It was something like 8,000 Japanese the last time I looked at it and over a million Chinese.

Wow. The Japanese asked the same question. We need to do more there. I'm like, yeah, that's fine. But, you know, every single person that's on the ground, those are relationships. But now, okay, but help me understand this. How is it that a country can understand this until it doesn't? Is it because they take it for granted?

Is it because they think that's the way it always will be? Like, how did the U.S. ostensibly understand the value of going and building bridges physically and metaphorically in these other places? And then all of a sudden go, it doesn't matter anymore and then wonder why like China would take over? I mean, two different types of answers. One's external, the other's internal.

Okay. The external answer is that when you have a country that goes from everyone's riding bicycles and you aspire to have like a washing machine to a million, you know, to a billion-plus person economy where their middle income. And suddenly, and they've been growing at over 10% a year on average for 40 years. Damn. At scale, like that's never happened before. So, I mean, you even had, when Biden first became president, you may remember this where he had this, like, statement on China where it's like they're never going to compete.

Oh, yeah, I remember this. And it's because he hadn't been there. He hadn't been there when he wasn't serving. But do you hear what I'm saying? You're telling me that a president, not just of any, a president of the United States looked at a country that most of the world was looking at as like a close competitor in terms of power and went, nah. How? They think they rip us off. They take things that we make.

They make them a little bit better. They steal intellectual property. All of which has been historically true. But today, Trevor, you've got Europeans that are cutting deals with the Chinese saying, we're willing to let you invest in our country, but only if you engage in technology transfers to Europe. To Europe. From China. Imagine that.

That wasn't happening even three years ago. And now it's happening. So these things, the point is these things change quickly. So what's the next thing? The thing, if I was right, go back to your earlier question. What is happening now that you see could be happening then? Yeah. And I think one of the biggest things is that technology companies are becoming essentially

sovereign as actors in the West. They are the ones that are not just writing the regulations, but they're actually creating the algorithms that they're deploying real time. They're experimenting on society and the economy and national security. And I think that within five, 10 years, some of these technology companies are likely to act like states on the global stage, that their level of power and influence will make them geopolitical actors. Not in China. In China, the state is controlling AI and the state is controlling what tech companies can do. But in the United States, really that development has been just turbocharged. and I don't see the willingness or the capacity in the U.S. government to do much about that soon.

And yet it's moving really, really fast. It's moving very fast. So we need to start asking ourselves, well, what does a global order look like when some of the principal actors are countries that do or don't have elections with citizens that they're meant to provide for? And some of them are companies with CEOs and owners and shareholders and business models, which don't look anything like. governments. And we know that governments, some are rich and some are poor and some are more closed and authoritarian and some are more open and democratic. We don't even have models to understand what different types of companies are and what their business models are and their alignment with governance or not. So that's a real mind fuck if you want to think about where the world

is going. And I think we need to start, like my field doesn't even have like if you went to college and studied political science or international relations, there wouldn't be that you'd have American politics, you'd have comparative international relations, you wouldn't have like a branch that would look at companies as geopolitical actors. And yet I would argue that we need to have that now. I don't know if it's the same, but could it be similar, obviously in a way more modern way, but could it be similar to what the world experienced, you know, like in and around, like the Dutch East India trading company and because there was a time when the ships that were trading around the world were owned by companies that were almost more powerful than

some governments because they carried the spices, they carried the gold, they carried the people, they carried the, do you know what I mean? And their influence and their power was such that they could shift your fortune. If they decided who's who. If they were on your side, They would give you a loan as a country. They would decide where your military goes or doesn't. Do you think is it that or do you think it's even? I think it's even bigger than that. The reason I think it's bigger is because if we imagine just a few years down the road,

and you and I have both seen some of these presentations before, by the way, together. And the fact that you're going to have AI that is trained on our data, which means it will know us better than anyone, better than any government knows us, better than any spouse, member of our family, doctor, lawyer, accountant, what have you.

And we're going to spend all of our time being intermediated by that AI. Well, the company that controls that AI is going to have much more influence over us individually

and anyone else in a society that is deployed with that AI than any government will. And I think that now that may cause a reaction, it may cause a revolution, it may break a state, it may force the state to nationalize them. I don't know, but that is the trajectory we are presently on. And that's way beyond talking about any East India trading company. That's like you're not just your citizenship, your entire humanity, you're going to become more than or less than homo sapiens. You're going to be programmed by this thing. You'll become kind of a hybrid human being in some ways. But it won't be because of your relationship.

with the government, a passport, citizenship, it's going to be because your relationship with that AI, which is owned by a company, which is created by a company. That's a wild evolution of a geopolitical model that you and I have grown up with just kind of not even questioning what the assumptions are. This is why you should always lie to your AI.

I encourage people all the time. To lie. As much as you can. Tell me more. As much as you can. Every time you type into your AI, like whatever you use, I always encourage people to just throw out of the trail sometimes.

Just be like, I'm a father of seven and this is my life and, you know, this is what's happening. Of seven. Yeah, but if you're not a father of seven, you get what I'm saying? Just be like random things. I live in Bulgaria and this is my story and this is my world. But you do live in Bulgaria. Oh, I mean. You just don't tell people that.

You know, I thought I was worried about the future. I should be worried about the present. I've got two state actors here. I'm trying to help you. What you mean is a gen provocateur. What you're saying is actually very interesting because in South Africa on the 16th of December is a day of reconciliation

which has been Dengan's day before it was commemorating the Zulus turning on the Dutch on the Afrikaner basically after they send them on a conquest to go fetch cattle from the Soutu King but one professor was interviewed on radio and you are saying that

it is not about the history itself It's that the history being taken away from the curriculum of a schooling system makes people lose their culture. Now, when everyone in a country that has 11 official languages start speaking one language, it's going to be very hard for them to believe that they are different. And he says that mistake was done by Japan at some point, where they focus too much on math and science, all the stem subjects. And he says, they paused and hit the breaks and were like, we're introducing arts and culture back into society again. And as you say now, our interaction with America and how we know America is through pop culture, right?

Fast food, movies, music, cigarettes, alcohol. And that's all we know. And for a long time, there was American culture. But you fast forward to 30 years from now, I mean, from then to now, if a South African visits America, there's very little that they see. In fact, we sometimes criticize other things and go, oh, we are far, far, far ahead of this year. Yes. And that was always never the case. And also you go to South Africa and more and more kids speak less of their home languages or indigenous or vernacular.

And I think what you're speaking to is it's almost like, and like Trevor is saying, we're feeding into this homogenous society that we're going to end up being. The AI runs. Exactly. We'll not need a president to tell people what to do. They'll just find it from a computer. Yeah, the algorithm that you have. And the president. I have maybe the thing that most determines your community, your connectivity, who you are how you think, not your nation, not your actual physical community.

Your story in your house does not lie with you anymore as the parent. It lies with a computer because they can ask the computer what the story is. One of the great values of the United States that I have always found has been the locality. Like when I grew up in Chelsea, Massachusetts, my entire world was my family and just a few blocks around me. is the public school that I could walk to and all those kids. And they came from different countries, but we were really, really tightly knit. That obviously is going to be blown apart

when each of those individual kids has AI. Yes. Which is one of the reasons I think that this new Australian law that is saying under 16, no mass. Yeah. I think that should, clearly that should be global. No mass is a boxing term for when you've been, you're like, I can't take anymore.

You say what? No mass. No mass. Is that someone trying to say no more? Yeah, like, no mass. How did that start? I guess when you bend the knee. No, no mass.

No mass. No mass. No mass. No, no, it's part of it. But it's a boxing term, right? Oh, okay. If you've had enough, you're like, ah. Do you think it's too late though?

Like, some people say, oh, the cat's out the bag. It's too late for Australia to say kids can't have social media and that. Because now, because now there's the kids. No, no, I'm just asking. No, yeah. Too late for hope? Never too late for hope. Yeah.

I don't expect a question like that from Trevor. No, no, I'm asking you. I know. I'm asking this. I was so disappointed in him as well. Were you? I looked at him as a father of seven. Yeah.

From Bulgaria. And no hope. I mean, look what he's made of himself from those humble background. It was actually a man by the name of Ian Bremmer who taught me to ask questions that you yourself wouldn't necessarily ask and to think in ways that you wouldn't necessarily think to get a better strategic understanding of how the world might work. Wow. That's what he taught me. That's extraordinary. Yeah, you should meet him.

I should meet him. I should meet him. He sounds like a great guy. It really does. No, but I think we can do it. Of course we can. Now, can we do it in the United States? Yeah, can anything happen anymore in the United States?

And I don't mean this in a facetious way. But like, can anything happen in the United States? People believing that the U.S. was so broken, that the political system was so corrupt, so sclerotic, is what got us Trump. Most people, that, voted for Trump thought that democracy was more important than the people that voted against it. Right. Because for them, the idea, and it's in the polls. They read not, most people didn't think that the election was about democracy, but for those that did more than voted

for Trump than voted for Kamala in the last election. And it's because those people thought that the, the deep state, the administrative state. The system. The system was so broken, just like my mom used to. My mom, when she was alive, you know, she didn't finish high school. She cared a lot about me and my brother. That was her whole life. And she's like, these guys will never take care of you. Not the government officials, not the CEOs, not the bankers, not the media, none of those fancy people. I got to fight for everything. And if I have to steal, I'll steal because it's my kids, right? Yeah. And I, you know, you have so many Americans over the past decades that feel that way about the government.

