Hello listeners.

Welcome back to another episode of Geopolitical Cousins.

Marco and I are back at it.

The first hour is a continuation of our last episode.

We complete our geopolitical power draft from our last episode and then argue

about whether we needed to make some changes based on how the selections fell.

Uh, Marco and I get into a heated debate about Canada and

where it belongs on the list.

Uh, from there we turn to the world and talk about some things that are going on.

Uh, we talk about the big beautiful budget Bill, what that means.

Some interesting disagreement between me and Marco on that.

Um, I basically try to get myself canceled by wading into issues related

to Israel Palestine antisemitism.

And then we close with some thoughts about South Africa.

Um, which is in the news for all sorts of strange reasons.

So hope you enjoy the episode.

Uh, we've appreciated your feedback so much.

You can keep writing to me at jacob@jacobshapiro.com with more feedback.

I forward it all to Marco and I promise here.

Um, in the next week or two, we will get a podcast specific email so that you can

make sure you send things to both of us.

Uh, really shouldn't take that long, but it's been a crazy, crazy couple of weeks.

So, um, we're so grateful to have you all along for the ride.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you for leaving a rating.

Thank you for leaving a comment and especially thank you for sharing

with anybody you think would be interested in this podcast.

Uh, we'll see you at,

take us away, Marco.

Okay, Jacob, uh, great to, um, be recording another podcast with you.

We left off with, uh, the top 20 I. Basically geopolitical draft.

For those of you who didn't, uh, listen to our last episode, I

would expect, uh, I would suggest, expect, I would suggest not.

Well,

I, I expect, I expect, what are you doing here if you

didn't listen to our previous two hour long geopolitical mock draft?

Come on guys.

I mean, yes.

Uh, this is gonna be very weird because, uh, we're gonna, we stopped

basically with the 16th draft pick.

So what, what Jacob and I did, just a little recount.

Um, we picked basically countries in terms of geopolitical standing

and the current draft board.

I had the first pick.

I picked the United States of America.

Jacob had the second pick.

He picked China.

I then decided to cheat and just take all of Western Europe as my third pick.

But really, really the way I did it is, I call it the EMU five.

So the five largest economies in the European Marre Union, which is Germany,

France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands.

I just took them all.

Uh, with the expectation that over the next 30 years, which is really our time

horizon for this, you know, 10 to 30 years, uh, they would integrate further.

Jacob then went, uh, with Turkey on, uh, with the fourth pick, which

was, I guess the first surprise.

I countered with another pretty, you know, pretty sort of down the middle

pick of India with fifth Jacob.

I think you surprised again, sixth Russia.

That's what I do.

That's what you do.

Yeah.

You're looking for the, for the projects.

Um, and Russia will be like a reclamation project.

It's like a 43-year-old basketball player that's like played in Euro

league and you're gonna bring them back into, uh, into, uh, the NBA.

I then, uh, went through my first, uh, surprise picked South Korea, uh, which

of course, uh, flies in the face of everything we know about demographics.

I then proceeded to, uh, shit on demographics as a tool of analysis,

which I'm sure irked a lot of people.

I. Jacob then went, uh, with a really nice solid, you know, eight Brazil.

Uh, I countered with my insane pick of Canada, which clearly is a home bias.

I literally have a British Columbia poster right there.

It was a, a little, uh, interesting, uh, deviation from Marco's

nihilist Dlo indifference by being a Canadian nationalist.

He does have a heart, ladies and gentlemen.

How about that?

He does, yeah, it's, it's coated with maple syrup, uh,

which would be very bad for my help.

Then you pick Iran, which I love, and so jealous of that pick as number

10, because this is a future draft.

It's just such a smart way to go, like, you know, 90 million

young people educated, uh, great geography, great resources.

Why expect it to be a prior state forever.

Marco then kind of did the same thing, but with, uh, Argentina, um, Jacob.

Then a surprise pick went with a city state Singapore, although I think, uh,

solid one, I ConEd with Saudi Arabia.

Then slipping all the way to 14 is, you know, Japan and then Icon with Ukraine.

Uh, and now we are at 16 pick.

And it's your turn, Jacob?

It is my pick.

Um, all right, so we're gonna pick up where we left off and then maybe do

some, some analysis of, of things, right?

Is that, is that the plan?

Yeah.

Yes.

Like in analyzing the draft and what what it tells us.

Yeah.

I just, I'm, I'm, I already have some of the, criticism is the wrong word.

We got some really nice constructive feedback from people.

And I just wanna remind people that my definition of power

was, was deceptively simple.

It was, can this country make other countries do what it wants them to do?

So, like, for instance, Mexico has a lot of different like components

to it that might make, you wanna put it in a geopolitical mock drop.

But when I sit down and think about, well, can Mexico make anyone

do what Mexico wants them to do?

Eh, like, that's pretty tough 'cause they're so dependent on the United States.

Um, so I, I think actually, um, I, I struggled with this

'cause we're in that sort of.

Weird nebulous space of what happens next.

Uh, but I'm, and I, I think this could be a bust.

This is a high, high risk, high volatility pick.

I think I'm gonna take South Africa off the board here too, and I know we'll

get to South Africa a little bit later.

I like their geography.

I like their resources.

I like their potential.

I like them as a potential regional leader in Sub-Saharan Africa.

And there's really not an African country on our list quite yet.

And this is where population growth is gonna be happening.

I think the new scramble, like geopolitical scramble

will happen in Africa.

And if there is going to be a regional leader who's going to like, you know,

uh, take advantage of that, it's probably going to be south, uh, South Africa.

Now, the problem is there probably won't be a regional leader and probably

foreign powers will just use Africa like a check checkerboard and South

Africa's internal socioeconomic cohesion.

I don't know.

It might take more than 30 years, if ever, for that to immers into a, a true nation.

But I'll, I'll take the potential and I'll take the risk and I'll

take them off the board here at 16.

Alright, that's cool.

Um, so one of the things that I incorporated into my analysis,

I like your definition.

Obviously that's a classical international relations definition.

It's a really good one.

I, I think you did something more though, Jacob, your Iran pick was

good because it's not about what Iran can do today to compel behavior.

It's about what Iran is going to do over the next, let's say 10 to 30 years.

So I think that you did more than just say, you know what I can do today.

And, and I think that that was a really good analysis.

I use the quantitative index that I've created before at BCA research.

It's called the BCA Geopolitical Power Index.

And then I deviated away from it.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, so on this index us is number one, China's two, India is three,

number four is Germany, number six is France, and then Italy is number nine.

Spain is 13, Netherlands is 17.

So as you can see, I, I actually stuck to that.

So US is first.

Um.

Picked, EMU, third punished India a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

I picked it fifth, uh, but just a little bit.

Uh, I just have some questions there about India.

Uh, I then ignored, uh, a couple of countries.

I mean, you picked Russia, which is fifth on our, uh, on this index.

Um, Japan is eight.

It's slipped to 14.

I did pick South Korea seventh, and by the way, it's number 10 on

the BC geopolitical power index.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, not that much of a crazy pick.

You picked Brazil eighth.

It's actually 11th on the index.

Canada is 12th on the index.

So I actually did not pick Canada that far up.

Um, and then we got some, um, criticism, you know, and one of them was Mexico.

We also got criticism for Indonesia.

And I do think that we are missing a South Asian, a southeast Asian power.

Now you picked Singapore.

Um, I'm, I'm actually going to pick Indonesia here.

And, um, I struggle 'cause I have two other countries that I kind of want.

But I do think that that criticism from outside was good.

I have written a lot on Indonesia for work, uh, for my clients.

I do like it.

I do think it's a very interesting, uh, country And using your own definition.

Jacob, what's interesting is they've already compelled behavior from

other states, including from China.

Indonesia famously slapped tariffs on export of raw nickel.

China could have retaliated and said, listen, we need this for our batteries.

Um, so no, we're gonna slap tariffs on you.

But instead what China did is it moved $20 billion worth of CapEx to

Indonesia to build them a processing.

Nickel processing industry from scratch.

So Indonesia's now, uh, one of the world leaders in processing nickel,

and, uh, from what I understand, they're gonna slap tariffs on that too

and compel China to move their battery production facilities to Indonesia.

So it's a country that even China can't ignore and can't really punish.

So I'm picking Indonesia number 17.

I'm jealous.

They, I was between South Africa and Indonesia, so I think we're, we're on

the same, we're on the same page here.

I was hoping to sneak one by you and come back to Indonesia on the other side.

Um, I know I just said that proviso about Mexico not being able to force other

people to do things, but with a future focus, I'll take Mexico here at 18.

Um, and that's really based on the notion that yes, today Mexico is.

Uh, the 52nd state, if Canada's got the 51st state sort of locked down, but 30

years from now, if you've got US China decoupling and a big trade war and the

United States is that much more dependent on Mexico demographics favorable.

Um, I'll take it.

I, I'm worried about the cartels.

I'm worried about the future of Mexican democracy.

Like there's lots of sort of landmines there.

And I'm also just worried about Mexico's overall state of dependence on the

United States, but may maybe 30 years they'll have leverage over number one

and that should at least like, get them some consideration in the top 20.

Alright, well this is my last pick.

That, that's, that's a great pick.

This is my last one and it's a tough one.

Um, because there is a country that is ranked seventh on my

quantitative number measure and we, none, none of us picked it.

Um, do you know which country this is, Jacob?

No, I mean, hold on.

Lemme try to guess for a second.

So guys, you ask, it's not, it's not a European country.

Well, I mean it is.

Yes it is.

Go ahead.

I, I'm not sure what is it?

It's the United Kingdom.

Oh, duh.

Yeah.

Um, it's, it's tough.

You know, this is about the future and I do think that the

UK is in an inexorable decline.

But couple of things about the uk, um, I gave South Korea a very high score.

Here it's seventh because of its soft power.

I mean, if I'm gonna be consistent, I mean, the United

Kingdom has massive soft power.

Always has, uh, United Kingdom has reinvented itself in the past.

Famously, in the 1970s, the United Kingdom was begging the EU to let it in

the EEC as it was called at the time.

And famously, Europeans had to wait for Charlotte to gold to die to let the UK in.

But the UK was on its knees begging, and then it just, you

know, after basically a post.

World Wari, two decades of absolute shocking moles.

It reinvented itself and launched a pretty difficult conflict with Argentina,

which for the United Kingdom in 1980s, in 1982 was, was a difficult one to do.

I mean, it was very far the Fal ones.

Mm-hmm.

So, I, I mean, it's a nuclear power.

It's a leader in many technologies and I think the fact that it slipped to 19

is, is kind of, uh, you know, shocking.

But it's also, I think, uh, maybe we're a little bit of prisoners in the current

moment when it's gotten a lot of flack for Brexit and for being largely irrelevant.

