Foreigners.

Welcome to another episode of Geopolitical Cousins.

This was meant to be the Bias Part two episode, but so much stuff has been happening in the world since last we recorded ICE in Minneapolis, China, military rumors, Mark Carney in Canada asserting itself an aircraft carrier headed towards Iran and everything else.

So we work a bunch of different things here.

I'm recording.

It's 9:30pm on Monday, January 26th.

I think this will publish Wednesday morning, so it should be current.

Marco's had a busy week of travel.

I could feel myself deteriorating as the podcast went on.

So you get some unhinged takes towards the end.

If you have questions, comments, anything you want to tell us about the podcast, email me at jacobacobshapir.com, i'll make sure that Marco sees it.

We're going to have a mailbag episode in the next couple weeks, so now's the time to get your feedback in to see if we can answer your questions in our next episode.

I think that is about it.

I will be quiet.

Cheers.

Take care of each other.

We'll see you out there.

Treat.

All right, listeners.

Cousin, I think our Bias episode was particularly well timed because what, that episode came out, was it a week ago?

Yeah, I think it was a week ago.

Right.

I can't even remember now.

Time and space doesn't mean anything to me.

And since then, it feels like the world is trying to get even crazier.

We've got Mark Carney's speech at Davos and everything that Canada is doing in response to President Trump.

We have what's happening in the United States and Minneapolis.

We have senior generals and the Chinese military being purged.

We have Japanese bonds going crazy.

Like, it really has been, like, kind of a nuts week.

I'm having trouble keeping up with everything.

And you and I have also both been on the road.

I thought, though, well, I don't know, do you want to begin with some United States, Minneapolis, or do you want to begin with Mr. Carney in Canada?

I think given the geopolitical relevance, we should probably start with Carney.

Okay.

Lot of feedback.

Lot of feedback from the speech.

Did you want to set it up in any way?

Did you want to reference certain points?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll.

I'll set it up this way.

So Mark Carney had a really, let's use the word, interesting week before we start adding, you know, qualifiers to it.

It started with making a deal with China, which I believe we talked about on the last podcast.

And it wasn't like the.

The subst.

The deal was more about how he said it and what he said about it rather than the actual deal, because I think as we talked about it, was small potatoes.

And when he was asked about it just over the weekend, he sort of said, guys, like, I'm not going against the usmca.

Like, I can't do that because Canada follows the rule of law.

That was a nice little shot in there.

But then he went to Qatar and accepted billions of dollars worth of investment from Qatar.

So he didn't go.

I saw some people out there reporting that he went straight from China to Davos.

He didn't.

He stopped in Qatar, got some.

Some commitments for a billion dollars worth of investment in energy infrastructure, which if you're a candidate, you desperately need, because all your energy infrastructure points down.

And if you want to export other places in the world, you're going to have to, like, have that energy infrastructure going to different places.

And then on top of that, you have his speech at Davos, which, cousin.

The way I wanted to set it up was maybe the most important geopolitical speech of the century.

I jotted down a quick list of speeches that might be similar.

I had George Bush's Axis of Evil, State of the Union 2000, 2002 speech, I had Barack Obama's 2004 Democratic convention speech, and I had Mario Draghi's 2012 whatever it takes speech.

And I think Carney bests all of them, but I think that.

I don't know.

I couldn't come up with any more.

I'm curious if you have a list.

And ever since Carney gave that speech, it's been Carney versus Trump celebrity death match.

It's Trump tweeting, we're going to have 100% tariffs on Canada if they do this.

And Canada is being lost to China, and we'll never let them be lost to China and everything else.

So that was my list of speeches.

I think it might be the most important speech I've heard in my lifetime as an analyst.

And like I said, like, certainly in the century.

Where do you want to start to pick it up?

Oh, I should also say, I mean, I know we're about to redo the Geopolitical Power Poll country rankings.

Like, we're coming up on 12 months since we did the last one.

And I had Canada too low.

I had Mark Carney too low on my leadership leaderboard.

I was wrong about Canada.

Maple syrup.

Power to the max.

Marco was right.

Take it from there.

Mark.

Well, I mean, well, you know, I don't know.

Like, I Don't know if we can really counter chickens yet or counter moose.

No, we can't.

I.

Well, the thing about it was.

I'll just say two things about it.

I know I just tried to turn it over to you.

But first, I think one of the things I admire about leaders so much is when they fight against constraints.

Like Mark Carney is obviously constrained and what he's trying to do flies in the face of his constraints.

And I admire the sort of Don Quixote foolhardiness of it.

I also think, however, when I was reflecting on it, and I think you had this right, I think I underestimated the extent to which there's also a constraint for being the Canadian prime minister right now, which is the constraint of not being too much of a pussy.

Because the Canadians are riled up about this, rightfully so, and they've discovered their nationalism and they've discovered their impoliteness.

And I think you made this point a couple of times.

They will stomach more pain than the Americans will on this if they feel like their national distinctiveness is at stake.

And that's sort of what's at stake.

And Mark Carney is rising to that moment.

Maybe it blows up in his face, but here, today on January 26th, like 2026, I'm impressed because he is fighting against the constraint.

So anyway, take it from there.

Well, by the way, I admire that too.

I mean, my framework is pretty.

When I do my job, day to day job, I focus on constraints almost, you know, with a cell, with us, like a zealot focus.

Zealous focus.

Right.

But yes, when we rank policymakers, obviously you don't want someone who just throws up their hands and is like, well, I guess that's it, we're screwed.

But rather says, okay, well, what can we do to obviate constraints?

And one of the things that I think has been so important is that Canadian prime ministers have always whispered and clutched their pearls about, oh, no, what if the Americans get mean?

And it's like, well, they got mean, call them out on it.

Because it's also very difficult for American presidents to rally the troops, to rally the populace around the idea or the narrative that Canada's evil.

So in a way, Canada has an advantage here because you can rally Canadians around the idea that Americans are being mean to Canada.

It's very difficult to rally Americans around the idea that Canada is somehow doing something wrong to America.

And so Canadian leaders actually have a weird advantage in that.

And Prime Minister Carney, first and foremost, if President Trump goes Hard against him.

He's going to call an election to win a majority.

Like, first, let's just be very clear here.

He will crush a majority.

That speech was extremely well received.

From Alberta to Quebec, you know, two places where Carney's not very well liked.

And so he's crushed it.

Now, what did he crush?

In a weird way, I think that Carney's speech is the response of the west to Vladimir Putin's famous 2007 Munich speech, which, for those of you who are listening to this, Google it.

There's a whole Wikipedia page on a speech at the Munich Security Conference.

This was a very big speech.

And effectively Vladimir Putin stood at a Munich conference and was like, hey, guys, this unipolar world you guys have decided exists, this world where America decides what to do, bombs, whoever he wants, without a Security Council organization.

This is going to blow up in your face.

You know, he, like, Putin was saying, like, I'm coming.

And of course, in 2008, he invades Georgia in a weird way.

Cardi, first Western leader, some.

What is it, 18 years later?

Did I get my math wrong?

Right.

Math is hard.

Hashtag math is hard.

Close enough.

Mark Carney says, yeah, Putin was right in 2007.

Like, the world is not unipolar.

Might makes right, and we need to adapt to it.

The part of the speech that I like the most is that Carney effectively tells the assembled elites, like, stop with your pearl clutching.

Right?

That's.

That's not a strategy.

Okay?

The strategy is let's find new allies, let's find new trade partners.

Let's do something actively, like, might makes right.

Yeah, Putin was right in 2007.

And guess what?

America's kind of joined that side of the ledger in some ways, at least in looking at the world in a Machiavellian rather than magnanimous ways.

So let's do about something about it.

My favorite part of this speech was at the very beginning.

The Davos crowd is just on autopilot, you know what I mean?

They're clutching their latest copy of the Economist.

God knows what they're doing.

And he says, take down the sign from the window.

It's time to take the sign.

And he's basically telling all of them it's time to stop pretending like what Trump is doing is ghastly.

It's mean, it's evil.

Like, shut up and let's roll up our sleeves and deal with the man.

Cause he's the President of the United States of America.

And we have to also deal with China.

And so On.

So he says that and everybody starts clapping because I think they thought he was going to say, then let's stand for the rules, and so on.

And he's like, no, I'm not going to stand for rules.

I'm going to make a deal with China.

And don't you accuse me of making a deal with an evil regime, because I don't see the world anymore in good and evil.

I see it in what countries can do for my country.

And that's it.

And so in a weird way, the reason it's such a profound speech is because it embraces Trumpism.

It embraces parts of this new realist, Machiavellian world and says, look, man, Canada's not going to just get eaten alive here.

Yeah, we're going to play this game, too.

So if you don't like my deal with China, give me a better deal.

And that's what's fascinating about it, because he's saying, like, let's go.

And you know, I think in a way, why did it take Canada to make this speech?

Why wasn't it somebody else?

I don't know.

I don't know.

But there is something in the Canadian mentality that says that if somebody cross checks your star player, the goon comes in from the fourth line and his job is purely to beat the shit out of the other player who just did that, there is something, like, still chivalrous about Canadian mentality that I think is really hard for, like, in other words, what I'm saying is there's still something about Canada and Canada's geography and climate and culture and history where you have to occasionally just, like, stab the grizzly bear in the neck.

And I think Prime Minister Carney more than anyone else did that.

And then after him, a slew of other leaders stepped up.

Like Frederick Merz's speech, which didn't get as much, you know, coverage, was similarly, like, sober and like, okay, cool, real politic is back.

We get it.

We're ready to step up, unite Europe and wake up the Vermont, you know, like, just kidding, just kidding.

He's not just kidding.

I don't know if you saw this.

Rheinmetall is going to be able to produce more artillery than all of the US Defense security complex.

Well, obviously, like, who's surprised by this?

Like, anyone who said the Germans were just sleepy and we're like, come on, man, this is this country Rose twice.

Okay?

Like, I think they have that lever somewhere still on their dashboard.

So, yeah, I can't say enough about it.

To stick with our brand, A little bit like this very clearly maps onto a scene in the Wire where Omar is in court and he's going at it with the defense attorney who represents one of the drug dealers or whatever.

And the attorney is trying to make it out that if you haven't watched the Wire, go watch the Wire.

Omar is this incredible character who robs drug dealers and is also homosexual.

That's his whole thing.

And so the attorney is trying to make it out like Omar's testimony can't be trusted because he robs drug dealers and he does all these terrible things.