That's what got you Bernie. It's what got you, Mammani. It's what got you Trump. It's the same thing. Why did Trump decide that he was going to welcome Mom Dani in the White House?

Because fundamentally, he gets that that's part of what got him there. Yeah. He was saying, he said, like, we agree on a lot of stuff. Sure. You know?

You know, both in principle saying we want to stick it to the man. Now, Trump, of course, is also the man. So he's sticking it to himself. It's really impressive. That's amazing that he's able to occupy both roles. He tries.

Yeah, no. In people's eyes is that he goes, I am the persecuted and yet I exist in the realm of the persecutor. It's an interesting dichotomy that he gets to occupy in that way. When I saw the felony convictions and the mugshot, that's when I was convinced Trump was going to win. Wait, really? Yeah. Yeah. Because that made him seem like it is, the deep state is a thing.

It can happen to anyone. The system was out to get him. Like all of the bad things that he did, of all of the real political cases that were out there and should have been brought of the impeachments that were real. Of the Republicans that said no boss, right? It was the most ridiculous case that would not have been brought up as felony charges against another American that was politicized against Trump. That's where he got his felony convictions. And, you know, his entire election was a grievance-based election. It's like, you know, they come in.

after you, I'm standing in front of them, you know, let them come after me. And they do want to take him down, right? Yeah. And he was almost assassinated. Yeah. And it was this close. It's this world of like everything. It's interesting that you say the thing about saying, because I've seen people

bristle at that comment. If you say Bernie and Bow and they go, how can you say? But AOC had a live on her Instagram. I think it was after, I think it was the midterms. I forget which election it was. But she had done really well and most Democrats hadn't. And then she asked, just her followers online, she said, have any of you voted for me and for Donald Trump?

And if so, please tell me why. Because, you know, she was sort of posing this question. She went, it seems like we're completely different. How would you vote for me and him? I don't understand that. And it was fascinating to see the responses that people gave. they said, while the two of you are not politically aligned, you both agree that the system is broken.

It's broken. And you both present yourselves in an authentic way, not honest necessarily, but authentic, which was an interesting semantic difference. And they were like, and we like that you both disrupt what was because it wasn't working for the rest of us. And that was an interesting insight

to get from people themselves to say, oh, we're now living. in a time where America especially, but in the rest of the world, you're seeing it as well, the system has pushed people so far that they're no longer incentivized by what's safe because it hasn't brought them safety, it hasn't brought them security, it hasn't brought them sustenance. The American dream no longer works for that. Yeah, so they've gone so in this break.

It's believe in a China dream today than Americans believe in an American dream. Wait, is that true? That is absolutely true. and that was not true when you and I were kids. So that's a radical transformation. We started this part of the conversation by you saying, can you still do things in the United States? Yeah.

Trump is living proof. You can still do things in the United States. Number one, him personally, with the greatest political comeback in American history. True. Yeah. But beyond that, I would argue that we are in the middle of a political revolution right now. Trump is intending to ensure that there are no more checks and balances

on his behavior as the executive of the United States. We see that with the way he is trying to weaponize the so-called power ministries, the IRS, the FBI, the Department of Justice to do his will in a way that he thought they were weaponized against him. You see that with his efforts to ensure that the principal enemy to the United States are his political adversaries. That's a political revolution. I don't know that he's going to be successful.

and personally, I hope he's not, but I do hope he's successful in eliciting sufficient pushback from people that want to really change things. Okay. That's interesting. Just this idea of inspiring some sort of movement, some sort of idea, some sort of...

Help us understand how to even begin thinking about these things. You know, like, you're a big fan of strategic. thinking. And what I like is how you break this down. I think a lot of people would consider themselves strategic thinkers. And based on your definition, they wouldn't fall into the category. Because I think most of us would think that if you ask anyone, are you a strategic thinker and we're like, yeah, I think should I walk on 42nd Street or 45th Street?

I think about that all the time. It's my strategy. And you're like, no, no, no. How you see the world is a strategic. Help us understand why you think it's so important to be a strategic. thinker, regardless of what station you occupy in life. Let's start with what it is. I think it's wanting to first define a problem before you act in response to it, right?

That the idea of something is uncomfortable and therefore I lash out, that's not strategic thinking, that's pain reaction. There are lots of problems, lots of challenges, lots of opportunities in the world, right? You couldn't respond to climate change until you had a population around the world that recognized, oh, here's the science. Here's what's happening. Okay. We've got the following carbon in the atmosphere, and it's leading to these changes.

You can choose to decarbonize. You can choose to invest in new technologies. You can choose to adapt. You can even say, actually, we're getting so much benefit from the economic outcomes of globalization with oil and coal that we don't want to do that. other stuff. Maybe we, there are lots of different effective ways to respond, but you can't even start to respond until you have identified the environment that you're in, the real honest to God

environment you're in. Hmm. And that is true in climate. It's true in technology. It's true in geopolitics. It's true in the economy. It's true in life, I would say. It's true in life.

Even in a, in a personal relationship, you know, it's first understanding what the situation is. Yeah. Who you are, where you are. Yeah. Yeah, so they're the terrain and then have a battle plan. Yeah, yeah, because too many people want to get into the debate about what we should do before they've actually discussed where we are.

And so like this whole discussion of Trump, good, Trump, bad. Let's first understand how we got to the point of Trump, because Trump is not the reason the United States is in the present situation. Trump is a beneficiary. Trump is a symptom. And Trump is an accelerant. But Trump only happens in a political environment where very large, numbers of people believe that the system is already broken.

So to be a strategic thinker about what needs to happen in the U.S., you have to understand that. And that makes you then think, well, maybe the political establishment, as we've been dealing with it for the past decades, is not the answer. We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break. People are always hopeful of younger leaders having better ideas. Is that true in politics? And do you think it will be true for the U.S. as well? Well, I think younger people are increasingly the majority.

So whether or not they have the answers, they will be the answers. So understanding those demographic change is super, super important, right? Like Saudi Arabia, I was just in Saudi Arabia a little bit ago. What's it like? It's so different than 10 years ago, than 20 years ago. I mean, it's literally they're going through like a reverse Iranian revolution. Now, they have leadership, which is, of course, deeply confident and it's a monarchy. Yeah.

And it doesn't broke political opposition. But they are transforming how societies work. It's not just that women drive. It's that they work. It's that they're educated. They're going out. They're like, there's a dating culture in Saudi Arabia. Now, it feels normal to an outsider in a way that 10 years ago it felt like an alien repressive society.

Now, you see, this is something that. I feel like you're the perfect person to speak to about this. Because you have to think of it, this is literally your job, and this is what you consult on, and this is what you work in, this is what you write about, this is what, how do you think any given person in any given country should think about other countries and the journey that they're on in terms of getting to the place that we think they should get to?

I know that sounds like a word jumble, it's like a word salad. There was a lot there, true. Yeah, yeah, but I. Five dollars seven. Yeah, from Bulgaria. I haven't slipped in a long time, guys. So I think of it like this. Many people in the United States would say

nobody should do business with Saudi Arabia. No one should go to Saudi Arabia. No one should do anything in and around Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia doesn't have free speech and they oppress gay people and it's a terrible place for women, etc. They'll say all these things, right? They'll say them. Some of them being very true.

Some of them may be outdated. They've changed, but people haven't changed knowing what has changed, right? I remember asking someone this question, not being pro Saudi Arabia at all, by the way, I just said, but America wasn't always pro gay rights. Right? Correct. Obviously. So do you think America should have been boycotted and sanctioned then? And people would like, well, no, but I'm, but.

But sanctions on South Africa, of course, worked. Right? Because here was a country that really didn't want to be. isolated. Yes, and helped make them. But did it work? Or did the apartheid government at some point realized they were just running out of steam? Both. No, they totally moved, but because of the sanction.

No, but that's what I'm asking. It accelerated the process. Right. There's no question. Without that international pressure, it wasn't going to move so much. Look, Americans, young people in America feel a lot differently about Israel and Palestine today than they did 20 years ago. Right. I'm growing up in the United States, Israel, principal democracy, and still a whole bunch of forefathers, parents,

you know, saying, hey, what happened in World War II? That's why they have a state. That can never happen again. You have to support that. Today, you've got Israel as by far the strongest country militarily in the region, able to determine outcomes with comparative impunity against its adversaries. And you have Palestinians who are living with next to nothing, and they feel like the little guy.

They feel like the oppressors, there are a lot of young Americans that automatically, are just not going to align with the stronger power. Right. Irrespective of where right and wrong and history and the rest play. So the point is these things change. And I think this is kind of like a throughput of the conversation that we're having the entire time.

It's not just how you think about other countries. It's also about how you think about other countries in your own country over time. What's the trajectory? Are you making progress? No, the arc of history isn't always towards, progress, it has to be moved by people, by leaders, towards progress. And right now in the United States, we're living through a very uncertain time.

If you'd asked me, 1989, if you'd asked me in 1989, when Gorbachev was in the Soviet Union, asked me to describe the Soviet Union as a country, is it a dictatorship or not, is an empire or not? And I would say, I don't know, because it was in process, right? It was going through an extraordinary political revolution. And it could have collapsed. It could have not. But it was all pregnant with possibility. The United States today is like that.