Yeah.

That, that may be our first, I, we need to go back and, and

uh, and analyze some of these.

That might be a mistake.

I'm not sure that the UK should be that, that that should be that far down.

Although it's, it's tough.

'cause when you think 30 years out, um, you know, it wasn't a couple years

ago we were talking about is the UK even gonna be the UK in 10 years?

Is Northern Ireland gonna join Ireland?

Is Scotland gonna break off and join the eu?

Like, are we getting the return of 17th century British politics and not even

being able to dominate the island, let alone like project power in other places.

But they also have nuclear weapons.

Like you said.

They also, I mean the pound sterling is not what at once was, but it's

still like, has a bigger role.

Yeah.

The world.

A lot of different other current, like, you know, it's, the UK is relevant and

as long as the UK is not gonna fall apart at the seams, like it will probably.

Continue to be relevant and I honestly think I've revised some of my pessimism

on the UK in the last six months.

I've been very bearish, the UK really since Brexit, and it's only in the last

six months with the Trump administration pushing so hard against Europe that

I've sort of changed my tune a little bit because it looks like the UK

now can maybe, it can be this middle ground between Europe and the United

States, or maybe the UK is gonna be an integral part of whatever European.

Confederation emergence, whether that's officially on the inside or some

kind of nascent satellite agreement.

Um, and then that takes away some of the risks of, you know, Scotland

trying to break off or, you know, Northern Ireland, Ireland, well, if

you're all in some kind of EU cohesive entity anyway, does it really matter?

Like it, it's taken some things off the board, so we probably need to,

to go back and, and think about that.

Um, for the last pick, I, I'm really, I, I feel like we're not, uh, I

don't wanna insult these countries.

We're not, uh, skimming the bottom of the basement, but I mean, there's a

couple different directions we could go.

We still have some nuclear powers on the table, like Pakistan, hundreds of

millions of people, nuclear weapons.

Uh, we've got Israel on the table, which today, if it was just a geopolitical

power ranking of today, on my definition, would have to be much higher.

I'm extremely pessimistic about Israel's medium term future, and I

know we're gonna get into that a little bit later, but they do have nukes and

they more than anyone have been active in shaping the region around them.

So it's probably not good to discount them.

Um, and also sitting there staring at me.

Uh, you know, far away from lots of different problems.

Like, okay, they're not gonna project power anywhere besides the South Pacific,

but the South Pacific isn't nothing.

Um, and maybe there's some important things there, and maybe that will

become more important over time.

So I, I think, I think gun to my head, I'm, I'm gonna take Australia

for the last lot, but I don't feel overly, um, I, I feel like we're

really the, the, the bottom of the barrel here in terms of the index.

We're thinking about, oh, like, you know, regional power that can project

power in this very small region, um, and has a lot of different, um, weaknesses.

Like Australia's biggest defense partnership, the United States biggest

economic relationship with China probably can't defend its own sea lanes.

Completely dependent on trade issues of climate change, blah, blah, blah.

But I'll, I'll take Australia 20 to round us up.

I'm glad you did that.

Um, I mean, uh, I do think if Canada's gonna be nine, I don't think

Australia should be that far down.

Uh, so that's, I think fair.

Um, they are also quite, uh, actually elevated in the

quantitative index as well.

They come in at, let me just see where Australia is.

20th.

They're actually 20th on the geopolitical index that I created.

And just as a reminder, the geopolitical index actually has six factors in it.

Um, it looks at demographics in terms of the pop population, aged 15 to 64.

It has, um, military expenditure imports and arms exports, um,

GDP, primary energy consumption.

So, um, it's, uh, it's a little bit more modified.

So population is actually, uh, looking at dependency ratios,

uh, not just young people.

That's what it focuses on.

Uh, economic relevance.

Um, it's, it looks at basically, um, um, imports.

So the greater, the greater the import share, uh, the

greater the bargaining power.

So to your point, ability to compel behavior by being a consumer market that

obviously benefits the US massively.

Then arms exports.

We don't look at it from a perspective of who has a large

army, because that's irrelevant.

It's more, uh, high tech.

Also, one of the, uh, indicators is r and d spending, uh, which mm-hmm definitely is

the reason that Israel is one spot higher than Australia on my quantitative measure.

So it's 19th.

Um, so just, uh, uh, to your point, I do think that keeping

Israel off is a mistake.

Um, having Argentina as high as it is, I think that's probably the one.

So I, I guess we should just go into analysis.

I mean, what I would say from this Israel not being on the top 20, I

think is a mistake, but it's also a call on the future, which I agree

with you on other countries that we didn't, uh, put here that are on

the quantitative, uh, index Poland.

Um, although mm-hmm I just basically assume that Ukraine will.

Effectively, um, you know, actually overtake Poland on the index.

Ukraine, by the way, is 23rd on my index of quantitative measures.

23rd.

23rd.

So not much lower than Poland.

And I do think that it's gonna benefit massively from both

influx of capital and technology.

Um,

well, and you could be right in the end, maybe

we get the resuscitation of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth,

which Ukraine was a major part of.

So technically like that's one big thing.

Exactly.

Um, the other countries, I mean, we, we nailed it.

So the ranking on, on the quantitative, uh, mix of indicators.

US first China, second, India, Germany, Russia, France, uk,

seventh obviously slipped.

Uh, Japan, eighth slipped a little bit, but not that much.

Italy, ninth South Korea, 10th, Brazil, 11th, Canada, 12th,

Spain 13th, Indonesia 14th.

So we put him in the top 20, Mexico's 15th on the syndicators.

Saudi Arabia is 16th.

I took Saudi Arabia 13th, so not crazy.

Netherlands is 17th.

Poland is, 18th is missing.

Israel's missing 19th.

Australia.

20th.

Iran is 21st.

So Pakistan is 22nd.

Ukraine is 23rd.

Belgium 24th.

Thailand, 25th.

I do feel like Thailand or Malaysia probably could have

made our list of top 20.

I guess You chose Israel with Singapore?

I chose with Indonesia.

What do you think?

Are we making a mistake?

I don't think we're making a mistake because Indonesia is the one

that has the, I know we talked earlier about, uh, demographics not being.

Sort of an arbiter of, of, um, of future performance.

But Indonesia's demographics are so good compared to a Thailand, which is an

aging population compared to Malaysia, which is an aging population and also is

extremely overexposed to globalization.

I mean, their dependence on globalized supply chains, uh, is massive.

When you look at trade as a percentage of, of GDP, um, that's not true for Indonesia.

Indonesia is still very early on.

They have been, they, you go back and read World Bank reports

or IMF reports from the 2010s.

Indonesia is the redheaded stepchild because they're resisting

the neoliberal world order.

They're doing all these things.

The World Bank and IMF can't possibly entertain a sound policy.

Like I'm sure the economist was writing articles at the time, lambasting them, uh,

but they were preparing for this world.

Like this is the world that now you look at Indonesia and they're like,

ah, they were sort of forward thinking.

So when you put together all those things, I think Indonesia

is the big in terms of population.

In terms of like, size of economy and resources is the big play.

And Singapore is, uh, in some ways is an interesting one on the list because

it's about, can a very, very small city state exert power in a meaningful way?

And I think Singapore can use AI and automation and relations with China

and financial capital and all these other different things, a stride,

the right of Malacca to have this kind of power over what is gonna be

a completely contested trade zones.

But, you know, if, if Singapore gets into a shooting war with Thailand,

uh, you know, I mean that's not gonna happen, but like, it's gonna be really

hard for Singapore to defend itself.

So it's a much different sort of indicator of power, I think.

Um, okay, so that's fair.

Singapore was 26th, by the way, on the list.

So even though it's a small country, uh, and gets penalized, uh, in many

ways for demographics, my quantitative indicator actually gave them a lot of.

I think props Switzerland is 27th, by the way.

Um, and I agree with that.

I think it's actually got some really compelling and

interesting things about it.

Um, um, I think if it had retained its neutrality, probably would've

been more interesting to me.

Um, the fact that it has been eroding it, I do think has been a mistake.

Could have maybe ended up on our top 20, had it kind of had, uh, something

unique on the foreign policy front.

Bangladesh is 28th, the country that I really wanted to put on the top

20, but it's really difficult to do.

So, uh, I'm just a huge suite of file.

So, um, Sweden actually comes in the 29th.

One of the most interesting emails we got was from a Swede who said,

you should consider some kind of Nordic union that Denmark, Norway, Sweden,

maybe Finland will combine together to be their own sort of mini confederation.

And that, that block would be, um, extremely powerful.

I agree with that.

Yeah.

Let's, let's, let's have a, a group of honorable.

Mentions here.

Uh, I think that Nordic Union, let's put that led by Sweden.

Uh, interesting.

I mean, I take, I did take EMU five.

I did not include, uh, anybody from sort of the Scandinavia slash Nordic world.

I think Israel is definitely an honorable mentioned, uh, I think Poland as well.

Um, Thailand, Malaysia, we didn't really have much of, I mean, I think

both countries have a prospect.

Malaysia's very interesting, particularly if semiconductor, um,

knowhow starts migrating from Taiwan and China to a neutral country.

I think Malaysia.

Should make our honorable mentions.

Um, lemme see, Philippines is at 30 on my quantitative index.

Egypt is 31.

Um, nah, nah, you know.

Yeah.

There's no way.

No way.

No way.

Like for, for some honorable mentions, like I think

you have to think really outside of the box to, to start adding more.

Like if like we have Brazil and Argentina here, could it be like Mercosur emerges

as some kind of EU light of South America?

Like that could sort of change the rankings and I could see that

happening over the next 30 years.

Really off the beaten path for me would be, um.

Uzbekistan, um, double landlocked country, but it's literally the country that makes

all the stands connect to each other.

And in times where trade has been threatened, like there

was a reason Uzbekistan was at the middle of the Silk Road.

Yep.

So if you did have meaningful conflict in the maritime space or meaningful

volatility to where goods couldn't move there, that's sort of what

China's belt and Road initiative is all about in case, you know, yeah.

Sea lanes break down, can you move things over land if that happens?

Uzbekistan I think is actually placed really well to be a sort

of regional leader in Central Asia to use that, but I think that's

a very sort of speculative play.

No, I, I think Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, I think that's a great point.

I mean, there's this, uh, in geopolitics for those of you who

want to sort of read more about it, there's this constant battle between

the Mahan and the kinder duality.

You know, these are the two, like the Yin and the Yang, the Sith and the Jedi.

Uh, Mahan is sort of the operating system.

He wrote, uh, Mahan was the, I believe in Admiral.

A naval scholar and he wrote a lot on, uh, the power of the navies and the seas.