And Omar's basically like, we're both in the game, man.

Like, I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase, but it's all in the game, right?

And that's exactly what Mark Carney did.

He, like, looked at Donald Trump and said, okay, like, you've got the aircraft carriers, I've got the maple syrup, but it's all in the game, right?

If you want to play the game, we can play the game.

I think what he's saying.

I think what he's telling him is not so much maple syrup, but he's saying, like, I've got the geographical land bridge between TPP and eu.

Like, let's go.

I've got the natural resources you want.

Let's go.

I've got norms and values, and you cannot conquer me unless you enslave me.

And American public is not going to be cool with that.

Like, there's just.

We're not there.

Like, we're not even close to being there.

You cannot conquer Canada if you're American.

You cannot.

There is no military operation in which the United States of America wins that war.

It just doesn't.

It lost against Vietnam.

It withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan.

You're just not going to be able to convince a nice kid from Arkansas to go and, like, what, conduct counterinsurgency against, like, Steve in Manitoba?

Like, what are you talking about?

This is a fantasy.

And by the way, if in some way, shape or form, America did annex Canada, you've got 40 million people who are going to turn America into slightly more like Canada.

Well, welcome to universal healthcare.

Know what I mean?

That's why he knows it's a bluff.

He knows there's nothing America can do.

And if they impose these onerous tariffs and Canadian goods, first of all, prices are going to go up to Americans because they buy Canadian goods more than anything else.

But the second issue for the U.S. for Canada, is it's going to unite Canada.

Yeah, there'll be a bad Recession.

I think Carney is making a bet Canadians are willing to have that deep recession at this point.

They're pissed.

You know, they're not coming to the US in droves.

They are not shopping for American products.

Like this is.

He has made this gamble, and I think it's a correct one.

Which is why subsequent to the speech, there was a lot of chest bumping by President Trump and his team.

But they've walked some of that stuff back.

A hundred percent tariffs on Canada for doing a deal with China.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

That's.

If they do a free trade deal with China.

Who the hell has a free trade deal with China?

Like, nobody.

Also, hold on.

That's Scott Besson and Q. Scotty doesn't know because cannot have enough of Scott Bessen going out there trying to put rational lipstick on the irrational pig.

The idea that Scott Besset, like Scott Bessant, comes in and says, oh, no, no, it's only if they have a free trade deal with China.

That's what Donald Trump is thinking.

Okay, fair.

We don't know.

We don't know.

But the thing that Carney knows is that something that we talked last year, which is nobody wanted a trade war in America.

The polls are very clear.

It's the least popular policy of President Trump.

We can talk about Minneapolis and ice.

Let me tell you, President Trump's immigration policy is polling better than tariffs.

So this is.

Although that's starting to flag, too.

Although.

We can talk about that.

Fine, Fine.

But I'm just saying, like, this is an egregiously unpopular policy that President Trump has imposed.

Granted, I can defend it.

I can defend President Trump.

I can say, like, yeah, America needs $3 trillion worth of revenue.

Fine.

God bless the tariffs.

It's the only thing that saved us from a bond market carnage.

The point is, Cardi knows that imposing more tariffs is just kind of like closer you get to the midterms.

It's just.

It's messy.

And so he timed the trip to Canada.

He timed the speech.

And, yeah, I think it was an.

It was really well done.

Now, you said it's the greatest speech of the 20.

Of the 21st century.

We've had 26 years of the 21st century.

Fine.

He's used the words, the narratives, the verbiage.

I've been telling my clients was the reality for 15 years.

So obviously it's close to my heart.

However, I do want to say one thing, though, Jacob.

It's not like he's saying something that you and I have not been talking on this podcast or in our research.

He's just like, the sad truth is that Mark Carney in January of 2026 has to tell these supposed to elites what's been the case for like five, 10 years.

It's not like Donald Trump ushered in a multipolar world.

And it's not like Donald Trump has made it clear in 2025 that the world is run by great powers.

So in a way, you know, what I'm trying to say is like it is a reflection of the sad status of the foreign policy, business and financial elites that Mark Carney's speech is that profound.

It shouldn't be profound.

This has been a fair complete for a decade.

Yeah, I mean I hear you.

You know the, the part of the speech that I thought was, was strongest, it's this part and you, you paraphrased it well.

But there's just a couple sentences I want to read because I think they really are like that important.

And he talks about how we knew the story of the international rules based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically.

And we knew that international law applied with varying r on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lane, stable financial system, blah blah, blah.

This bargain no longer works.

Let me be direct.

We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

There's a couple things in there.

The first thing I think that is remarkable what he's doing is that there have been, to your point, leaders who have called out some of the asymmetry here and some of the hypocrisy, but none quite so starkly.

There have been none who have then tied that and not from the West.

None who have called it American hegemony, a fiction.

And none who are saying, hey, this is not some piecemeal thing where we have to fix it or we have to band together to do whatever.

He calls it a rupture, we're done.

This is cataclysmic.

We have to function in a completely different world.

And to your point, it's not just that he's the first one in the west to do it because there are concentric circles of American alliance.

There's NATO, there's Japan is in there too a conquered power that the US rehabilitated everything else.

Canada is one of the five eyes, it's the US neighbor.

Like these are the, like these five countries together are the core of the western liberal whatever order.

And I think in that sense, you're right.

Carney has a special power because he's the one that's next door.

He's in the heart of the Five Eyes alliance.

And he's saying no.

He's not just saying like, no.

He's saying like, this is done.

It's ruptured.

There's no going back.

Like, I'm, I'm done with this shit.

And so the French and the Europe and the everybody else is like, oh my God.

Like, it would be as if.

It's not quite as bad as if Texas came out and said this, but it's about as close as you get to Texas saying this about what the White House is doing versus anything else.

Let me write on that because that's such an important point.

Like, it's Canada saying it.

This is.

Can look like I did graduate school in political science in Canada.

Canada's the country of constructivism for those of you who are listening.

This just for fun, I apologize.

Constructivism is where you say realism is not true.

Norms and values matter.

Why?

Because Canada is a country of norms and values.

It's a country, a middle power that's always stood on its morality.

Right?

That's where its power was kind of derived out of.

And so for Canada to make this speech.

You're absolutely right, Jacob.

It's like, it's not Germany.

Oh, Germany just woke up.

Oh, here comes, you know, Mertz with the Wehrmacht, the French.

Oh, they were always secretly like Machiavellian, you know, of course.

But no, it's Canadian Prime Minister.

And you nailed it.

That is the quote to read and reread and reread and reread.

Because he's not just saying this world was great and it's over.

He's saying it was fake to begin with.

And we Canadians participated in its fakeness.

Oh, responsibility to protect the foreign policy idea that countries lose their sovereignty because they failed to protect their citizens.

Oh, yeah, we used that to illegally bomb Serbia in 1999 because, hey, it was cool and Bill Clinton needed a distraction.

Yeah, we participated in that, says the Prime Minister of Canada.

Not in those words.

We undermined the very normative value driven world by ourselves being hypocrites, subverting it.

Allowing Vladimir Putin to make a speech in 2007 that quite frankly was quite cogent because it was the west that had done willy nilly whatever it had done.

The bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and then subsequently in 2008, severing a piece of a country because, well, they were mean to a minority.

That is what happened in Kosovo and Serbia, which I'm not going to get into, because I, quite frankly, don't care.

And they can do whatever they want.

I am an aloof, indifferent nihilist.

But my point is that when all those hypocrisies stack up and then Vladimir Putin calls you on it because suddenly oil prices go higher and he suddenly has more material wealth.

And now his turn to use responsibility to protect, to invade Georgia, which Sergey Lavrov did with a Cheshire Cat smile.

Oh, no, we're going to Cheshire Cat.

We're gonna clutch our pearls in collective.

You know, and this is what Carney's saying.

Like, all this shit's gotta stop.

And we at Davos need to take the sign out of the window that, you know, proletariat of the world, unite.

Cause we were the ones that, quite frankly, eroded the systems ourselves.

So it's time to play, you know, for keeps.

And what he's basically saying is he's not speaking to Donald Trump.

He's speaking to the liberal intelligentsia, the establishment with their master's of degrees from Johns Hopkins, sais Columbia, you know, the.

The learned elites who scoff at all this nonsense.

He's saying, like, listen, man, when I make a deal with China, I don't want to hear about Xinjiang.

I don't want to hear about Hong Kong, okay?

I want you to shut up, up and let me make a deal that's good for Canada, Period.

End of story.

Mic drop.

Yeah, well, and, like, I mean, this was already all in the works a little bit.

But it's no coincidence that today the EU announced its free trade agreement with India, something they've been pursuing since 2013 and has only been accelerated in the last 12 months because of everything President Trump has done.

It's not a coincidence that Europe finally force fed the Mercos here, mercosur free trade deal through the system, even though the French are screaming bloody murder about it, or whatever it is the French like to scream about, because they know that they need to do this.

Canada also teeing up agreements with India to come forward, you know, making amends in the Gulf, as we already talked about.

Like, it's just.

It's a whole bunch of things that are together.

And it's also, you know, before.

Before all this stuff happened this week, because we have tons of things to talk about.

I told you that I had just watched that Nuremberg movie and that you should watch it.

And we should spend some time, you know, critiquing it or at least talking about in the podcast.

I don't think we should do it for the whole time here.

But actually, what Carney was saying intersects directly with this, because Nuremberg is, in a sense, where the fiction begins.

I was watching my wife, who is not a history nerd and not a geopolitics nerd, and, like, about 20, and she was into it.

Like, usually when I pick things like this, she's like, yeah, she, like, falls asleep or she, like, she puts up with it, whatever.

But, like, 20, 25 minutes into this, she was in.

And at one point she looked at me and she was like, is this really how they.

Like, who.

Like, what is the.

Like, how do these people have authority?

Like, how.

How did they invent, like, these judges have what, power?

And I'm like, yeah, that's exactly the point.

Because the victors created these tribunals and decided that they should put people on trial and embarrass them or defeat them or whatever.

And the entire premise of the movie, that you have to somehow embarrass Guring, like, it's not enough that you defeated the Nazis.

You can't just hang him.

You have to string him up with justice and everything else and show, yes, he's guilty.

And it's this battle against this evil person that Russell Crowe plays incredibly like, oh, my God, Russell Crowe, wonderful performance.

It's the beginning of it because.

Yeah, go ahead.

No, I didn't know what you wanted me to watch Nuremberg for, so I watched it for different directions.