Damn. Yeah, same with South Africa with a sanction. It could have gone either way. Could have gone either way at the time. And most people think apartheid lasted very long. It wasn't actually very long because, obviously, for it to become a republic from the British giving it to the Afrikaners, they realize that sanctions will take them back half a generation, actually,

because they had just acquired all this wealth. Right. And for a way to keep the wealth was to obviously relinquish power, but still keep the levers. of power. And we're dealing with it now, 30 years after the first elections. So nothing much has changed. And you're right. It's just people adapting. And I think it was just young ideas of the people who were in government at the time of the aparthe government who said, look, strategically, if we think about this, if we relinquish power, appease the West and then put these people in power,

we can still control the money. And it was true. And it was true for a long time, actually. And Becky, it was certainly true. 100%. And even to your point of that is like Nelson Mandela had to be It's funny when you talk about people's perceptions of things changing over time. Nelson Mandela was widely seen as the person who orchestrated the impossible. He threaded a needle that was impossible to thread because he said, power is going to shift over from a minority to a majority. There will be no widespread bloodshed. There won't be any war.

There won't be any purging of people. So there can't be pogroms against these people? Yeah, there won't be any idiomene. there won't be anything like that. They will still be involved in the echelons of power. And at the time, people went, oh, this is the only way it could be done because the West, for instance,

might just shut South Africa off. It might sort of turn us into a Haiti, for lack of a better term, where they go like, no, they would though. They could have just shut down South Africa and go like, we're putting sanctions on you. Even though you have freed yourself, we're putting sanctions on you.

And he did that. But it's interesting to see how like a generation later, there are many people who go, he did the wrong thing. It should have been a revolution. Himandela affected us. Yeah. Because if you think about it properly, after the first elections, there were two terms that ran concurrently and two races heard them differently. The first one was transitional government.

So white people still understood that they still had the levers of power. You had FD. Tleg being a secondary president. And then Rainbow Nation was for the black people. All of us were together in this whole thing. I love the rainbow nation. One had no power. And guess which one we went with?

I love the Rainbow Nationa. Yeah, we're still in a transitional government, whether we like it or not. And all 30 years later. Again, it's the domestic and the international. Yeah. You have to look at the internal and the external. And, you know, if the United States is going to be Israel's protector no matter what, then the behavior of the government and the way that the people react is going to be different

than if suddenly they had the view that, oh, my God, the Americans might actually be turning against us. And then we're in real trouble at that point because we no longer. have that support, right? And that's true for so many different countries around the world that are going through significant transitions. The reason why the United States is so unusual is because the U.S. is going through a political revolution at the same time that it is the most powerful country of the world. Oh, that's interesting. That's really interesting. So that so many countries. Because commonly it would happen when things aren't going well. So many countries around the world are not happy with what the U.S. is doing, but they don't want

to get into a fight because it's dangerous for them. And not just Mexico, not just Canada, but the Europeans, right? I mean, when publicly, when they're meeting with the Americans, they're trying to find a way to, oh, yes, you're brilliant, and we got to find a way to work with you. We appreciate all your efforts. And we'll get to the right peace deal with Ukraine and we'll get to the right trade deal between the two countries. Only the Chinese have hit the Americans back hard and the Americans backed off.

So when we're looking at that world, you know, you said that first rule, first understand the lay of the land. First understand the situation before you react or respond to it. We are currently in a situation where, as you said, you know, powers diffuse. People can work in different worlds. Like, you know, a good example is America being like the number one exporter of like soy to China and then Brazil, I think, basically taking that spot from them. And then the Americans taking it back now.

Yeah, because now going like, we're going to work that deal. We're going to find who we pay with that. It's such an interesting, complicated puzzle that's constantly moving. So what is step two? When you have the information that's only applicable to now in this moment, what is step two of strategic thinking? Well, let's first recognize why step one is so hard today. Because if you're living in an environment where the basic, like the block and tackling of

just what the information is, is completely divided on the basis of your political tribal affiliation. Oh, man. Then you can't get two step two. How many times have we had this conversation? Uh-huh. Can I tell you, it doesn't matter who we've spoken to, whether it's comedians,

whether it's news anchors, whether it's politicians, whether it's analysts, whether it's political science. It doesn't matter who it is. Almost everyone has agreed on one thing, and that is one of the greatest threats facing society today, is the fact that we are not getting the same information.

Not that we don't agree on it, just that we're not getting the same information. And so you can't do strategic thinking if you are not together at least able to understand the lay of the land. Yeah. Not what the solutions need to be, just the basic issues. The facts around a vaccine and its efficacy,

the facts around an election and its outcome and the fact that it was or was not free and fair. These are fundamental things. things that Americans today are incapable of agreeing on because their information ecosystems are completely different, are politicized, or treating them like products. Because we're not going to do strategic thinking as an American nation absent that. Not possible. And we will therefore slip farther behind our competitive environment, our competitive advantage

to other countries that can do that strategic thing. So when you see something like that as somebody who studies the, you know, journey that countries are on and how nations rise and fall. Is it absurd to think that America could sort of like eat itself from the inside out if everyone believes that nothing is real and nothing works and nothing? Because at some point what people stop doing is they stop believing, they stop caring. And then they just, they sort of just like give that power to something or someone else. You know what I mean? People just walk away. I mean, I think as someone who's traveled all over the world and has spent most of my life studying other countries that have gone through transitions

when the U.S., as I've grown up, has been much more stable. And so people think, oh, it's always going to be this way. You recognize that these are a femoral points. Yeah. That the U.S. could go in a very, very different direction, that the institutions that you think are strong might not stand. That the leaders that you think will stand up for something might not stand up for something. And that could lead to widespread social movements in the United States, but it could also lead to wide repression and violence. I don't think that those things are imminent or likely today, but I recognize their possibility. You have to, anyone that has studied Latin America or the Middle East or Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia, anyone that has studied any

of those countries. Even like Brazil has gone through so much similar politically from what the United States has recently and no very few Americans would say oh our countries like Brazil no actually these political dynamics are very similar and if you end up with a political class that feels like if they lose they lose everything you heard Steve Bannon say this the other day if we lose we're all going in jail if they really feel that way if it's not just about losing an election but if we lose they're investigating us they're throwing us in prison ourselves our families maybe well now you don't now you don't You don't want to allow an election to become, why take the chance now? You have to control the outcome when it becomes about everything.

Yeah, that's terrifying about now. It's terrifying. And that happens in so many different countries. You cannot tell me that there is something so exceptional about the United States so unique in human history that it could not happen in the United States. It's a country that had a civil war where it literally tore itself apart over ideas. And it could happen again. Of course it could. There's that phrase that always scares me

the political class and what it breeds, right? I think we don't talk enough about that. Yeah. What elements of it? Does breeding make you uncomfortable? Which part? Once you have people that will cling on to power by any means necessary, then they start determining about,

I mean, how the culture of that country is going to be like. The one person that's going to get into power who's going to slip in, after all is said and done, is going to want to stick in there. And we see it in this country, right? Someone brings in their relative. They get power. then they have the people that around them that have political power as well.

Then it becomes a little cabal in a class that goes and negotiates deals with other countries, but they're not necessarily acting for the country. Then they start determining who's a figurehead that stands in there, but they're the ones who control the levers of power. Yeah, I mean, in South Africa we see it as well where it's like one of the great fears of any leader is losing the power, not because they want to do things for the country, but because they're scared of what will be done to themselves. Yeah, yeah.

Because of what they've done. Yes, but obviously in our country, it was political, struggle credentials first. And then it became political dynasties, you know, children of people who went and struggled. And then obviously there's- Like our version of the Kennedy's essentially. I mean, President Trump was clearly willing to go a lot farther than I think anyone around him, his advisors, the Republican leadership had imagined that he would at the end of the first term when he lost to Biden. Yeah.

When he lost a free and fair election, both in terms of calling the Georgian election officials and saying, you got to do something for me in terms of January 6, all of these things, which is why so many Republicans turned against him with that second impeachment, unprecedented in U.S. history. That is exactly the sort of thing that people underestimate. And it's not just about Trump. When you see some of the decisions that are being made by the Attorney General right now, it's inconceivable in today's environment that the U.S. Attorney General would open an investigation against a member of the Trump administration in good standing.

and yet that's exactly what an attorney general is supposed to do. That's only changed in the last year. And yet there are so many examples of that happening in other countries around the world. When you're analyzing a lot of this, I've noticed in a lot of your work, you sort of take the approach that I feel like a doctor does with medicine or with surgery where they almost don't have like an emotional feeling towards a cancer, for instance, or they just observe the thing. Oh, yes.

Do you get what I'm saying? I do get what you're saying. Yeah, a lot of the time I'll read your work or I'll watch you. I'm a little disturbed about it, but I get what you're saying. No, no, no, because I wonder if you, do, it feels like you've had to find a way to observe something unemotionally and then then respond with your emotions if you wish to. But first go, this is what I see is happening. I'm glad you put it that way because, I mean, at least the doctor analogy, doctors are human beings. They're not robots.

They actually really care about their patients, but first, they have to do no harm. First, they have to try to understand and respond to what it is they're dealing with. Now, I could never be a doctor because I can't handle blood, right? And so many people say that. But it turns out, I can actually emotionally handle all sorts of political distress. I don't get wound up about it. A lot of people can't. A lot of people can't.