Uh, and that is the operating system that the United States of

America operates on, that it, uh, downloaded from the United Kingdom.

Um, the seas are the highways of the world, and if you control them, you can

pretty much show up in front of anybody's capital city and threatened them.

You can also trade, you can control trade routes, but there is an alternative

operating system, which none of us have really taken seriously since

probably Hitler, and it's the me kinder and the me kinder looks at the world

from the perspective of the world island, which is what e erasure is.

So from Ireland to Ka chop cut, there's this world island.

And if you control the world island, you don't have to spend a single cent

on a single ship, like Americans can run around with their, like fancy

schmancy ships, but you don't care.

You've got all the technology, all the consumer markets, and all the natural

resources you would ever really need.

There's nothing that you, Eurasia doesn't have.

And, uh, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, if you suddenly just shift your thinking towards

that kind of a kinder operating system, I think Uzbekistan is not a crazy pick.

Yeah.

Um, there's, there's two others I want to throw on and I'm curious where they are

in your quantitative index because we, I threw in South Africa at the very end.

Yeah.

Um, and, and Africa's hard to, is harder to think about from this

point of, from this perspective.

'cause I think, like my base case is that Africa is probably going

to be dominated by external powers.

Not that African nations are gonna be able to sort of create, uh,

geopolitical power bases of their own.

But let's say I'm wrong about that.

And let's say that some of these African nations are able to congeal

into nations and sort of project power.

Um, two on my list, one would be Ethiopia.

Um.

On the horn, really young, uh, motivated population.

Uh, you mentioned Egypt, like the Nile begins in Ethiopia and there's already

been tension between Ethiopia and Egypt.

But so I say that because Ethiopia is damning the Nile, it could

literally control everything down river from the Nile.

And if you have control of the Nile, you like, generally

speaking, civilizationally, you've been a pretty powerful entity.

And you know, they can project to the horn.

Now they're technically landlocked.

They're having problems with Eritrea and some of these others.

Also, they just fought a civil war in which hundreds of thousands have died.

Like there's so many problems with them, but they're one that I think deserves.

Honorable mention, or at least put them on the watch list.

The other one is, is less a country, although I have a country

that might benefit from this.

But, you know, going back a hundred years, people have recognized

the potential of what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Mm-hmm.

Just from the perspective of population, resources, water, where it is in

Africa, all these other things.

Now, of course, um, the DRC, what is today, the DRC, like, it's

the subject of heart of darkness.

It is the subject of all of these d it's, you know, kingly, upholds,

ghost, all these different terrible things have happened there.

And that contin, uh, didn't even mention the, the Rwanda genocide and the second

African war in the ni uh, world War in the 1990s, like one of the most deadly

conflicts in the history of human beings.

Um, like all of that is sort of in there and it's happening again today.

Like there is restiveness and fighting.

Rebels running all over the place, Rwanda, arming rebels, and maybe even

Rwanda military presence on the ground in the eastern parts of the DRC.

So the, the country that's on my watch list is actually not the DRC because

I'm, I'm, I doubt that the DRC is gonna find that national footing.

Uh, but I think Rwanda deserves an honorable mention just in the way that

it's changed in the last 30 years.

It's military and, you know, security capacity.

Some of its investment in like, whether it's science, like they have some

interesting things going from them and they have shown the ability to

affect things in countries around them.

Um, that's a great point in a way that Israel has.

So they're on my list too, on honorable Mitch.

I like, I like the technology aspect of Rwanda because that's true.

They actually do have, um, a burgeoning tech industry and your

definition of being com able to compel.

So, uh, in terms of where all of these countries are in the indicator.

Um, so first of all, as I mentioned in the first podcast episode, there is something.

Called the Composite Index of National Capability, the CINC, it

was created by political scientists at the height of, uh, the Cold War.

Mm-hmm.

And that one is much more like a Cold War era index.

It looks at, um, uh, total population, urban population, iron in steel

production, energy consumption, military personnel, and military expenditure.

And so it's very much, I think, old school.

I modified that with my own, which emphasizes things like military exports.

Why?

Because that's a way to show that you have technological capability, that

you have actual, you know, ability to sell something that's sophisticated,

not just buy it 'cause you're big.

But the reason I mentioned this is that there, there are some African

countries in this one that doesn't penalize you for just, uh, not

being technologically capable.

So Nigeria is actually 21st, the Congo's 35th, you know,

to your point, Sudan is 38th.

South Africa's 30th Rwanda's on neither one.

Um, but I think that that's a really nuanced pick.

So I think I like that one.

Ethiopia is also not on either one, which is interesting.

Uzbekistan, is it?

But I I get your Uzbekistan point.

Um, if I wanted to add one, I think it would be the United Arab Emirates.

And the reason I say that is because you, you mentioned Singapore as a potential

place where AI could really play a role, but I think UAE is probably the one

country that is potentially going to have the biggest role in AI development.

And you saw President Trump's trip to the Middle East.

He was followed by a lot of people from the AI community and they

selled a lot of deals, including with the UAE company, um, which is

a, uh, front runner in some of this.

Uh, this is the G 42 artificial intelligence company

headquartered in Abu Dhabi.

So why.

Because UAE has this very interesting mix of small population, large capital

pool, and an expat population that no one's going to cry about if they

all get fired due to AI developments.

So when you think about very powerful lobbies in America, like American Medical

Association is extremely difficult.

You try replacing doctors with ai, good luck with that.

It's not gonna work.

You know, and it's not, not because you and I, like Jacob and Marco

have a problem with AI doctors.

It's because doctors have a problem with AI doctors, same

with pilots or truck drivers.

Um, there are a lot of, you know, very vested interests, political

interests that are going to prevent AI from being deployed fully.

But a place like the UAE, were pretty much accountants, doctors, pediatricians,

you know, like you name it, are pretty much all expats, non-citizens.

They can all be fired tomorrow if a GI was to be developed.

So I actually think that of all the countries on the planet, UAE

will be the first to deploy full AI systems in government and in

education, in medicine and so on.

So that's my, uh, honorable mention.

So we have a good group, Nordic Union.

No, and

I, and I just wanna continue on that too 'cause

I, I think it belongs there.

And this is like Singapore was my stand-in for thinking about like, are city states

even possible like in the future and should they be on this list in general?

Because when you think about like city states today, like I count the UAE 'cause

of Dubai, but it's a really small list.

Um, it's Singapore, Monaco, the Vatican.

If the Vatican ever wanted to like get like more muscular again, like that

would actually be a really sleeper pick.

Like the return of the Catholic, uh, the

papal states.

Yeah, the papal states back, uh, with, you know, their, their

billion Catholics or however many there are of them, uh, sort of running around.

But I, I wonder if one of the things that's missing on our list, well, first

of all, I wonder if I'm right that.

Geopolitics, the way that we're heading towards Multipolarity is gonna lead

to the rise of New city states or the empowerment of city states in

a way that it hasn't in the past.

And then I wonder if what's missing from our list is some of these city states,

like the, the, this is, this is not a well thought out analysis yet, which good?

You're coming here for entertainment, not for well thought out analysis.

Uh, but like, when I think about the bearishness of the UK, for

example, uh, that bearishness with the UK was always coupled with, but

London will be extremely powerful.

So if the UK did fall apart, would London sort of become a city

state or like would like around England or something like that?

Like, could you have the rise of some of these different, uh, mega cities turn

into like city states of their own right.

And might they affect the map of the world in different ways in the future?

I don't know.

I it's, it's a, it's a very speculative concept that, as you can

tell, I haven't developed fully yet, but it's in the back of my head.

Our Congress too.

No, no, I, I've thought about this.

I think city states is one, uh, the other one is also regional.

So the Nordic Union.

Points that are, you know, um, one of our listeners pointed out

is very, very well thought out.

In other words, a multipolar distribution of power does create a need for scale.

So in a unipolar world, you can be a tiny country, you know, you can be

Slovenia and be extremely successful because hey, Americans are in charge.

Just follow the rules and you know, you'll be fine in a bipolar world, you can be a

tiny country, just pick the right side.

Mm-hmm.

But in a multipolar world, like scale starts to matter.

And so I do think that one of the failures maybe of our

ranking, we do think of scale.

Like, I like Canada 'cause it's huge and it can import another 40 million people.

Like done.

And suddenly it's a global power.

But like, okay.

But we did not, and you know, we picked Indonesia but we didn't pick like

Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand corridor, something like, you know, we didn't

get like innovative on that point.

And I think that.

That might be something to think about.

Maybe there will be more regionalization now.

Well, and and there's also like to, to your point, like, um,

based on a podcast I did earlier this week, like a really out there, um,

selection would've been instead of China, like Huawei or Microsoft, like, there

is this narrative out there of techno fascism, techno overlords companies

that will become stronger than nations.

And there's precedent for that, right?

Like before there was the British Empire, there's the British East India company.

Mm-hmm.

The Dutch story is like that too.

So we may be missing, like with the combo of technology and, and some of

these other things like the rise of companies or non-state actors that

affect the world in, in different ways.

'cause there's none of that on our list right now.

There isn't.

And I love it.

I I love your point.

You know, Hudson Bay Company basically created candidate because

people in Europe wanted beaver hats.

Like, there you go.

You know, which is why beaver should be on the flag, not, not a maple leaf.

Um, now.

I wanna do one final thing before, uh, I hand over, uh, the MCTU.

I want you to take a look at this list and I want you to make one change.

Now that we've had some time to digest, take some criticism in.

You can either switch two of your picks, you know, you can basically trade them.

Like, let's say you can say Turkey at four is too high,

high and South Africa's too low.

So you like, flip them.

Or you can take one of your picks off the board and put someone else on

like, you made a compelling case for Israel or Uzbekistan or Nordic unit.

So either one of those.

Yeah, I, I think we need to do a little more postmortem

on, on the list itself too.

'cause you might think that.

In the moment I was most insecure about my Russia pick at number six.

But I actually feel pretty good about my Russia pick and

we might wanna spar on that.

And like, I'm, I'm looking at just my choices here too.

Like, I, I wanna get into an argument argument with you about Canada.

Like, I just don't see it.

I want to, I want to hate on Canada right now 'cause I don't think it

belongs like, because certainly not in the top 10, and I'm not even sure it

belongs on this list to be quite frank.

Um, but I, I, when I look at the list, I think my biggest mistake,

um, is that Japan is likely too low.

Um, and it should probably be slotted like Japan should probably have been, I. I

don't know if it's before Russia or after Russia, but it's definitely in the top 10.

It doesn't belong there.

Sort of languishing at the bottom.

And the UK too, like was, was a little bit of a blind spot for me.

I like some of those honorable mentions, but they're too speculative.

Like I like them on the bubble and I see that they have potential to jump

up, but you know, like an Ethiopia pick or Rwanda pick, um, Nordic Union pick.

