And, This Is How The World Looks At Us Under Trump With Ian Bremmer

Transcript

Speaker 2 The fact that Trump wants to fundamentally change the U.S.

Speaker 1 political system so there are no longer checks and balances on his presidency. My principal enemies are inside the House.
They almost tried to kill me. It was this close.

Speaker 1 Reality has punched him in the face. I think that what Epstein represents to Americans are these assholes can get away with anything.

Speaker 2 Coming up next on this is Gavin Newsome. I just sat down with Ian Brenner, the founder and president of the ERAZA Eurasa group, started GZero Media.

Speaker 2 It's a fancy way of saying a world-leading expert on geopolitical risk, on politics, on business, and its intersection.

Speaker 2 And of course, this week, highlighted by the visit of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, there's so much to discuss around the world we are living in, the trend lines that define this moment, and what to expect in the future.

Speaker 2 This is Gavin Newsom,

Speaker 2 and this is Ian Bremer.

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Speaker 2 Ian Brenner, it's good to be with you.

Speaker 1 Good to be with you, Gavin.

Speaker 2 Where were you? We're in San Francisco. Yes.
You made it all the way out west. I did.
Are you a product of East Coast?

Speaker 1 What are you doing out here, Warsaw? Yeah, I I grew up in Chelsea, Massachusetts, just outside Boston, and I live in New York now. All right.

Speaker 1 Well, I like it. I do like it.

Speaker 2 Do you like it? You can't move me out. Okay, well, I'm not trying to.
That's a good point. And we'll get to a little bit of the East Coast.
I've been here for a few years. Where were you? Stanford.

Speaker 1 Of course you were. Sorry.
Of course you were.

Speaker 2 Hey, they let me in.

Speaker 2 If you're from the projects, let me in Stanford. I'll just drop it right away.
Yeah, you're at Columbia University as well. You're all over.

Speaker 2 But look, I want to, let's contextualize because I think for me, I'd like to sort of sort of level set about, you know, sort of in the Tom Freeman zone of what world are we living in?

Speaker 2 I mean, what world are we living in, sort of globally? What are the trend lines that define the world we're living in? What's your sense of the moment we're in globally, geopolitically?

Speaker 1 Well, the biggest thing that is so unusual in your and my histories is that the United States, we,

Speaker 1 are now driving the greatest level of geopolitical uncertainty.

Speaker 1 It's not China. It's not Europe.
Russia is certainly a problem, but comparatively small. No, it's the question of what does the United States want? It's whiplash from one administration to the next.

Speaker 1 And it is absolutely an unwillingness to be the reliable partner on the set of rules that the Americans had instituted.

Speaker 1 and mostly, though not always, live by collective security, free market trading, you know,

Speaker 2 rule of law,

Speaker 1 foreign aid. I mean, all of these things.

Speaker 1 Huge questions. And countries all over the world, especially our allies, saying we don't believe that the United States is reliable going forward.

Speaker 2 So the issue of reliability, so you talk and you've written a lot about this notion of unpredictability, reliability, but never both and.

Speaker 2 And that's the world now we're living in, this notion of being unreliable and unpredictable. That's anomalous, even by Trump 1.0 terms.
Completely.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, they've been through Trump 1.0, and I think a lot of people assumed Trump 2.0 would be the same um and they were really wrong right so much more consolidated power under trump so much more willingness to to break the furniture on tariffs you know for example on on trying to do peace deals for example just a very very assertive this is my opportunity my principal enemies are inside the house they almost tried to kill me it was this close and so I have to be a revolutionary president.

Speaker 2 And you've used that word revolution.

Speaker 2 And some people have balked at that, saying that may be overstated, though you've made the point, not dissimilar to Gorbachev himself, some of the revolution we saw, at least economic revolution in China, that you can certainly make the case that Trump's policies vis-a-vis the west of the globe is revolutionary.

Speaker 1 I think that, again, in our lifetimes, and this is why the geopolitical uncertainty from the U.S. is so great, There have really been three attempted revolutions that have had global impact.

Speaker 1 The first, Deng Xiaoping,

Speaker 1 an economic revolution, not a political revolution in China, successful and brings China ultimately into the WTO and into the global economy.

Speaker 1 The second, under Gorbachev, when I cut my teeth as a graduate student, my first trip outside the U.S. was to the Soviet Union in 86 when he had first come in.

Speaker 1 This was a political and an economic revolution,

Speaker 1 completely failed,

Speaker 1 and the Soviet Union collapsed as a consequence.

Speaker 1 And the third, a political, though I would argue not an economic revolution, here in the United States by Trump, and we don't know if it's going to be successful or not.

Speaker 1 And by the way, Steve Bannon would completely agree with that. He wants it to be successful.
You absolutely don't. A lot of people feel very differently.

Speaker 1 But the fact that Trump wants to fundamentally change the U.S. political system so there are no longer checks and balances on his presidency, either from inside the administration or from the party.

Speaker 1 or from the administrative state

Speaker 1 or from the judiciary. I mean, these are from the media.

Speaker 1 I mean, as we saw, you know, you and I are taping this on a day that Trump went directly after ABC and said they should have their license taken away, didn't like a question, tells the head of the FCC you should be looking into that right now.

Speaker 1 That is not historically something that is compatible with the United States, but under a political revolution, it might be. And you say

Speaker 2 not an economic revolution, a political revolution, but you just referenced the economic revolution in China.

Speaker 2 Some have equated the economic policy shifts in the United States to aspects of Chinese state capitalism.

Speaker 2 This notion that we have seen, or not just notion, but we've seen some of the transactions that have come with the 10%

Speaker 2 ownership into Intel. Obviously, these golden shares with U.S.

Speaker 2 Steel, NVIDIA and AMD, even MP Materials here in the state of California, disproportionate number of California-based companies, aspects, sort of component parts.

Speaker 2 of state capitalism, though, have, have they not? Yes. Entered into political context.

Speaker 1 Industrial policy. Absolutely.
You just picked all the big ones, by the way. So, I mean, it's not like you can say that across the U.S.
economy at all.

Speaker 1 The biggest American companies are spending lots of money on the Trump administration to ensure that they can continue to essentially capture the regulatory environment, not the other way around.

Speaker 1 So, my view is that there are similarities between China and the United States in the way the economy runs. In China, the state captures the corporations.

Speaker 1 In the United States, the corporations capture the state, right?

Speaker 1 Where in Europe, right, the state actually stands pretty much outside and its superpower is a regulatory superpower, which sounds great for the social contract until you realize that there's no growth attached to it.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So from a perspective, you know, back to sort of the alliance, there's

Speaker 2 alliances and now this notion of predictability or unpredictability, reliability.

Speaker 2 Would you describe, I mean, an alliance-first framework that sort of defines the post-World War II order, the last 75, 80 years, to now an American-first framework, or is it an economic first framework?

Speaker 2 Or is it just Trump an impulse in the context of what his revolutionary construct or ideological frame references?

Speaker 1 Well, so one of the reasons why I don't think it's an economic revolution is because even though Trump might be interested in some of that stuff,

Speaker 1 reality has punched him in the face. So, you know, for example,

Speaker 1 he tried to start a trade war with China and force them to bend the knee. He tried to put an effective economic boycott on the Chinese.
It didn't work.

Speaker 1 Xi Jinping wasn't getting on the phone and jumping and saying, please, sir, can you do that?

Speaker 2 Did that surprise you, the extent to which China leveraged, particularly on rare earth minerals, their strategic strengths in relationship to that?

Speaker 2 Do you think that, I mean, was that a surprise, not only from your perspective, but do you think that surprised the Trump administration?

Speaker 1 Well, it clearly surprised the Trump administration.

Speaker 1 The part that surprised me was not the

Speaker 1 capabilities that the Chinese had developed in critical minerals and rare earths. They've been building these up for decades.

Speaker 1 It's very obvious that this is like a really strategic move to have that leverage. But what surprised me and I think surprised a lot of people in the field was the view that their

Speaker 1 ability

Speaker 1 to suddenly actually regulate through licensing and have a scalpel that would allow you to really hit American companies and not necessarily hit other companies.