And I have no problem. By the way, I personally believe, and I've said this publicly, that Trump is unfit for office. I believe that for reasons we can talk about if you want. But I have no problem. When Trump does things that are legitimately successful, when does things that are more successful than Biden, and there are many of them, I have literally no emotional problem.

That's what I mean. Saying that publicly. But that's what I mean. It's obvious that that is the case. And people get mad at me. You know, people that think that, well, wait a second, hold on, hold on. You can't say anything positive about Trump. But what do you mean?

Like, if he's successful, then you want me to call balls and strikes, right? Don't you want me to tell you what I actually think? You just wanted to be your monkey, as you know, John Stewart used to say. Yeah, but where do you, but where do you think you got that from? I mean, living in a country where, as you said, it's become more and more tribal in and around politics, but where do you think you got that from? And what do you think you're holding on to? Well, first, I grew up with nothing, right?

I grew up in the projects. I wasn't part of some political elite in the United States. So I didn't feel connected to that. Secondly, I traveled all over the place starting when I was a kid. 16, I went to the Soviet Union. Why? Because I was in college. because I was pushed ahead when I was younger.

And it was an opportunity to go someplace for someone that had never been anywhere. And the Soviet Union behind the iron curtain and then you find out, wait a second, the kids that are here are a lot like me. And I get really offended. Like I know that there are a whole bunch of people out there like, you know, you shouldn't think that just because you're black,

you think this way or just because you're a woman, you think this way. A lot of people think that because you're an American, you think a certain way. And I get hugely offended by that personally. Like the idea of that, I would hold certain political beliefs and values just because of what country I happened to randomly be born in. That's like a crazy thought, right? Well, your grandmother will argue the random part, but that was my grandmother.

I'm not my grandma. I didn't make that decision. Can I tell you? It is so funny. I remember talking to somebody about this once and I said one one concept that has truly, truly, truly always evaded a certain part of my brain is like patriotism in the sense where people you know when they go like, my country. Then I'm like, I'm not saying don't love your country,

but you also have to admit it is pretty random that you didn't choose it. For the most part, people didn't choose it. I'm Catholic. Not by fault at all. And there are a lot of weird things about Catholicism that I do not support. But I grew up as a Catholic and I don't want to renounce it.

That's what I'm saying. It's just a world where you go, just this random thing happened and I'm willing to accept parts of it and be proud of it. But also I admit the randomness of it. I'm American, which is random, but it doesn't mean I have to only think

one way because of that. I'm an American, I'm also a Scorpio. Right? Oh, no, that explains a lot, though. I know it does. No, that explains a lot. I mean, I'm a Scorpio. Classic Scorpio.

Yeah, I knew that. Classic Scorpio as well. Yeah, see? But equally random. I don't know. I just learned you must just say that. When anyone tells you their star sign, the first thing you must do is like,

ah, classic, and then you say the star sign. It doesn't matter what it is. Classic Sagittarius. You just say that all. See that? That's what you did there. Classic Sagittarius. Classic Sagittarius.

But I am a New Yorker. And that I chose. There you go. And I put a lot of time into that. And I really believe in being a New Yorker. And I was offended at the beginning. You remember that guy that was on LinkedIn who Seinfeld called some asshole on LinkedIn? I don't know this way.

What happened? At the beginning of the pandemic. Yeah. And one of the like this, this influencer on LinkedIn. And that is actually what he was known for, was being influenced on him. He was well known. Said that he was that New York was never going to come back. This was it for New York.

Oh, I remember this. I remember this. And I was so personally offended by that. Yeah, I remember this. You know, like, if you told me that America was over, I would be clinical about that. I am passionate about New York. If only people knew there was a chink to your armor. Your politics and mass murder.

Yeah, no emotional. But New York. New York! Yeah. LinkedIn! Kill. Kill Lincoln. Who is that hassle?

I couldn't believe it. I mean, this is such an amazing city. Yeah, and Jerry wrote this whole thing about, like, go out and see what it's going to be. It's like one, just one, one cycle of experiencing this. And it was actually a beautiful like, like peace, like an F you, go out there and see what it's like. Once you've lived in New York, you can never live anywhere. Was the idea behind it? Oh, I see what you're saying.

Yeah, because this guy was like, New York's done. And Jerry was like, okay, go. Go somewhere else? Go anywhere else. Yeah. And when you've had a few weeks of this and a few, you're going to see what's going to happen to you. You're going to come back to the city. You're going to, and honestly, almost everyone who left came back.

anyone who could sort of came everyone went to Miami, everyone was Florida everyone came back to New York I agree that look there is a real affordability crisis Yeah but that's not saying the people who could afford It's a hard place to live you're poor The people who could afford I came here on us poor and I still loved it

Yeah the people who could afford were the ones I don't like it and it's like You're gonna come back But maybe what you guys are explaining is why the world has fallen in love with America Because we think the whole America is New York Like a melting part of cultures and ideas And it's fast and it's moving

And anything is possible If you make it here you can make it anyway. Do you feel like that about New York? Is that why you're... Because I think New York is everywhere. It's everybody's here and everyone walks and everyone takes the subway and it's a pain in the ass and it's smelly and sometimes it's a little dangerous and there's grit.

But we all... Human beings, it's we want to overcome, right? We give our best when there's some pushback, when there's some resistance in the band. And it's not... New York does that every day all the time. It does it with... When you're sleeping, it's still noisy. It does it when you wake up in the morning.

There's nothing easing about this place. Yeah. But every single thing, every piece of progress that you make in New York, you earned it. You got, you had to work for it. It's a grime. It's a grime. Yeah, the place is a grime. But it's rewarding as hell.

Yeah. And the people are so cool. And they're from everywhere. You have no idea what they do. You don't know who they are. You can bump it to anyone in New York. It doesn't matter. Well, I've said one of the things that I think makes New York such a special place is the fact that

you can't opt out of many of the shit things of New York. And so because of that, like in South Africa, I noticed, I noticed a crazy thing to say, but we, we had load shedding, right? The power blackouts and like the government, because of corruption, they didn't build up the power stations the way they should have. It's a whole long thing. Long story short. We have these scheduled.

You said you can't say that. What do you mean? Long story short. You're right. You said long story long. Literally before we start. No, but you can't say long story short. No.

Oh, I can't. You can't. You can't. But you're our guest. But you're our guest. You, you're our guest. I will still expand on the story. You can't say.

You can't say. Literally is the one thing you said. The rules of an administration. It was the rule. It was only one rule. No one is above the law except the lawmaker. That's how it works. Political elite.

It's kind of like the United States. That's what it is. It's a revolution. I've just pardoned. I've just pardoned myself. I see. That's what I've done. So we started having these rolling blackouts in South Africa.

Terrible thing for the country economically. Terrible thing for people. get around. Traffic lights were out. You name it. Stores would go down. But it created the strangest thing that I think most South Africans never considered. Chinese solar panels. That too. And it was, by the way, China's killing it because of that everywhere in the world, even internally. They're just like the solar farm game is on another level. Shout out to China. The thing it created was a commonality that you couldn't escape. Every South African, rich, poor, young, old, black, white, Indian, you named it, experienced the electricity going out.

At the same time. At the same time. It was this thing that all of a sudden connected you. And that's what I think New York does. It's like, you can't escape the traffic. You can't escape the subway. You can't escape the walking. He can't escape the cold or the hot or the humid or the smells or the sounds or the, you can't.

The people. Do you remember when Jeff Bezos? Remember when Jeff Bezos wanted to build, he wanted to build a helipad on his apartment building or something? New York was like, where? And he was like, no, I want my helicopter. And they're like, nah, buddy. Come, come through the tunnel like all of us. No?

No, they're like, no, buddy. There's no helicopters here. No helicopters are flying over the city like that. And 9-11 was that, of course. Yes, that changed everything. They're like, none of this. No, no. But that's my point is like,

I think what it's created is a city where, while they're still definitely class will determine what you can and cannot do in different ways. But still, members clubs haven't really blown up in New York, like where you pay to be part of because the coolest, like, the thing. You know what I mean? You go to a bar where people want to stay in line.

Exactly. You know, if it's a really cool thing, yeah, yeah, half of New York is people waiting in the line for a bagel they've heard about. I stood in line today and I was like, I don't like this poverty mentality. You see, you think of it as that. In New York, it's sort of is like a cool thing. It's an experience. There's a bagel placed around the corner from my house.

One of the most well-known bagel places in there's called Apollo bagels. Shout out to Apollo bagels. They just opened like six months ago. And there's always. always lines around the block. And so when Mamdani won as mayor, and people said, it's gonna be bread lines, I went outside and I took a photo of the bread line.

And everyone was smiling, and there's like dogs and everything. I'm saying, oh my God, bread lines in New York, the Mamdani effect is already in place. And of course, because it's social media, people think I'm serious. Oh, man. Like, well, what do you mean?