Like, I like them but there's not enough reality there for, for me to do it.

But if I had to pick one, like I would boost Japan, probably five or six slots.

Do you wanna do that?

Yeah, so I think I'll, like, for my picks, just imagine I'm

picking Japan right after Russia, so everything else gets bumped down.

Well why not flip Iran for Japan?

Well, yeah.

Well so I, I, 'cause I want Brazil ahead of Iran so I would, I would flip

Japan and Brazil, if that makes sense.

And then flip Brazil ahead of Iran.

You can only flip one.

I know.

I can only flip one.

So, uh, well, Brazil, I can do whatever we want.

We're making, we are the commissioners of this draft.

Okay.

So you want

Japan where

I just, oh, Nico Harrison just called.

He said, I'm allowed to do whatever I want.

And as a, as, as a, as a thank you for that.

I will get the first pick in the draft next year.

Thank you for that, Nico.

I really appreciate you watching my back.

Um, let's just do that to keep it simple.

So I play by the rules.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna switch Japan and Brazil.

Japan and Brazil.

Yeah.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

So Japan and then Brazil.

Alright.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I, I have, I have to switch Japan and Iran.

Sorry.

I'll switch and I, that's what I think.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, but that makes sense because then Brazil remains ahead of Iran.

Yeah.

You're just putting, you know, Iran 14, it's still a controversial

pick, I think, and it retains that.

I, I picked Argentina way too high.

I I thought you were gonna take it.

Hmm.

Um.

So I picked him 11th.

I think that was kinda ludicrous.

I'm gonna switch Indonesia.

Oh, I'm gonna put Indonesia in the

11th spot and I'm gonna bump, um, gonna bump Argentina down to 17th.

It's still ahead of Mexico, which I feel comfortable with.

Um, but it's below South Africa now and Ukraine and that's okay.

And it's below Iran.

So basically Iran and Argentina, we kind of took them down a couple of

notches because they are speculative and we're expecting a lot of things

to go right in order for them.

So I think it's fine that they're a little bit, you know, down.

Um, yeah, and I, I'm very bullish.

Brazil, like my bullish, the level at which I took Brazil indicates to

you that I'm actually very negative Argentina, not necessarily from a

market or investment perspective.

I'm actually very optimistic about Argentina from that perspective.

But from a power projection perspective, I think South America

is Brazil's, and I think it's either gonna be Brazil as a regional power

or some kind of regional union.

Or China or somebody else is gonna dominate it.

Like I don't see that Argentina is advanced enough at this state with where

we are with multipolar competition to be a South American regional power.

Now, maybe they can make up a lot of ground.

Um, and, you know, certainly Melay has done some interesting

things from a reform perspective.

But, uh, I don't know.

I need somebody who's not, uh, channeling his strategies from his dead

dog before I, I start getting really excited about a country's capacity to

do things geopolitically in the world.

I think what's interesting about this is, uh, yeah, I mean,

I think, uh, I think that's fair.

And I think Mexico gets penalized in many ways because it's next to America, as

Mexicans will always point out, you know.

Uh, if they were anywhere else in the world, I think

Mexico would be more powerful.

And that's true.

And similarly, Argentina has appropriately now come down relative to Brazil.

Um, okay.

So I'm, I'm ready to defend Canada.

If you wanna, if you wanna take on the challenge, give it, give it to me.

Yeah.

And,

and, and, uh, well, and just before we take on Canada,

'cause, 'cause Mexico and Canada are sort of two sides of the same coin,

like Canada, well I guess you could make this argument for Canada too.

Mexico like does have Central America.

Where it could project power.

If Mexico could ever like, get control of cartels and be responsible for

regional security and project power down all the way through Panama, uh,

and sort of be a leader of the Latin American world in North America,

like that there's, there are roots for them to develop their own power.

They've just never done that.

Everything has been northward facing for obvious reasons.

So over a 30 year time horizon, is that something they could do?

Like Yes, and that's possible.

And same with Canada.

Like I guess if, if you're making the positive Canada argument, you can talk

about, uh, the polar ice cap melting and Canada being the king of the Arctic

and you know, the Arctic is the new Mediterranean and Canada is one of the

powers that is gonna benefit most from it.

Uh, but I don't know.

I'm just not buying it.

It seems to me that I, you know, I think that, uh, please separate.

Uh, our president's, uh, demeaning attitude towards Canada,

from what I'm about to say.

'cause I don't think Canada should become the 51st state, but Canada is

woefully dependent on the United States.

Nobody gives a shit what Canada says.

Think about all the things that have happened to them

in the last couple of years.

China kidnapped their people didn't give like, whatever, like nobody

actually helped them or did anything.

They picked a fight with Saudi Arabia over things like women's rights.

Saudi Arabia was like, cool, we're not gonna trade with you anymore.

And like, just like, go away until you apologize.

And eventually they had to apologize.

You know, United States wants to pick a trade war with, with them.

They're, they try to fight for it.

United States doesn't care.

Literally the leader of the United States is like, great.

So my best offer is that you just become part of our country.

How, how's that for you?

And the best we can do is like, you know, globalist Mark Carney coming

in and saying like, no, I'm really gonna do, like, be tough with them.

Um, like, okay, yes, they can immigrate a lot of, they can

welcome a lot of immigrants.

They also have lots of fault lines within the society itself.

Like, uh, we've got Quebec, we've got, you know, murmurings in the

west that, you know, Alberta will break off some of these other things.

Like, it, it just, like, it, it doesn't look to me like a coherent power that's

gonna project power in any meaningful way.

They're gonna be tied to the United States, um, for the long run.

And I don't see a, a world in which, you know, China, like, imagine this is 20

years from now, is China gonna be afraid of kidnapping some Canadian diplomats

because of what Canada's gonna do to them?

Like, no, like Canada, like China's still gonna kidnap their diplomats.

Well, I mean, I think that's, you know, the, the way the

trade value, uh, ranking works in the basketball world where Bill Simmons

does it, is that you would not trade somebody below for somebody on top.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, I mean, it's, it, it's, I don't think China would

care about Japanese diplomats being kidnapped or businesses or.

Singapore, right?

No, no.

I,

I think they would, I think they would with Japan, and I think they

would, I think Singapore, yes, I would.

I would trade them with all of them.

I think there's two different things here, and this is something that

you and I talked about before.

If I'm China and I'm drafting which countries I want as allies, like if

we just put all politics aside and I just want to take pure pieces off the

board to build some kind of Chinese LED alliance that allows me to have a

Chinese LED world order, Canada would be very close to the top of that list.

Right?

'cause they are a really crucial ally.

And for the United States too, they have to be really at the top of that list.

So I think as like as value is a partner, Canada's really high.

But if we're just talking about like Canada's ability to shape the world

around it and project power, like I don't think it has any juice there whatsoever.

Like I would put it, like I would trade Iran, I would trade Singapore,

I would trade Saudi Arabia, and you know, I'm not a Saudi Arabia fan.

Uh, I would probably trade, uh.

The uk, Indonesia for sure, probably the uk.

Uh, I would put ahead of Canada too if it's just like who I would

trade on the list, like Absolutely.

So I think, I think there's three things that Canada

has that other countries don't have.

First of all, it's a hedge.

So think of Canada as like, you know, like those bunkers that people have where

they're like, everything is just turnkey.

Or like the United States of Amer America has military bases around the

world called lily pad bases, right?

Where you're just like, you turn a key and like the Burger King in

the back starts like operating, you know, the like Dairy Queen, like

ice cream machine starts buzzing.

That's Canada for the west, it's this bunker.

And the reason I say that is that if anything bad happens to the United States

of America, like Canada has everything US has just like ready to be scaled up.

So if there is any sort of a domestic disturbance in the us,

Canada becomes the US overnight.

Precisely because it is the exact same in many ways.

It's just ready, like if, if the US had some sort of a calamity, there are

50 million American refugees in Canada tomorrow, and that's just, that's now a

hundred million dollar, a hundred million dollars, a hundred million people country.

So that's the first thing I would say.

Um, it has institutions, governance.

Those soft things that make Canada interesting to me are, are that it

has basically Western IP and Western operating system is just smaller, is the

size of Spain in terms of population.

Mm-hmm.

The second thing I like about is obviously natural resources, which I

think you're discounting the reason that you want to take Canada over Saudi Arabia.

And the reason that Canada will matter is because its food production is just

gonna go through the roof and you're the big soft ag guy, uh, soft commodity guy,

you know, like Canada, um, will have.

The greatest agricultural output over the next 30 years because

climate change is happening and climate change is not always bad.

Canada will will definitely benefit from it because the growing

seasons will, um, expand and you'll have multiple growing seasons.

This is the Saskatchewan and Manitoba play.

It's not actually that much about Ontario or British Columbia.

It's really about those prairies that suddenly become extremely good.

It has water, endless water, uh, as water as far as di can see.

It has massive, um, hydroelectric potential.

It hasn't even tapped Quebec as a country is an exporter of energy,

purely because of what, uh, it's done on the hydro side of things.

It just invented hydropower, just built some dams on these lakes that

nobody even really knows how to get to.

There's no roads up there.

Um, so the natural resources one is the big one.

And then finally technology.

I think that, uh, you're, you're underestimating just how.

Important Canada has been to Western technological dominance.

Um, research in mode, in motion obviously doesn't exist anymore.

It's been overtaken by other things, but I think that rim is an important example

of what Canada has done in the past.

It's innovated massively.

The reason we have cell phones that work today are rim patents that, um,

are still being used in iPhones and in, uh, modern mobile telephones.

The other issue is nuclear energy as well.

It's another example of how Canada has uh, uh, punched above its weight.

Quantum and fusion.

Two things that Canada does really well and the reason for that is that

it's universities are top class.

Nobody really talks about 'em 'cause they're not fancy and they don't have

sports, but they're very, very good.

And again, it's kind of a hedge if, if you don't want to live in

the US and you know, you posted on Twitter something interesting.

How many PhDs in the US.

Their performance, I think based on where they're coming from.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Yep.

You know,

like Canadian universities are, are basically just there sitting

ready to take in all this global talent.

So yes, this is definitely based on the future, but the reason that

I like Canada more than like Iran is that Iran has the people, but

it requires governance to change.

Canada just doesn't have the people and I think honestly

it's easier to solve for that.

It is easier to build the infrastructure and have an aggressive immigration

than to fix governance in institutions that haven't been modernized for

like, you know, 50, 60, 70 years.

So, um, that's, that's what, that's kind of why I have Canada.

Maybe it is too high at number nine.

I think maybe it should get that Iran, Argentina.

Like, uh, yeah,

I just, I would push back a couple different ways because

like, okay, like it's a hedge on the United States, but that would

be catastrophic for, uh, Canada.