Speaker 1 And to be fair, like when they announced these licensing agreements, suddenly everyone is trying to make applications to China and it's thousands of applications and they don't have the staff to actually deal with it.

Speaker 1 So it did cause damage. For example, China's relations with the EU right now are markedly worse than they were a few months ago, in part because they weren't as capable.

Speaker 1 to really use this as a lever just against the United States and just against American companies. But their willingness to do it, together with their getting up to speed really, really fast, I think

Speaker 1 surprised everyone to at least a degree.

Speaker 1 And the fact is that the Trump administration is not prepared to have this fight with the Chinese. What does that mean?

Speaker 1 In part, that means that the Americans need friends.

Speaker 1 Need allies. It turns out inflation is higher than Trump thought it was going to be.
And what does that mean?

Speaker 1 It turns out that like a lot of those tariffs on food and on coffee and bananas, other things, turns out, well, you got to take those off.

Speaker 1 Turns out that Trump doesn't actually, probably doesn't have the ability to use AIPA individually as the president,

Speaker 1 as everything is a national emergency, no matter what country, no matter how poor, how rich, how small, how big.

Speaker 1 And that the Supreme Court, at least the initial arguments, look like that's going to hit him back pretty hard. All of that implies that Trump's, he may have an idea,

Speaker 1 a grand idea that I'm the biggest actor out there and therefore the law of the jungle, I'm the predator. And so as the apex predator, everyone has to bow to me.

Speaker 1 But, you know, even the apex predator like picks off like a wounded wildebeest, but doesn't go after the entire herd simultaneously. Turns out it's not really working for him.

Speaker 1 So I think that in the past few weeks, we've actually passed the tipping point where Trump's global unilateralism is really getting constrained.

Speaker 2 Sort of peaked Trump in that way.

Speaker 2 And AIPA is the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, of which Trump has asserted it's being litigated in the Supreme Court that he has the unilateral authority without congressional approval to move forward with these tariffs.

Speaker 2 But even, of course, if the Supreme Court adjudicates against that authority under the merger, he still substantially can find other avenues to advance the tariffs.

Speaker 1 But it would take time.

Speaker 1 And expectations for where the global blended tariff average from the United States would be would probably be three to six points lower than they presently are.

Speaker 2 Which is roughly, what is it? It's 17. It depends on the average.

Speaker 1 It depends on whether you're saying what he has or what they're actually implementing, but something between 13 and 17, yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's the highest since the 1930s.

Speaker 1 Without any question. And that's the single biggest thing he's done on the global stage so far.

Speaker 2 And it seems to me that's the entire. policy.
I mean, every single thing is leveraged. Every conversation is leveraged in the context of that cudgel, isn't it? The tariff cudgel.
With him.

Speaker 1 I mean, the Russia-Ukraine thing, clearly, it's whether or not you remember when the Ukrainians, when Zelensky came to the Oval, that horrible shambolic meeting, and he cut off intelligence and defense support for a week or two.

Speaker 1 That wasn't trade, but my God, that was important, sent a big message to the Europeans.

Speaker 1 They're similar in terms of the Abraham Accords and the F-35. So American military capabilities also have.
I would say that's another significant significant piece of literature.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 let's reinforce that in the context of the meeting that the president just had in the Oval Office of the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,

Speaker 2 talking about transactions around F-35s,

Speaker 2 talking about potentially, well, though. Apparently they didn't talk about the Abraham Accords, but the process.

Speaker 2 They did a bit to pull potentially to get Saudi Arabia as part of that.

Speaker 2 So give me your over-under in terms of that relationship, which is to me fascinating, also deeply predictable, because there's sort of a crony component of that as well.

Speaker 2 There's a little bit of self-dealing that seems to attach itself respectfully from my perspective to all things Saudi Arabia and the Trump and Trump family.

Speaker 2 But how did you perceive that meeting, the importance of it, a little bit of the controversy around it, particularly in relationship to

Speaker 2 the murder in a Washington Post reporter? What was your sense of that?

Speaker 1 Well, there's so much to unpack here. Saudi Arabia today, over 30 million population in the region is transforming itself in ways that if you haven't traveled to the kingdom recently, is shocking.

Speaker 1 In a positive way, in an incredibly positive way.

Speaker 1 If there were elections in Saudi Arabia, would almost certainly win 80, 85, 90% of the votes. He is...

Speaker 1 Women were 11%

Speaker 1 of the workforce 10 years ago. They're now 36%

Speaker 1 in 10 years. It's like a reverse Iranian revolution, right? They're diversifying the economy.

Speaker 1 So it's not just oil and petrochem. It's actually meant to, and it's technology and tourism and it's sports and it's health and it's all of these comedies.

Speaker 1 They even did that comedy festival recently. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 And so you go and you see that suddenly like men and women are actually able to talk to each other.

Speaker 1 And I remember the first time I went to Saudi Arabia, local men referred to women as MBOs, moving black objects, because they were completely covered by the niqab and you couldn't see them aside from this little slit, you know, with their eyes.

Speaker 1 And they certainly weren't playing any role in terms of social public culture.

Speaker 2 That has completely changed.

Speaker 1 There are no religious police on the streets anymore. All of that is extraordinary.
So any country in the world, not just the United States, that is thinking about

Speaker 1 what are the future-oriented governments that you should be engaging with, Saudi would be on your list. Having said that,

Speaker 1 the Khashoggi assassination, which the CIA said Muhammad

Speaker 1 under Trump said Muhammad bin Salman was directly aware of, right? And then so suddenly today, and no one is, you know, Khashoggi is no longer a thing in the sense that it was many many years ago.

Speaker 1 You got Davos in the desert, all of the global, the bankers, the industry leaders from the U.S., other countries, they're all going. It's not like the Saudis are suddenly a pariah state.

Speaker 2 Not at all.

Speaker 1 And I think Biden made mistakes on that, frankly, not reading the room.

Speaker 1 But for Trump to then take a question and pretend that not only

Speaker 1 did this incident not happen, to whitewash it and say, well, Mohammed bin Salman, he knew nothing about that, to say that, well, this guy, Khashoggi, was a bad guy.

Speaker 1 Like, you don't need to do any of that.

Speaker 1 And yet it's almost like he takes pleasure in

Speaker 1 the opportunity in undermining the values that the United States has at least tried to stand for for much of its recent history.

Speaker 2 Net, net, positive. So what you're saying is

Speaker 2 positive. Yeah, I mean, and it was, he was treated like a head of state, even though it's technically not the head of state.

Speaker 1 But Yeah, they're still the king.

Speaker 2 But as it relates, so it gives us an opportunity just maybe then to get into the Middle East and the Middle East politics a little bit.

Speaker 2 The Abraham McCords are a big success for the Trump administration 1.0.

Speaker 1 Arguably his largest success.

Speaker 2 Largest success.

Speaker 2 And what I love about you, you call balls and strikes. You're nonpartisan.
And you're able to assess things without a deeply political lens, which I think is critical and important.

Speaker 2 I think it's important for us to acknowledge that, particularly folks in my party.

Speaker 2 But as it relates to where we are today and the ability to build on that success and the relationship to this quote unquote Middle East peace deal, the most significant, you know, Trump sort of triumph, the challenges that persist in Gaza, Hamas, who appears not to have any interest in,

Speaker 2 you know, eliminating or at least setting down their arms, the challenges with the next phase of that peace deal, the importance of Saudi Arabia recognizing Israel, but first Israel recognizing a Palestinian state.

Speaker 2 How do you feel the state of the Middle East is today?

Speaker 1 Well, so first, balls and strikes, let's give Trump credit where credit is due.

Speaker 1 Nobody thought that Hamas was going to actually release all of the living Israeli hostages. And they did with Trump pressure.

Speaker 1 And it was at the United Nations General Assembly. And I remember when he stood up and the speech was way too long, almost an hour.
And there were only two applause lines. One when he finally finished

Speaker 1 and the other when he said, you want to end the war, Hamas has to let the hostages go. And everyone, almost everyone in the room, applied to that.

Speaker 1 And so, but no one thought it was going to get done. He got it done.
And he got it done by also orchestrating a summit on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

Speaker 1 And you were there in New York with me as well

Speaker 1 with all of the leaders from the region. not the Israelis, saying, here's the 20 or 21 point plan, depending on what we talked to, that they then mostly

Speaker 1 got agreement on. And recently, they just got it passed by the Security Council.