And I'm glad you picked this one, because I did also saw that, and it was gnawing at me in the back.

And that was also something.

I actually watched it with my children, which.

Parental advisory.

Not a great idea.

There are some scenes that are pretty ghastly, but, you know, I'm of the view they should watch it as.

As soon as possible.

So you're watching it.

And that is also what they picked up on.

It's.

It's like, well, what's the big deal?

Why don't they just shoot them?

You know, like, why?

Why not?

And it's like, well, because we're.

We're a country of laws.

And quite frankly, Guring makes a very good counterpoint to the shrink that's in his cell.

Like, what was firebombing or Tokyo about?

Oh, you dropped two atom bombs.

And then there's like, oh, well, you know, like, Japan attacked us.

And, you know, he's like, yeah, but, like.

And we needed to destroy their factories.

It's like, bro, time off.

Like what?

You know, like, let's.

And.

And this is.

This is the thing again.

Most people miss Mark Carney's.

The point of Mark Carney's speech, it's not a criticism of Trump in many ways.

It's an embrace of elements of reality, which is might makes right in this world.

Canada needs to act in its own interest.

So does America, so does India, so does Portugal, so does every other country.

But that means.

Don't come at me from this normative, moralistic point.

Don't come at me about talking to me, how we have to set up tribunals.

You know what I mean?

That's what's interesting.

He's trying to increase the maneuvering room for himself domestically, particularly in a country so seeped with morality and a sort of a holier than dao, which is something that annoys Americans about Canadians, right?

Every time.

Well, we didn't follow you in Iraq because, you know, you guys were like, that was illegal.

You know, like, there's a lot of that in the Canadian subconsciousness.

And what Mark Carney is saying, like, we need to leave that behind because we will be eaten alive if we're sitting here constantly thinking about our values and norms.

Because let's.

Let's just be very honest with ourselves.

We kind of always were hypocrites about that to begin with.

And I think that this is actually very profound and important because in a way, it makes for a safer word world.

And this is why I brought up this book before George Cannon's Diplomacy.

Read it.

George Cannon's point, which has been dispelled by many political scientists.

But George Cannon argued, one of the reasons we have so many blunders in foreign policy is because we try to paint everyone as the next Hitler.

But if everyone's the next Hitler, well, then you can never just sit down and make a deal.

You can't end the war in Ukraine because Putin is the next Hitler.

You cannot just talk to Desi Rodriguez in Caracas because she is, I guess, goering to Madura's Hitler.

And the world, actually, I think, will be safer if this part of Trumpism does take root.

This idea that, like, wait a minute, let's pump the brakes on morality and norms.

Let's just kind of like, think about interests and find common grounds to, you know, put the ball on the floor, pump the brakes a little bit and so, and arrest conflicts in early stages before they blow up.

And I hope the Democrats and the liberals in America are watching Carney's speech and getting it are watching what's happening in Europe because these countries are not rejecting Trump's embrace of realism and Machiavelliism.

They're actually modifying it for their own interests.

And it would be a mistake if the next President of the United States of America decides to abandon Trump's approach to foreign policy, in my view.

I think there's many things that Trump is doing that should probably be abandoned or whatever.

But on this issue, I think it will be a mistake, both for US Interests, but also for, like, the world, which is a very.

Which is a very dangerous thing to say because you're basically saying, like, yeah, I mean, in this Machiavellian world, you just gotta read the Prince by Machiavelli and pursue that kind of a, you know, policy.

The truth is that if the majority of countries are doing it, as Carney said, you're on the menu.

Yeah, I mean, there's so much in that.

I mean, to your point, Leo Strauss called this the reducto odd Hitlerum, and it goes back to Nuremberg.

Precisely to your point, like the fact that we had to string up the Nazis as the worst and the Japanese to a lesser extent, although it's not the same.

Nobody's talking about Tojo being a fascist and like, like the left and right not accusing each other of being Japanese fascists.

It's always Hitler.

But to your point, like, about it being more peaceful, I think I would push back there a little bit in the sense that it's better for the peoples of the world who have power.

And I think, like, we actually have a real life example playing out here.

This, I think, has gotten buried under everything that's been happening over the last week.

But I, as you can probably tell, I have a soft spot for leaders fighting against constraints.

That also means I have a soft spot for underdogs.

Nations that are trying to become nations that probably won't become nations because of their constraints, but are constantly striving to get there.

The Kurds have always been an underdog to me and one that I've been interested in from a very intellectual point of view.

And they've always been their own worst enemy.

There's multiple different Kurdish groups, they speak different languages.

The Iraqi Kurds, while Saddam was gassing them, were fighting a civil war amongst themselves.

If they would just stop squabbling and get together, they'd probably have a state of their own in the Middle east and they could have 40 million plus people and everything else.

Anyway.

The Syrian regime is trying to conquer the Syrian Kurds, and is doing so apparently with the US's blessing.

And the Syrian Kurds are now getting support from the Iraqi Kurds and the Iranian Kurds and the Turkish Kurds and they're all sort of banding together.

And the reason I want to bring this up is because for groups that are able to secure power for themselves, and we'll see if the Kurds can pull this off, they have a lot that is working against them that we can talk about.

Yes.

Like, as soon as you can defend your borders, then you have a bit more peaceful of a world.

If you can't, though, this world sucks for you.

Ukraine is another example of this.

Ukraine was able to defend itself.

Ukraine will have a more successful and peaceful and prosperous future for being able to do it.

But if you're a country like Armenia or if you're the Rohingya or if you're any of these other groups that are just at the mercy of the great.

Like, the whole thing about the liberal international order was it was supposed to protect those people, that it was supposed to be idealistic and high minded.

And Carney's right.

Like, it was always a bill of goods.

It was always a fiction, but we at least believed in the fiction.

We were Sisyphus, we were at least trying to push the boulder up the mountain.

And the fact that the Canadian Prime Minister said, I'm done pushing the boulder up the mountain.

I'm just gonna go over here.

I'm just gonna let it go, roll down.

Like, fuck this.

Like, the Germans are like, fuck.

Atlas literally Shrugged.

Atlas Shrugged.

I shrugged.

I'm done.

Like, I'm done picking it up again.

As somebody just incredible.

Look, as somebody who comes from a small country, I originally, I gotta tell you that, like, I just don't hear you on this, you know, and no, the hypocrisy is just so deep.

Like, what if, what if we just decided that Tariq Aziz was the Desi Rodriguez?

What if we said, like, hey, cool, the foreign Minister of Iraq, you know, Tariq Aziz, why don't you take over?

You know, what if we didn't paint the Baathist regime as evil?

Why didn't, what if we didn't have to do that?

What if we didn't have to go through these idiotic motions that some somehow morality and norms, you know, like, required us to cleanse Iraq of its Baathist stink?

Then quarter of a million Iraqis would not have perished in the subsequent insurgency and civil war.

Like, and that's what I mean.

That's what I mean, the, the sinews of this morality require war and foreign policy to always be wreathed in a perception of high mindedness and good.

And my point is that when states contest each other in the international arena, there is no good.

There's just interests.

And if we are open minded about that, if we are honest, brutally honest, insultingly honest, we want Venezuelan oil, we can at least then carve out what it is that we can speak like humans to each other.

I want your oil because I'm more powerful.

And then Desi Rodriguez and it's like, you know, you go, you nab Maduro and then you could talk to Desi Rodriguez, the vice president of Venezuela, and say, like, I want your oil.

What are you going to do to prevent me from bombing you further?

Here's some oil.

Good, done, done.

And then people don't die.

And so that's the thing when we are moralistic.

I mean, you're right.

I think there will be occasions in which my view will be wrong.

You know, like you will point to some case where like, there's just nobody who speaks for the Kurds.

There's just nobody.

And you will be right in those cases.

Yeah.

And, and maybe nobody was ever going to speak for them anyway.

I mean, it's not like, I mean, the other thing about the UN was it was supposed to be never again.

And how many times has it happened again since the organization that was founded?

One thing that I just want to be very clear on, I want to be.

I, I really am not an expert at what we're talking about right now, because this is really about just war.

This is about morality, this is about norms.

I am open to everything like this.

I don't have a high conviction view.

I have observed an incredible amount of hypocrisy over the last 25 years that you really kind of have to have been born in a non Western society to kind of look back.

Like take China, China's evil, according to most American policymakers, like straight up, it means us harm.

But if you look at the last 26 years, how many international incidents has China committed?

Like in terms of invading countries, it's built islands in the middle of nowhere in South China Sea.

How many people died in that process?

Xinjiang is the, it's part of China.

It's the most recent example.

I think the Chinese would point to Minneapolis.

You know what I mean?

Like this with.

No, no, with Xinjiang, they would point to 911 and they would describe as their 9 11.

They would point to the Arumki The Arunki riots is their version of 9, 11.

And where did that come from?

And it's an issue of national security.

You're exactly right.

But also, like, that's what they did.

But to your point, I mean, to go back to somebody that you shouted out in our Presidential power index, George H.W.

bush faced a China that did Tiananmen Square.

And did he paint China as this evil thing that had to be sanctioned in Nuremberg trials on Deng Xiaoping and everyone else?

No, he quietly communicated to them, this is not a good look.

Could you please stop doing this?

Also, we still want to keep trading and do all the things that we've been doing for the past decade.

And globalization, another example.

And everything else that was a much.

That was a much more pragmatic approach of dealing with it.

You know, again, we.

We ranked George H.W.

bush, as I put him in the starting five.

I forgot if you did or not.

But for foreign policy, I didn't.

I didn't.

But he was, he was high up.

You had him higher, though.

But, but the other one is Saddam.

Again, same thing.

Like, hey, you invaded Kuwait.

That was naughty.

I'm about to proceed to kill your entire military.

But you know what?

You want to stay in power, that's cool with me, buddy.

Like, do whatever you want, just don't do it fucking again, right?

So this is.

It's very difficult to have limited military incursions if everyone's a Hitler.

And we.

I think that's where I really do think that morality and norms are actually dangerous in the foreign policy field.

You know, they're actually dangerous.

And you know where else they're dangerous in the legal profession.

Like, again, I think I used this example before.

We do not allow defense attorneys to decide whether or not the person they're defending is vile.

You're a professional.

Shut up and go defend them.

And if you refuse, you get disbarred.

Similarly, in the conduct of foreign policy, in the context of foreign policy, there is a element of sort of, well, you have to deal with assholes and really mean people, because if you don't or if you go too far, then civilians and innocents will actually die in those military conflicts.