Like if the United States really fell apart into some kind of warring states

version of China or something like that.

I mean, maybe parts of Canada also get hid off or are gonna

get negatively impacted by that.

Also, Canada, not to get too, God, I can't believe I'm gonna be

the one who talks about rivers on the podcast, but like, there's no

Mississippi River Network in Canada.

You don't that shit anymore.

Come on.

It's not the, you definitely do.

You de I'm sitting here at, at the bottom of the Mississippi.

It still matters, uh, for, in a big way.

What

New Orleans matters 'cause of the Mississippi of course.

Oh, come on.

Well, how much trade A US trade actually goes down to Mississippi that's

actually been researched by actual researchers doing actual analysis.

Uh.

Uh, there you go.

Uh, do, do, do, do approximately 500 million tons of goods annually.

I don't know what that means.

Uh, 60% of US grain exports, if you're talking about LNG and

things like that, also pretty big.

Um, so like you can count, you can go and count the ships and understand

something about like US agricultural complex and things like that.

I mean, like maybe wheat because it's easy to put on a barge,

but you could also do that by train.

Yeah.

For it's more costly.

Um, in terms of, in terms of, Russia

doesn't have any really useful rivers either.

Like, you know, it's not like the Russians are really, really using the ulca.

No, but they do have the vulgar.

But yes, there's a reason that Russia has never been able to succeed and

achieve its geopolitical imperatives.

It's six that are, look Russia and Canada.

Yeah, because they

have, they have a meaningful military and they're

willing to use it and they have great power prediction capacity and like a

population that is many times larger than that of Canada and is not completely

economically dependent on its neighbor.

I mean, it's getting that way because of what Putin did with Ukraine.

But I'd, I would definitely rather have Russia than Canada on the geopolitical

power index even 30 years out.

I think.

I think that's, that's true.

I would too.

That's what Canada's lower.

Um, and as I said, yes, I think it could be lower.

Look, I think you shouldn't over index on the hedge thing.

Um,

I think, well, yeah.

So, so no.

So, so, so the two other points you made the point about agriculture.

Do you know what the second, um, uh, the second biggest agricultural exporter

in terms of value is in the world?

I. Russia products by value.

Second largest exporter in the world of agricultural products.

I think Russia.

It is the Netherlands.

Oh, you can do farming with technology and vertical farmings in all other different

sorts of ways if you're willing to do it.

And I think, actually, I think you're right that Canada geographically is bound

to do well as a result of global warming.

But Canada's institutions, some of the mechanisms around its agriculture

are actually fairly antiquated.

And I bet you some Canadian farmers wouldn't mind if some things weren't,

uh, I'm thinking specifically about milk, but like I don't think that

the system is actually that great.

In some ways it's been so easy for them that they haven't had to

invest in some of these things.

So I would take the flip side and say, yes, they have natural advantages,

but like it's, and um, it's not like they're the only game in town.

And my list has producers like Russia, Brazil, um.

Australia.

Like there are some ag producers on here, so I don't discount it.

I just don't think that it makes Canada, um, particularly unique.

I accept your point about institutions.

The biggest argument for Canada, to your point, is they have institutions.

They could be a beacon for immigrants.

They could get some of the best and brightest from the rest

of the world to come to Canada instead of the United States.

The problem with that is just that I think it's gonna require a lot of

Canadian investment in becoming a leader in some of these things, and I don't

see the political coherence or will to do that quite yet in Canada Now.

30 years is a long time.

Maybe it pops up and they realize the United States is in decline in that sense,

or is abdicating this position and they're perfectly suited to sort of soak up that.

So I, I take your point there, but I would push back on the first two.

Yeah.

But again, technology, uh, innovation in Canada has been massive, you know,

and I think that's what we're, uh, also missing, um, from your criticism.

I mean, that's, that's been like a constant stream of like,

oh shit, Canada invented that.

Um, that I think that it, you know, it, it signifies.

Basically there is something in the country that produces innovation.

That's very interesting.

And I think that's because of immigration.

I think it's because of great schools, because of quality of life.

Um, and uh, the other issue that I would point out is energy.

You didn't mention anything on energy.

No.

We've got too much oil.

Cool.

The world.

The world has too much oil and Canada's oil infrastructure

is all pointed downwards.

No,

it's

not.

No, but that's an easy fix.

That's an easy fix.

This is where I think you're missing what's happening.

Like Donald Trump.

That is the one thing, if I could say, of all the things that he's done wrong.

I think for the future of the us the biggest mistake was that Canada's

a milkshake with one straw in it.

And he's encouraging them to build two straws, two extra straws.

True and Dish, you know, the way that NDP and the Green Party performed in the

election was a clear rebuke by the, uh, Canadian population against this kind

of like very extreme environmentalism.

Um, where it, it's, it's kind of silly like Canada's gonna

produce these hydrocarbons.

Why limit their export if they're gonna be produced anyways?

Why are they all going to the us?

And so that energy infrastructure, I think is gonna be interesting.

And it could make Canada very, to your point, that it doesn't really

have a lot of, uh, pool in the world.

It doesn't because all of its, uh, trade is with the us.

Yeah.

Um, what else on the list?

Is there anything else we need to, by the way, Canada, I, I like

you like, on different lists.

I would have you very close to the top.

It's just in this very narrowly idiosyncratic way that I'm, I'm

pushing you down, but I like you guys and you shouldn't be the 51st state.

You should be your own state forever and ever.

Uh, anything else?

I think Japan, well, we kind of moved Japan.

We got Argentina lower.

I think the honorable mentions are interesting of, of those,

the Nordic Union, uh, which of course is a play on the future.

Israel, Poland.

Malaysia, UAE, Uzbekistan, Rwanda.

I think Israel, Israel's really the one that's the toughest.

Um, I think Aion just because again, to use the quantitative

index, Israel is 19th by the way, if you use the quantitative index.

I created Israel's 19th, the one from the Cold War, which obviously

emphasizes just raw things like size of military, size of population.

Mm-hmm.

Israel is 40th still pretty good for a country of, you know, 10 million people.

Still pretty impressive that it makes it nation Yeah, it makes it to that list.

Uh.

Top 40, uh, but it is 19th on the geopolitical power index I created, um,

using some of this quantitative stuff.

Um, so yeah.

Yeah, I

just, I, I think the thing with Israel is like, um,

it feels like the past, it feels like it's not gonna be the future.

Like imagine if you and I were sitting here in 1949 creating this

index, we wouldn't have put Israel anywhere close to the top who

should have, let alone the top 50.

But what they did over the course of the next 30 years was remarkable.

So in some ways, I think we're looking for the next Israel, I'm not sure that

Israel's gonna go back and reinvent itself the way that it did in 1949.

Now it does have nuclear weapons and it does have institutions and it does

have an existential need to exist and all these other different things.

So like I, I see it.

Um, but you know, in some sense their need to dictate action in

their regional sphere, um, is.

A sign of weakness and like they're losing.

Like I think the relationship with the US is fraying and who is gonna

be like the security guarantor?

'cause Israel has always needed some Big Mac daddy in the

background who's gonna help them.

Um, they've never done this alone.

And it's, it sure seems like they're starting to embark on a world where

they're having to do it alone.

And that should be very frightening for Israeli strategic decision makers.

But to your point, they've done it in the past and they do, like,

they're, they're not starting from zero like they were before.

So,

you know, my concern, my concern Jacob, is that like, the

future is not about demographics.

Sorry.

And it's not about rivers, sorry to YouTube, but it's not like geography

and humans are being constantly, constantly throughout human history

have been disrupted by technology.

I mean, do you, United Kingdom being the greatest example, and please don't

tell me Tames is a fucking river.

You know what I mean?

It's like an tu like no, no.

Grain is being transship by tames.

So the Thames, sorry.

My point is that technology always, always, always, always wins.

You know?

Always wins it.

Like just, it just does.

That's why I picked South Korea as high as I did.

'cause I'm betting that their unique mix of necessities, insecurity,

all this stuff, you know your point about North Korea being subsumed

at some point, which is good too.

I didn't even think about that.

But to me, South Korea is number seven because of technology.

Yeah.

India I think can also do the same.

And then obviously the standard US China, EMU five.

My concern is when I look at our list, some of the countries that I

picked that don't have, oh by the way, Canada too, like my point is Canada

has endogenous technology, great universities, and has done it in the past.

It's proven in the past that it can actually innovate in

like globally relevant ways.

My concern is when I look at this list, the countries who haven't

really been able to do that.

Uh, so you are a pick of Mexico?

My pick of Argentina.

South Africa actually has innovated technologically, so it's not like.

That's a silly Ukraine.

I picked Ukraine in the top 20 because they've proven in this conflict that

they can innovate, uh, massively.

Some of the, yeah,

we, we got some pushback from, from listeners about Ukraine and my

point about Ukraine was, if you're looking for the Israel of the next 30 years,

Ukraine is probably the one, like it has a lot of weird similarities with Israel.

You know,

late think those were Russian bots at Twitter, you know, like, come on.

Like clearly like, but the, you know, Singapore, okay, so Singapore on that

rubric of technology I think is great, but this is where I worry that yeah, we,

we over index on like Israel's domestic politics perhaps, and its demographics.

But what we, I think, I think Israel and UAE are honorable mentions and Nordic

Union Sweden has, I. Sweden punches way above any country on the planet when

it comes to technological innovation.

Like you're talking about a country of 10 million people as

fighter jets that people buy.

Come on.

This is like serious, serious, serious capability.

So anyways, I think that probably we should have thought

about that a little bit more.

I, I do worry about my Indonesia picket 11.

You know, I worry about Turkey at four, although they have shown the ability

to innovate and they have absolutely.

Turkey at

four is high.

I'd be the first to admit that and like, it probably should not be ahead of India.

Um, but I go back and forth about India, like some days I'm like, India should

probably be number two on this list.

And then, and then some days I'm like, India will be 25 because it won't

be able to get its shit together.

Like I really, I'm ambivalent

and I'm really, I'm really happy people didn't get

any hit, hit mail on India because I thought, well that's probably

just 'cause nobody from India listened.

If they did, I'm sure

we, I think they do.

I think they do.

But I think that they were, uh, appropriately satisfied with it, you know.

I feel like Indian Twitter is kind of like Portland's trailblazers fans.

Like if you are not saying like Portland Trailblazer fans are famously, like soccer

moms, very productive of their children.

I feel like I thought we would get hate mail for having

India theft, but we didn't.

I think it's appropriate and they do have that technology factor.

But anyways, the technology factor is what worries me because your example of

19, us sitting, sitting and doing this in 1946, if we were sitting and doing this

in 1946, like who would've picked that?

