The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway: Conversation with Ian Bremmer — Ukraine’s Counteroffensive, US-China Relations, and AI’s Geopolitical Influence

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Episode 269, 269 is the area code

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The Prop G-Pod Episode 269

Welcome to the 269th episode of The Prop G-Pod.

In today's episode, we speak with Ian Bremmer,

the president and founder of Eurasia Group and G-Zero Media.

He's been on the show more than any other guest

clicking it at eight times.

I relate to Ian, except for the fact

Ian's like a doogie howzer.

He ended up at Tulane when he was 14.

Can you believe that?

I think that's strange yet.

Ian, I've gotten to know Ian

is actually a fairly balanced, thoughtful,

like strikes me as a well-adjusted guy,

which probably means, I don't know,

there's some freaky shit going on

at the Bremmer household when I'm not around probably,

but from all appearances,

he seems like a pretty balanced, nice man.

Anyways, before we get to the news,

in case you haven't heard, I know this is big news,

the Signal Awards have nominated the Prop G-Pod

for the Best Business and Finance Podcast.

The Signal Awards are a podcast-focused spin-off

of the webbies.

So first off, thanks for the Hollywood Foreign Press.

I did not know the Signal Awards were part of the webbies,

but this is very exciting.

These awards mean a lot to us.

Is that true?

Do they mean a lot to us?

Yeah, they're validation, they're really nice.

And we're up against Barron's and the FT.

Ooh, that's right, Barron's FT, the dog.

One of these things is not like the other.

So a quick request, it's all about fan-based voting.

Voting is open until Thursday, October 5th,

and we very much appreciate your vote.

We put a lot of work into this, and it's super exciting,

and I don't know what else to say other than thank you

very much and appreciate you attending.

Anyway, enough of that shit, let's move on.

What should we talk, hmm, what should we talk about?

I know the writer's strike, which has been going on

for the past six months, appears to finally

be coming to an end.

Over the past weekend, the WGA and the studios

have reached a deal that allegedly meets

the demands of the writers.

They described it as exceptional.

By the way, just some quick game theory here.

If you're gonna tell people to not make money

for the better part of six months,

you better come back with something exceptional.

So we'll see.

As a reminder, the writers have been on strike

in hopes of gaining greater pay or higher pay,

more royalties, better working conditions,

and protections against AI.

All seems pretty reasonable.

A vote on the proposed three-year contract

is expected to happen while we're recording,

but regardless if the strike is officially over or not,

I have some thoughts.

So first off, just do the math.

It's a three-year deal, and if people were out of work

for the better part of six months,

if you took their compensation to zero for six months

in order to gain better conditions

over a three-year contract,

then if you didn't in fact negotiate

at least 12.5% bump in pay,

then they've lost money

because you took their compensation to zero for six months.

A Cal State Northridge professor estimated

that the strike cost California economy $3 billion.

At the end of August, California's treasurer

wrote a letter to the studio exec saying,

your failure to come to an agreement

is threatening the industry's ability to ensure

that writing, acting, and other positions

are viewed as sustainable careers in California.

The actors, SAG-AFTRA, are still on strike.

Late night and daytime talk shows can resume production

once the guild allows its riders to return to work.

However, as the actors are still on strike,

scripted stories will not return until a deal

between SAG-AFTRA and the studios is met.

In some, I mean, there's just some crazy shit

that's gone on here.

I think the first mistake that the studios made

was the studio's sans Netflix was believing

that Netflix had a mutually vested interest

or the same concerns or the same economic dynamics

as what we'll call the linear guys.

And that is the Disney's, the Viacoms,

the Time Warner's of the world.

When you don't have fresh content,

linear no longer becomes linear, it becomes a wall.

It becomes a line that stops.

Whereas the streamers have a ton of content bank

because they've had so much cheap capital

that if you're on Netflix, you don't notice any difference

between Netflix six months ago and today.

Whereas I believe if you're on,

not that I watch any of these things, ABC, NBC, CBS,

and you wanna watch Sheldon or God Christ,

I don't know what people are watching now

on broadcast television.

I used to, last thing I watched on broadcast television,

I used to watch Modern Family every week.

But when that comes, when that just stops,

or you're used to turning into Jimmy Kimmel or Fallon

or Stephen Colbert and all of a sudden it just stops,

you notice it and they have less negotiating power

in terms of carriage with cable companies

and they begin to lose money right away.

Meanwhile, meanwhile over at Netflix,

they in fact were increasing their subscribers.

Nobody noticed and they have a massive content machine

outside of the US.

I believe they have 10,000 people working in Madrid.

Think about that.

So stop, stop, it hurts so good.

We continue, we continue to increase our subscriber base.

Oh, and this multilateral enforced pause on spending

means our cash horde grows

so we can announce a stock buyback.

So what's the net effect here?

Let's talk about the linear guys.

Since the rider strike began,

Walt Disney's off about 15%.

You wanna talk about a shit kicking.

Viacom has lost 45%, it's almost shed half its value.

Warner Brothers Discovery,

I never get the fucking name right.

Let's just call the whole thing HBO.

Anyways, HBO is off, I believe about 12 or 13%.