He's not even mayor yet, you idiot. I'm like, yeah, you gotta stock up. Oh, man. There isn't even gonna be bread when Mamdani becomes mayor. Oh, man. People, we need more of a sense of you. Can I tell you? I wish there was like a joke filter that you could put on the internet to tell people,

other than writing, this is a joke at the end of, I don't know, it's just lost it, you know? You have to just, you have to own it? You have to just get right in and let people come out here. This is a man who's not worried about being shot in the streets. I will own none of these things in. I will own none of them. I tweet far and few between now. Because no one, literally, to your point of not understanding a reality,

that has become part of the reality fracturing is that humor has lost its context humor has lost its oh you were making and then I've even seen people go even when they find it's a joke well you shouldn't make that joke because someone might not have a sense of you

because it might be a breadline and it's like yeah but that that was the joke that was the thing that we're living in but I don't want to forget wait what's step two because we said step one is understanding the lay of the land What do you do then? When you're strategic thinking, what do you... Once you all have a common thread.

It depends on who you are and where you want to go. The reactions of different actors, once you understand what the problem is or what the opportunity is. That's when you... So you just make your choice. What's your discount factor? How much does 10 years in the future matter to you compared to tomorrow? How much flexibility do you really have as opposed to do you pretend you have, right? Is this how you live like your, how much do you apply this to your daily life?

A lot. Give me an example of just like. My man was in a queue for a bagel. He wasn't in the queue. He took a picture of the queue. I was in the queue. Yeah. I took it as a participant.

Oh, okay. Yeah. I feel like it's good to participate. No, no, no. Well, you called it. Exhibit one. Yeah, yeah. No, you called it.

Yeah. Was the bagel worth it? The bagel? Yeah, absolutely. Some people say that these things feel like they're worth it because of the queue. Because of the queue. Others say that that's not true. What do you think?

I believe that the experience is. part of it. Yes, absolutely. So it's like a theme park ride. Yeah, like if you buy a nice bottle of wine and people tell you it's a nice bottle of wine, you're going to feel it's a better ball of wine because of the experience having gone through that. When they tell you there's only 400 of these in the world. Yeah. It's like I went to theme park. I went to six flags. And I used to go to six flags all the time before anybody knew who I was. Why does it call six flags? I have no clue why they call it six. There's just six flags there. There are six flags. Literally. There are six flags. I think there are six. What's on the flags. Different colors. It's different colors. It's not like flags of countries.

It's just triangle flags. But I used to go all the time, and you know, you wait, and then you ride the roller coaster and you do a thing. After I got The Daily Show, once I was going, and then they saw that I was coming, and they're like, hey, are you coming to six flags? They're like, oh, you don't have to wait in any of the lines. And I was like, oh, I mean, now I've achieved.

This is what I've worked for in love. And it didn't mean as much to you. Can I tell you? One of the worst experiences I've ever had for a few reasons. One, I didn't realize how much of a theme park was fun because you stand in line with your friends for hours and just talk and laugh and you get bored together

you hear screams the whole time and you keep going like I wonder what this is going to be like for me and then when you walk to the next ride or back from it now you're decompressing you're thinking about it. We went on, rode the same ride like four times back to back

only rode the best rides didn't stop at any other rides on the way we had headaches and we learned nothing more about each other as friends It was the shortest theme park day I've ever had. Did you read that wonderful? Do you know what happened?

You can't just go on a roller coaster. No one told me. Back to back to back to back to back to back. There was the New York Times. Interview with the woman who had she was a little disabled. And she wanted to take her like she couldn't walk properly. So she needed to have like, you know, sort of a walker or something. Oh, so it wasn't.

Okay, okay, got it. And she wanted to bring her daughter to Disney. And it was a huge, huge thing, and she had to save up. And it described her entire experience compared to the experience of the guy that brought his family that could, like, pay that make sure they have a guide in advance. They bought it to everything. And talked about how Disney in America, when Disney was started, it was the great equal. It was the one place that, like, you know, was meant to be this idealist experience that everyone together could have together. And now it's not.

Once you put on the Mickey or many ears, we're all equal. And it's not. And it's not at all. And that is, there's still a few bits of it, like for example, the fact that the characters run around and everyone can take photos with them. But for most of the experience, it's become completely segregated. It has. And so, and that, and people, people don't like that. Shocking.

They don't like that in aviation. Shocking. They don't like it in sports. Shocking. And New York is one of those places, which is a great leveler. There's so much about the city that no matter how much money you do or don't have, how much power. There are fewer things you can escape. There are few of things you can escape.

And I, but I do think that there's self-selection. I think a lot of people that like this are people that have decided that is strategically interesting for them. Yes, that's what I was about to say. And I'm not sure that's true for everybody. Exactly that. I'm sure a big part of it is. I grew up as a striver.

Exactly. Like a poor person who's gotten two days off to take their family there and they've been saving for a year, they would love to go on all the rides. But for you, because you're cosplaying and you're thinking, I love this. struggle for eating in line and every one turkey leg at a time. That's not what I'm saying. First of all, that was a poor impression of me. I'm sorry.

I felt it. I've seen you do much better impressions of me. That was a terrible one. First of all, I'm so sorry. That's not bad. That's not bad. No, this is what I'm saying. It's not about it's better than any impression I would have attempted, which would get me

canceled in a lot of places. No, I hear what you're saying, but I don't think it's that. I'll disagree with you on this. I don't think it's that. It's not about. idealizing a struggle or it's not that. Cosplay. Yeah, it's rather understanding.

Okay, so think of it like with parents. You and I've spoken about this. One of the strange gifts that comes from having a parent who doesn't have money is that when they say no to you for something that you want, it's because they don't have money. Mom, can I have that toy? No. Why?

We can't afford it. mom can I have that cereal no why we can't afford it those clothes no why we can't afford it it's a really simple response to a request right it is hard to think that there's a world that exists that would create some sort of friction or a terrible relationship when you have to explain the no for no reason does that make sense yeah so there's people who have money and the kid goes can I have that? No, why? Because no, but why? Because I said so. Wow. Because I say, now I'm not saying that one is a gift in the nicest sense. Yes. But everything in life comes. You know, my motto is every gift is a curse. Yes. No matter what you say. A big country. Good for you,

also bad for you. Good luck uniting a big country. Yeah. Oil. A curse. Exactly. It's a curse. Yeah. You got oil is like, you know, and we've got to talk about Venezuela's oil, by the way. I want to know what you think about this whole saga. But like, what I, what I mean about these things is I didn't realize. I don't want to wait in lines more, but I didn't realize what I was getting by being in the line. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. I genuinely didn't realize it. And I think the same holds for like a New York or one of those places is you don't realize what the hassle of having to be on the subway does for you as a person until you don't have it. Most things that are a hassle have some sort of benefit that you aren't able to appreciate

until you remove the hassle and then you go, oh, shit, there was a side of this that I didn't know. So this brings me back to the strategic thinking question and how one goes the second step. And the fact that New York has this great equalizer forces people to behave in ways that are somewhat similar. There's one thing that I can think of

that is a great equalizer, no matter who you are, no matter what your station in life is, no matter how rich, how poor, how powerful, how powerless is one thing we all have. Dendraft. We have the same exact. amount of it as well. It's time.

Time. It's all we have. That's all we have. That's the great equalizer. So really, once you understand the environment, the opportunity, the challenge, the thing that you most need to key on is how do I respond to that in terms of how I want to be spending my time. Oh.

Oh, I like that. And I spend a lot of time personally thinking strategically about that. What are the things that I want to be doing? How much do I want to travel? How much do I want to travel? How much do I want to engage in the following ways with the following people? What do I want to spend my time doing? I've organized my company that way.

I organize the people that work with me that way. The kinds of things I work on and I don't work on. It's all about the time that I'm actually spending. Don't go anywhere because we got more what now after this. Do you ever have to advise governments? I know you work with companies, but do you ever have to advise governments? I talk to foreign leaders all the time. Do they take your advice or do they just listen to?

to you. You know, I think for many of them, I'm kind of like a geopolitical therapist. Because these are people with no time. That's a good way. What a line. They're the busiest people. They're the busiest people. They have no time. The fact that they're giving you an hour or half an hour if you're ahead of state is like the most valuable thing they could possibly give you. And what they spend most of their time working on is really, really pressing immediate narrow problems. And what they really want to be doing because they're head of state or they're a foreign minister or they're what have you in a position of real authorities they want to be able to spend a little

time thinking about how the world is changing and and that's really what I think we end up spending most of our time doing is giving them a little bit of that that they don't have and I'm not blowing smoke up their ass I'm not telling them what they want to hear I'm very happy if we have disagreements on stuff because I don't need anything from them you know I'm not working for them. I'm not taking money from them. It's just a, it's a sharing of information. For a person like you who's met every sort of powerful person in the world.

I suppose this question might be a bit weird because revealing our strategy, when we do this podcast, we always think our guest must not feel the transition between them having a normal conversation with just anybody and being interviewed. It's not an interview. So they must get through a pathway. They can get through what they do. And then we can just also understand who they are. So what strategy did you think you're going to use to get through to who we really are as a host of this podcast?

When you're thinking about it, what's going on? I feel like I know Trevor a little, both as a public figure, but also because we've met informally a few times. I feel like we're simpatico. I certainly have a warmth towards his curiousness and his knowledge and interest in policy and global stuff, which meant that I didn't have a strategy. I'd have much more of a strategy, but someone I've never met before. I don't know who they are.

I don't know what engages them. I don't think that there might be a gotcha, that kind of thing. Here it's much more. No, no, I'm going to show up and I'm going to see what Trevor's going to talk about and I want to be maximally open to that. I want it to go whatever direction is going to be most interested.