So anyways, I say, for one, I think that 90% of coverage of Mark Carney's speech is wrong.

The people who are covering that speech.

He's making fun of you.

He's telling you you're wrong.

And I hear your point about not being an expert on just war.

I'm not either, although I did.

I have done A lot of work on international law, but there was an extent to which international law and international rules and norms, I think they were a soft constraint.

I never put as much into them as maybe others did.

But there was.

There was a constraining factor to international law or international norms.

And I think Mark Carney has gotten rid of that.

And maybe you're right, Maybe getting rid of that, especially one that became increasingly hypocritical over time as the United States ignored it time and time again.

Maybe that leads to more stability or at least more honesty about the instability that we have.

I also cannot help but think of the Elmore Leonard joke, and I'm thinking now of Donald Trump in the United States.

If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole, but if you meet assholes all day, you're the asshole.

Like, we're sort of getting into that sort of territory for the United States here and for Donald Trump.

Okay, we've been talking about it for 40 minutes.

I want to, before we leave Mark Carney in Canada and jump on some of these other things, I want to turn it around and say, because you, you mentioned not counting our chickens before they hatch.

How does this blow up in Mark Carney's face?

Are we here in 2027 saying, yeah, like, you really should have taken the Claudia Shanebaum approach.

You really should have just, like, bent the knee and sucked it up and gotten your USMCA and then, like, done all this quietly behind the scenes.

Did you really have to go to Davos?

And I know that you're saying that the speech wasn't directed at Trump.

I think it wasn't super directed at Trump either.

But I am sure Carney relished the way that he embarrassed him in front of everyone else.

You could, you can tell that he's relishing the way that he's pummeling the bully a little bit, but the bully is stronger.

So does this blow up in his face, or do you think he's got the cards here?

Well, look, again, like, I think it's not so much that he criticized the US in that speech.

I mean, he is genuinely criticizing the liberal establishment and the elites who were our pearl clutching.

And he's saying, enough with that.

But the problem is that he is the.

He's the girl that came in, like, just an incredible dress to somebody else's wedding.

Like, that's his crime.

The crime of Prime Minister Carney is that he absolutely overshadowed everybody else, including the belle of the ball.

And Trump was, like, subdued, visibly in his Speech.

Like what?

Oh, man.

So, anyways, I think.

I think he'll be all right.

And look, my.

My view has always been that, again, problem with Canada is that its leaders have always, in hushed, referential terms, said, we cannot do that.

And my advice to the Canadian Prime Minister is cancel the F35s.

Bring your defense spending to 0% of GDP.

Just say, we're not going to do it.

It you want to invade us, invade us.

Let's go.

Let's go there.

And don't obviously do that, but you have to have chips with which to bargain.

The problem with the rest of the world, when they're faced with Trump, they try to reason with him instead of trying to get some chips with which to bargain with him, not hit him across the nose.

Don't raise tariffs.

You know, Scott Bessen always says, I always tell everyone, don't fight President Trump.

Fine, fine.

Let's take Scott Besson's advice.

But go, Go have a drink with Xi and post it on Instagram.

You know, do it for the gram.

And that's what Carney did.

The deal with China is quite vacuous, but whatever, it's a start.

It's improving relationship between China and Canada.

But it's on the gram, and Trump saw it and he got tagged, or Carney's tagged and he's following him and he's like, oh, man, he's having drinks with China.

You do that so that you can bargain it, so you can cancel it, so that you can alternate your behavior.

You cannot go into negotiations with President Trump talking about how you stormed the beaches of normandy together in 1945.

You have to go in a conversation with President Trump with some suggestions.

I have an F35.

We don't really need F35s.

The Gripen actually is a better aircraft for the Canadian conditions.

Oh, well, you know what?

We don't really need to defend because you're going to defend us anyways.

No, I'm not.

I'm going to annex you.

Well, go ahead then.

Why don't you invade?

Why don't you get the American public to support an invasion of Canada?

Oh, yeah, that's right.

You can't do that.

So let's move on to other things.

The deal with China.

You don't like it.

You don't like my deal with China.

Cool.

Offer me something else.

And that's, I think, why I do think this was necessary this time.

I think it was a bold move, but I think that Carney smells blood.

And what I mean by that is he smells that the political, domestic political system in the US Is turning against tariffs.

And so he had a little bit of room to move.

So, again, it was also bold.

Yeah, it was also an incredibly elegant.

It was also an incredibly elegant political move because to your point, the deal is pretty vacuous at the nation state level.

But the concession that he got from China was to lower tariffs on Canola Canada.

Canadian canola exports, that's a drop in the bucket for the Canadian economy.

It probably doesn't matter to most people.

And yes, you're.

Unless you're a canola farmer, but if you are a Canadian canola farmer, it's huge.

And to your point, these are the people that felt left behind by Ottawa who have been like, talking about how enough with the Justin Trudeau and he's in bed with the Chinese.

Last week I was at a conference in, in Manitoba, freezing my ass off at negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit, and I didn't hear a single negative word about Mark Carney.

When I put the slide up of him shaking hands with Xi Jinping afterwards, nobody had anything but nice things to say about him in conservative Canada.

Country.

In country that even a week ago, if I'd said a nice thing about Mark Carney, would have.

I mean, not tarred and feather me, but whatever the polite Canadian equivalent of tarring and feathering me after, after the speech would have been.

And it was nothing.

They would have bought you a beer and tried to reason with you.

God damn it.

But by the way, by the way, here's another thing you didn't hear.

Here's another thing you did not hear in Mark Carney's speech.

There wasn't a single time he put the words climate and change together.

Not once.

Because you know why?

Canada shouldn't really care about that.

Sorry, it's not in the national interest of Canada to care.

Canada is 40 million people.

If Canadians all drove EVs, you know what that would do to climate change?

Nothing.

In fact, you could argue that climate change in some ways might even benefit Canada.

Now, I'm not denying climate change.

I'm not denying it's a problem.

I'm not denying that human beings on the planet should try to do something about it.

But until they do, Canada should sell those natural gas resources because it's in their interest.

That's Mark Carney's point.

That's the point of his speech.

And that's why 99% of you listening to this.

Yes, both Trump fans and those who don't like him miss it.

It wasn't directed at Trump.

It's directed at the liberal establishment that constantly binds the hands of policymakers when they try to fight against Trump.

How is Canada going to fight against Trump?

By building fossil fuel pipelines to Europe and China?

It's not going to be by being like, you know what, let's put some solar panels.

Have you been to Edmonton in March or quite frankly, July?

What are you talking about?

You know, and that's why the Carney speech was such a breath of fresh air, because here's a prime minister of a center left, ish, I guess, liberal party of a very deeply moral and normative country saying, stop tying my hands behind my back when I fight for the interests of my country.

Make Canada great again.

Honestly.

Yeah, I am adopting some of Trump's tools and we all have to.

Otherwise we're going to be the menu, we're going to be the meal, we're going to be the course that he's going to feast on.

So I think it's.

You're absolutely right.

I don't know if it's that profound.

I have to tell you because I've been writing to my clients since 2011 that these things are happening.

So there was nothing in his speech that made me think, oh, I learned something about the state of the world today.

I think it's 15 years too late, quite frankly.

But as a policy tool, as a call for freedom and room for maneuvering, as a policymaker saying, I need to adapt my country to this world.

They may have been here for 10 years and fine, we've been all whistling by the graveyard.

I think in those terms, it is one of the greatest speeches in a very long time.

Well, yeah, and I agree with you.

There's nothing new in it.

It's the fact that the Canadian Prime Minister is saying it.

It's the cherry on top of now.

It's undeniable that what you and I have been saying for over a decade is really here.

And I love going media now where all of these geopolitics experts are sudden like, aha.

Like the world is multipolar.

Oh, yeah, that's my favorite.

Cool.

Oh, gee.

Shit, really?

Holy shit.

Thanks Tips.

Mark Carney told you that world is multipolar.

Oh, man, I love that.

Yeah.

Welcome.

Well, last thing, I actually, at first I was worried that this was going to mean bad things for the usmca.

I think it actually means good things for the usmca because you could tell that Trump is now in art of the deal mode.

He's Just like, okay, I'm going to threaten Canada with all kinds of shit.

And Mark Carney's like doing the dance.

And now I'm actually more confident that the USMC is going to get done.

Any pushback on that or you think that's interesting?

I don't know.

I mean I, I think it, in the end it has to get done.

I just don't think there's any popular support.

And by the way, for those of you listening to this and you're like, yeah, there is.

I support tariffs.

Cool story, you know, like, great, good for you.

I'm talking about data that's over.

I mean, it's overwhelming.

It's beyond overwhelming.

I mean it's just like vomit inducing level of data just clearly showing this is the least popular policy arm of this White House.

Like they, I mean, you go to conservative America to give speeches to farmers.

I go to conservative America to give speeches to farmers.

I was just in Iowa.

Great event.

That's actually one of the events where President Trump kind of announced his, what's his candidacy in 2015, the Land Investment Expo.

It was a great honor to speak there in Des Moines, my first time in Iowa.

Great people, great place, farmers in the audience.

Like, yeah, the number one concern was like, where are the immigrants?

Number two concern is will we be able to field all this agricultural output to China and other markets.

So yeah, like, there is absolutely no support for the trade policies of President Trump beyond the tariffs he's put on right now.

The tariffs you put on like there's like a tacit support.

Okay, cool.

You did this.

You raised a ton of revenue.

Well done.

You made the deals.

Well done.

But that's it now.

Okay, like that's enough.

Yeah, you know, like, can't we just.

But well, there's two things.

There's also a ton of data that shows that if USMCA does go away or if there is a Canada U.S. trade war, both sides lose, Canada loses more.

It's going to be very, very bad for Canada if it happens.

So in that sense, it's the Kissinger said this about Hafez Al Assad, that when you were negotiating with him, he wouldn't just get to the ledge, he would fling himself off the mountain.

Sure.

That he would grab a branch on the way down.

Like Mark Carney is the Hafez Al Assad here.

He has flung himself off the mountain.

He is 100% confident.

Right.

And what I would say, Jacob, is like, this is why it's such an incredible.

He should rock it to the number one spot, honestly.

Because it's finally a Canadian Prime Minister who's not afraid to just say, like, okay, let's incur some pain.

Like, it, you know, like, this is like, how are you going to deal with Trump?

You got to show him.

Like, yeah, you know what?

The Canadian public is willing to have a recession.

No, they're not.