And then let's talk about Netflix,

which is up around 20%.

So you have, oh, and let's talk about

the other content makers, Apple, Amazon and Comcast.

They're up, Apple's up 11%,

Amazon's up 34% and Comcast is up 23%.

So what is the primary enduring impact of the rider strike?

They have substantially weakened the linear guys

which were a key component of the demand side

for their business.

I think they struck at the wrong time

and I think they're essentially kind of,

they haven't killed the golden goose

but they've definitely clipped its wings.

These companies were deeply impaired.

What's the biggest learning here?

What's the biggest learning?

The biggest learning is that they're trying to squeeze

the wrong fruit here, squeeze blood from the wrong rock

in some, in some, and this stat just blows me away.

Microsoft in one day when they announced integration of AI

into their Office suite of products

increased their market cap by $170 billion.

They added the value of the entire linear industry

with the exception of Disney

or you could just say they added the value of Disney, right?

So when you're trying to figure out which lemon to squeeze

you wanna go through the supply chain

and say, where are we adding value?

And just as importantly, not only where are we adding value

but where are we adding value

that's creating economic value for another party?

We're trying to go after the linear guys

who are all combating the same thing

and that is a 17 year old boy

who's the most valuable person in all of media

because he's coming into his mating years

and you'll buy stupid things like tennis shoes

or want a car that's cool

or he'll want a pair,

he'll want the right pair of sunglasses

or he'll be willing to pay money on high margin coffee

or quick service restaurants

or he was one of the few people that still goes to the movies

and maybe even sees them two or three times.

Advertisers love this irrational organism

that basically fuels all of ad supported television

called a 17 year old male

and that 17 year old male

is no longer watching linear television.

So if you wanna be angry at something

you can get mad at Bob Iger

for wearing cashmere or making a shit ton of money

but the real person you should be angry at

is a 17 year old that's decided, you know what?

Instead of watching Jimmy Kimmel

or instead of watching The Witcher or whatever

I'm gonna watch a TikTok all goddamn day along.

Why? Because it's free.

The ads are really elegant or sort of targeted

so I don't mind them as much

and there is a talent pool

the depth of the Mariana trench

who doesn't demand anything and it's not unionized.

I think that especially the late night talk shows

are never gonna recover.

I think they will take a structural step down

in terms of viewership

and people that likely over the last six months

adopted new habits and incorporated new substitutes

into their lives.

Whether it was going into that content bank of streaming

I couldn't even, I'm on season three of The Handmaid's Tale

which I think is just an incredible program

and I found out there's like five or six seasons.

I mean, how many cruel things can they do

to the Gilmore girl?

Anyways, anyways, they had very little leverage

they miscalculated and they should be going after

where do we move forward from here?

Distinct of what you think about labor or unions

by the way, I get a lot of shit online

for being anti labor, I am very much pro labor.

I just don't think unions are the right construct

to advance the needs in the, I don't know

the very warranted and deserved dignity

that all labor deserves.

Anyways, enough of that, enough of me being defensive.

What have we learned here?

What's the big learning?

All of them now that they've come to some sort of agreement

should get on the same side of the table

and then put Cook, Nadella, Kachai, Altman on the other side

and say, just exactly whose content are you crawling?

When I type in, please write a script

for a show in the voice of modern family.

And you can do that and it comes back

with something reasonable.

What exactly, what content are they in fact crawling?

What is the coal going into the furnace here

that is powering a multi-trillion dollar train?

You gotta go where the money is guys.

Why did so many people move to Dubai

over the last 20 years?

Cause that's where the money was

and guess what they're doing now?

They're moving to Riyadh kids.

Guess what, spoiler alert.

That's where the money is.

So you gotta go to the biggest pile of money

and stand as close to it as possible.

I.e. start striking and putting pressure on them

and they have a real valid case here.

The NASDAQ had its best first half in the last 40 years.

In the last 40 years, it's up 17%.

70% of those gains are attributed to just seven companies.

And what are those seven companies all having in common?

Microsoft, NVIDIA, Netflix, Meta.

What do they all have in common?

AI, AI is at the center of it.

AI is at the center of crawling content

and then adding value to it and then charging people,

whether it's enterprise or consumers, a subscription fee

and the whole market is going bad shit,

ape shit, champagne and cocaine, crazy for these things.

So guess what?

If you wanna find a lemon to squeeze juice from,

start squeezing Microsoft's nuts

and saying we're gonna start filing suits against you

because we have our own AI that has figured out

that you are crawling the shit out of our IP

and you are not paying for it.

You are not compensating us.

Instead of going after Disney, come on folks, go.

Move to Riyadh, go where the money is.

It's AI and it's like, notice how quiet they've been.

Notice how they haven't said anything.

Also, also, word to unions.

If you really wanted to try and make a splash

and bring your workers more money, go after,

go to the where the money is.

Go after tech and in the automobile industry.

For God's sakes, go after the one company that's worth more

than the rest of the auto industry combined.

Simple folks, simple focus.

Move to where the fucking Benjamins are.

What should you do?

What should we do?

What should unions do?

What should labor do?