Speaker 2 Which is remarkable.

Speaker 1 Which is remarkable. The Russians and the Chinese abstained and everyone else.

Speaker 2 Israel was a little bit they were a little bit on the side of the channel.

Speaker 1 They were chippy.

Speaker 2 They were chippy. That's the right word.
Chippy. I like that.
No, but that was another remarkable

Speaker 1 to go from a position where the United States had been almost isolated completely on the global stage in its support to Israel to having the U.S.

Speaker 1 lead diplomacy with the Security Council voting in favor and only two abstentions from American adversaries. That's an an extraordinary win.
Give them credit.

Speaker 1 When Trump went to the Knesset and gave that speech, he was a hell of a lot more popular there than Prime Minister Netanyahu is.

Speaker 2 Right? Clearly. So

Speaker 1 that's the positive. Negative is

Speaker 1 getting this deal from ceasefire to a Palestinian state is really, really not looking very likely right now. And that's why

Speaker 1 the Saudis were not prepared to show any leg on the Abraham Accords. And when I was in Riyadh, same thing.
They're like, yeah, yeah, we're very happy. We'd like to do it.
We'd like to engage.

Speaker 1 We'd like the technology, all that stuff.

Speaker 1 But not until we see a clear pathway to a Palestinian state. And right now, with this leadership in Israel, it is not happening.
So you saw Trump just brought the Kazakhs into the Abraham Accords.

Speaker 2 You see that? I saw that. Weekly.
They've not even, it was an unrelated party. Well, but it was just to show momentum.

Speaker 1 They already had relations with Israel for like decades.

Speaker 2 It's like when Trump Trump announced that he ended the Azeri-Armenia war, which is great because they weren't actually fighting the Nobel Prize and the 10 peace deals. I know, I know.

Speaker 1 But the point is, the Abraham Accords are not going to include the Saudis for the foreseeable future.

Speaker 2 That is the real.

Speaker 2 Where are we, what's your over-under? And I've been reading some of the things you put out. How concerned are you about Hezbollah in Lebanon?

Speaker 2 How concerned are you about what's happening in Beirut or not happening? Where do you see things going in the short term?

Speaker 1 Well, the Lebanese government,

Speaker 1 after the ceasefire, said that they were going to work to ensure that the heavy weaponry that Hezbollah had in the south of the country near the Israeli border, they were going to destroy that critical infrastructure and make sure that those weapons weren't there.

Speaker 2 They've done none of that. None of that.

Speaker 1 But a couple of cases, a couple of cases where U.S. has intelligence, provides the Lebanese government, they respond to that.
But this has not been proactive.

Speaker 1 Nobody thinks they're going to actually get this done. And that means that Israel is going to start mowing the grass again.
And that means more strikes by the Israelis. I do.
I expect it.

Speaker 1 Now, whether or not that is limited strikes,

Speaker 1 drones, missiles, aircraft just across the border, or whether that includes special forces insertion in Beirut, there's a big, big difference between those two things.

Speaker 2 Either could happen.

Speaker 1 But I'd be stunned if we have this staying quiescent over the coming months.

Speaker 2 Tony Blair heading this effort. In Gaza.
In Gaza.

Speaker 2 What's your over-under on success in that respect? I mean, the idea if Hamas is not going to put down their arms of an international security force coming in,

Speaker 2 armed security force,

Speaker 2 seems less likely under those circumstances. Or am I off?

Speaker 1 Less likely, but also everyone that's been traveling to this coordination center that they've set up just on the Israeli side of the Gaza border.

Speaker 1 And it has like one floor with the Israelis, one floor with the Americans, then one floor with the multinationals. And apparently, first of all, much bigger, much more capable than people think.

Speaker 1 The U.S. much more directly involved now in terms of ensuring that humanitarian aid is getting in.
The Israelis are in some of the meetings, they're not in all of the meetings.

Speaker 1 So there is an effort to really have people that are capable of moving the ball and also, as the administration has called it, BB-sitting.

Speaker 1 So senior officials that are constraining him so that he can't destroy the progress in the process now also tony blair a controversial figure but is well regarded well respected in the gulf he brings far more political influence and leadership to a gaza role than anyone else plausible interestingly the jordanians have been really opposed to him.

Speaker 1 And I haven't been able to figure out why.

Speaker 2 No history when he was prime minister and with a king. With Iraq a little bit, sure.

Speaker 1 But still surprising to me.

Speaker 1 I mean, it might be that Abu Mazin is opposed to it and has used the Jordanians to say, hey, you know, sort of he's going to be tough on us.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure, but I think that everyone would be fortunate to have Blair in this role, frankly.

Speaker 2 Was it was the, your perspective, was the right thing to do to go in and go after those nuclear facilities, the United States, and those strikes? Well, they worked, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, you're talking about

Speaker 1 intelligence estimates are you probably delayed the Iranian program by some 12 to 18 months, and the Iranians were incapable of any response, marshalling any response to Israel or the United States.

Speaker 1 Most of it was done by the Israelis. The Americans saw that that was successful and nothing happening.
Trump wanted to get in.

Speaker 1 But then the war was over in short order and no American boots on the ground.

Speaker 1 So look, on balance with an Iranian government, remember, Trump had Bibi in the Oval Office and while he was there announced, I'm going to start engaging with the Iranians.

Speaker 1 I want to see if we can get to a diplomatic deal. And there was some effort and the Iranians weren't really willing to go there.

Speaker 1 So ultimately, that meant, I mean, this is not like the Gaza situation, certainly not like Qatar, where the Israelis made strikes, the Americans weren't happy about it.

Speaker 1 In the case of Iran, the United States was was pretty much on board with, okay, we're going to let you guys have at it.

Speaker 2 Let's go back to China.

Speaker 2 It's interesting to me, just with a weaker economy, we talked a little bit, I mean, this notion that they were able to flex with a little more precision and push Trump back, though we still have outrageously high tariffs, and that's going to impact, or is already impacting prices, as you suggest, but particularly this Christmas, where I think 80% of our toys come from China, et cetera.

Speaker 2 So we're going to feel those impacts. And they're starting to actually make, I mean, people are starting to absorb the realities of these terrorists in a way.

Speaker 2 Those first few months, they appear not to be. And so there's back to this notion that certain realities are hitting Trump in the face in terms of how he positions.

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Speaker 2 But give me a sense, you know, the Biden years vis-a-vis China, how Trump is posturing that relationship with Xi.

Speaker 2 Where do you see things going, even beyond the situational politics today around the immediate? You know, sort of we sort of decompressing a little bit of that stress after that APEC meeting.

Speaker 2 Where do you see things going with China in the next two, five years?

Speaker 1 The Chinese are very confident right now. They believe that the United States, as a country that is less reliable, is creating big opportunities for China long term.

Speaker 1 U.S. shuts down USAID.
Who's going to be the principal on the ground in the global south? Going to be the Chinese. U.S.
doesn't show up at the COP summit that you just went to in Brazil.

Speaker 1 Who's driving technology at scale for post-carbon post-carbon energy? The Chinese. The Americans are scaring off brown people that might want visas to get top higher education in the United States.

Speaker 1 Who's now trying to make visas easier for people to come in? The Chinese. So long term, Xi Jinping is going to be there in all likelihood a lot longer than Trump is.

Speaker 1 He believes this is an opportunity. I would argue he is also overplaying his hand.

Speaker 2 She.

Speaker 1 She is.

Speaker 2 Yeah. In which respect, or what respect?

Speaker 1 That when he decided to put that loaded gun on the table that said, here is what I can do in weaponizing these critical minerals that are utterly essential for everybody in the advanced industrial economies.

Speaker 1 Suddenly you have Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans, Australians, Canadians saying, okay, we can't rely on the United States.

Speaker 1 But these guys are actually a fundamental national security problem right now. And we've got to find a way to work together, all of us, so that we have alternatives.

Speaker 1 In the same way that the Europeans had their eye off the ball on energy and allowed themselves to be dependent on Russia, really bad idea for decades.