Israel would be one of the greatest technological, uh,

wellsprings of innovation.

Um, and I think that that's what has kept Israel as high as it has been.

So I do think that that maybe is something we are understating by focusing still.

It's, it's so funny.

We're trying to resist the pool of demographics and

rivers and humans and wheat.

Yet, I mean, Indonesia picket 11, you know, like Argentina, Mexico, a

lot of these picks are based on some of those, maybe a little bit over,

um, stated geopolitical qualities.

Well, and it's a, and like this list has to be dynamic.

Like, I think the thought experiment of, if we were trying to do this in 1946

or 1949, like who would be on the list?

Like obviously we can't like, forget all of our knowledge and really

put ourselves, uh, back in 1946.

We should, we, we should be able to try.

But like if we were doing that and just, you know, thinking like what was

conventional knowledge at the time?

Like, I wonder what that list would look like.

It would probably look like us Soviet Union and then what the United Nations

would be third, like Japan wouldn't be on there like, uh, German, like all

these different countries that like really defined the next three decades

would probably not be on the list.

'cause the world just came out from a war and everybody was bombed.

Wait,

Jacob, Jacob, Paula, I actually think we should do this.

We should do this in couple, when, when things slow down,

which will never No.

Our, our next draft.

We could do our next draft.

No, but the reason I think it'll be interesting, Jacob, is that if

you and I were in 1946, I think you and I still picked China and India, high

India.

We do, we do.

A hundred percent.

No, no.

Listen, we do.

I swear to you, we do, we do.

Let's put ourselves You'll be smoking.

I'll be drinking heavily, right?

Yeah.

We'll do it.

The the point is not that we wouldn't, the point is that we would and we'd be wrong.

That's true.

That's the point.

The point is that you would've picked Brazil.

Oh, well they avoided World War ii.

I love Brazil.

I'm a soft ax guy.

I know how important this is.

Boom, err wrong.

I would've been like, listen, India, there's a movement for independence.

It's gonna be infused with new energy, you know?

Wrong.

Then you would've been like, yo, China, you just wait.

You know, they're gonna, like, in industrialize, I think Miles's gonna

shift from being a guerilla soldier to being a modernizer err wrong.

You know?

And that's what it would've been so exciting to actually do.

Um, it would've, but like the actual, like if, if we were

good analysts, let's assume for a second we were good analysts in 1946.

If we were good analysts, the list would be Russia or would

be United States, Soviet Union.

End of list.

End of list.

Yeah.

Like that.

You, you would've had the balls to be like, I reject this entire exercise.

That's that the two get, get out my face.

Nobody cares.

But listen, I think, you know, what I'm getting at here is that I think when

we talk geopolitics, I think it's a big mistake to use immutable variables.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and that's really, and that goes against our training at Stratfor by

the way, that goes against very training that you and I received in our youth.

I think it goes against the training that most people think goes into

being a geopolitical analyst.

It's like, well wait, if I use things like demographics, which are slow

moving rivers, geography, natural defenses, natural resources, I should

produce a relatively correct list.

And that's my point.

In 1946, you would've picked, not you, but like one would've picked fairly,

like consistently the same countries, and yet it is the Netherlands and yet

it is Israel, and yet it is some random South Korea that's like barely, I

mean, that was like pushed to the very East China Sea, you know what I mean?

Like it, it is these countries that end up outperforming expectations

because true innovation and true, true power and, and true like.

Abilities come out of necessity, not the plenty.

Yeah, I, I agree with you.

I'm gonna make one semantic change to what you say.

'cause I dunno if you saw, we had one per person who replied to us on Twitter

that said we were taking some shots at Peter and, and George and the godfathers

who, uh, taught us and things like that.

But one of the reasons I'm so frustrated with, with George and with Peter and

some of those others, and by the way, I. We don't have careers without them.

So everything I say like if Iain to speak about them, it's

actually a sign of respect.

If I don't respect you, I probably won't use your name at all.

Like I have a healthy level of respect even when I disagree with them.

But I think we were taught actually that there are no immutable principles

that rivers can change and that technology can be created that makes

what was a previously really strong like longstanding thing change overnight.

Like the rise of precision guided munitions and the

semiconductor in industry.

And everything that happened with it completely revolutionized

geopolitics basically overnight.

And that happens in the late 1950s.

And I think we were actually taught to be highly attuned to that, that the

hardest part of geopolitical analysis is yes, you're looking for the thing.

That feels immutable today, and which defines the center of gravity today.

But you also have to be flexible enough in your mind to throw it all out of the

window tomorrow because you read some article in the, you know, Uzbekistani

post that suggests that it's all going to change in the next 10 years.

And being able to throw out your old mental model and embrace a new one and

say, okay, this is the new immutable principle for the next 30 years.

Like, that was the training that I got.

And I feel like, you know, geopolitical analysts who have started resting on

their laurels, that's when they start going back to, and the river is here and

the demographic pyramid says this, and I'm just gonna, you know, extrapolate

from this going into the future.

Whereas like the really hard thing, like I said, is for us to be here next

week, let's say some discovery gets made for fusion, and we look at each other

and we're like, all right, everything we've said for the last 10 years to

our clients, it was all fucking wrong.

Like, we gotta change everything.

Like we have to start from scratch and you have to do that exercise like constantly.

Um, in this business, not.

So I'm not sure we were taught that though, because, you

know, I mean like the whole point of, and, and I think we, we should

dedicate a whole episode just in the concept of geopolitical imperatives.

Um mm-hmm.

But I, but you know, like for example, yeah, I'm, I'm not sure

that that was ever effected.

And you know, one of the interesting things about finance and geopolitics

is that the reason you can have geopolitical trades is because some of

these long-term trends just don't matter.

Mm-hmm.

You know, they just, and they, and they, they might matter on a 30 or 50 year

time horizon, but they don't matter on a five or 10 year time horizon.

Countries do revolt against their geographic prisons, against their

demographic prisons, and they revolt against them through innovation.

Through productivity and through surprising, you know, and that's,

again, going back to 1946.

I think we pick a lot of these countries in 1946 and we end up being wrong.

You know, we, we ignore Europe, we ignore the Netherlands, we ignore

Israel, we ignore South Korea.

Um, and we're shocked by what, what comes after.

All right.

Well, so we'll do a future episode on geopolitical imperatives, and I'm gonna

take the reins here and use that as the perfect segue, because speaking of

revolting against constraints, um, let's start sort of our 30 minutes around

the world with this narrowly passed sweeping tax cut bill from President

Trump and the Republicans that is on its way to the Senate, uh, different,

you know, independent sources saying it's gonna add 4 trillion roughly to the

US deficit over the next decade or so.

Um.

Well, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pretend to be humble.

I said two things at the beginning of the Trump administration that he

wasn't gonna be able to double down on tariffs, and that there was no way

in hell that this administration was going to be fiscally conservative.

Uh, and we've seen Elon Musk has exited stage left.

Uh, he's very chagrined by his support.

And the Republicans and the Trump LED White House are

going to blow out the deficit.

I think that's the news, um, of the week there.

I'll let you cook from there, but I think it, I, I say it's a revolt

against constraints because I wonder how you think about this.

Like the, the extent of US debt in and of itself has become a constraint.

I think you can see that in the way the dollar's behaving and the way that

US Treasury yields are going and the way that other countries are dealing.

With the United States, with the Moody's downgrade, like the debt itself has

become so big that it is a constraint.

And rather than President Trump sticking to the guns that got him sort of elected

with your Elon Musk and your, you know, your fiscal hawks and things like that

in the background, he's going, screw it.

Let's do another 4 trillion.

Let's do more than we did with the pandemic and with the, the

previous tax cuts combined.

I'll let you cook from there.

Well, your math is not really correct.

Great.

Correct.

Correct me.

Yes.

I, I want you to know listeners.

I, uh, I was a member of the Weber school math team in high school.

I competed with them for three years.

I mostly was there for the free pizza that came along.

I competed at math competitions for three years in high school.

Uh, I did not get a single problem.

Correct in my three years in, in competition.

Jacob, Jacob, I got three degrees in political

science, which is three too many.

So like I am not a math guy.

It's just that we need to kind of think about the numbers, right?

The pandemic was an orgy of fiscal spending.

It was, you know, 5 trillion in basically four years.

So, uh, the current bill that just barely passed the house is 2.3 trillion

additional, um, deficit over 10 years.

So the rate of change in adding to the deficit has massively collapsed.

Now, the reason that I don't think President Trump campaigned

on fiscal conservatism at all.

He campaigned on prophecy.

He, his promises and, you know, various think tanks, like actually

tried to put math behind his sort of, you know, campaign promises that

he would think of in the moment.

His campaign promises, if they were actually affected, would've

added 10 to $15 trillion.

Mm-hmm.

To the deficit.

So let me just put that very clearly.

Let, let's take the low end of that.

'cause let's say 15 trillion was always going to be impossible.

His campaign promises would've added 10.

This bill adds 2.3 over 10 years.

So it's a fifth of what he promised.

And the reason for that is that the sequencing here, I think Jacob, is that it

was the bond market riot in November and December, which many people didn't even

experience, but people who trade fixed income, they definitely know it happened.

The Fed cut interest rates a hundred base points.

The fed controls the short end of the curve.

Usually when the Fed cuts interest rates, the long end comes down too.

So you, you are borrowing rates of for your mortgage or for your credit card.

They get adjusted lower when the fed cuts rates.

That didn't happen in November and December of 2024 for the first

time in 50 years of US history.

In other words, the long end.

Acted the way Brazil's long end would act after the election

of a populist president.

And it was that selloff in the bond market in November and December that

forced the house to become a lot more conservative, or not forced,

but gave them the sort of backing.

They got emboldened, oh, look at what the bond market is seeing.

And it forced President Trump to do two things.

He didn't wanna do Doge, he didn't wanna do that, but he did it because

of that bond market move in October, November and December as the bond

market was rioting due to his election.

And finally he selected Scott Beson for the Treasury Secretary.

There were rumors that Howard Lutnick had basically outmaneuvered him

and his call Bestin shows up last minute and actually calms down the

bond market just by being there.

He the White House, just as a human being.

So the sequence is this, president Trump becomes a viable candidate in September.

People realize he's gonna probably cook Harris.

Bond market starts agitating higher and higher.

It gets to 4.8% of the 10 year yield, and it was that move from 3.6 to 4.8.

That freaks out everyone.

Mm-hmm.

And that leads to Doge Scott, treasury Secretary, and the

House of Representatives becomes emboldened to ask, ask for cuts.

What we have in this bill is something that nobody really expected last

year, which is that there will be cuts to offset some of the spending.

And so instead of $10 trillion, addition to the deficit, we get 2.3 trillion.

Now, is it fiscal conservatism?