What should the UAW do?

Simple, move to Riyadh.

We'll be right back for our conversation with Ian Bremmer.

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Welcome back.

Here's our conversation with Ian Bremmer,

the president and founder of Eurasia Group

and GZero Media.

Ian, where does this podcast find you?

I'm on the West Coast, San Francisco.

What are you doing in the Bay Area?

A bunch of meetings.

I was in New York for all that United Nations

excitement last week, the whole world coming to us,

which is always nice, and then I got out of Dodge.

So all that excitement is somewhat relative,

but nonetheless, we'll talk about the United Nations

General Assembly that just took place in New York.

You attended and wrote in your newsletter

that the mood was bleak, though not defeatist.

You also wrote that if the world had a CEO,

they'd be fired.

Tell us more about your observations.

Well, that seems pretty clear, right?

I mean, I wrote about that specifically playing off

what they call these sustainable development goals, SDGs,

these 17 metrics that the United Nations

has spent a lot of time working on

that basically define together the state of human development.

So education and poverty and hunger.

In other words, kind of good that the world comes together

and figures out what do we want to see

to ensure that the 8 billion people on the planet

over time are actually doing better.

That kind of makes sense, right?

You sort of want someone defining that.

And we're at the halfway mark of these SDGs

that are supposed to hit their goals by 2030.

About only 30% of them are remotely on track,

and a lot of them are doing worse than they were

when we started the process.

So I mean, just by self-definition of the metrics

that the UN is saying and the world underneath the umbrella

of the UN is saying, here's how we want to be judged.

Here are our shareholder returns, if you will.

But for the people and the governance on the planet,

we're kind of failing.

And so, yeah, I think we'd probably mix it up

and change leadership.

But of course, the world doesn't have a CEO,

and that is part of the reason why we are facing

the challenges that we have.

So I've always talked about, when I read,

I forget his name, Thomas Pinkman or Steven Pinkman.

Steven Pinkman.

Yeah, Pinker, the Harvard guy that basically says,

we have a defeatist mentality, and the cadence in the news

cycle creates a negative outlook on the world.

And if you look at abject poverty,

if you look at more democracies versus autocracies,

what stood out in terms of the specifics metrics

that we're not making progress against?

Well, first of all, Steven admitted to me

that he has an intrinsic bias towards upside,

which is great, but not analytically useful.

I mean, I think it makes him a happier person,

so I'm not opposed to it.

But if we're trying to just have a conversation

saying, where do we think we're heading,

you've got to take Pinker with a few grains of salt.

And I give him credit for being willing to admit it,

but still it's a challenge.

I would say there are a couple of things

that I would focus on.

First, the proximate, that in the last three years,

the combination of pandemic and the Russia war,

you know, Russia war, Ukraine,

how many people care about Ukraine?

Not all that many.

How many people are affected by the food

and fertilizer and supply chain disruptions

as a consequence of Ukraine?

A lot.

Like Ukraine matters a lot more

than any conflict in sub-Saharan Africa,

any conflict in South or Southeast Asia

to the poorest people in the world.

Ukraine matters more to them

because it's having such an impact.

So first of all, you take those two things,

pandemic, massively disruptive,

and Russia, Ukraine war, massively disruptive

for global supply chain economy,

and that by itself has reversed the trajectory

of what had been 50 years of unprecedented progress

in human development.

Basically, we got five years of regression in the last three.

And then secondly is the fact that we are increasingly facing

the pushback from climate change

and from the knock on effects of climate change,

which are expensive and disproportionately impact

the poorest, disproportionately impact those

that have not had the chance to industrialize

and carbon emit, but they're the ones facing

the most extreme temperature swings.

They're the ones that are starving.

They're the ones that are flooded out.

They're the ones that are forced to move

from their homes in largest numbers.

So I would say those are the two biggest structural causes.

And then you have just inadequate institutional response

for big reasons.

One, because the Chinese are so much more powerful

but are not trusted by the US and American allies.

So that creates a lot of conflict and inefficiency.

And then also the fact that a lot of Western institutions,

especially those in the United States,

increasingly are seen as unrepresentative and illegitimate.

And so our leaders are focusing much more inward.

There's much more populism.

There's much more anti-establishment sentiment,

but certainly much less willingness to act

like global sheriff, architect of global trade,

cheerleader of common global values.

So I think if you were to put those things together,

and I've got my geopolitics hat on

and economists would answer that question

somewhat differently,

but would still be talking about the same basic elephant,

that's why things are now actually getting worse.

That Pinker had been right for 50 years.

Pinker is much less right today.

So I'll put forward a thesis and you tell me

where I have this right or wrong.

And that is the world is becoming more prosperous.

Global GDP growth while it's slow to still positive.

And the biggest nations,

China's no longer growing 8%.

I don't know if it's 3%, 0%.

The US, well, unremarkable,

the growth has been steady and consistent.

Markets are up in the US.

We have a lot of prosperity.

The majority of that prosperity is crowded in the top 1%.

And the things that really ails us, polarization,

climate change, food and energy and supply chain interruptions,

quite frankly, don't impact the 1%.