And that's okay. I mean, that's what I do on stage with an audience. Like, I don't necessarily know exactly what I'm going to talk about, but I see the audience, I see what they react to and then I move. You know, and so, I mean, we moved a lot because I said something early on that I saw really touch Trevor, right? And that was really interesting. That was a moment where suddenly he was like, oh, wait a second.

Technology does this. I hadn't considered that before. I changed his worldview a little bit. Oh, let's mind that because that's a point of friction but also curiosity. Yeah. Open mindness is a big part of strategy, right? Open mindness is essential to strategy. Yeah.

Again, not necessarily open-mindedness in understanding yourself. Yeah. But open-mindedness and like the fact that everything external is changeable. And any opinion that you hold about the rest of the world, you better be open to having a change because even if it's not changing now, it will change in the future. You will. Like you're going to be wrong about almost everything over time. So what they say about predictions.

Either make a prediction or offer time frame, never give them both. And so like these things change. I wrote a book called The J-Cerve. and it was about a relationship between the country's openness and its stability. And at the time, countries that were most open

were also most stable. A big piece of that was because technology was helping to drive that, the communications revolution. Like if you had access to the internet, that was a threat to authoritarian states, but it was a strength for democracies.

Today, top-down technologies are much more consolidating and much more powerful, the surveillance revolution, the data revolution. If you're a big monopoly, platform or a government with access to data, you have a lot more influence and you can create a

lot more stability. You have a lot more power. The J-curve today looks more like a you. This was a seminal thing that I spent years of my life on. It was really important to my career. I teach it now and I tell my students it's no longer applicable. It's changed. It's wrong now. And so every single thing that I've written about, I have to be ready for it to be wrong at some point it will be. because the world's changing. I feel like this is such a liberating, it's just a liberating viewpoint to have in life. If we all felt like that.

Because I think, it's kind of geopolitical Buddhism. It really is though, but because if we hold on to our ideas as if our ideas are us, then we are afraid to let go of our ideas because we feel like we're letting go of a piece of ourselves. If somebody challenges our ideas, we feel like they're challenging us. But if you can, as you,

you say separate yourself from the idea, then it can change. It can be challenged. It can be wrong. Yeah. It can move. It can shift. Do you know what I mean? It's essential. It can create a world way. It's 100% that. I think also interpersonal relationships are a good training ground for that. I think for you at that age to go all the way to the Soviet Union and meet other young people and exchange ideas. I'm sure when you came back to New York, to your peers, you were someone else, right? Well, at the time it was going back to Boston, which is where I was living back then. Yeah, it was completely different. I had to felt like I had like this huge experience that had opened my mind of stuff that I thought wasn't possible before.

What was the thing that shocked you the most? I know you said when you were there, the kids were the same as you, but what do you think shocked you the most? From what you had been told about the Soviet Union, what changed Ian's mind when he was actually there? I think the fact that they knew as little about me and us as I knew about them, I thought that somehow because I hadn't traveled anywhere and because I knew how cloistered I had been, again, projects, public school, just a few people.

blocks. I thought that would be true of other kids that they'd know a lot more because they were like, I was going to Moscow and that was a big city with millions of people. Absolutely nothing. So, for example, do you remember the sharper image? The gym? The store. What was the sharper image? It was a weird little store that sold everything gimmicks, gadgets, little gadgets. So I, I, we used to have in the days before smartphones and all the rest, we had cordless phones. And the sharper image sold a cordless phone that, you know, you could probably talk, you know, they had a little like antenna. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you could probably talk 50 feet away from the base.

But this cordless phone was not only cordless, but it also was waterproof and it floated so that you could have a phone call in your pool. Yeah, in your pool. Oh, in your pool. And I remember having a conversation about like the different stuff that because, you know, they all wanted like Levi's jeans or Marr. Marlboro cigarettes. That was like the big thing. Access to that kind of stuff. Bring ballpoint pens because their pens suck.

You know, all that kind of thing. And I was telling them, I said, can you bring for me, ballpoint pen? Boisne. Please, Ian, I need to bowl point pen. Would be very nice. I pay much money for ballpoint pen. Wait, what pens did they have? Oh, my God.

I mean, they were like skill craft pens, but down three notches. You remember those whole, yeah. My brain can't imagine a way. world without a ballpoint pen. I know. And it hasn't changed very much. Like we still make those. They're still cutting edge in 2025.

Yeah, they really are. They really were early to that game. They were late, apparently. So, and this is why they're in Ukraine today. To go get bullpoint pen. They have all the ballpoint pen. I can only imagine you had customs. Two suitcases full of ballpoint pens and blue jeans.

So we were, you know, we're talking about all this stuff. And I tell them. I'm a per vee of goods. Let me see your pockets. So that, We're talking about this. And so I told them about this store. There's a store at Fanual Hall, Quincy Market.

Quincy Market, as we'd say, back in Boston, a little touristy area. And there was a sharp image there. And I said, you know, they have these stores. It's not cheap, but they have all this crazy stuff. It's what kind of stuff? I told them about it. I said, well, there's a light, there's a lamp.

And if you touch the lamp and it's a metal lamp, it'll turn on. They didn't believe me. Didn't believe me. I had no way of showing it. They didn't photo. I told them about this phone that you could use. First of all, the idea, phone has to have a cord.

Yes, of course. Okay. phone in your bathtub. Yeah, of course not. But there are people, my aunt had a pool. My aunt she built a house and she was like the one middle class person in the family. She built a pool. A one aunt with the pool. Always the rich uncle. They did not believe that this was possible that you would have, that a private home would have a pool in your backyard and you'd have a phone call and it wasn't like this blew their minds. I love that you thought you were blowing their minds with the phone. It's cordless. You can talk anywhere and in the pool even. And they were like,

Wait, wait, wait, you have your own body of water in the back of your house. No, no, no. Look, Ian, you can fool us with some things. How can man-made lake just be at back of house? See? You have tanker traffic on this. It is a crazy concept when you think about it.

But having a swimming pool is one of the most ridiculous ideas ever. one of the things that I found out about that blew my mind was you can draw a direct line between places that have a shit ton of swimming pools in their houses and the racism laws that were in the country.

Really? Yeah. In the United States, almost nobody had a swimming pool and then they changed the laws and they said black people could swim in public pools and then remember like... And then suddenly white people said,

I get out pools. Yeah, and then obviously there was the fights and there were people was it Mr. Rogers who had his friend's feet in the pool with him, if you remember that? And people were like, Mr. Rogers, how could you do this? You're going to have a black man in this little pool thing with you? And then pools did this in America. All of a sudden, people were like, all right.

And I'm going public anymore. Not only did private pools blow up, public pools started getting shut down. People were like, well, maybe we shouldn't fund public pools. South Africa as well, public pools used to be like the thing. I grew up swimming in a public pool. And then after like democracy fully, like, Like when people were like, maybe we just swim at home. Everyone just swims at home.

The cordless phone. And yet another thing. And now public pools. We need civic spaces. Yeah. Places where we can meet these people, these kids. Public phone. I mean, floaty phone.

Yeah. So you're with the Russians. You're telling them about the public phone. No, just blew their minds. And I just, the fact that I hadn't considered, there were so many different components of that story that I hadn't remotely considered would be strange or interesting to them. And it allowed us to like,

have this wild open moment about how different we were, but we were the same kids. Having that experience combined with you doing what you do, what do you think we misunderstand about Russia right now in this moment in time? And I say this as somebody

who is always, not always, maybe for the past like six years, been fascinated by how America has misread Russia over the years and then acted based on that misreading. Is this something that you think the world doesn't understand about Russia right now. Just how disrespected they feel.

I mean, this is a country that's lost empire. This is a country whose total economy is smaller than Canada. This is a country that used to take such pride in having the best culture of anyone in the world, that all of their college kids had read all this incredible literature and knew all the top arts. And now the government has stopped investing in this completely in science. They had the world-class scientists, Soviet collapse, and all these Americans. and companies would go in IBM and Boeing and that hire the best scientists, mathematicians,

and they don't have that anymore. And you feel the sense they have such pride, such Russian pride in their nation, in their history. It's not about money. It never was about money. You know, remember, this is the whole system of, you know, they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work. Yeah. Right. But the personal connections and the history. And this is a place that, yes, there's a lot of suffering. There's a lot of tragedy, but you get through it because there's a sense of responsibility and greatness.

And they have lost so much of that. I know you can't predict another reality, but do you think it would have been different if the U.S. and the world had done a better job of bringing Russia in posts? Of course. You think it would have been different if their own oligarchs that were connected

were not so rapacious, were not so kleptocratic, did not rip everybody off and take that money out of the country for themselves. Both of those things. So the economic shock therapy that the Americans offered to them was nowhere near what was useful for them

given the ability to strip out the wealth and also the fact that the Soviet Union dropped in America's laps. You kind of won it. You didn't fight over it. It wasn't like World War II where you almost lost your way of life for everybody. Here it was like, well, we don't need to rebuild these guys.

We rebuilt the Japanese. We rebuilt the Germans. These were our enemies. It wasn't just our allies. We rebuilt them. And then we created the U.S. That was American. Yeah.

I mean, it's funny because now you have Americans saying, UN, globalists. Those who actually are morals. They were our ideals. I'm very proud of the UN. I love having it in New York. And I think that one of the reasons why Americans today don't like the UN, especially elites, is because we feel a sense of shame that we no longer are living up to the values and standards that we create. And so, yeah, I think those things really matter.