Oh, yeah, well, they're willing not to go to Florida.

So.

Yeah, my favorite was when Ron Desantis was like, in January of 25, like, Canadians are still coming to America using like 2024 data.

No, they're not.

And I mean, some are fine, but like a third are not.

That's huge.

And yeah, like, American goods are basically being boycotted.

Like, no, Canadians are.

Carney will win a landslide if there's a recession because of Trump's tariffs.

And even if he won't, he should.

It's in his interest, in the Canadian interest that he, as you said, pretends that he will.

And that's what he's doing.

High stakes stuff.

He apparently wants and said.

It is, it's, it's, it's wonderful.

In 2008, in the, the height of the financial crisis, Mark Carney is reported to have said, there are no libertarians in financial crises.

Maybe we can update it to.

In multipolar worlds.

There are no constructivists.

I don't know.

There, there's some, there's some construction.

There's.

That's definitely a great line that four people listening to this podcast understood.

And God bless them for it.

You wasted a lot of school, a lot of time of your life in grad school.

All right, cousin, do you want to talk about Minneapolis or do you want to talk about China first?

Or do you want to try and talk about Minneapolis and China in the same thing?

It could be a game, I think.

I think there's also Iran.

I don't know if we.

There's also Iran.

Sure.

So maybe, maybe we do 5,000 each or whatever.

Like, look, I mean, there's a American armada steaming towards Iran, which is completely unnecessary because the United States of America has enough military hardware in the region to turn Iran into parking lot.

So it's a little bit for show.

However, oil prices are definitely acting as if my Chuck Norris premium is showing up to the market, so.

Oh, by the way, one thing we didn't mention, the cad, the Canadian currency did not collapse on anything that just happened.

It's like, when it comes to the Canadian currency, it seems like at least investors think we're in another you know, Taco and President Trump's threats don't matter.

With Iran, it's a little bit different.

Oil prices, they go up.

So we had Kamaran Bukhari on our podcast.

I think it was two podcasts ago.

And.

And, you know, like, I think that the jury's out on what's going to happen there.

We don't know.

President Trump, I think, is in real time deciding.

And given that the situation with Greenland kind of left perhaps an unpalatable taste in his mouth, like it didn't get resolved maybe the way he wanted, does he now have to be tougher on Iran?

I don't know.

Yeah, well, about the Canadian dollar.

I mean, gold is the big move this week.

Everybody's buying gold.

We crossed 5,000.

It's up, like, what, 15, 20% this month so far.

Not Bitcoin, by the way.

It's gold and then silver and some of your precious metals, which is interesting.

I have trouble generating much animus about Iran, and maybe I'm making a mistake and sort of looking over what's obvious in front of me.

I've done it before.

But, I mean, it seems to me the story about Iran was that.

And, you know, Kamaran said this a week, whatever it was, two episodes ago, and I kind of pushed him on it.

I said, you're saying it's regime change, but you're not saying it's regime change quickly or it's evolved regime change.

Like, I don't get it.

Like, either regime change is going to happen or it's not going to happen.

Either the US Is going to bomb them into the middle of the Safavid era, or it's not Safavid.

I forget how that's pronounced.

Anyway, I got close enough.

I'm sure two people will be able to write and correct me on that one, too.

Like, the real story about Iran is what I worried about two weeks ago happened, which is they crushed everyone.

They killed how many?

I mean, we don't know what the number is, but we know from the anecdotes that are coming out the thousands of people have been crushed by Iran's security services, and that for whatever competition is happening within Iran's security services, they still have the monopoly of force inside the the country, and the people are not rising up to meet there.

So President Trump can bomb the country all he wants, but if there's not, you know, a protest movement that is active, ready to sort of.

He got involved with this in the first place by saying, if Iran kills protesters, we are going to Be there for Iran's protesters.

Okay.

They've been killing protesters.

President Trump are.

What do you.

They've killed so many protesters that there's like, basically none left.

Like, it's off the table.

The Middle east has moved on to the next thing in the news.

So I don't know.

I can't generate much concern about it, but maybe I'm wrong.

Well, I just wanted to bring it up because I do think that is the obvious geopolitical hotspot right now that could be made worse or better by President Trump's intervention.

It honestly can go both ways.

I think there's way too much pearl crushing, which is my favorite phrase of this podcast.

Clearly perhaps a title.

But yeah, like, there's too much like, oh, Trump shouldn't get inter.

Involved.

It's hard to say.

It's hard to say, especially because Trump has a penchant for these limited amoral interventions that do not necessarily get the US Stuck into a loop.

But I do think that this is something to watch for.

Sure.

I think this is the biggest issue right now.

And I'm sure we'll have to do a bunch of emergency podcasts going forward.

I'm hot diggity.

I look forward to it.

But no, you can tell I'm enthused.

I do that.

Want to move to Minnesota for a second at least.

And we can take it from a couple different angles because you might be right in the sense that the Trump administration could really use a distraction.

ICE has been on the ground in multiple US Cities.

They were in New Orleans, One of my favorite taco shops had to close down for a couple of weeks because they were worried about ICE employees or ICE guys going after their employees.

But what's happening in Minnesota is a little bit different.

And, you know, over the weekend, the killing of Alex Preddy, this nurse, this 37 year old nurse.

Did you watch the footage of him getting killed, Marco?

Yeah, unfortunately, yes, I did.

Yeah, unfortunately I did too.

I, I would encourage listeners not to watch it if you can avoid it.

But this, this goes back to our conversation about bias.

And it's, it's one of the reasons I think our bias episode was so well timed.

Because if you try to just strip yourself of your American ness for a moment, like let's say you're a Chinese analyst or a Russian analyst analyzing this.

I mean, you could make the case that what just happened here in Minnesota is that a, a police force that is loyal to the White House went into the streets of a major American metropolitan city and executed Someone at gunpoint for going against the directives of the White House.

What does that mean for US Domestic stability?

What does that mean for the future of the United States and for the rule of law in the United States?

Like, I think those are actually fair, objective and open questions.

Yeah, and then there's also the.

Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Yeah.

And just saying that he was armed at a protest.

Curious choice.

One that I think that most parents would have discouraged their children to do.

However, this is United States of America and we have a right to bear arms.

So tralala to that.

You know, like, I mean, I saw a bunch of conservative Republicans going on network television criticizing him for being armed and you know, like, I mean, that's his constitutional right.

So the gun was pulled off of him.

Now did he reach for it?

We don't know.

We don't know.

But the gun was pulled from him and then he was shot like multiple times.

Like there's a whole, like, you know, I mean, there's a lot of questions to be asked.

One thing I will say, there is a lot of bias against the coverage of these events.

I mean, for example, when recently, you know, the media carried the fact that a five year old child was detained by ice, that was not fair.

I mean, the parent was detained by ice.

They're not going to just leave the child in the streets.

Law enforcement, when they, when they pursue their role as law enforcement and arrest the parent, the child is not left.

Like if, if, if the, if, if the police served a warrant for my and my wife's arrest in this house, like they're not going to just leave white kids throughout the sub like, like chicken wings and say like, you guys, you know, have fun.

And so that's where like this metaphor that it, well, hold on.

In this metaphor, they're going to take your kid and move them halfway across the country into a holding facility and not let you speak to them.

So that's, which is what they've done over and over.

Yeah, no, and, and that's, that's not cool, obviously, especially if they're American citizens.

I mean, there's like a lot of problems.

I just do think the coverage of all these has been really bad on both sides.

I mean, but after recording an episode of bias, I think that there's a lot of ways that we have made.

And the problem is that it's gotten to a point where now obviously protesters are motivated to go and challenge these operations.

I think we recorded something on immigration and this policy.

And my point was, look, everyone in the country illegally committed a crime.

Like that's a fact.

What's also a fact is that this country closed its eyes to the fact that they were committing a crime and effectively invited him by making it extremely easy to hire migrants who were undocumented.

How many people have gone to jail in the last four years for hiring an undocumented migrant?

So we've created the context in which these people are walking, talking criminals in every minute that they are here in this country.

And so I think both sides need to step back and like realize that the macro context here is really bad.

And interestingly, while we're recording this, I mean, this basically happened, Trump had a conversation with Governor Waltz and it seems that they are going to defuse the situation.

And I expect congressional action in the next couple of months because this can't go on, you know, so what I would expect happens over the next couple of months is that Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are going to sit down and write some law.

That's.

And you know, and that law probably is we're going to build a 40 foot wall with a moat and put alligators in it, you know, like whatever.

So the Republicans have to get what they want.

They have to.

There has to be a giant wall on the southern border.

And if you're listening to this, you don't like it, that's too bad.

But that's what's going to happen.

And hopefully it's colored really pretty and it's got cool like slides and water slides on the other side.

I don't know.

But there's going to have to be a huge wall and then on top of that there's going to be, there's going to have to be a way for people who are not criminals to be, you know.

Yeah, Amnestide, absolutely.

May never vote for sure.

But I think you're going to have to have those two.

So the liberals are going to have to hate it for the rest of humanity because they're going to be looking at a 40 foot wall with a moat and the conservatives are going to have to deal with yet another amnesty following the night.

I just don't know how else this gets resolved, but that's the way.

And then fine, ICE can go and hunt for the evil guys who have committed really serious crimes and then take them and deport them.

Yeah, I love this image of the border wall.

Like if you get too close to it, it sucks you up to the top of a water slide and just sends you back down to some other place on the Border.

It's like, really, we should get some scientists or.

Yeah, I mean, wherever else.

But it's a water slide.

It has to go down.

I mean, I think it's interesting that the Trump administration, and not just the Trump administration, I shouldn't say the Trump administration.

President Trump, who has a nose for where his supporters are, has turned on this very rapidly in the last 20 years.

I think for the median voter, I think you need to give him more credit.

Not just his voters.

I think the median voter.

Right, like that's important.

The median voter.

And that's, you know, he sensed that with Greenland.

He's sensing it now.

I mean, this phone call with Waltz just happened.

Quite extraordinary.

There's a lot of people in the White House.

And by the way, it's shocking to me that people still don't understand this about him.

The reason he's got Peter Navarro and Jameson Greer in the same administration is so that he can kind of rattle the chains and see what works.

Like I said, stop trying to analyze Trump from his preferences.

I don't think he has any set in stone preferences.

He walks in and Howard Lutnick and Peter Navarro tell him, hey, you know what?

50% on penguins, 50% tariffs on penguins sound like a cool idea.

He's like, all right, let's try it out.