And that the life is so nice,

the ability of kind of the 1% to sequester themselves

from what are the biggest problems facing us.

In addition, these problems are like creeping takeovers.

They're not gonna end the world in the next three years.

It might be probably not even the next 30,

but definitely possibly the next 50 or 100.

And then when you couple the ability of the people

who are in charge who tend to be the wealthiest,

who have recognized unbelievable prosperity

and can shelter themselves and ring fence,

all of these problems,

that the people who are in charge have never done better.

And so the motivation or the impetus

to address these challenges,

just doesn't affect the people

who would be responsible for catalyzing a change.

That was a bit of a word salad,

but you get where I'm going.

Yeah, absolutely.

Do I think you're right on that?

I think you're absolutely right on that, Scott.

I think it, first of all,

what I like about the analysis is it's always,

it feels better when the analysis actually matches

with some level of empathy.

I think the response to that is interesting.

I mean, there's a lot of people whose view is,

we wanna burn it down as a consequence.

And why is Biden and Trump both going?

Why are they both going to Michigan right now?

And it's because they want to paint themselves

as being the champions of precisely those people.

Those people, exactly.

And for different reasons,

both are inappropriate to be embraced by them,

but both have arguments that will resonate and will land.

I think it's interesting that so much of populism today

is about politicians trying to find issues

that don't address inequality,

but will allow them to continue to promote themselves,

their buddies and their network deletes.

So, I mean, let's not talk about class warfare.

Let's talk about identity politics

because that'll get people all jinned up,

but won't force us to pay taxes, right?

I think there's a lot of that.

And certainly in the United States,

where we have a level of economic collapse

for the lowest classes, the lower middle classes,

for the last 40 years, minimum,

we have, I mean, stagnation,

which feels like collapse to them, I should say.

I mean, these are not poor people

in the global scheme of things at all

and made much worse by the inflation levels

that we see right now.

And those inflation levels have come down,

but that doesn't mean prices are going down.

That just means they aren't going up as fast

as they were last year.

So it's not like the people that are still making 15

or 20 or 25 bucks an hour

suddenly feel like they can pay for stuff.

Absolutely not.

And you see that in the poll numbers.

Then you have the United States as the country

that most lionizes entrepreneurs, individualists,

people that build things themselves,

which is fantastic for your and my personal background

and trajectory, but also means the families eroding,

the churches eroding, community groups eroding,

so many of the places that allowed people to feel

like they were part of the fabric of something

that would look out for them, take care of them,

engage with them.

Those things increasingly don't exist.

Instead, you're intermediated through your phone.

And then finally, of course,

the role of a much more polarized and fragmented media space

and now social media space and now algorithmic AI space.

I think if you layer those three things

on top of each other,

I'm not gonna suggest what percentage each have

in terms of responsibility for this new malaise

that so many Americans are feeling

and this anger that so many Americans are expressing,

and it's not just white undereducated men.

I mean, it's much broader than that.

I think that you really do engulf the problem.

And the fact that this has been growing for decades

means that even if you start to fix it,

it's not gonna get fixed in one electoral cycle.

I don't care who you elect.

So let's do a whirlwind.

Let's go around the world.

So give us your thoughts in terms of the situation

and how it's evolved or devolved in Ukraine

since the last time we spoke.

Well, the counter offensive,

the Ukrainian counter offensive has gone

at best marginally well for the Ukrainians.

And Zelensky, who was just in the United States

and Canada a week ago,

probably had his most difficult foreign trip

since the war started.

You saw this reception.

Yeah, well, you saw that McCarthy

was not willing to grant him a joint appearance of Congress,

was not willing to have the Biden administration

do a full briefing for the house

the way they had for the Senate.

I think McCarthy was doing Zelensky a favor, honestly.

I think that if he had done either of those things,

there would have been many more headlines

from a skeptical right wing of the GOP party

yelling and screaming

that we shouldn't be spending this money anymore.

I don't think he was undermining Zelensky at all.

I just think he's in a very difficult position,

but that difficulty is gonna grow.

Zelensky was told by the White House

that you cannot count on military support

for a second counteroffensive next year,

which means that increasingly the land that Ukraine has

is kind of the land they have for the foreseeable future,

like their ability to retake everything

that Russia has taken,

and they have every right to do so,

every right to want to do so,

but it doesn't look like they're gonna have the capacity.

So that's one very serious problem for Zelensky and for NATO.

At the same time, we see that Ukraine

is increasingly engaging in drone and missile strikes,

not just on the front lines, but into Crimea,

into Sevastopol, where the Black Sea Fleet is based,

into their headquarters, into Moscow, into Russia proper.

They're putting what will soon be over a billion dollars

into their drone industry.

They're gonna become one of the top drone producers

in the world.

They will not be restrained by NATO

and how and where they use those drones,

and that is bringing the war increasingly to Russia itself.

Now, the Ukrainians thus far

are striking almost uniquely military targets.

The Russians thus far are striking mostly

infrastructure, civilian infrastructure,

and civilians indiscriminately,

but no guarantees that's gonna continue.

And I guess what I'm saying

is none of this looks particularly sustainable.