And I think that we did not cover ourselves in glory in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed because it was, because we were doing so well. We were kings of the world. Everyone just was going to be like America. So we didn't have to do anything. Let them come nuts. When you look at Venezuela today, I was joking with Eugene about this other day and I said, as much as America will say certain things, it is funny how half of the stories slash all of them sort of end in oil. It doesn't matter what it is. You know, they'll be like,

Iran, terrible regime and the plotting and the oil. You know, Iraq, Saddam Hussein, this evil person, weapons of master's oil. You know what they're doing? Gaddafi. Oil. Gaza. Oh, my God.

Nigeria. Oil. No, no. But that's why we don't care as much. No, my mind. It's the counterpoint. It's true as well, though. But I'm saying being in there.

If there's somewhere America goes into, though. Oil. Oil. Oil. Yeah. I'm sure it's not that simple. I'm sure it's not that simple. But if you are, and you are, literally,

somebody who studies this for a living, what do you make of this situation? Are these the actions of a country that might end up fighting another war with a country that happens to have oil? No. No, you don't think so. First of all, because Trump,

I think, really does fundamentally understand that the U.S. has gotten involved in a lot of very expensive long wars, and he's willing to do anything to stop that. He doesn't want boots on the ground and many years on him. Yeah. I mean, he ended the war in Afghanistan

by cutting a really crappy deal with the Taliban, but at least the end of the war. Yeah, right. And then Biden was kind of stuck actually, ending, ending the war, but Trump made that happen. And so I think the likelihood that Trump, under any circumstances,

would say, okay, let's send a whole bunch of young men and women to go and fight in another country. I don't think you're doing that. The funny thing, though, is... They'll send them in the U.S. I think it's... Yeah, the funny thing, though, is I think it's more money thing.

I don't know. Did you... Do you remember the... I think it was around Syria when Bashir al-Assad was... He launched one of many of, like, his most heinous campaigns. It was just like a moment. Was this chemical weapons?

Or you mean before that? I think it was around that time. But there was an image of a young child on the cover of the New York Times, I think it was, on the front page. This child and his like ashen face just post like a strike or something. And I think it was Ivanka Trump who showed the image to Donald Trump

and he was so moved by her being so moved that he said he's going to respond. And then they bombed a few parts of Syria, right? And then afterwards he came out and they were like, oh, is this going to be a full scale? And he came out and he was like, he's like, we're not, we're not, he's like, we bombed them and he's like, you know how much it costs?

One rocket. I can't believe. He's like, had I known, I wouldn't have sent it. I wouldn't have shot it. One of these, I wouldn't have shot. I wish I could take it back. He's like, I wouldn't. And it was interesting to me that he, from what I observe of him, is more against war because

he doesn't like the country spending the money on it. I think he's gotten more used to it, as we've seen with Iran. Yeah. And the 12-day war, I think he's gotten more used to it with all the rockets against the ships, the little tiny boats that are bringing the drugs. I also think that personally, this is a guy who did everything he could using his personal connections to avoid the draft. The bone spurs. Yes.

And he understands that that was something that one should avoid. That war was scary for him and war was scary for a lot of young men and women. So I think he comes to that honestly, historically, whatever it is. I think there are lots of reasons why they're talking about going in. I think that for Marco Rubio, who comes from Florida and has a very strong Cuban concern. constituency and a bunch of Venezuelans too. And they see this as a dictatorship and they see Cuba's a dictatorship. And he's always wanted to remove these brutal leaders. And he thinks if you get rid of Maduro, then you can stop the dominoes. Yeah. You can also start the dominoes with Cuba.

But he might not be completely wrong about that, but it's not an immediate direct effect. I do think that the oil matters. Rick Grinnell, who was the special envoy without portfolio for Trump and was involved in the first administration as well as ambassador to Germany for a while. You may remember tall guy was a Fox News guy. He was engaged on the Venezuela brief at the beginning of the administration had been talking to the oil companies in the U.S. and was trying to see if a deal could be made that would allow them, would have them, you know, crack down on the drugs, but would get the Americans to actually invest more broadly in Venezuela. Also, a lot of illegal oil going evading sanctions from Venezuela

using these ghost tanker fleets through Cuba to China. By the way, same tankers that the Russians and the Iranians use, which is why Putin called up Maduro to support him after the Americans seized a tanker. Right.

Because it was like, wait a second, we used that tanker. So it was kind of interesting. I absolutely think that because the Grinnell effort didn't work, that now you're seeing, this country has more oil reserves than any other country in the world.

Geez, I don't know that. Or proven oil reserves, more than Saudi Arabia, more than the United States. Geez, I didn't know that. And so Trump, certainly, if Maduro is gone with whatever military government is immediately in charge and maybe some transition eventually to someone that could be elected, the deal he doesn't care about democracy in Venezuela. He cares a lot about cutting an investment deal where the Americans are going to get a big piece of that oil, just like the critical minerals deal that he forced Zelensky to sign if he

was going to keep providing intelligence and defense support to the Ukrainians. So, yes, I do think the oil plays, but I don't think it's been the principal driver. I wonder when I hear some of these stories if, I mean, I don't know if it was ever true, but I sometimes wonder if America has given up its moral authority and moral superiority to be able to like say these things in the world. I actually think to, I think it was, I think it was Israel's prime minister or somebody hype in the government who came and gave a speech at the UN. You know, when people were complaining, they're like, oh, Israel did this and you, when they bombed in Qatar, right? And they were like, oh, to do this on another nation's soil.

And then they were like, well, America did it. And they listed off like a few other countries and like, they did it. They're like, so how are we different? And it was an interesting moment because it was weird that the response to, why did you break the international law was we all do. Do you know what I mean? Of course I do. And it is, on the one hand, the fact that the United States has historically held itself up as some exceptional, indispensable nation means that even though the Americans have given so much more in foreign aid, even though the U.S. had played so much more of a leadership role in the IMF and the World Bank and doing so many things that really matter and philanthropy also in promoting Americans to do.

that. But when the hypocrisy happens, and let's face it for the U.S., the hypocrisy happens at huge scale in Iraq, you know, or in Abu Ghraib, right, and, you know, or in Guantanamo, and so many examples of this, or with the global financial crisis, you know, so many examples of this, then suddenly all of these other countries are pointing fingers. And the Americans were never as much of a shining light beacon on the hill as we put ourselves out. And let's face it, we almost didn't get involved in World War II, and that would have been a huge mistake. We were late to the game, and it was only because of Pearl Harbor. And, you know, it was the America first concept started then with Lindberg and the movement of why would we care about these Europeans way over there

really far, has nothing to do with us. Here's shades of that today, right, in the national security strategy document, for example, and with Trump saying, you guys have your problem. Ukraine's far away. but still, if you had to compare the United States with what the Chinese would do globally or what the Russians would do globally over the last 50, 60, 70 years, you would on balance take the U.S. Now, the question is today,

would you still make a strong call for that? Not as clear. A lot of countries around the world would say that the United States has become actively adversarial. A lot of countries would say that. The Canadians would say. that, which is crazy.

Yeah, Canadians never say anything mean. Yeah, and now they do. And they won an election on that. And their population is saying, we've got to find a way to just work more with the Europeans, work more with everybody than the Americans. And they're so incredibly integrated with the U.S. economy. It's not like, and security.

It's not like they have much of a choice, but it's hugely popular in Canada to say, we can never go back to the trusted relationship we used to have with the U.S. And their tourism down to the U.S. is falling off a cliff. They're really upset because they feel like we no long stand for the things that they thought we stood for.

And if the Canadians feel that way, who are basically Americans just a little colder, right? Then how do you think the other people feel that don't have those relationships with us, right? That's sad. What are some of the questions you have now that you haven't yet found the answers for? In the world?

Yeah, just things that you're pondering and puzzling through, but you haven't yet struck on a satisfactory answer. I want to know when artificial intelligence can provide answers on a large number of topics that are as good or better than human beings. I want to know what that does to political power. I want to know how the Chinese Communist Party deals with that when Xi Jinping is supposed to be like the Oracle from which all information comes down. Is it repression? Does it change their system? I'd love to know that. Maybe they'll just have like a They'll just

Their AI I think their solution is the easiest They just have to make sure that their AI Just says like you say to AI in China Hey what's happening here Or what do you How do I fix this or and then their AI must just be like

She says I just asked she And she was saying that you should Put your yeah put the cupboard together like this You know she actually told me how this works Chat CCP I like I like

Sometimes it would be like That's what she said That's a nice one. That's what he said. That also works. That actually works together. Look at this. We've got a show here.

I mean, this is doing something. No, honestly, I genuinely think this is just me with my just wandering through the streets brain. I have no company, nor do I have any credentials. I think AI is going to be a greater detriment to free nations than to nations that have a stranglehold on their politics and their populations. because there they can work to constrain the thing whereas in the other one they're like ah it's like let it go and see what happens and then it's like oh okay well that was the whole point

that's why the j-curve became you that is the whole point that's what I mean though that's what I'm saying they I'm not sure those are free nations for very long if it turns out that the companies control the algorithms the AI and suddenly you're not a citizen you're actually just a product of a business model okay okay so that's one thing you're pondering an unelected leader all of sudden

yeah you do I mean a second big thing I want to is what happens with the social contract when people that are white, white collar, knowledge, labor increasingly no longer has productive stuff to do. Can I tell you that is one of the biggest ones that people take for granted? Because it's exactly that. It's a social contract that keeps us all moving along. And when it's gone, think of everyone in an office whose job is only about moving information around and remembering it and dispersing it. And if Your company makes a system that does that everywhere. Maybe you can tell me this because I've never gotten a satisfactory answer from CEOs and from companies.