Speaker 1 In the same way that the Americans did that with semiconductors and TSMC right off of the Chinese coast, really bad idea for decades. All of us have done this on critical minerals and rare earths.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, I think if you're China,

Speaker 1 you should have just, you know, as they say, you know, the Sun Tzu, right, when your enemy is making a mistake, let them and don't don't intervene.

Speaker 1 And I think that the Chinese actually sort of have played a little too aggressively recently.

Speaker 2 The new prime minister of Japan said she would intervene on behalf of Taiwan. If they were attacked.
If they were attacked.

Speaker 2 The United States has had a curious, I mean, the Biden administration seemed to have multiple positions on this, and I don't mean that as an indictment, but this notion of ambiguity, I think, was part of a little bit of the strategy.

Speaker 1 Well, it didn't help that Nancy Pelosi also decided to go play by herself under the Biden administration.

Speaker 2 And there was some friction

Speaker 2 there.

Speaker 2 What's the over-under on China moving on Taiwan in the next decade?

Speaker 1 Oh, a decade is a long time, right? I mean, in the next...

Speaker 1 Over the course of the Trump administration, I would say actually quite low.

Speaker 2 Low.

Speaker 2 And why would you say under the course of the Trump? Is that just because of years or because of policy with Trump?

Speaker 1 I think it's both. It's in part because the Chinese don't yet have the military capabilities in place.

Speaker 1 And you see every month there's a new corruption scandal that's hitting the inside, the top levels of the Chinese military.

Speaker 1 So how much would she want to rely on that to ensure with a military that hasn't been used in sort of battle conditions the way like the Russians have, for example, and learned some things maybe they didn't want to learn at the beginning of that war?

Speaker 1 But then you also have the fact that the Chinese see that Trump isn't looking for a trade war, like recognizes that he needs to bend the knee, that he needs to find a way not to cause problems for China.

Speaker 1 There is a mutually assured economic destruction between the two countries for now, at least, even if the long-term path is towards decoupling.

Speaker 1 And, you know, going to war against Taiwan, even if Trump's instinct, his impulse would be, that's pretty far away, not really my problem.

Speaker 1 But the Japanese, the South Koreans, the Australians wouldn't feel that way. And the Americans are very much on the ground there.

Speaker 1 And intelligence sharing and troops and all the rest would be, it'd be hard for the Americans to actually steer clear of that. And I don't see Xi Jinping as wanting to take that risk.

Speaker 1 Similar to the economy, you know, the Chinese economy is not performing that well right now.

Speaker 1 He's not ready to launch the big bazooka at domestic stimulus. He's not suddenly going to take all of the provincial debt and take it on at the federal level because he doesn't need to.

Speaker 1 Because Xi Jinping is thinking about 10 years down the line, as you suggested, 20 years down the line. And the fact that, like, he can wait.
He is patient. He is more risk averse.

Speaker 1 He's being quite cautious about some of these bigger long-term strategic issues, specifically like Taiwan.

Speaker 2 Is the policy of the United States decoupling or is it de-risking?

Speaker 1 I think it is long-term, it's decoupling. And that's an aggressive thing to say.
But

Speaker 1 when I think about the commanding heights of the global economy over the next five years, we're talking about AI and advanced technologies.

Speaker 1 And these are places where what the Americans are doing and what the Chinese are doing are completely separate sets. of investments.
They're not interoperable.

Speaker 1 We're taking our researchers out of each other's programs. We're not collaborating.
We're not communicating. We're doing completely different things.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, we're going to other countries and we're saying we, it's not just about, if we want to talk about U.S.-China, we have to talk about American diplomacy with third parties and say, well, we're pressuring the Mexicans to ensure there are no transshipments of Chinese goods through Mexico into the United States.

Speaker 1 We're pressuring the Netherlands to make sure that they're not actually, you know, sort of selling software design or semiconductors into China.

Speaker 1 We're working on all of these countries to build alternate supply chains so that we don't rely on the Chinese. That's not de-risking.
That's decoupling. That's where the Americans are going long term.

Speaker 1 But there's a recognition that for the next one, two, three years, you can't actually get that done. You can't execute on that strategy near term.

Speaker 2 You mentioned Mexico. We can sort of connect the dot up to Canada.

Speaker 2 What is the Trump administration's bone to pick with Canada? What's the origin story here? Was it personality with Trudeau? I mean, was it just, again, back to impulse? Or is there

Speaker 2 a strategy? I mean, this issue of sovereignty, Denmark, we've written about. I mean, we were going away from down in Panama for a while.
We'll get to Venezuela perhaps in a moment with Maduro.

Speaker 2 But what is it? What is the bone to pick with Canada? Is there a strategy here? Is there a rationale?

Speaker 1 Well, given that the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement was, again, after the Abraham Accords, arguably the second biggest biggest win of the first Trump Australian

Speaker 1 agreement.

Speaker 1 And that's why I say the second Trump term is so different from the first.

Speaker 1 It's much more like I'm much more powerful and I am in a position where I can force you to accept asymmetric negotiations that benefit me to a greater degree.

Speaker 1 And, you know, yes, at the beginning, of course, it was Justin Trudeau and the fact that he really disliked him personally.

Speaker 1 And so when he came down to Mar-a-Lago and Trump had him surrounded that table and started talking as Governor Trudeau.

Speaker 1 And you'll remember that there were like, you know, hockey matches and the rest where they were booing the American national anthem.

Speaker 1 All of the countries, I mean, when I mentioned that the Americans are perceived as unreliable,

Speaker 1 but there are a whole bunch of countries that are still trying to find more effective ways of can't we just get along? Can't we not have a crisis?

Speaker 1 Canada, because they know the Americans so well, they are so angry. Yeah.
You look at how few Canadians are traveling to the U.S.

Speaker 2 We rely on 1.9 million a year just in the state of California.

Speaker 2 It's collapsed. Stunch.
Absolutely collapsed. The economic damage, the self-harm we've done is off the charts.
That's aside, but you're right. It's interesting.
For the Canadians, it's raw. It's raw.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I talked to hotel owners in Boston, New England, that kind of stuff. Also, Canadian tourism has just fallen off a fucking cliff.

Speaker 1 And so there's there's a huge amount of self-harm in a country that really integrates, trusts the Americans, right? I mean, they're very similar people.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 remember, Mark Carney won because of Trump.

Speaker 2 Period.

Speaker 1 I mean, he was not in there with the fighting chance otherwise.

Speaker 2 It was a good idea. And we'll get to Lulu and we'll get to all these others that are beneficiaries of Trump's policies.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Australia, same thing happened.

Speaker 2 It's interesting. That's a good point.

Speaker 1 A number of elections that Trump actually pushed in the other direction.

Speaker 2 What's it? Shenambon's, the president of Mexico has played it from her perspective, Canadian

Speaker 2 Mexican perspective, well. I would say so.
I think she's been wondering. Sometimes it's a little frustrating for other trading partners or relationships, i.e., California and others.

Speaker 2 But she's got a lot more to lose, no? Yes.

Speaker 2 She's figured out how to play Trump a little bit differently than a lot of leaders, no?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that what's interesting, you're talking about a PhD, woman,

Speaker 1 environmental scientist, Berkeley grad. I mean, you know,

Speaker 1 if she had been black and lesbian, I mean, like, you can't find me a demographic that's going to be more challenging for Trump to actually deal with, right?

Speaker 1 And yet, and yet she's been,

Speaker 1 she's talked with him frequently on the phone. She has engaged, she stands up.
for herself and her country on the issues that are utterly critical.

Speaker 1 Like, for example, you can't send the military indirectly. You can't can't send drones indirectly, we'll cooperate with you, but our sovereignty is utterly sacrosanct.

Speaker 1 But she's given on border security, which has made Trump look good. He's much more popular on that than he is on the economy right now.

Speaker 1 She has given on trying to get China out of their economy, which frankly, the Chinese investments in Mexico haven't been that popular. I mean, they're not manufacturing cars.
They're assembling.

Speaker 1 There aren't many good jobs around that.

Speaker 1 They're sending in a whole bunch of cheap textiles. A lot of Mexican small and medium producers are losing their jobs.
So, I mean, there's alignment on a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1 They had their absolutely biggest fentanyl bust in Mexico under Scheinbaum for Trump. They weren't doing that under Biden.
And by the way, I just heard from...