Well, no, because they're adding to the deficit.

But I need to remind you that extension of 2017, tax cut alone,

just that extension is $5 trillion.

4.8. So the fact that we're only adding 2.3 trillion to the deficit over the next

10 years is to me a shocking outcome.

Unexpected outcome because it means that that $5 trillion bill to

just keep our tax rates the same.

Let me just be clear.

This isn't about cutting taxes.

It's about keeping the current legislative tax base the way it is, that in of

itself costs money just to keep the taxes the same, costs money because

in 2017, they were not paid for it.

Therefore, the reconciliation bill required it to expire seven years later.

We are seven years later, eight years later, 2025.

The legislation expires at the end of this year, that 2017, so we're spending

5 trillion purely on keeping things the way they are, and yet somehow

they find enough cuts so that the deficit only expands 2.3 trillion.

Now, a couple of things on this.

I'm the guy who coined the term human steeper.

President Trump is.

Mm-hmm.

Means that there's a sell off.

But that already happened, and I think a lot of people look at this

bill and they're saying like, oh, here comes the bond market riots.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It was the bond market riot in November and December that got us this bill.

So

I'm not sure there's gonna be another really significant sell off in bonds

because look, at the end of the day, the bond market always knew the

2017 legislation would be extended.

It'd always do the math of it, that it's $5 trillion.

And it always knew that it would be highly unlikely to find

enough cuts to offset all of it.

So the fact that the deficit increases by 2 trillion is not that much.

Plus the tariff tariff level of 10% is probably gonna stay.

Right.

I think we all at this point agree, Jacob, that we're gonna have some sort

of a flat tariff of about 10% that brings in probably a hundred to 200 billion.

So if you actually add that to this bill, honestly, it's kind of offset.

So

you're, you're zagging.

No, I like it.

So, so what I'm saying to you is like, you have a shocking outcome.

You have most of President Trump's priorities that he talked

about during his, uh, campaign.

You know, he talked about lower corporate taxes, he talked about

lowering corporate taxes and stuff.

None of that stuff is gonna happen, Jacob.

None of it.

All he's gonna get is taxes and tips are gonna go down.

Yay.

Alright, cool.

You know, like, I don't see like how much, whatever.

I'm not gonna perjure myself here.

I was gonna say, if I was gonna do tips, I,

I mean you plead a favor.

Uh, alright.

You

heard it here first.

We're, we're now charging for our analysis.

Yes.

Just the dollar per, uh, per uh, per appearance.

We got a tip charge, but no, look, here's what I'm seeing.

Like you've got.

The tax cuts from 2017 to to be extended.

I hate the way we frame that.

That's not extending tax cuts.

Let's, let me rephrase it.

It's gonna cost $5 trillion to keep our tax codes the same.

Okay.

So that's what we're gonna do.

We're gonna get some taxes and tips, mortgage, like modify a

little bit, some salt stuff.

And then we're gonna do a bunch of cuts to make sure that it's only 2 trillion.

And then we're gonna add a VAT tax on our consumers also

called the 10% import tariff.

Yeah, let's call that for what it is.

It's a federal VAT tax.

Effectively.

I see.

So actually, I think President Trump is running on a Nikki Haley policy

because they're going to cut Medicaid benefits, they're going to cut welfare,

they're going to have cuts, and they're raising consumption taxes on Americans

through that 10% import tariff.

And that gets you to very little fiscal thrust, and there's gonna be very little

stimulative effort out of this bill.

It's basically non-existent, that 5 trillion, again, we're spending 5

trillion to keep our taxes the same.

We're gonna expand the deficit over the next 10 years.

Jacob byte 5 trillion.

And it will have no impact on consumption or investment in this country.

You are not gonna change your behavior next year if your taxes the same.

It's not like you actually thought that 2017 tax cuts would expire.

Nobody did.

If Kamala Harris won as the president.

President Harris would've extended the 2017 tax cuts.

Like obviously no one's gonna let taxes go back up.

That does, like, doesn't happen in America, you know?

Yeah, no, I, I love the zag.

Uh, and it's good for the listeners that you and I would take opposite

sides of this a little bit, and, and maybe you're, you're right,

like maybe I'm too far into it.

And also I think it's worth saying like, this still has to get through the Senate.

We could see significant changes in the Senate, you know.

Is it 2 trillion?

Could it go up to 5 trillion?

What is the cost if you factor in increased interest rates over time?

Like there's, you know, what does military spending look like?

Uh, is the growth real or not?

I think one of my biggest criticisms would be that we're not, the

United States is not setting itself up for meaningful growth.

Like, there isn't meaningful investment in things like infrastructure or

innovation that is part of the spending.

So this notion that you're gonna grow your way out of some of these

things, like, 'cause part of this, like they're projecting higher growth

rates along with that, and I think some of that growth is kind of empty.

Um, I, I think you're also right to say that, um, Trump did not

campaign only on fiscal conservatism.

He talked out of both sides of his mouth.

So when he was with people, yeah.

You know, he wanted to talk to the fiscal conservatives and he wanted

to talk to the, you know, the populace and he merged them together.

Um, but I always said at his core, he, he never wanted anything to do

with the fiscal conservatives, but.

In the nod to Doge and to Elon Musk, like he did all of this grandstanding

cutting U-S-A-I-D, cutting innovation funds, things like that without much

benefit to the budget, actually probably damaged the US in the long run with some

of these intangibles that the United States has always been so good at.

And now he's going back to his tried and true sort of populace.

I'm gonna blow out the deficit thing.

And no, I don't think that this shows any sense of, um, of measure.

You mentioned Medicaid, they're not gonna cut Medicaid.

Let me get this quote from President Trump.

Uh, that, uh, two Republicans anonymous, anonymously told, uh, Politico that he'd

been meeting with, um, some conservative hardliners on the budget who were

pushing for deeper cuts to Medicaid.

And here is the quote from President Trump to them.

Quote, don't fuck around with Medicaid.

End quote.

Like, he's not, he's not trying to cut.

I know, but we're like, we still have to go to the Senate, like,

and who, who says he is gonna sign, like he's gonna be the one that

was like arbit of getting Medicaid.

I, I don't even know what's gonna get through the Senate.

Like, I I understand that we're early here, but, uh, I don't know.

I I'm, I'll take the other side.

Look, it's 20 20 15 to 2014.

What I would say to you is that if this bill gets changed, it will be

changed towards a more conservative side, not towards the more provate

side, because he Well, that'll be

interesting.

No, no, because he is not a conservative,

so you're right.

He, he wants the bill to be bigger, but the conservative in the house are

the ones that are holding that back and they will be aided by the bond market.

Mm-hmm.

So what they did overnight is they actually, so the

Medicaid, uh, means testing.

So you need to show that you're working and so on, or trying

to get a job to get benefits.

That was pulled back by three years from 2029 when he's out of office to 2026.

Mm-hmm.

In order to pass the house.

And so my my point is that they did mess with Medicaid and he

is happy that it got through.

I'm, I'm not sure the Senate is gonna modify the bill that much.

I mean, maybe they will, but I think that this people confuse who's

more on President Trump's side.

I think everyone over indexes on 2017 experience when it was the Senate

that stood against him on Obamacare.

Mm-hmm.

This time around, throughout this entire experience of following

this budget process since January very closely it's been the house that's

been resisting him, not the Senate.

So, I mean, if the Senate wants this bill to pass, they need to kind of pass

it quickly and just like, like end it.

Because I don't think we're gonna get, this is as profligate, which,

if that's a GRE word for anyone, that means this is as that populous

spend heavy as you're gonna get.

Uh, it just cannot, you're not gonna be able to get it through the house

if you get any more aggressive.

And the bond market is sitting in the sideline right now.

And if you are right and I'm wrong on the politics, then

the bond market gets involved.

Mm-hmm.

And then I'm right again because, you know, and we saw this in

January again, the house started talking about cuts, not last year.

Donald Trump and his, Cory and his supporters did not talk

about any cuts on anything.

At any point in the campaign, doge came in and said, oh, we can fire bureaucrats.

Oh, because there's so many of them and they get paid so much.

No, that's not gonna do anything.

So Doge never seriously contemplated, actually, like anyone who understands how

America works, understands there, like, you cannot cut $2 trillion out of American

spending without going to Congress.

Well, EII think Elon thought he could, but to your point,

I don't think he understands America

well.

Also, how appropriation works.

Like you can't just say like, we're not gonna take the money.

No, no.

It was appropriated by congress, by law.

You know, you gotta take the money, how you use it, you can burn it in api,

but it's been appropriated by Congress.

And so the issue is that the House of Representatives really revolted against

Trump in December when they denied him his request to punt the debt ceiling to 2029.

Nobody really paid attention to that, except for me.

To me, that was a really big moment when republicans in his own party after

an extraordinary electoral victory by the president, said no to him.

And then in January they started adding cuts.

And I think that the Trump administration basically gave into the cuts at all

any cuts because of the bond market action from November to January.

And so, unless they want bond yields to go back up to 4.8, where they peaked,

um, and if they wanted to go to five.

Then have a carnage in stock market, which they can't control at that point.

It's not about tariff levels, it's not about negotiations with China.

This is now bond market saying, we don't like your deficits, but you are right.

Deficits will expand.

And actually what I think Jacob just says to us is the following, the delta

in adding to the deficit is collapsing.

You know, we went from adding like mm-hmm.

2 trillion in one year to 2 trillion in one year to 2 trillion over 10 years.

That's a huge delta change towards conservatism.

But it's not enough because to your point, wait a minute, it doesn't decrease

the deficit over the next seven years.

Exactly.

And so what that means is that the difficult work will be left for either

the last two years of Trump like presidency or the presidency in 2028.

Whoever gets elected.

If it's a OC, she's gonna no but, but she's gonna deal with

the deficit one way or another, and she's got a solution to it.

You know, it's raising taxes or maybe it's Nikki Healy and she's

gonna have a solution to it as well.

It's gonna be a little bit different.

It's gonna be cutting spending.

So I think that the US is on an inexorable path towards fiscal conservatives.

That's like, what's just gonna happen?

Or it's Donald Jr. Um, while we're talking, Marco, I

was just seeing the Economist, uh, uh, release its cover for this week.

It's the remarkable rise of Poland.

I feel so bad for Poland.

I've been bullish Poland too.

God, the economist just jinxed them while we've been talking.

Well, no, but we didn't put them in 1220.

Yes.

Right.

Yeah, we didn't, we we did it.

We, we did it really good.

Um, okay, second thing, let's turn to, uh, we've talked about the Middle

East quite a bit, so we're only gonna spend a little bit of time on this,

but I do think it is worth talking about this a little bit, um, because

you've had the Trump administration really change its messaging on Israel.