Doesn't work.

You're fired.

Besant Greer, go clean it up.

You know, so we ended up having 14.4% tariffs, not 35%.

Similar with his immigration.

I have a sense he let the deputy Chief of staff, Stephen Miller, have his way.

And now he's saying like, look, this has not worked.

It's chaos.

People are getting gunned down like, no, we're like a mother of three got shot in.

Like, this is, you know, this is, this is just not going to work.

And now he's going to bring in somebody else to try their hand at this.

And I really do expect that Republicans in Congress, particularly in the Senate, are starting to get a backbone.

We saw that with Greenland, Thom Tillis, John Kennedy, Josh Hawley, a lot of these are not centrists.

These are right leaning.

You know, senators who spoke against the Greenland thing.

I think you will see the same thing on immigration.

And I think that, you know, it's, it's really bad to see anybody die.

I, I think that the deaths of these two protesters in Minneapolis, in a way I'm really hoping will not be in a V in vain.

I think that, that this will be it, this will be the end.

And I'm very hopeful that we will actually get to some middle ground.

Yeah.

When I've been thinking about it, I think you're right, because you actually are seeing the constraint impose itself on Trump.

And I think it's the rejoinder to the.

Because there is in the liberal coverage of this comparison of ICE to the SS to do the reducto ad Hitlerum, but that's what they're talking about, that there is some kind of goon squad out there that the White House is using and there is an element of truth to it.

But let's go back to one of the first things we ever talked about in the podcast, which is the South Park Index.

South park had their episode about this last week.

It was unbelievably brilliant.

If you haven't watched it, I encourage you to watch it.

They've got ICE rounding up people in Denver.

And then somebody, some liberal guy in a pink sweater is interviewed by the television and he says, I think Latin Americans are really great people.

I'm sure there are lots of Latin Americans in heaven.

Cut to ice, speeding into heaven like shooting dogs and angels in heaven to find, like, the Latinos in heaven so that they can drag them in cuffs out of heaven and back down to the ICE detainment facility.

The point of that being South Park's not off the air.

South park is going at President Trump as sharply as it's ever gone after him.

The entire popul.

I shouldn't say the entire.

Most of the population is incensed.

The NRA is pissed off.

The hardcore Republican senators are pissed off.

The left is obviously losing its mind and Trump is turning around.

So, like, there is some notion of constraint here, the flip side of it.

And I have trouble reconciling myself with this.

And I've been doing some reading about Kent State because I know about Kent State in the back.

You know, in the back.

Interesting yard of my mind.

Like, I remember that in high school, I listened to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, like, okay, is it a Kent State type moment?

Is it something about the social cohesion of the country is fundamentally broken down and until we get to some new revolution, it's just going to be chaos.

Is it a blip?

Is it wrong to look at U.S. history?

Like, I am having trouble placing the moment because it seems historically important, even as it is also an example of both how far America has fallen and also how the constraints still maybe act more on President Trump.

But wait a minute.

We recognize.

I don't know.

You can hear my confusion.

Go for it.

No, but Jacob, Jacob, like Kent state happens in 1970.

Did American cohesion break down?

I mean, yes, yes, of course.

1970s, there was a lot of civil disobedience.

There was a lot of protest.

There was domestic terrorism, for God's sakes.

Right?

Straight up domestic terrorism.

But like, here's 2026, the United States of America is still here.

You know, the conservatives and liberals in the country still are kind of fighting same battles, but some new ones.

The conservatives have moved, I think, on war quite closely to the protesters at can state, interestingly, you know, so, like, on the issue of foreign policy, many, many conservatives have become anti war in a, In a quite a significant way, willing to break with their traditional party lines of being sort of more hawkish relative to Democratic dovish.

So I, I think that.

I do think that the ICE analogies to ss, I think it's too early.

It's not just too early, it's just not true.

And the reason it's not true is because at the end of the day, President Trump did win an election, and so he has the mandate.

This is one of those things that he was pretty clear in the election there were going to be mass deportations.

He got the appropriation, he got it through.

He funded ice.

I think their behavior, in many ways, like the being the masked, you know, civilian clothing, they're also not really trained in crowd control.

This is the part of this that I just don't understand.

They're not, you know, this isn't riot police.

And, you know, the leaders of Homeland Security and ICE themselves say, yes, but that's not our fault.

That's the fault of local and state officials not helping us.

They're not cooperating.

So we're walking into these neighborhoods, like, without, you know, backup and without crowd control.

Bottom line.

Is that the difference?

I think the big difference between the United states, America in 2026, and any analogy we want to make to something in the 30s or 40s is that this has been going on for a couple of months, and I think it's peaked because the median American has absolutely no tolerance for this.

And that's the big difference.

Whereas, you know, in the places that people like to point to Germany, Italy, other places, this was the desire of the electorate fully.

Yeah.

You know, there's the question of, you know, the guys that shot the nurse over the weekend, Alex Preddy, you know, one of my friends was, was saying that, you know, they obviously, they need to apprehend these guys because they're obviously guilty of a crime.

And I went down this rabbit hole Nobody at Kent State was ever convicted of a crime.

The National Guardsmen who fired the shots were not convicted of crimes.

Nobody.

Nobody was ever arrested for.

For it.

And to your point, the republic still stood.

I also think it's interesting to think about the 1960s, because in some sense, Kent State was the cherry on top.

You had the assassination of RFK Jr. Dr. King, JFK, earlier, governors refusing.

Governors refusing to enact federal laws on this, on and like, on treating African Americans like full citizens.

Like, this is a grisly history.

Now, of course, somebody listening to this would say, but it's 26.

We're back at it.

Well, because we had the assassination of Charlie Kirk and we had an attempted assassination against the current sitting president, no matter what you think about him.

So honestly, so far, it's been less violent and less chaotic than the 1960s were.

And I don't know whether you chalk that up to improve security or it's not quite as bad or if something else different is happening.

I think it's not.

I think.

I think it's not as bad.

Like, I gotta say, like, I'm sorry.

Like, I grew up in a place where, like, stray dogs were trying to eat me on the way to school.

You know, I. I actually just did a. I just did a speech in Wisconsin, you know, and I. I started off by saying, like, look, I'm uniquely positioned to tell Americans to cool it.

I actually grew up in a communist country that then actually became fascist.

So when people start throwing out words like communism and socialism, I mean, Americans, when Americans start saying, well, this guy's socialist or communist, or when the left starts talking about fascism, I'm like, pump the brakes a little bit, man.

I lived under Milosevic, okay?

Which was like actual fascism in a way, in a modern way.

God bless him.

He.

He.

He.

He had good PR as well, marketing.

And then similarly, I actually, actually lived in a communist country.

And so I gotta just say, like, look, this is not a good look.

The theater of this is terrible.

Like, the uniforms, the masks, just the brutality of it.

The.

You know, like, that is not, like, that's very bad, but it's not like something illegal is really being done.

This is what I keep saying.

Like, look, the man got elected.

He's pursuing a policy, and he's starting to face a backlash against the American society.

Not just liberals.

It's not just progressive liberals protesting in the streets of Minneapolis.

It's his Republicans, it's his senators, it's their constituents, you know, many of whom are themselves of Hispanic descent.

They're Latinos.

They themselves, like people who voted for Trump, are saying, like, enough of this.

And so that's why I do think that this, you know, we're not, we're not there.

We're not nowhere close to this leading to a civil war.

And look, Governor and president had a conversation and now they're contemplating reducing a federal presence in monopolies.

Like, I think that's, you know, that's a sign that the US Works and the median voter is still moving this country, I think, in a, in a.

And I don't mean this politically in a progressive direction.

I mean progress, not.

Yeah, I'm sure this was just funny.

I'm sure you also saw Ted Cruz, like, leaked Axios that he confronted the Trump administration on some of these policies and how destructive they were going to be for the midterms and like, laid out this thing.

And President and President Trump's response was, quote, fuck you, Ted.

No way.

Was it really?

Yeah, that's what Axios reported.

They had the, quote.

I know, it's great, right?

By the way, this is like the one senator that thought an invading Greenland was a good idea.

So well done.

Slow clap, by the way.

I think with Cruz, to give him some credit here, I think, look, you know who's going to be very sensitive to what's going on in Minneapolis?

Anyone who's about to face Telorico in Senate rates in Texas.

Like, listen, like, it's, it's close, you know, it's very, very close.

And I think that, you know, what's happening in the election down there in Texas is something to really watch.

Trump is not going to be on the ticket.

He can't save you in a way.

So you're going to have to stand up against a lot of, like, fired up Democrats.

Of course, some Democrats are going to be too far left.

You're going to cook them, no problem.

Well done.

But someone like Telorico is starting to look like a real star on the rise over there in Texas.

And, you know, I think that the truth of the matter is that President Trump won the 2024 election fair and square with an incredibly diverse coalition, which Democrats and liberals don't want to give him credit for.

And that coalition could have died in Minneapolis.

Like, the Hispanic vote was a huge component of this.

And, you know, like, like replacing Maduro in Venezuela is not going to help anyone.

By the way, it's not going to carry.

There's 700,000 Venezuelans in the country.

Most of them are not eligible to vote.

Like there's no constituency in the United States of America right now that's like, you know what I'm going to do?

Going to vote for Trump because of Venezuela and Cuba.

Like, what?

Cubans in Miami?

Like, no, Florida is already Republican.

You're talking Texas, you're talking Arizona, you're talking the Midwest, you're talking a lot of places where the Hispanic vote really did sharply swing towards Trump and it's going to swing back the other way.

And no, not because they're pro illegal immigration.

No, that's not it.

It's because the perception of these actions, I mean, and it's not just the perception.

I mean, think about it.

ICE has a warrant for somebody who committed a crime, God bless him, go serve it.

But then the whole neighborhood goes up in chaos, and then these ICE dudes are running around grabbing whoever they can, you know, and in that chaos, of course, some Americans who are of brown complexion are going to be arrested.

Of course, this isn't like, that's just the chaos of these law enforcement operations that are becoming more and more chaotic.

And you can blame the protesters, you can blame the, you know, the people who don't want to get arrested, you can blame ice.

But the reality is that this is being done in a way that if you are a Hispanic voter in the United States of America, you're not going to like.

So, and by the way, I'm not saying anything controversial.

Like, this is a fact.

This is why Trump just sat down with Waltz and made a deal.

Like, I am obviously right, and they're going to get crushed in these states if Trump doesn't pivot.

I think he's too late.