I mean, you look at the last six months

and the front lines in the war are where they've been.

The Russians have 18% of Ukrainian territory,

that's more or less been true for six months,

but the nature of the war

and the context is actually changing quite a bit.

So if you had to, in recognizing nobody knows,

but if you're forced to guess or speculate,

what does the conflict look like

in 12 or 24 months from now?

What would you posit?

Well, so you said, given the fact that I don't know,

so let's look at, I agree with you, I don't know,

but let's at least look at why I don't know.

One of the biggest reasons why I don't know

is because I don't know who the American president's gonna be

and the United States has been providing

a strong majority of all the military support,

training and intelligence that the Ukrainians have.

If Trump becomes president,

leaving aside the fact that he has promised

that he will end the war within his first 24 hours,

which seems long for Trump,

but nonetheless, leave that aside,

the policy on Russia, Ukraine

and the support for Ukraine will change

almost 180 degrees overnight.

That's really interesting because a lot of people,

I mean, I've spoken, last week I spoke

with at least six European leaders,

like presidents, prime ministers of their countries,

and they were all increasingly

and very seriously focused and concerned about that issue.

And what's interesting is it's making them feel

if the window is closing on potential support

from Ukraine from the U.S.

And they know that they're not gonna be able

to make up the gap.

Like, I mean, if the U.S. goes away,

Europeans aren't gonna be able to suddenly continue

to provide that military support.

So their view, increasingly, not the Germans,

but the rest of the Europeans I've talked to pretty much,

the French, the UK, the Poles, the Nordics, the Baltes,

their view is that you've gotta bring Ukraine

fully into NATO before that happens.

Now, right now, Biden and the Germans

don't support that, worry that it's too confrontational,

it pushes the Russians too hard,

though they're less worried about that

given how Russian bluster hasn't played out

over the past months to concern the Ukrainians

can't be trusted.

I mean, lots of issues there,

but that is now becoming a much more active dynamic

in the intra-NATO conversations.

Again, there's a big danger here, Scott.

I think one of the things that we can fairly say,

looking 12, 24 months out,

I think if we look back,

we are likely to say that where we are right now

is peak NATO.

It's peak transatlanticism,

it's incredible coordination between the U.S.,

all the Europeans and the Ukrainians.

It's gonna be increasingly very challenging to maintain that.

How would you describe our relationship with China?

Is it getting cooler?

Or is it thawing?

I would say that it is,

or it lacks trust.

It has, the speed of its decline has diminished.

And I mean, so like for the media companies in the U.S.,

that sounds like the new up.

Your rate of decline has reduced, right?

I guess that's positive.

It is clear that Xi Jinping and Biden are now

putting a lot of work into a bilateral summit

that will occur only a few miles

from where I am right now in San Francisco in November.

By the way, historically,

when you look at U.S.-China summit meetings,

the most stable time in the relationship

is not after the summit.

It's before the summit.

It's right now.

It's when both sides are preparing for the summit.

So they're spending all of this time

making sure nothing goes wrong,

talking about what they can announce, how they can gauge,

what are the things that'll be fruitful,

what they can talk about, right?

So the next two months of U.S.-China relations,

I would suggest are likely to be

among the most stable that we've had.

And then after the summit's over,

you'll get a honeymoon effect for a few weeks.

It ain't gonna last very long.

It'll be like the next time that Congress,

sort of lobs a piece of legislation,

the next time someone big goes to Taiwan,

the Taiwanese elections are January 13th,

certainly assuming that the vice president,

the national's vice president wins,

that's gonna be more problematic.

So no, it's a poor relationship,

but both leaders right now are trying to stabilize it.

And they're having some level of success.

The biggest announcements in the last few weeks

have been these new bilateral channels for engagement

through the State Department, through commerce,

and most recently through treasury.

Nothing that's gonna knock your socks off, Scott,

nothing that's gonna make big headlines,

but does help to normalize the high-level engagement

between the governments.

I was asked to mediate the,

or help unwind business from two owners.

And I looked at the business and got to understand it.

And my conclusion was I sat him down and said,

figure it out and make up.

There's just no way to unwind this business

without you both losing 90% of everything.

And so figure it out.

And I feel that that is somewhat analogous

to the relationship between China and the US.

And that is the biggest tax increase or tax cut

is a function of the US and China

not getting along or getting along.

It seems to me that they have such a mutual interest

in trying to figure out not great relations,

but at least good relations.

What do you think the real soft tissue here,

the issues that separate the two from what feels like

a real vested mutual interest?

Well, one is that the level of mutuality

has been eroding for a few reasons.

One is that China, when the Americans

were bringing the Chinese into the World Trade Organization

and opening that market,

China had just an unprecedented amount

of hardworking inexpensive labor.

That labor is now more expensive than Mexico.

It is highly competitive

and local Chinese firms are fighting for it

and they don't have rule of law.

So China as the factory for the world

is increasingly not a useful analogy.

A lot of companies want China to be the factory

for Chinese consumption, Chinese demand.

China for China is what that's being called,

but it's a very different model

than what was driving China in globalization.