Speaker 1 her cabinet just last week that the um that the bust in nogales i guess it was with the united states actually grabbing all of these rifles, heavy rifles.

Speaker 2 Right, they were going south.

Speaker 1 They were going south, was the single biggest seizure that has happened from

Speaker 2 deserved a lot more attention.

Speaker 1 But in Mexico, it got a lot of attention. Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 So we've been working, our own state National Guard has been working.

Speaker 2 I've deployed them to the border on precisely those operations, working in partnership with the National Guard in Mexico, of which we have a formal relationship. So I applaud that effort.

Speaker 2 That was significant. And a good proof point of that relationship.
When we look more now.

Speaker 1 But of course, they are deeply worried about

Speaker 1 what happens with trade between the U.S. and Mexico.

Speaker 1 So at the end of the day, as much as she's trying to manage it and she's doing a good job, they are deeply uncomfortable with the Americans saying, hey, USMCA, don't care what that says.

Speaker 1 We're actually going to rip that off and we're going to hit you hard unless you improve trade terms with us.

Speaker 1 That worries them a lot because, I mean, they are, you know, a much smaller economy and they are overwhelmingly reliant on the U.S.

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Speaker 2 The issues of narco-trafficking, etc., it's obviously raised.

Speaker 2 Boy, when I was down at COP in Brazil, this was a question.

Speaker 2 I had a press conference with a few hundred reporters, and it was interesting how many questions I got on this topic, not on topic, meaning climate issues.

Speaker 1 They expect that the Americans are going to start bombing Venezuela any day.

Speaker 2 You got it. I mean, where do you? I mean, a lot of people are speculating.
It's a little bit of Wag the Dog.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of distrust about the administration, particularly time Epstein files and everything else going on, everything that arguably is going wrong. Trump's had a difficult few weeks,

Speaker 2 and I would argue a few months, but notably the last few weeks.

Speaker 2 What do you make of what's going on with these

Speaker 2 strikes on these boats? What do you make? Is this a strategy strategy to take out Maduro? Is it a strategy to create anxiety for

Speaker 2 their regime of sorts,

Speaker 2 for folks down in that region more broadly? Beyond that?

Speaker 1 I mean, it clearly isn't just a strategy to take out these boats because the expense and the amount of materiel that the Americans presently have arrayed off the coast is radically beyond what you would need for that, right?

Speaker 2 Let's put an aircraft carrier down there. That's right.
Yeah. Yeah.
Strike group. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No. So now, I think what's interesting, though, is that unlike a lot of the policies you and I have been talking about in the past moments,

Speaker 1 this is one that Trump has not personally been driving details on.

Speaker 2 This is Rubio?

Speaker 1 This is, it's Rubio, it's Ratcliffe and CIA, it's Stephen Miller, actually, as well.

Speaker 1 And they've really been pushing pretty hard to nothing is going to be worse than the Maduro regime right now. There are several reasons.

Speaker 1 It is cocaine export coming into the United States. It is oil going illegally to Cuba and then on to China.

Speaker 1 It is ideological that you've got Venezuela, you've got Nicaragua, you've got Cuba, these revolutionary leftist regimes where otherwise in the region, most of these countries are turning towards the United States and towards the right.

Speaker 1 And so there's a whole bunch of things happening at the same time. And it's also a little bit of, hey, we were successful with Iran.

Speaker 1 You know, all we need to do is a little flex. We don't need boots on the ground.
We can get rid of this guy. So I think that's what's driving them.

Speaker 1 But this is going to be a lot harder because, you know, you are at the end of the day talking about wanting Maduro out

Speaker 1 and what replaces him. and how that gets done and who's responsible for that.
I mean, chaos is a real option here.

Speaker 1 And chaos can easily be worse than the devil you know, as we've seen in Libya, as we've seen in Iraq. And I would hate to see that kind of quagmire

Speaker 1 on America's shoulders again, as much as I find Maduro utterly despicable and want to see this guy out of power.

Speaker 2 It's interesting. So,

Speaker 2 what's your over-under? I mean, just in terms of your assessment of risk in terms of them escalating. I mean, clearly, they've escalated significantly in the last week or so.

Speaker 2 But what do you anticipate in the next few months, weeks, months in terms of any additional activities?

Speaker 1 I would say close to 100%

Speaker 1 that there will be direct U.S. military strikes against targets in Venezuela.
Yes. Now, that is not necessarily regime change.
I would be stunned if they don't.

Speaker 2 Stunned.

Speaker 1 Everything is oriented, including just the cadence of meetings in the situation room on this, the amount of like, you know, intel and scenario planning.

Speaker 1 There's no way they're putting this much effort into it to just say, ah, it's going to climb down, don't really care. Unless Maduro were to be forced out absent that push.

Speaker 1 And I just think he has too much control for that to happen.

Speaker 2 Interesting. Let's talk about control things not happening.

Speaker 2 Clearly, the Trump administration overpromised significantly in terms of controlling the agenda for peace deal with Putin and Ukraine. What do you make?

Speaker 2 Did you, I imagine we all came in with some hope and expectation that we can turn the page, that maybe the power personality, the relationships between the two leaders that could pre-persuade. I mean,

Speaker 2 where do you think we are right now?

Speaker 2 Was the Bilat up in Alaska a complete abject failure? Yes.

Speaker 2 So where are we right now?

Speaker 1 I mean, Trump really did think that his relationship with Putin was going to make a difference. I think he came to that honestly.

Speaker 1 He saw that Biden did not treat Putin as an equal leader at all. Remember, the whole thing was autocrats and Democrats,

Speaker 1 and he wasn't going to pick up the phone to talk with Putin. He certainly wasn't going to invite him to a bilateral summit.
Trump was willing to do all of that.

Speaker 1 And in fact, that first phone call he had with Putin, it was a two-hour phone call. He didn't even coordinate with the Allies in advance.
So he gave Putin so much more respect.

Speaker 1 as an equivalent great power. The way when he met with Xi Jinping the last time around, when he spoke with him, that he said, this is a G2 meeting, right? I mean,

Speaker 1 he's seeding the field of we're the two great nations, right?

Speaker 1 No other American president would do that.

Speaker 1 And so between that and saying that he would end the sanctions and he would no longer freeze the assets and they could work together on arms control and up in the Arctic and critical mineral exploitation.

Speaker 1 There was a lot that was being offered. And Trump had already showed through the Ukrainians that he was willing to really pressure Ukraine

Speaker 1 to accept the ceasefire with no preconditions. Which, again, Biden didn't do.

Speaker 1 I mean, Biden, I'd be talking to Jake Sullivan, I'd be talking to like, you know, all of the people around Biden, and they'd be saying, well, we can't really get them to accept the terms for a ceasefire.

Speaker 1 The Europeans are having a hard time with it. It's hard to bring up.
Trump went directly to the source, got that done.

Speaker 1 But Putin was absolutely uninterested in moving an inch on a ceasefire. And kind of humiliated Trump, honestly.

Speaker 1 And I think that Trump has taken it personally. Even though he clearly doesn't want to escalate against Russia, he now has put himself in a position where he is escalating against Russia.

Speaker 1 He is directly permissioning

Speaker 1 missiles that the Americans have provided to Ukraine and allowing them to take it out of the box. In other words, going far deeper in in terms of their strikes with U.S.

Speaker 1 intelligence on targeting, taking out Russian energy capabilities. And that's why oil prices have been started to push up in the high 60s and might go to 70.
It wouldn't shock me in that environment.

Speaker 1 Trump also on Lukoil, on Rosnev, telling the Indians, I'm willing to give you a trade deal. But part of that is you stop buying that oil from Russia.
Biden was willing to allow them.

Speaker 1 to buy that oil from Russia. So, I mean, for all of the talk about how Trump has been some kind of a Russian asset, the reality is Trump wanted a good relationship with Putin.

Speaker 1 He doesn't care about the human rights abuses. He doesn't care about the fact he's dictated.
That could even be a feature, not a bug.