Um, trying to get Israel tougher on stopping bombing Gaza into

the middle of the middle Ages.

I mean, it's already done that it's, I guess now it's trying to return

them, return them to the Bronze Age.

I don't know.

Um, so, you know, Israel has stepped up its attacks in Gaza.

I think it sort of sees the writing on the wall and is doing as much as it can.

You've also had reports, silly reports, because Israel can't attack

Iran without US support, but reports that Israel is considering an attack

on Iran because they're worried about some kind of nuclear deal.

And then the big news from yesterday that two Israeli diplomats were shot,

um, outside an event at Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, dc Uh, the guy

who they suspect did it as he was being hauled off into custody shouting free

Palestine at, at the top of his lungs.

Um.

And I mean, I, we can cook on this in a bunch of different ways.

I'm gonna risk getting canceled here and just point this out.

And here's where I'll bathe myself in indifference.

And here's where I'm, uh, honestly, probably more cynical about

this issue than probably anybody else you're gonna listen to.

Because there were so many, um, social media posts, official statements

about we condemn antisemitism, this is horrible, et cetera, et cetera.

Uh, but these, first of all, this was an assassination of

Israeli diplomats on US soil.

So it wasn't, they weren't targeted because they were Jews.

They were targeted because they were representing the Israeli government.

That doesn't make it okay, but there's this line between antisemitism and

anti-Zionism that always gets blurred.

Um, and I think it's just, first of all, worth pointing that out.

So if you're condemning the assault on these two people,

what you're actually condemning is somebody going after Zionism.

Not Jews and a lot of the people who are criticizing the antisemitism, it's

o it's safe to criticize antisemitism, but it's not safe to, um, criticize

anti-Zionism because Zionism, they're, that's the genocidal maniacs, the

Zionists need to be destroyed, but of course, don't kill the Jews.

It's like, Hey, you, you say this stuff long enough about one thing,

they're gonna do the other thing.

I don't know if that was very articulate, but that that's 0.1.

And the second thing I just want to say here is that no matter how

morally reprehensible you think, what Israel's actions and Gaza or how

morally reprehensible, reprehensible, you think Israel's actions and Gaza.

Are, and I happen to think they are morally gross.

I don't think you can argue any other way, like the extent to which we're here

now, like it's morally reprehensible.

Even if you bathe yourself in a difference, like on an objective

level, um, every time something like this happens, even the people who

would support criticism of the Israeli government, um, on the insider,

like, well, that could have been me.

And so like the strategic logic for having a safe homeland for

Jews, uh, makes a lot of sense.

And we have to look the other way because if we don't, like, they're just, they're

just gonna try and kill us all again.

Um, and so it, it excu, it excuses all manner of sins.

I think I, I'm, I'm not saying that it does excuse the sins, I'm just

saying that it, like, it creates this dissonance from the exact people you need.

You need their minds to change.

Like they're also getting attacked in this different vector and so

they're gonna look the other way and continue doing what they're doing

because they have post-traumatic stress disorder of their own.

So, I dunno, there's a lot in there that could get me canceled.

But, uh, take it any direction you want.

I am not gonna take it in any direction.

You're not.

Okay, cool.

No, I think this is one of those where you have to cook yourself.

Uh, I think you get a pass.

I'm

cooking myself here.

I don't know why I'm, I'm suggesting something.

I just, there was something that really bothered me about this reflexive,

oh, we condemn antisemitism and it's like, okay, like bullshit.

Like nobody condemns antisemitism.

I, I dunno.

It just bothered.

Well, no, I think, I think what you're saying is that,

uh, you can't actually, I think what you're saying is that you

cannot just create these platitudes.

About condemning antisemitism.

If you then don't accept at least some level of Zionism,

you know, let's say, you know what I mean?

If, if, if antisemitism is like from zero to a 10, and if we all

agree, then only zero is acceptable.

Only zero antisemitism is acceptable on planet Earth.

Mm-hmm.

You can't be like, oh, well I'm a two outta 10 antisemite.

Well, that's two outta 10 too many.

You know, like, so if only zero is acceptable, then if there's a zero to a

10 on Zionism, you, you have to accept some Zionism because Zionism, which is

a very loaded term today, but really it was just in my very sort of bizarre

nihilist interpretation of what Zionism is, is it's basically 19th century I.

European style nation state movement.

In other words, Jewish, it's Jewish

nationalism.

It's the only nationalist movement in the world that has a different word for it.

It's like, okay, French nationalism fine, but Jewish nationalism.

Oh, but that's Zionism.

That's poisonous.

I would even say nationalism.

The word nationalism is now also been denigrated in many ways.

But in the 19th century, like Jews are sitting in Vienna, they're sitting in

Minsk, they're sitting in Thessaloniki, they're sitting in all these, uh,

cities in Europe, and they're looking at Italians creating a country out

of something that's never existed.

Right.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, if you know Italian history, what Gary BDI did is he put

together, oh, it looks like a boot.

Let's make it into Italy, like it was Rome 2000 years ago.

Italy is as much a Zionist entity for Italians.

There were people in the boot that didn't speak Italian, for God's sakes, France.

What France did.

We today speak I de France French because it's completely destroyed different

linguistic dialects, including some that were more like Catalan in the South.

So the Jews are sitting in Europe throughout the 19th century looking at

what's going on around them while they're being persecuted every day for being Jews.

Right?

I mean, this isn't like a a, a new phenomenon, obviously.

It's not a Holocaust phenomenon, it's a predates it massively.

So if you're Jewish and you're sitting, you're looking at Germans creating

Germany out of nothing, you look at Italians creating Italy out of nothing,

and you look at the French, okay?

It's not fair to say the France didn't exist.

It did, but it became much more dominated by El de France, French.

I think Zionism comes from that history, and so it's simply doing what Europeans

did in Europe, but for Jews somewhere, you know, anywhere it ended up being

Palestine, of course, we're dealing with the consequences of that decision.

But the point I think is that

I understand your point, that's all I'm saying.

Like you cannot, no.

And you cannot just say, well, I'm not, I'm a I, I I delore

anti-Semitism, but you know, Zionism in the Jewish state are evil.

And the point is, well, actually one solves for the other.

You know?

And I, and I get that.

The question I have is, is there a pursuit of Zionism that actually

is going to create stability over the next hundred years for.

Israelis.

Yeah, probably not.

And I appreciate your use of the dials.

'cause what I said was probably a little bit too flippant.

I'm sure the earlier stuff will get aggregated, but like, think of it this

way, if you're a 10 on anti-Zionism, what that means is you think the Jews

should not be allowed to have a state.

Exactly.

And that is anti-Semitism.

Yes.

That means the destruction of the Jews full stop.

Now that's one position you can be critical of Zionism and say.

Jews, like everybody else in the world, should not commit war crimes.

And if they do, they'll be punished like everybody else in the world.

But as a people, they do have a right to a state as legally

defined, blah, blah, blah.

And the thing that I'm going after here is I, I'm raise my hand.

I'm in print criticizing Zionism, like a self-critical like person

who has like spent a lot of his time thinking about these things.

Like, well, like I said, what Israel's doing, God were reprehensible.

But the thing that bothers me is the people who were saying, I hate

antisemitism, but I know I have the receipts to say, okay, but you

are also saying there should be no Jewish state, that it should be

Palestine from the river to the sea.

And that like, that, like you condemning antisemitism.

Like, I'm not, like, that's what gets me.

So no,

I, I think that's perfectly fair.

I mean, and by the way, I do think it's anti-Semitic to say that

Israel should not exist, obviously.

Would it not be anti Italian?

Would it not be discriminatory towards Italians as an ethnic group?

If you said that Italy should not exist, we should go back to, you know, uh, the

papal states, as you and I actually kind of inferred earlier in this podcast,

but like, you know, like Italy should be split up into Kingdom of Sicily and

the Papal states and you know, like Venice should be its own city state.

Like that would be, I think, antit Italian.

So I think it's interesting because, you know, what I think confuses a lot

of people is that many people think that being Jewish is about a religion, you

know, and obviously I'm, I'm walking on eggshells heels because I'm not

Jewish, but I think that there is a, um, pretty deep historical ethnolinguistic

component to a Jewish identity.

In other words, you do not have to be observant Jew to be Jewish.

In particularly, in particularly because you know, when shit hits

the fan in history, when they come to get you, they don't ask you

if you can recite from the Torah.

You know what I mean?

You know what I mean?

Right.

Yeah.

No, and this goes back to the power index and why I'm so pessimistic about

Israel on the power index, because if you look back at the history of Jewish

polities in the Middle East, like getting away from the, the politics

and ideology, now there's a reason there haven't been that many of them.

And that's because this geography is hard to control.

And it's also because, uh, Jews are all like, are their own worst enemies.

They're always at each other's throats.

There's always different factions who hate each other and won't listen to each other.

And usually they start fighting each other, and then the Romans or the

Persians or the Babylonians or the Ottomans come in and sweep them up

because they can't have a unified front.

Hmm.

And the reason I'm so pessimistic about Israel over the next 30 years is that

you, you're seeing that internally in Israeli politics right now where you've

got the religious, um, demographics or increasing the secular Jews.

Are kind of dying out.

There's an apathy on the, like the left hasn't been able to meaningfully

challenge for, you know, um, the Israeli government in decades basically died with

the end of the, the peace process before.

There is such a large Arab population now that nobody wants to

work with that it basically means you're gonna get center, right?

Governments or the left is gonna have to work with the Arabs.

And for as enlightened as the left is, it really won't work with the Arabs.

It doesn't want to.

So it's just like this, uh, the, the way that Israeli demographics look going

forward, especially if you're gonna add, if you're gonna conquer Gaza and you're

gonna conquer the West Bank too, which is the path that Israel is on right now.

Like, it just leads to the sense where Israeli society itself is not

gonna be able to defend from the external threats that are coming.

And that's always been the end of Jewish independence.

Uh, see that's an interesting

one.

So in other words, we both agree that it should be definitely zero on

the zero to tens antisemitism line.

That's a fact.

Um, but what you're saying is that on the, is existence of Israeli state.

You also, like, you have to be zero on anti, uh, Zionism

to be zero on antisemitism.

But there is some cri criticism of where is this enough.

Mm-hmm.

If I, if I listen to you as an external, non-Jewish observer, an

interpreter here, I would say that you're seeing, like, look, the risk here

is that Israel in pursuit of security basically chews up too much territory

and he can't digest it at some point.

And so there is a point where maybe this is enough.

Mm-hmm.

Is that, I mean, and, and I, and I see what's going on in Gaza and like

that piece of land, I mean, it has no real benefit at all to Israel.

I mean, you know, like, I mean it's, it's, it's truly, it has

absolutely no geographical benefit.