There's this term of art that you hear everyone talk about,

the Europeans, Vandaline, Biden, others de-risking.

Well, this is a de-risking that makes the interdependence

between the two countries less deep, less all-encompassing.

Then you have the fact that some of the American companies

that are driving the indices,

your Metas, your Googles,

your Microsofts have either no or virtually no access

to the Chinese market.

China doesn't let them in.

And so, you know, the Americans say,

well, we might not let TikTok and the teenagers go crazy.

I don't think TikTok is a national security concern,

personally, at least no more than I think

that having kids on Facebook or Instagram

is a national security concern, and they both are.

But if the Chinese aren't going to let American companies in,

why should we let Chinese social media companies in?

I mean, because we want to do more damage to our own children?

Like, that doesn't seem fair.

So, there's that.

And there's also just this, you know,

the fact that the Chinese economy right now

is seriously and structurally underperforming

on the back of over two years where no one traveled to China.

And so, a lot of companies, the US,

the Amcham in China just did a survey

of all of the corporates there, and only 50%

said that they might be interested in investing more

in the next five years.

That's the lowest response on record from the Americans.

The Europeans are a little bit more optimistic,

but not radically more optimistic.

China's now, they say they're growing at 4% to 5%.

In reality, it's a lot lower than that.

The real estate sector is really sucking wind

and could implode at any moment.

Lots of unsustainable corporate debt.

Demographics really challenging.

And the Chinese are focusing more on China.

They've made it hard for a lot of foreign companies.

You see this Nomura exec that has just been, you know,

detained, has kept in China.

You've seen investigations into American companies,

European companies suddenly getting raided.

I mean, all of these things together,

I still am a firm believer in everything that you said,

that the US and China have far more reasons

to get along than not.

That the only thing worse for America

than China succeeding is China imploding.

China imploding would be very bad for the global economy,

very bad for the United States,

very bad for American consumers.

We don't want that.

But the level of interdependence

is not what it was 10 years ago.

And it's trending faster in that direction.

We'll be right back.

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Before we talk about AI,

I just want to get your take on the political situation

and the state of affairs in the US.

Any thoughts on, I mean, since we last talked,

it just seems we're starting to normalize the notion

that Trump's going to be the nominee

and that he could be president again,

which just seems almost unbelievable to me.

What are your thoughts?

Well, it would be unbelievable

if it hadn't already happened once.

Once it already happened once,

you kind of think it can happen again, right?

I mean, you know, those people are-

It's one thing to elect a talk show host.

It's another thing to elect a talk show host

who's also an insurrectionist.

I mean, this really has taken it up a notch.

I mean, I would argue that what was being elected

was a grievance-based campaign incredibly hostile

to all of the enemies of these people.

Incredibly hostile to the establishment,

irrespective of the fact that he's part of it

and is profited from it and all that stuff.

But I mean, the fact is that he was driving them crazy,

the mainstream media,

increasingly like the university professors,

the doctors, the scientists,

that all of these people,

Trump is the one that's gonna stick

the middle finger to those people.

And the fact that, you know,

he's now been impeached twice, acquitted twice.

91 indictments.

And by the way, if they don't vote him in,

if his party faithful don't vote him in,

he could face jail time.

So look what he's willing to do.

Look what he's willing to go through

just to stick it to the man, right?

And, you know, I mean,

if that's why he was voted in the first time,

he's only given all those people far more reasons

to vote from a second time.

So very clearly,

I think we all should be betting on him being the nominee.

Can he win as president?

I don't know.

I mean, again,

I don't know if it's 50% likely or 30% likely,

but it ain't 10%, not against Biden,

where, you know, a strong majority

of the entire population believes

that he's too old to run.

And, you know, he's not doing well on immigration now at all,

which is a serious issue that affects every American.

I mean, even the New York mayor was taking,

you know, hotshots at the president,

not exactly a red bastion, you know, on that front.

And on the economy,

while I'm sympathetic to the fact

that the economy is doing considerably better

than that of other advanced industrial economies

coming out of the pandemic and the Russia war.

So, I mean, you know, if you were looking at Germany,

France, the UK, Japan, Canada,

I mean, you bet on the United States.

So you have to say the U.S. is doing something right

from a policy perspective,

but a lot of Americans are hurting.

And I do put stock in the fact

that the average American in that context

is going to blame the incumbent.

Not that they think that Trump has done anything right,

but that they're more willing to stick a finger

to whoever's in charge.

And so, you know, if that persists,

and one thing I can predict pretty strongly

is that in 14 months, Biden will be 14 months older.

So that, that, right?

So that dynamic is not getting better.

And I mean, you saw the New Yorker cover funding out,

but look, you know, the four-page-

Yeah, parents, the cognitive decline is not linear.

I mean, it gets, it starts to decline faster and faster.

Let me ask you this.

Do you think that, do you think there's a chance

that Democrats might, if there's an incident,

he falls or he is popularity continues to wane?

Do you think there's a chance or is it too late

that the Democrats prop up someone else?

Well, first of all, I think there is no plan B.

Right now, there is no plan B.

So there's no one around Biden that is saying,

okay, if something happens, who are we gonna go for?