Speaker 1 But now that Trump has humiliated him, not given him what he wants, Trump's pretty angry. And Trump can also legitimately say, hey, the Europeans are doing most of the lifting now.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Which is what I wanted from day one. They're the ones spending most of the money.
We're not.

Speaker 1 And that. So.

Speaker 2 He would argue we're making money. money.
We're selling arms.

Speaker 1 He would argue that. Yeah.
He would argue that. So what we're literally making money off the war because we're selling arms.
He would say that, yeah.

Speaker 2 What, and so I mean,

Speaker 2 you, you see Putin five, ten, I mean, is this another Afghanistan from Putin's perspective? I mean, he's just going to wear everybody out. This is another two, three years, grind, grind, grind.

Speaker 2 I mean, inch by inch. I mean, at what point do you see Zelensky breaking, the EU saying, we've had enough? I mean, we, you know, we've got to move on.
How many more winters are people going to suffer?

Speaker 2 How many more tens of thousands of lives are going to be lost?

Speaker 1 So, Gavin, we've been coming up now on almost four years of war. And after the first few months,

Speaker 1 it's been, you know, it hasn't moved a hell of a lot. I feel like we've been lulled into a false sense of stability in this war.

Speaker 1 I don't think, if God forbid we have another two, three years of the war, which is wholly plausible, I don't think it's going to stay the same the way it has.

Speaker 2 Meaning it's going to significantly escalate.

Speaker 1 I fear that it's going to escalate for a few different reasons.

Speaker 1 First, because I think

Speaker 1 the AWOL numbers of Ukrainian soldiers in the last year, I'm hearing from the Ukrainians, are about 300,000. That's a lot greater than it was a year ago.

Speaker 1 However, a harder time getting the reservists to actually fight.

Speaker 1 The Ukrainians are stepping up their own indigenous military capabilities, these flamingo missiles with a 3,000-kilometer capability, and they're making 100 of them every month their drone capacity, which is massive,

Speaker 1 and a willingness to hit the Russians a lot harder because the Ukrainians see that they can't continue to fight the way they have.

Speaker 1 At the same time, you know, the Russians just in the last few days, we saw clearly ordered

Speaker 1 these

Speaker 1 agents to try to blow up. a Polish

Speaker 1 train that was providing aid to Ukraine. This is after sending drones 300 kilometers into Poland.
I talked to a lot of the frontline leaders, the Baltic states, the Nordics, the Poles.

Speaker 1 They're deeply concerned that this Russian asymmetrical warfare is

Speaker 1 already happening inside NATO.

Speaker 1 And NATO hasn't done very much in direct response to that. So if you're Putin, you think, okay, I can get away with that.
Can I get away with a little more? Can I do a little more?

Speaker 1 With the intention of dividing the Europeans, because you're hitting the frontline states, you're not hitting Spain, right? You're not hitting Italy.

Speaker 1 So you get those guys to say, hey, we don't want to be a part of this.

Speaker 1 So I think that for lots of reasons, both in terms of the direct Russia-Ukraine flight and also in terms of Russia and NATO, that the potential this gets significantly worse.

Speaker 1 And look, it's been horrific for the Ukrainian people, and it's been horrific for the Russians fighting. I mean, they've already had over a million casualties.

Speaker 1 So I'm not trying to diminish that at all. But for those of us sitting kibbitzing about this in the United states russia ukraine ukraine has seemed like seemed like a war vent

Speaker 1 way over there as the russians would say and and i i fear it's going to start becoming a little more real for us um

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Speaker 2 The NATO relationship with NATO seems NATO stepped. I mean, Trump tested the theory around the 2%.
I mean, obviously, he's got these guys. I mean, you mentioned Spain.
They may not be on board.

Speaker 2 They're not. But clearly, NATO is, their posture has been a little bit more assertive in terms of their own contributions.
And there's some curious ways they determine and calculate

Speaker 1 those numbers.

Speaker 2 So I think there's a little bit of press release and celebrate success on that. But what, I mean, do you think he's played NATO and very effective and strategically, Trump?

Speaker 2 I mean, despite how he's handled it, the outcome in terms of where he's positioned NATO, are we better off as the United States, I mean, in relationship to NATO, than we were prior to this new Trump?

Speaker 1 We're clearly better off because the Europeans are spending more. We're clearly better off because the Germans are now taking this seriously.

Speaker 1 We're a little worse off in the sense that the trust has been so eroded to get there. So, I mean, you know,

Speaker 1 you kind of want to be in the middle, right? You've had this policy of extremes where for a long time the Americans didn't really press the Europeans.

Speaker 1 So the Europeans were free-riding and they weren't developing their own military capabilities, and that made them a lot more vulnerable. And now they have to really get up to speed fast.

Speaker 1 But the damage that's being done to a lot of the relationships is real and is going to be persistent for a long, long time. It's going to be hard to build.
And

Speaker 1 I would be perfectly happy with the Trump approach of you guys have to spend spend or else we're out if it was not aligned with J.D.

Speaker 1 Vance and others saying you guys are the principal adversaries and you don't respect rule of law or free speech and we don't we don't want to be aligned with your governments.

Speaker 1 We want the AFD in Germany, which the German government sees as a neo-Nazi party, right? So I think that we've done a lot of own goals

Speaker 1 by having this, let's just flood the zone on every issue and fight against our allies on everything, as opposed to picking the few things that are really important for the strategic relationship.

Speaker 1 And that's where the fight is. And on everything else, keep it stable.
Don't make the news. Don't make the headline.
But that's not the way this administration works.

Speaker 2 And they don't really care about the long term.

Speaker 2 Right?

Speaker 1 That's the problem. So short term, this is going to look like a lot of wins because you can point to the Europeans and say, look at how much they're doing.
And look at at how much they're lifting.

Speaker 1 And, you know, they're really when Zelensky last came over to the White House, look at how the Europeans all came with them, and we're all sitting there, like, you know, sort of being lectured to by the American president.

Speaker 1 Doesn't that mean the Americans are showing leadership? And to a degree, the answer to that is yes.

Speaker 1 But you can't sit and think that these alliances can just take this idea that there's no friendship, no trust, no shared values, that the only thing that aligns them is, you you know, some common present-day interest from a deal that's been struck.

Speaker 1 That's not an alliance.

Speaker 2 You've talked a lot. I mean, this notion of short-termism with terms.

Speaker 1 That's why we needed you in Bella. That's why it was important for you to go.

Speaker 2 No, and I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 And I want to connect a few dots in terms of just my, it was interesting just having the opportunity to meet with leaders from around the globe, from Colombia to Chile, not just South America, Central America, and European, and to hear the feedback and to hear

Speaker 2 what you hear in private, what is

Speaker 2 obviously what Trump often does not hear or is not interested in even knowing about in terms of their perspective is important.

Speaker 2 But here, the perspective of short-termism, which you've written a lot about, you've talked about, you've studied, versus long-term interests.

Speaker 2 You know, you referenced AI.

Speaker 2 We talked about the bilat in APAC, which Trump did not participate in the APAC conference, but did the photo op and had the short inter

Speaker 2 exchange with President Xi.

Speaker 2 WHO talked about USA, AID, immigration policy, the attack on research and universities. I mean, the seeds of our own destruction in many respects, that's an overstatement, perhaps.
It is.

Speaker 2 But the significant damage that potentially we're doing to these conveyor belts for talent, to this formula, some would say, for success, that has defined the American dream, certainly defined California dream.

Speaker 2 Those seeds have been planted. I mean, mass immigration or deportation rather,

Speaker 2 issues around the universities, which we're feeling here in California disproportionately, $584 million of grants, research grants, NIH, NSF grants, a billion-dollar extortion fee that in fine that Trump wants from the UC system.

Speaker 2 You mentioned what China is doing as it relates to potentially getting the best and the brightest in first-round draft choices because we've seen a significant decline in international students.

Speaker 1 I think 17%

Speaker 2 so far, year over year.

Speaker 2 What do you make of all of that? And are we, again, am I overstating the impacts in the medium and long term in terms of the damage that will be done?

Speaker 2 These alliances, truth, trust, these relationships, easy to damage stuff, hard to build those things back.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 1 I think you can't look at the whole elephant,

Speaker 1 all of the damage that's being done to so much American trust and soft power and commitment that has been undone, unwound

Speaker 1 unnecessarily, and think that it's all just going to be fine because these countries have nowhere else to go. It is true that they have nowhere else good to go.