I go, why would you do this? Why would you do what? As I understand business, the point of a business is to provide some sort of service to somebody who will then pay you for it. But like Henry Ford understood, you need the people who can buy your car. Yes. So he paid his workers a certain amount of money and he made his car a certain price so that they themselves could buy it

Yeah, his first consumers. Yeah, but if companies are going to make themselves fully AI, AI will advertise, AI will plan trips, AI will do the work, then where's the business? Yeah, well, that is a huge, that's what I'm saying, it's a huge question. And, you know, you worry that, first of all,

some of these people are so racing ahead are so short-term in their orientation that they're not worried about that just want to get their first and cash out because the models and the money that's being raised is so extraordinary. That's driving the economy.

And second, of course, there's a collective action problem to it if you don't do it, someone else is going to. Right? So there's the race level of it. And then there's also the disbelief. It's the view that, yeah, there'll be other jobs. There's always other jobs.

Something else will come. I do believe that, but I think their issue to borrow from what you were saying is time. And government. Everything can be figured out. The problem is, do you have the time to figure it out? Do you get what I'm saying? If everyone loses their jobs over a hundred years, let's say the job of Candlemaker goes away over a hundred years, I think people will be fine.

But if tomorrow a job that is done by a lot of people disappears instantly, you don't have time to figure out what the next job is. I hope that's right. And I think that's right. But of course, it didn't work out that way for horses, right? I mean, you know, suddenly you have steam power and the horse population goes down to 10% of what it was in one generation. Because, you know, horses are then useful. Oh, you think our population might.

Well, I hope not. I'm just saying that I know that when you suddenly have technology that surpasses the total capacity, the total productive capacity of that entity, you no longer need the entity. No, but this is where I think, honestly, on a human. level, I do think we will create a new thing because all jobs are invented. The issue is I don't know that we'll have the time. This is where I'm agreeing with you. I go, you do it too quickly and then do you understand what do you understand what do you think you would do in the revolution? Making candles. No, like genuine. Like do you do you do you ever think about like Ian what do you think

you would do you think you'd be like part of helping? No, I honestly wonder that you don't think about this at all. No, no, I don't think about it. Like let's say it all goes to shit the things falling apart. the people now is like, where do you see yourself in the mix? I always think, front lines, planning. I'd be a dissident. Oh, you'd be a dissident? Absolutely. Because, I mean, if you think about back in the Soviet Union, before the collapse,

there were lots of people that tried to do what I do. They just didn't do it like for money. They didn't do it legally because it was illegal. So what did they do? I mean, they, you know, they did Samasdat literature. They do like informal coffee house conversations, but they still tried to bring truth to people to the fellow citizens. I like this.

So if that were to truly happen in the United States, I'd still do what I do. I would just do it less effectively and I'd be repressed for it. You'd be on the front lines, Eugene. I think that with everything that changes, things have been changing since the beginning of time. But I think it's the people that have institutional memory that are lamenting the change sometimes. I think the younger generation is not as worried about the changes that we're facing. I mean, there's kids who don't even know what a house phone looks like. Well, this is, I hear what you mean.

So what we are lamenting is the world, as we know, It is no different from how when you're in a queue you were lamenting being in a queue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You remember? Yeah, like the world that didn't exist. Yeah, the world that didn't exist. I'm thinking what we are doing now, we are almost, we are here to preserve what was. Even in conversations like this, there will always be a job for these kind of people.

It's almost like the books of the future. There'll always be people who remember how things were and will try in their small circles to keep things the same. The person who bakes the bread themselves, although... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm with you. So this idea sharing will always be...

And we've been saying this, that what we're not realizing is the portals to this information for the future is digital media, the podcast, the YouTube's. People in 100 years' time, if they want to really know

how things were done, just like how people are making handcrafted binders for books, they will go and listen to how things were done. There'll be a person who's interested in disseminate the information and getting things done.

But what we can't stop is things changing. They are always going to change. Especially if there's money involved, change is inevitable. And like you said, it's a race now. If you don't do it, someone else will. Bob Eiger, I think, was right about this. You've never, no one's ever been successful trying to stop technology from happening. So, I mean, it's not about saying we're not going to do it.

It's going to happen. The question is being aware of what it is. Yeah. And trying to align yourself with it. How do you want to spend your time? given how fast it's changing. Yeah. Okay. And then what's like a third question you have? So the first one, the second question one was about AI. Yeah. The third one is about whether or not we are going to have increasing

global governance to respond to global challenges. Right. So you think about how so much of these new technologies, how fast they move. Are we going to have a U.S. China agreement the way we did after the Cuban Missile Crisis between the US and Soviet Union so that we didn't blow each other up. We created a hot line. We didn't have any arms control until we almost blew up the world. Do we have to wait before we almost blow up the world to have agreements on how we're going to try to manage collectively these new technologies that are incredibly powerful to advance

humanity? Yeah. But also are really dangerous. the hands of the wrong people. Bad actors that would want to create, you know, a bio weapon or that would want to, you know, sort of knock out an economic marketplace or flood the world with disinformation and fake videos. That can't just be handled in a country-by-country basis. There are adversaries out there. We need to make sure that we're not using them against each other. And right now we don't have any AI arms control. We don't even have the beginning of that

negotiation. And so we don't have 20 years. for that, you know, and so this administration's going to have to engage. Very interesting. You probably saw that Trump gave this long speech at the UN this year back in September. Yeah, the one way he said, like, basically, you guys suck and was it was, I mean, there were funny parts of the speech. Yeah, the escalator speech. Yeah, the escalator speech.

Yeah, it was really interesting. At one point, he actually said, there was something he said, a new program that he wanted the U.S. to start, that he asked the UN to be a part of, which you'd never expect him to do that. Yeah. I'm really concerned about the spread of bio web. and we want to have like a new US-led global initiative on that and the UN has to play a role.

Now, he didn't come up with that. But the point is he didn't kill it. And no one around him killed it. You can't do this stuff unless there's some kind of global cooperation. Yeah. It can't just be America first on protection of the world from these advanced technologies. There are some things in the world we still have to cooperate on.

And yet we're not moving in that direction right now. Almost none of the big political trajectories are towards more cooperation. It's all towards fragmentation. It's all towards picking aside. There's some stuff that we need to actually work together on. So I'm really interested to see how does that start to happen? Does it require a big crisis? Yeah.

Or can we start to actually plant some of the seeds to allow for that without? So just so that you leave us on a good note, what have you seen geopolitically that's given you like a fuzzy, warm feeling? The fact that as the United States is playing less of a global leadership, role that other countries around the world actually don't want these institutions to fall apart. They may not be able to be the United States themselves, but they want these things to work. They want countries around the world, even China. No, we still want the UN.

We still want to pay our dues for the UN. We want the sort of. We still want the IMF. We still want the World Bank. We still want their programs. We still want the World Food Program. We think these things are important. We still want trade agreements.

So if the U.S. isn't going to be able to do all the trade right now, Well, then the EU and Mercosur will try to sign something up in India. We'll work with, you know, Australia. And there's more of that. So there is an effort to create more resilience in the system. And it's not, everything is not just about, oh, my God, the United States isn't going to be Papa. And so we all have to cower and be on our best behavior. Oh, this is going to strike us.

No, there's actually more than just the U.S. out there. And a lot of it is trying to find a way to ensure that we still have stability. I love that. It's what I told my seven kids. Now that I'm not around, you guys are going to step up. You're going to do something for yourselves. I'll take three. He'll take four.

Can we move to where? Bulgarian. You bring a whole lot of ballpoint pens and... Oh, man. That's my favorite ones. The ballpoint pens and the blue jeans. Just you doing that in... Did you ever go back and meet any of those people?

Oh, God, yeah, of course. You did? Yeah. Oh, man. On LinkedIn. Yeah, it was really cool. Not on LinkedIn. No, when did you first go back and connect?

Like, who did you like? Oh, it would have been, I mean, probably three years later, two years later, 88, I think it was. Yeah, yeah. And you went back and then you... Yeah, yeah. I mean, I stayed as pen pals with these kids. Again, this is pre-internet.

That is so cool. So you're then writing notes to these kids. Yeah, it was wild. With your fancy ballpoint pen. Yeah, right? Just flossing in their faces. Yeah. Dear Vlad, I write this to you elegantly and with the smoothest precision that a ballpoint pen can provide.

And then Vlad was like, dear, tink, tink, tink, pion. Pink, tink, tink, um. Man, that's, I'm glad. That's dope. That's really beautiful. Well, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you so much. Great to see you, man.

And thank you for showing us a new way to see the world. Yeah. I think that's, you know, that's honestly one of the things that you've changed most in my life, which I appreciate, is just the idea of like learn to see it, meet the people who don't see it the same way you do, talk to them about why, understand it, and then you go from there. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

That means something. Thanks a lot. This is really fun. Thank you. Yeah. That's really cool. What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaziamin, and Jess Hackle.

Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiu. Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random Other Stuff by Ryan Harduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now.