In part because the person that is obvious they would go for

is not electable, is the vice president.

And maybe that's fair, maybe that's not fair,

but it is a reality that is accepted in Bidenland.

So right now there is no such conversation happening.

Biden is absolutely running,

but the McConnell episodes have now made this

much more front and present for the American public.

And, you know, people calling for McConnell to step down.

McConnell's doing the Republicans a great service

in continuing to govern in his incapacity

because it just makes the age issue of Biden more salient.

It's so funny you said that I thought that

if they were really Machiavellian,

they would have McConnell freeze every other week.

And no question, right?

It's exactly what you did.

Just keep the issue of age front and center.

Yep.

I mean, I don't think that's what's actually happening.

Yeah, no, I don't think it's faking it.

It looks pretty authentic.

I mean, you know, let's be clear.

I mean, we could probably get this to trend on X.

I mean, are you back on, by the way?

I'm almost 90 days Twitter sober.

I've just decided I'm not gonna paint

this guy's fucking fans.

No, no, I understand that.

But have they allowed you?

Because you were like, you were thrown off?

Oh, yeah.

As soon as I went public with not being able to get back on

to someone's credit, I did hear that day from Twitter saying,

this is how you get back on.

I didn't do it.

Anyways, let's talk about AI.

In your article with Mustafa Suleyman for Foreign Affairs,

you wrote, open quote, whether they admit it or not,

AI's creators are themselves geopolitical actors

and their sovereignty over AI further entrenched

the emerging technopolar order,

one in which technology companies wield the kind of power

in their domains once reserved for nation states.

Let's unpack this.

How do you think AI will influence geopolitics?

Well, you know, when you started talking to me

about Russia, Ukraine and China, I mean, you know,

we think we're having a conversation

about the future of the world.

And of course, that means we're talking about governments

and political leaders that are elected or that are dictators.

And we kind of understand that.

And that's been the framework for our entire lives.

Increasingly, if we're talking about anything

that affects the digital world

and what the digital world touches and can affect,

which includes our behavior, our spending,

big pieces of the global economy

and big pieces of national security,

we're not talking about countries anymore.

We're talking about companies

and we're talking about individuals.

So in other words, the future,

we talked, there's gonna be a China century

or there's Pax Americana, it's a G2,

it's a multipolar world.

No, when a technopolar world is that part of the world,

the digital order that is run by technology companies

and individuals that act as sovereigns,

that Elon decides whether or not the Ukrainians

have the ability to fight in certain places

because he does or does not turn on or off Starlink

for those soldiers, that Microsoft decides

whether they are providing cyber defenses

and securities for countries,

not just companies and individuals that are attacked,

that AI companies will decide what AI can do

who can use it, how they can use it,

how they're platformed,

what their political orientation will or will not be.

These things are all completely different

than how we think about geopolitics.

And if you believe as I do,

and as my friend and co-author Mustafa Suleiman does,

if you believe that AI is gonna transform

the way all of us behave on this planet,

the fact that governments have so far

almost zero say in that,

almost none of the resources,

almost none of the understanding,

that implies that we need to start thinking

of these technology companies as geopolitical actors.

So I would push back in the sense that,

you know, as much that we get wrong at a government level,

whether it's the FBI or NATO

or our security apparatus or our defense department,

the vast majority of the people in there,

they're serving as fiduciaries

for the Constitution and American citizens.

And I don't like the idea of normalizing

that Elon Musk and Sachin Adela and Sam Altman

get a seat at the table

because they have invented these incredible technologies.

I like the idea of passing laws that say,

if your technologies end up having an impact

and domain over battlefield technologies,

congratulations, well done,

we now get to make those decisions.

And if you don't give us real-time information

such that we can make those decisions,

we're gonna start putting people in jail.

I would go the other way, your thoughts.

Well, first of all, is that naive?

No, not naive at all.

I share your views.

And certainly with the Starlink case,

you've now seen that Elon is developing a new technology

that he's going to give to the US government

and the Chinese government presumably won't have it,

the Russians won't have it,

and NATO will make those decisions.

So on that specific issue,

your concerns, my concerns are being addressed.

And hopefully that will mean that the tech companies

are not making those decisions of life and death.

When we talk specifically about AI,

I think that we are moving way too fast

for governments to be able to do that principally.

But I agree with you,

I don't think the technology companies,

they don't have the interest,

they don't have the background,

they don't have the experience,

nor are they accountable to make those decisions themselves.

So what I'm suggesting is that

they're gonna have to do it together.

And we see this already start happening

in the United States approach.

You saw that the White House invited those seven companies

that are dominating the AI landscape to come in

and say, okay, let's have some initial agreements

on things like red teaming areas of potential malfeasance

or breaking your models

and sharing that information with the government

and with each other.

Let's have watermarking on AI

that ensures that people know what is

and what is not an image, a sound,

whatever a video generated by AI.

The companies all agreed to do it.

We don't yet have legislation for it

and they're working with the US.

That strikes me as the kind of hybrid model

that is more likely to succeed.

For me, AI is becoming more like

the global financial markets

where we all know we need the financial markets.