I think he's going to get crushed anyway.

And I mean, I made the joke about Ted Cruz and the Axios comments.

The other thing that Ted Cruz warned about was, you know, if the Democrats take the House, you're going to get impeached every other week.

And I think he's right.

I think if the Democrats take the House back, it's, they have the power to investigate, which they don't have right now.

And they will wield it like a cudgel.

They will go after every single thing.

The President, like the President and his henchmen, it's have been able to do whatever they want because they have Republican control of both the House and the Senate.

If even just the House falls to the Democrats, it's going to be a whole different political world over the next two years and it's going to be a whole lot of gridlock.

And nothing else, which maybe explains why President Trump is on all of his foreign policy adventures, because that might be all that's left to him and.

Oh, yeah, fine, fine.

Although I would just say that, like, if the Democrats pursue the path of the impeachment, then, you know, like, they just have not learned anything because it'll be a waste of time, you know?

Of course they haven't learned anything.

You think they've learned something?

I'm sorry, man.

I did.

My bad.

Like, shit.

What is in this Bubbly Waterloo?

Is there alcohol in this?

Sorry.

Democrats learning something.

Wow, Jacob, I'm so sorry, man.

I'm sorry.

It's the craziest thing you've said on the podcast.

I know.

I'm sorry.

Can we.

Can we get Schmoo to, like, delete that?

Like, I just don't want to look like an idiot.

Delete that.

My bad.

No, no, I'm.

I'm actually joking.

Keep that in because it's, like, unintentional comedy.

You're absolutely right.

Yeah.

They will try to impeach him again, and it will be the stupidest thing in the world.

No, it'll be, how many times can they do it?

Like, they're going to try and set a world record impeachment.

You know what's funny?

It would be funny if the Constitution had, like, a footnote under the amendment that you can't run for the third time unless you've been.

Unless you have been.

Unless the.

Unless your impeachments have failed five times, then you do get a third run, just as a you to the opposition for being dumb and wasting all of our time.

Yeah.

Get ready for it.

All right.

We've been going for an hour, 20 minutes.

Do you want to talk about China?

Do you want to leave it to next time?

I mean, we can.

We can cover it.

Like, sure, let's.

Let's.

We're on the roll, by the way.

We're not experts, but we do stay at a Holiday Inn.

Just a joke.

Jacob is recording this from a hotel.

Hopefully better than Holiday Inn, but we're going strong.

You just got.

You know, I'm.

I'm.

No, go ahead, Go ahead.

You just got off a flight.

Just, you know, by the way, please write to us.

We love all the great criticism, and, you know, we got to do a mailbag episode.

Jacob apparently was ageist on the last podcast and said people over 65 can't be analysts.

So we did get criticism for that.

We can cover that in the mailbag episode.

We've gotten you Know, people saying they listen to us with a family.

We apologize for curse words, you know, just like, just wonderful stuff.

But the one criticism that I gotta say is always like, bro, it's like, where are you guys?

Why haven't you.

So we record a prescient podcast on Greenland on January 10th.

Ten days later this thing becomes the issue.

By the way, it lasts six days, but let's leave that aside.

And then everyone's like, yo, where's the Greenland podcast?

I'm like, it's scroll down.

It's there.

We have jobs and families.

Poor Jacob just landed God knows where.

We don't even know where he is.

He's in an undisclosed location.

I've been going strong since 5:00am It's 6:30pm I'm pulling in 14 hour days.

Guys, please, you know, we're trying our best.

This is difficult.

We can't do this.

Even Bill Simmons doesn't record more than what, twice a week and that's his only job.

Yeah, and he doesn't write anymore either.

We also like, writing is our key function here.

We raise young kids.

We weren't paid $200 million by Spotify to have like an army of nannies.

There's all sorts of reasons why this is very difficult.

So once a week, okay guys, if you want more podcasts, then spread the revolution that is the geopolitical cousins to everyone you know.

And maybe once we get enough people listening, we'll do three.

And especially spread the root revolution to your second cousin twice removed's uncle, who is an executive at Spotify and needs to spend the next hundred million dollars because we'll be much cheaper than Rogan, I assure you.

And you'll get better roi.

I'm not at a Holiday Inn.

I am at the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort owned by the Saginaw Chippewa Indian tribe.

I'm in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

Um, it's lovely by the way.

It's, it's a rare.

Like I, I didn't Google this place before I got here.

You know, sometimes you show up at an event and it's eh, like it's not like it's extremely nice.

Like very, very nice.

I mean the casino is kind of weird, but everything else.

And yes, it's 9:30 here, so since.

We'Re talking about Midwest, I was in Kohler Wisconsin a couple of days ago.

You, which you, you've been to and you told me it was awesome.

Is awesome.

And just the American club there is right across from the Kohler factory where Kohler is of course famous.

If you've ever peed in a urinal, you've in a nice establishment.

You know Kohler, you know Kohler?

I always thought it was German.

You know, that's just my bias.

There you go.

You see, I, I just think Germans make great stuff, but it's American made American, born in Wisconsin.

And the beautiful, gorgeous American club across the street from the factory was where they had immigrants headquartered.

And I thought that was, you know, they brought all these Europeans to come work at the Kohler factory and they stayed in these rooms that are now this.

Anyways, we got off the, off the topic.

We want to close off with China.

But yeah, go to the Midwest, by the way.

Go and visit the Midwest.

It's amazing.

It's awesome.

There's so many cool places on various like lakes and rivers.

It's, it's.

People never think of the Midwest as a tourist destination, but I do.

It's awesome.

Not only a tourist destination.

I mean, I mean you talked about climate change earlier with Mark Carney and the Midwesterners don't want us to tell listener this listeners this, but if you want to know where there's ample supplies of fresh water and where climate is going to be good and where things are going to grow and where you're not going to be faced with hurricanes and earthquakes and everything else in the future, it's the Midwest.

There's a reason that this part of the country is quietly where people of means are.

Anyway, with China, you know, I know you neither, you and I are experts on China, but I mean when, when something like this happens, I do think we at least need to tell the listeners because again, so much has been happening in the last week or two that even I find stuff is getting swept underneath the rug.

And this is, you know, this is what we do for a living.

But so Xi Jinping has purged his latest set of senior officials, but this time he's purged China's highest ranking general who was vice chair of the Central Military Commission and also another person on the Central Military Commission.

They were, it was announced they were under investigation for suspected serious violations of discipline in law.

That is usually Chinese Communist Party speak for corruption.

The Wall Street Journal had a bombshell report claiming that this general was leaking nuclear secrets to the United States.

I have no idea how or I have no ability to evaluate the veracity of that report.

It strikes me as a little bit grandiose the idea that the US has flipped the top general in China and that he's sharing nuclear secrets that we don't particularly like.

I don't know, it just kind of doesn't add up.

There's also.

I mean, there's a bunch of other things out there.

But I. I read one thing by Drew Thompson, who is a China expert.

He was the director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the office, Office of the Secretary of defense back in 2000.

And he wrote a piece that talked about this general as one of Xi's closest advisors and as somebody who would give Xi no nonsense, honest takes on where the Chinese military was at, what the Chinese like capacity to go after, say Taiwan would be like somebody who would really speak truth to power, if you.

If you will, to Xi Jinping.

And I've seen folks like Bill Bishop and some of these other China experts that I follow pretty closely saying this is not such a good sign if you're purging sort of this general who was, who was that close at the same time?

Xi Jinping has been purging people left, right and center since he took over.

I've talked about how he absolutely has to do that because he has to redistribute wealth from the coast to the interior very, very quickly.

And he cannot afford for the wealthy elites or for military factions to be going after him.

So if he gets even a sniff of somebody coming after him, he's going to have to get rid of the factions.

But I don't know where do you put this on your report importance level, cousin?

Because I.

Right now, for me, it's just like it's at the level of rumor.

It's a example of a purge that has been happening for over a decade.

But I don't want to dismiss it just because it's been happening for a decade.

Yeah.

So, like, what I would say is that first of all, Bill Bishop cyanosism substack, it is one of the best out there.

So definitely.

Good.

My concern is that we have no idea, you know, and he was.

This guy was extremely close to she.

So is this directed by Xi or is it directed by others?

Everyone assumes that she has complete control over China, that he's in complete power.

I don't.

I think that actually the way the economy is going, you know, there could be a lot of factions that are vying for power still in China.

And so I am concerned that, you know, this isn't.

Well, I mean, not really concerned.

I'm just stating the fact that somebody who's your closest confidant, who you grew up in during childhood, you love this guy, and he gets taken out, like, yeah, I mean, maybe, or Occam's razor is that that wasn't necessarily Xi's decision.

It might be the collective leadership reasserting itself.

And I would just throw that out there as a possibility.

That's interesting.

I hadn't thought of that.

Well, do you think it's of any geopolitical relevance, though?

I mean, I don't see China invading Taiwan anytime soon.

We don't, but I do think that, you know, like, purges in the military are something you should definitely be focusing on.

And I do think that China.

I, I'm sure that if you and I were sitting in the room trying to advise President Xi, we would.

There's two kind of ways to advise him.

One is like, well, listen, the US Is in a very turbulent situation right now.

This is your time to go.

This is, this is the time to strike.

The other one is like, actually, no.

Like, there is a very well connected military intelligence complex in the United States of America.

They don't like that Trump is making deals with you.

You, they want you to make a wrong move so that they can nip this in the bud.

And so it would be very dangerous to go right now.

It's a trap set out by the United States of America.

And so that's why I think, you know, the, those are very two powerful narratives that are fighting over one another when it comes to Xi.

And I just don't buy the arguments from the west that there's some clock that he's on some timeline that if he doesn't do this, he's not going to be considered a great Chinese leader.

I, I think it, it almost like, denigrates Chinese leadership.

Like, they are out there trying to write history books about themselves, and they're not just trying to do what's best in sort of different time horizons for China.

Okay, well, that was easy.

Well, I don't know.

I don't think it was.

I don't think we answered the question at all.

I think it was easy because we have no idea.

Well, no, of course.

Well, I mean, I'm.

Even the China experts, like Bill Bishop himself was like, we have no clue.

Like, these are just rumors.

And sure, the Wall Street Journal is out there talking about how this is some big intelligence coup, but I mean, if you look at, I mean, it's January right now, I'm fully expecting that come April, or maybe we will have the exact same reports that we've had every single April or May for the past three or four years, which is, oh, my God.

Xi Jinping has not been seen in a while.

Is he sick?

Did he have a stroke?