Speaker 1 There is no other market that you would bet on as much as you would bet on the United States at this point and in the near-term future. But they will all hedge.
They will all do less.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it's not death by a thousand cuts, but it's a lot of injury by a thousand cuts.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, you know, you're Gulliver and you take enough Lilliputians and eventually your limbs don't work quite as well, right? And they are.

Speaker 1 A lot of them are Lilliputians because, and I don't mean to disparage, but the fact is that the big change in the U.S. alliance system in the last 30 years has been American allies getting weaker.

Speaker 1 It's not been America getting weaker. The American allies have, they have not invested.
They are not growing. And you're talking about EU,

Speaker 1 EU, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea.

Speaker 2 All of them. From a GDP perspective, from an innovation, an entrepreneurial perspective.

Speaker 1 Yep, new technologies, defense,

Speaker 1 growth, productivity, even demographics in the case of most of them. Every single piece.
And so, you know.

Speaker 2 But the reason why

Speaker 2 we have outperformed, all of those reasons, those underlying reasons, back to that formula for success,

Speaker 2 those things are being vandalized. They're putting sand in the gears of all those things.
So, what I would want Trump to do,

Speaker 1 I would want Trump to say, look, we need our allies, but we need strong allies. So, the EU is not a threat to us.

Speaker 1 We don't want the EU to break apart where we have much stronger relations with individual European countries that we can drag into the dirt and force them to do what we want.

Speaker 1 No, we want the EU to be stronger because a stronger EU is more capable of being a useful ally with the United States and fighting against Russia, fighting against China, and maybe even forcing them over time to align more with our own interests.

Speaker 1 A strong Canada, a strong Japan, a strong South Korea. That's the message that you want, that the Americans need friends, but they need capable friends.

Speaker 1 That's a message that allows, and yeah, there's going to be some tough love, that if you don't do these things, that we're not going to give you what we did before.

Speaker 1 But it's not we want to destroy the EU.

Speaker 1 It's not that we want the anti-establishment populace who don't care about your strength to win in these individual countries just because those people happen to like me and we're somebodyko on the global stage.

Speaker 1 But that's a long-term perspective. Where short-term, Trump is like, of course I want, you know, sort of the AFD.
Of course I want, you know, sort of reform in the UK.

Speaker 1 And these guys would completely undermine the productivity of their own countries. So that's where I think there's real misalignment.

Speaker 1 It's not that the Americans don't understand the symptoms of what's ailing everyone geopolitically, but

Speaker 1 the cure that they're offering is going to make the patient worse.

Speaker 2 You wrote a book, Us Versus Them, talked about this notion of, you know, well,

Speaker 2 you frame globalization in,

Speaker 2 and I think a very honest and reflective way, winners and losers, et cetera. We experience, this is a period of de-globalization.
How would you describe this moment?

Speaker 1 I would say this is a period where the United States is no longer driving globalization. There are still processes of globalization that are occurring.

Speaker 1 I mean, when I think about globalization, I think about people and goods and services and capital ideas moving across borders faster and faster all over the world.

Speaker 1 There are certainly lots of that that is happening more and more. Technology facilitates it.

Speaker 1 But the United States is no longer driving it. In many ways, the U.S.
is assertively moving away from it.

Speaker 1 And there is a level of decoupling happening directly between the United States and China and forcing other countries to make uncomfortable decisions.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, I don't think we're in an environment where globalization is sort of being driven by the economists and the political scientists who don't have anything to say about it.

Speaker 1 The politics are throwing sand in the gears, and it acts as a tax on the productivity. But we can't can't just think of this in terms of the economic shift.

Speaker 1 We also have to recognize that so much of this is that the U.S. political system, while the U.S.
economy has been doing so well, and the U.S. dollar has been doing so well, the U.S.

Speaker 1 political system is not.

Speaker 1 And I think this is the fundamental issue, that when I started my work on my PhD back in 1989, the wall came down.

Speaker 1 And I think part of the reason I wanted to do what I do is because this was a time of great pride to be an American.

Speaker 1 Because the wall coming down, I mean, you had all these captive nations, East Bloc, Soviet Union, were looking at our system and saying, damn, I wish my country worked like that.

Speaker 1 I wish I had some of that liberty, some of that rule of law. And in 35 years,

Speaker 1 people still want access to the U.S. market and our technologies and our companies, best in the world.

Speaker 1 But nobody around the world looks at the U.S. political system and says, I wish my political system ran like that.

Speaker 1 In 35 years. And I think that it is very hard to overestimate the impact of that damage on relations around the world long term.
Because you're no longer driving what people want to be.

Speaker 2 You're no longer acting. And that's this fundamental notion.
I mean,

Speaker 2 the historic project of our founding fathers are referencing, this notion of popular sovereignty broadly.

Speaker 2 And we'll maybe reserve that popular sovereignty aside, but this notion of the rule of law, I'll get to the rule of Don, which you coined, which I'm cripped, this notion of co-equal branches of government.

Speaker 2 What aspects of our political system do you fear are most being

Speaker 2 looked at negatively now in that respect?

Speaker 1 They're fundamental. On the global stage,

Speaker 1 you talk about a commitment to being the architect of global free trade, which the United States is no longer willing to do.

Speaker 1 And not only that, but the idea of a well-regulated free market, increasingly people looking at the U.S. and saying this is a country that supports kleptocracy.

Speaker 1 This is a country that supports state corruption. And that the best way to cut a deal is to make sure that you're paying off the right people that are close to the administration.

Speaker 2 So you're talking, I mean, now you're getting into, I mean, just looking at the self-dealing, looking at...

Speaker 1 That's part of it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And that's one thing.
Sort of what someone would call the crony capitalism. Yeah.
They sort of almost pay to play.

Speaker 1 I hear this from so many leaders.

Speaker 1 And I hear so many CEOs inside the United States who are global CEOs.

Speaker 2 No, and I mean, I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, I did a Patriot site where I literally am selling knee pads, Trump signature series knee pads.

Speaker 1 You said they sold. I think you said they sold out.

Speaker 2 They sold out. Yeah.
No, and yeah,

Speaker 2 well, there are plenty of reasons why they've sold out because there's so many examples of law firms and universities and media companies,

Speaker 2 not least of which some of my friends and CEOs that have sold out in that spirit. But they're selling out what makes this, to your point, a reputation of this country.

Speaker 2 They're selling out what makes the United States so central and so important. And

Speaker 2 so I couldn't agree with you more. But it's interesting

Speaker 2 from your perspective, though, you started with free trade.

Speaker 2 You talked about sort of just the global leadership that this country has advanced in terms of building alliances and building that free trade.

Speaker 1 Yeah, collective security. And NATO is still there.
And arguably, NATO is stronger than it was before because it's expanded a couple of Nordic countries and the countries are spending more.

Speaker 1 But the belief that the United States would actually stand for collective security if a country was invaded, that's deteriorated significantly.

Speaker 1 And that belief in American reliability is core to collective security. So you undermine that foreign aid.

Speaker 1 The United States has historically provided more foreign aid than any other country in the world.

Speaker 1 Still providing a lot of support to Israel and to Egypt, but around the world, they're shutting it down. And the United Nations was created by the United States.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Right here in San Francisco.

Speaker 1 Right here in San Francisco, and the UN Charter reflected American values. And it's something I'm really proud of.

Speaker 1 And I think part of the reason that we don't support the UN right now is because we look at what the UN stands for and we feel a little shame that

Speaker 1 it's not what America stands for anymore today.

Speaker 1 And we don't like that.

Speaker 1 We don't like something that we created making us look, you know,

Speaker 1 reflective on ourselves. But I think all of these things, from the perspective of other countries around the world, that really do need rule of law, they really do need collective security.

Speaker 1 They do need U.S.-led multilateral trade because otherwise they don't have the ability

Speaker 1 to operate in a global system that is a law of the jungle. They just don't.
They don't have the ability to operate and succeed under rule of dawn.

Speaker 2 They need rule of law.

Speaker 1 And I think that's a serious problem.