We also know that any market player

that potentially can start a run

can have knock on cascading effects

that can bring the markets down.

And therefore we need macro-prudential reform.

We need to have organizations

like the Bank of International Settlements.

We need the Financial Stability Board

that brings together all the financial players

and the governments to make sure

that if there's a crisis, if there's a crash,

that we keep the system working.

I think that's what we're gonna need in AI,

which means this is not a US versus China Cold War

because the Americans and the Chinese

aren't gonna dominate AI

the way they dominate, say, semiconductors, right?

Or the way they dominate 5G.

The AI is going to be systemic.

It's gonna be proliferated everywhere.

Everyone's gonna have access to it

and we're gonna need it to work, to be available,

but also not to destroy us.

And that's something that, frankly,

I mean, you and I talked about

how the Americans and Chinese need each other.

This is an area in actually fascinatingly

where we don't know it yet, we don't recognize it yet,

but within five, 10 years,

US and China will fundamentally need each other

on this issue.

Ian Bremmer is the president and founder of Eurasia Group,

the world's leading political risk research

and consulting firm, and GZERO Media,

a company dedicated to providing intelligent

and engaging coverage of international affairs.

Author of numerous books.

What's your most recent book, Ian?

Well, The Power of Crisis.

The Power of Crisis.

There you go.

New York Times, best-selling, yeah.

Go on, well done.

And most importantly, this marks

his eighth appearance on the Prodigy pod.

Most important.

And I enjoy every single time.

It's always great to see you.

Number eight, number eight.

Great to see you, Ian.

Thanks so much for your time.

Yeah, my pleasure.

Algebra of Happiness, The Power of Touch and Affection.

I got a random email from a woman

who owns this iconic restaurant in London

called The River Cafe.

Her name is Ruthie.

I don't know her last name.

And she said, I want to host her.

Listen to your podcast.

I love it.

It's, A, it's rewarding.

And Ruthie's open about this.

She's a 75-year-old woman.

It's rewarding when someone outside

of what I would consider my core demographic,

young men, listens to the podcast and likes it.

And so she said, I'd love to host you for lunch.

So I said, sure, it sounds great.

Made a date, comes along.

I forget, I was jet lagged.

I was just feeling shitty.

And I'm like, oh my God, I gotta go all the way

to the Thames River.

And it's like a 40-minute drive for me.

I'm like, oh, this is like the last thing I want to do

and have lunch with this stranger.

And hauled my ass into an Uber, got down there.

And first off, this woman is just a force of nature.

I mean, she just, she's built this,

probably one of the most iconic restaurants

in London, if not the world.

And she's done it.

I don't think it's through cooking.

I mean, the food was fantastic.

I think it's just sheer warmth.

Literally everyone in the world knows her,

from Bob Iger to Lauren Michaels.

Like every, I'm friendly with the CEO of Airbnb.

And of course, he was coming to stay with Ruthie

when he's in town, he stays with Ruthie.

So she has that kind of magnetism,

but that's not what this is about.

About 30 minutes into the lunch when we're talking,

she just very naturally put her hand on top of mine

for, you know, to kind of give me this sort of affirmation.

And when she did that, it was a bit jarring to me.

I thought, okay, it's a stranger holding my hand.

And she continued to do it,

probably another half a dozen times throughout the lunch.

And by the end of the lunch, I was thinking,

this is so nice.

It's so nice that another human

has the capacity, the confidence,

and just sort of the love for the species

to touch other people.

And I'm not used to that.

And I'm trying to have that confidence,

but I don't have that confidence.

And I thought to myself,

if I could give my kids anything,

or I could give them a small number of things,

I would want them to have the confidence

and the love and to be mammals

and have the confidence to be affectionate.

Because it just makes your day.

It makes you feel better about yourself.

Makes you feel better about the species.

And I thought, my God, what a gift.

Like, what were the right toys or the wrong toys?

Or what was it about her life,

her relationships, her parents

that gave her that sort of quality

that some stranger who hauled his ass down to a restaurant

is just so sort of moved

by the fact that this woman is holding my hand.

I don't know how to bring this to a close

other than to say for those of you

who have the confidence and the love

to hold people's hand, my God, keep on keeping on.

Thank you.

This episode was produced by Caroline Shagren.

Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer

and Drew Burroughs is our technical director.

Thank you for listening to the Prop G-Pod

from the Box Media Podcast Network.

We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice

as read by George Hahn and on Monday

with our weekly market show.

You must feel so fortunate to witness up close.

I mean, you're literally, you're swimming in the tank

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Like, he's a little bit tortured,

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He's a little bit angry.

If a homeless person breaks into the park,

falls into the tank,

I'm gonna rip off his genitals and drown him.

And then there's gonna be a documentary about me

where they'll finally stop doing, to me,

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I mean, that's what's going on here.

That's what's going on here.

But what a thrill for you to be in the splash zone

for the initial show of Shamu.

And I mean, I'm the big,

I'm one of those big fucking orcas

with like its dorsal fin is like,

is like hanging over, it's so big.

It's so big and manly, it goes like this.

It goes, whoa, and it's too big, right?

Like an arc.

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Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.