He just purged his generals.

Is he gone?

What's happening?

And then he'll emerge in the summer and everything will be fine, and the Chinese economy won't collapse in on itself.

And, like, there'll be another round of purges and there'll be no invasion of Taiwan.

And to your point, there will probably be some kind of U. S. China trade deal.

I wonder what they'll dress it up like and how that will mix with the USMCA negotiations and things like that.

But that.

That feels like where we're going to me.

And there's nothing in this that.

That makes me doubt that.

But it is weird.

Like, it's.

It's a.

It's a ripple on the surface that I think is at least worth talking about.

But look, Taiwan, nobody knows is the answer.

Yeah.

And I think the Taiwanese issue is obviously the most important geopolitical risk out there.

It is.

It is really, really significant.

So there's.

I'm not going to, like, pretend it's not.

You know, you and I have.

We're aligned to this view, but we've been aligned before and gotten things wrong.

So I think that I. I totally understand the obsession on this issue, and I think it's.

It's a worthwhile obsession.

It's.

It's worth obsessing about the role that Taiwan plays.

And maybe we can dedicate a whole, you know, podcast to elucidating our view, why we don't think that China is going to try to militarily reunify with Taiwan.

Like, that might be a worthwhile topic for at some point, at least as a baseline, so that, you know, we explain that in.

In simple terms so that people know why we have that view.

I have to tell you, though, and I know you know this too, every time I'm invited to a dinner where there's people who purely work in political risk or political consulting, who work for government, who work in those kind of shadowy networks of consultants and private analysts and so on.

So Jacob and I, the two of us, we work in finance.

So we are.

What's the word?

We're actually assessed on our performance and our forecasts.

So people who work in that other world where you can just bullshit for years and be completely fucking wrong, in that world, 85% of people think that China will invade Taiwan within the next two to three years.

So that world is far more alarmist.

Now.

Of course, they've been wrong for the past Four or five years straight.

None of them will admit it, but they've been just like massively wrong.

It just doesn't matter because they're never assessed for their performance because they're not telling you to buy or sell this or that.

So it's just like eventually they keep.

Cashing them government checks.

Marco.

They've been very successful in the sense that they created a fear so that the US Taxpayer dollars are rerouted and.

Australia and, and everybody else.

So yeah, in, in that world, I would say that 85% of the analyst community is, you know, high conviction view that it's coming.

And I field questions from my clients all the time because they just had one of these, you know, tourists walk into their office and tell them, you know, China's going to invade Taiwan because we've run out of javelins.

And I'm like, cool, tanks can drive over the Strait of Taiwan.

Didn't know that, but apparently they can, you know, so like that was one of these, like very, very high priced, you know, consultants basically said to my clients that China would invade Taiwan because the javelin production in the west had deteriorated significantly.

Which is like the just the dumbest thing I've ever heard anyways, by the way, Javelin, for those of you listening who were not following the Ukraine war closely, which is fine, you launch it at a tank, it will not help Taiwanese defend against China at all.

But somehow this person who had a very senior position in the Trump one administration was like, yeah, that's why China has a window.

And this kind of shit passes for analysis because no one holds these people.

They're fear mongers.

They're just there to kind of like, you know, prepare, like get the next visit.

My concern is that, you know, eventually even the, you know, a broken clock can be right.

Well, and to your point, for me, the much bigger geopolitical, I shouldn't say bigger because if they actually went after Taiwan, it would obviously be a big deal.

But I just think the thing that is less certain is about China's internal dynamics.

And I'm pretty confident that Xi Jinping is okay.

But there's a version of this where Xi Jinping has a heart attack tomorrow or a stroke tomorrow, and the system can't sustain the loss of this person who has amassed all of this power.

Where you get Cultural Revolution 2.0.0 type things, or where you get warring factions inside of China that are competing.

And that's the destabilizing scenario to me.

It's the one that keeps me up at nights.

Yeah.

For Sure.

I, I think China's like a pretty modern, sophisticated place that would survive that, like, you know, next man up kind of a thing.

I mean, yes, he's a mass power.

He's done a lot of purges, anti corruption campaigns.

But like, I mean, I, I, yeah.

I think it would survive.

It survived the Cultural Revolution, but the Cultural Revolution lasted years.

And what kind of instability would you, this multipolar system, if China's doing that for two or three years and if you have different factions or somebody who's in control for a while, who, who has a completely different risk calculus about the South China Sea or about the Korean Peninsula or about, you know, any host of things that, to your point, this Chinese system is not done.

I don't think so.

But like when I'm constantly check, like, I, Taiwan is so far out there for me.

Like, I never ascribe anything as 0% probability, but for me it's like 0.01%.

That that happens in the next two to three.

That's bold.

That's like, I love that.

Yeah, that's like, you're not like Kobe taking like a mid range jumper.

You're like Kobe falling out of bounds, shooting a jumper over the backboard into making it so difficult for yourself.

That's a low pro.

Yeah.

10.

Damn.

Love that.

Zero.

I'm Jokic driving towards the baseline at half court against the warriors.

And I'm heaving up the shot and it's going and off Glass.

Glass.

And I knew it was going in.

You called it.

And you know, I'll probably look like you're like pulled.

I'll probably look like it.

Did you call glass?

No, I called game.

That's Jacob right here.

That's like fire.

Oh my God.

Wow.

You didn't know that about me?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean like, that's, I mean, I knew like we shared like a similar view on this, but that's like, I mean, you know what?

If you're gonna assign a low probability, man, just make it low, baby.

Like, make a name for yourself.

Like, I am going to look like a really big idiot and I'm going to owe a lot of people drinks because at every speech I do, I say I will come back here on my own dime and buy you all drinks if this happens within the next two years on my own dime.

So listeners should be, you should be rooting for this because the bourbon is on me.

But let me.

But just one question.

I mean, over what time horizon?

So that cannot be over 10 years.

No two to three I say three.

Two to three years.

Okay.

Yeah, I think it's a totally different question.

It's still, it's still Kobe, you know, like taking the, the baseline.

But like, okay, like, obviously we have.

To update their probabilities.

And by the way, I, I think that.

I'm not saying they don't want it either.

I think they want it.

I think they are rapidly modernizing their military so that they can actually have the threat of doing it, so that they can create the political circumstances.

They need to just absorb it without firing a shot.

But to do that, they have to have the capacity to do it and for it to mean something.

My whole point is for the next two to three years, they will not have the ships and they will not have the Marines, and they will not have the planes, and they won't have any of the things that they need pull this off.

So in three years, five years.

Okay, like, I, I will have this conversation in three to five years.

But right now, right now, let's talk about the deflationary crisis and the housing bubble and Xi Jinping not getting rid of, of military generals and what that means for the Chinese system in general.

Like, now is the time to worry about Taiwan.

There will be a time to worry about Taiwan.

Let's not burn any brain calories on this, because this is like an interesting debate.

Sounds like we can.

We should do it.

It.

I think the way we should set this up is you should first articulate all the arguments for why China will do it.

Let's do that.

Let's start off with that and then we can add, you know, our view.

But this is good.

This is great.

I, I do think this is great.

I think we've done well for a late night podcast.

I'm pulling a 14 hour day.

You just came off a.

A flight.

I do want to say one of our, one of our listeners said something like, like, I appreciate your podcast, love to listen to them, but the ones that I really enjoy are when you've had a little bit to drink.

And it's, it's funny because we've never.

I've never had a single sip of anything.

Maybe, maybe once I was on the road or something, but like, like, and, and I just think I'm just sitting here thinking to myself, like, really intriguing.

I wonder who it is that thought we were slightly tipsy doing a podcast.

Unfortunately, dear listeners, we do this fully sober, so there is absolutely no alcohol.

Well, until Spotify buys us for $150 million and then we can start drinking the Pie.

I will say that I get, I get.

My filter gets less and less precise the longer the day goes on.

So like, as you get into the evening time, I'm willing to just be like Kobe and be like, all right, it's mamba time.

I'm taking this, like, shoot your shot.

Whereas, like in the morning, it's like second cup of coffee.

Like, I just took the kids to school, I got two client calls.

It's like, like you're dressed up.

Like, I'm not dressed up right now.

I'm in the Soaring Eagle casino right now talking about geopolitics in the year of our Lord 2026.

Yes, that's right.

I'm hitting the slots.

I'm hitting the slots.

I'm feeling lucky tonight.

I gotta save some energy.

Oh, and I just want to say to the person who thought I was ageist, because what they said, they thought they thought I was ageist, but they said, yeah, we'll see.

If you're saying that about people can't be analysts when they're 60.

I will not be doing this job when I am 60 years old.

Oh, period.

You will.

Come on.

I won't, I won't.

I'm gonna be just alone.

I won't.

Doing the podcast.

You gotta be.

We gotta do the pod.

This isn't.

Wait, wait, just to be clear, this isn't.

I'll do the podcast, but yeah, this is comedy.

Come on, let's give our, let's not, let's label this analysis.

Yeah, but I'm not gonna pretend like when I'm 60, I'm.

Now, I'm no longer gonna hold myself to analytical thresholds or like judge my performance.

I'm just gonna be like, cool, like, you wanna like drink some grappa at 4pm in my orchard and I'll get the recording software out here.

Like, sure, like, I'm happy to talk, talk about these things, but I will not be doing like, and to your point, maybe I'll help train analysts or maybe I will supply perspective on 30 or 40 years in the field and what that can do.

But I, I know myself well enough to know that at 60 years old, I will not be writing brand new analysis that is going to break the world.

Like, my best ideas will come out in the next 15 years.

I'm self aware enough to know that.

I, I believe you.

I believe you.

I believe you.

But as our dear friend and listener said, let's revisit it when we're 60.

Let's just revisit it all I'm saying is I believe you.

I. I truly believe you right now.

But we also have to talk about this then.

You know, I can also see Jacob Shapiro be like that.

That fucking guy didn't know shit.

He had two young kids.

He was like burning the mid like, yeah, hey man, I got this.

In fact, these last 20 years have brought me to this level of clarity.

I can also see Jacob of saying that.

I'm just saying, well, as Janis said, I'm human.

I can change my mind whenever I want.

But today I will not be requesting that trade because that's just not who I am.

Oh, man.

Okay, cool.

Well, listen, this was awesome.

Thanks for sharing the time while you were on the road.

And I can't wait to record another one.

Yeah, it'll be about Iran emergency podcast in about two days.

Can't wait.

Cheers, y'.

All.

That.