Speaker 2 Well, you talk about apex predators, sort of this notion of this sort of T-Rex presidency,

Speaker 2 where the guy either devours you or he mates with you, one or the other. You have that option.

Speaker 2 It's very visual. It is visual, forgive me.
But I mean, this notion of the rule of the jungle and the rule of dawn. And

Speaker 2 I've used your phrase, and I hope it is dawning on people

Speaker 2 how real and serious that is. And it's exampled here in California.
We're on the receiving end of so much of this disproportionately.

Speaker 2 But increasingly, I hope people are growing more and more conscious of this.

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Speaker 2 But I want to just close on mindful of time on two things that we haven't brought up. This issue of AI seems also that we're seeding global leadership on AI and AI standards.

Speaker 2 California has led this country in terms of at least addressing frontier model regulation.

Speaker 2 There's some legislation in New York right now that potentially can mirror aspects of what we have done here in our state.

Speaker 2 We take the issue very seriously as the birthplace and obviously the center of the universe in terms of AI. But you mentioned China

Speaker 2 in relationship to AI. What does AI mean from your perspective when we look at geopolitically and risks, rewards, opportunities, challenges in the next two, three years?

Speaker 2 Super intelligence, national security, truth, trust.

Speaker 1 What do you make of AI? I'm not worried particularly about... superintelligence.

Speaker 1 I think that I'm much more worried about what human beings that control and program the algorithms are doing with them if they are bad actors, if they're indifferent, if they're just focused on short-term fiduciary responsibility as opposed to well-being long-term, and if they're not really capitalists.

Speaker 1 Because really capitalists care about not just profits, but also losses. They're capitalists also when they experience losses.

Speaker 1 And yet a lot of the people that are driving AI do not account for the losses in society, do not account for the losses in the economy that come from damages, from product damages that come from rolling these things out.

Speaker 1 So I think we need more capitalism among the AI folks in that regard.

Speaker 2 That's interesting.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 I am an enormous enthusiast about this technology.

Speaker 1 I mean, you're just down there in Brazil, and you saw Bill Gates saying he's focused less on climate change because, not because he doesn't care, not because he doesn't believe the science, he certainly does, but because he thinks that what happens in AI is going to be more impactful in the near term to determine all these things.

Speaker 1 I buy that. You do, by that.
I do.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I think that

Speaker 1 we can exceed sustainable development goals that we've been failing to meet in terms of poverty, in terms of availability of food and water, in terms of shelter, in terms of efficiency of transfer of resources.

Speaker 1 So much of the world is so wealthy and yet we waste so much that's so inefficient. AI can fix that, but we need to make sure that everyone has access to it.

Speaker 1 It needs to be invested in and not just be a tool that's available for a tiny percentage of really rich people and everybody else loses their job or everybody else doesn't have access to it.

Speaker 1 And that requires governance. That requires not just companies to be in charge of the regulations, because companies ultimately aren't accountable citizens.

Speaker 1 It means that the states, the cities, the countries, and even in some cases the world needs to take some responsibility.

Speaker 1 And Americans, you know, Chinese are really enthusiastic about what AI is going to do. Americans are scared.

Speaker 1 And the reason they're scared is because the U.S.,

Speaker 1 they don't believe in their leaders to take care of them.

Speaker 1 Americans should be the ones the most excited about the technology, right?

Speaker 2 I mean, this is a frontier economy, right?

Speaker 1 We started so much of bringing new technology

Speaker 1 and making this country incredible on the back of that and then exporting it all over the world. And now we have the most transformative technology that humankind has ever come close to creating.

Speaker 1 And you're telling me that Americans are scared of it? That is a governance issue.

Speaker 2 It's interesting.

Speaker 2 Unpacking that,

Speaker 2 at the core, this notion of truth and trust, governance,

Speaker 2 that's compelling.

Speaker 2 What is less compelling to me, but seems more compelling than any other issue in America today, is an issue you just did a video on, and that is this damn Epstein thing.

Speaker 1 What is it's amazing that this is the same thing.

Speaker 2 It has just completely captured everyone's attention.

Speaker 2 You presented your point of view and you wrote about and did a video saying, you know,

Speaker 2 Trump has literally, he could not have scripted a more ineffective response. And he, I mean, in every way, just flubbing all, I mean,

Speaker 2 what does the Epstein files represent to you? What does it mean? I'm just curious. I mean,

Speaker 2 what is it? What is our fascination? Why is this? I mean, besides just the atrocities that occurred and the victims,

Speaker 2 beyond that, and God bless on that, what is it about the Epstein files that has captured so much imagination and attention?

Speaker 1 I mean, we talked about kleptocracy. We talked about the capturing of the American political system by people of power.
We talk about rule of law and the two-tier system of justice.

Speaker 1 I think that what Epstein represents to Americans are

Speaker 1 these assholes can get away with anything. Well said.
You know, my mother used to read The Enquirer every weekend. She didn't have a high school education and she wasn't, you know,

Speaker 1 she wasn't on top of all the global issues, but she knew in her heart that

Speaker 1 these people with a lot of money and a lot of power in the United States weren't going to take care of her and her kids. Didn't trust them.

Speaker 1 And, you know, this is before algorithms. This is before the blogosphere.
This is before cable news.

Speaker 1 But nonetheless, you know, and I think that what we see today with the Epstein files, after decades of Americans, wealthy Americans, just not taking enough care of their fellow citizens, the wealthiest people in the world right now, Americans, how much do they actually care?

Speaker 1 Do they feel responsibility and accountability for...

Speaker 1 their fellow citizens. Never mind the rest of the people on the planet, which I would kind of like if they'd pay attention to that too, but just their fellow citizens.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, Bill Gates is revered around the world for a lot of what he has done. Elon, not so much.

Speaker 2 Bezos?

Speaker 1 Not so much. And I think that

Speaker 1 that's a failure of the American political system, and we see it playing out. in the Epstein files right now.

Speaker 1 And yeah, there's, of course, there's also algorithmically people focusing on one side or the other and Trump has flipped so much on this.

Speaker 1 But people understand that the core, something is rotten, right,

Speaker 1 at the core of this venture. And it's part of the reason why

Speaker 1 people think that no matter who they vote for, they can't fix this, they can't resolve this. And, you know, I think it's not going away.

Speaker 2 I can't close on that. So I want to ask you,

Speaker 2 give me why we should be optimistic in the next five to 10 years. What gives you optimism? I mean, you mentioned AI should give us more optimism than pessimism.

Speaker 2 But what does, what aspects of some of these global trend lines that we opened up with give you more confidence and distill you with a bigger sense of well-being than perhaps most of us are aware or should

Speaker 2 of?

Speaker 2 Look, young people are more global.

Speaker 1 They're online a lot, yeah.

Speaker 1 But they're also skeptical of what they're being fed in a healthy way.

Speaker 1 And their friends, when I was growing up, my friends were playing stickball in the backyard. They all grew up within three blocks.
There were some Irish, some Puerto Ricans, some Italians.

Speaker 1 There weren't nothing else. Kids today are playing Fortnite on Twitch with kids from South Korea and they're watching K-pop and everything else.

Speaker 2 We're with politicians on Fortnite Friday. Oh, were you? Yeah, yeah.
But at TwitchCon as well, but keep going. So

Speaker 1 these kids, they're global. And you've done podcasts with some of them.
Right?

Speaker 2 So important.

Speaker 1 They have far more opportunities to connect with their fellow human beings. Why do they care more about climate than the 40, 50, 60, 70-year-olds?

Speaker 1 Because they're the ones that are actually inheriting that world.

Speaker 1 Why are they more skeptical of the U.S. political system? Because they see that the 70 and 80-year-olds that are running the Republican Democratic Party won't let go.

Speaker 1 won't let go after well beyond they should. And this is a huge Trump problem.
This was a huge Biden problem.

Speaker 1 I mean, come on, people.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I think the young people, okay, maybe they don't all believe that the way they're going to fix this is by voting,

Speaker 1 but they're going to do something. You know, they're not just going to sit, and demographically, they're going to be in charge.
And I hope they're going to be successful.

Speaker 2 Ian Brenner, thank you for being on our podcast. I appreciate it.
Great to be with you. Thank you.

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