Ex-CIA Spy: The Iran War Was China's Trap — And We Walked Right In

What's up, guys? Today I'm hitting you with a truly essential conversation featuring Andrew Bustamante. This guy's not just a former covert CIA intelligence officer—he's become one of the most sought-after experts on modern espionage, national security, and global power. With everything that’s exploding right now between the U. S., Iran, China, and Russia, I could not wait to get his perspective. Andrew is breaking down how the new world order is shaping up in real time—why China’s playing a long, strategic game, what the real stakes are in the U. S.-Iran conflict, and how economic warfare and public perception matter more than ever. If you've ever wondered what global power really means today, or how to navigate a world that's changing at crazy speed, this episode will give you the frameworks and mental models you need to make sense of it all. I hope you guys get as much out of this episode as I did recording it with Andrew. If you find it valuable, please drop us a review—it’s the best way to support the show and make sure we continue to bring bold, unfiltered conversations right to you. I'm Tom Bilyeu, and welcome to Impact Theory. 00:00 - Welcome and intro: Why meeting with Andrew Bustamante was urgent with global tensions 00:20 - What China Learned While US Fights Iran 05:24 - The global scramble: How 157 countries are hedging against US dollar and US tech; why the “portfolio split” just got real 09:06 - The “Suez Canal moment” for the US: Why losing grip in the Strait of Hormuz is historic 19:15 - How global perception shifts when threats (“economic D-Day”, anyone?) become empty—China’s new confidence in resisting American pressure 31:08 - From American Dream to “Red Dream”: How Xi Jinping’s CCP is remaking global aspirations, and the chilling influence on wavering democracies 40:45 - Why China WANTS conflict close to its home turf (South China Sea)—and what happens if the US ever takes the bait 53:21 - Does China see itself in decline? The real calculus behind demographics, technology, and whether they’re just waiting for the world to come back to them What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: Want my help starting a business? Join me here inside Zero To Founder https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show Sign up for my AI Masterclass: AI Masterclass https://tombilyeu.com/ai-masterclass?utm_campaign=Live%20Masterclass&utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=evergreen FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Cash App: Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/v6nymgjl#CashAppPod *Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App’s bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N. A., pursuant to a license from Visa U. S. A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast http://cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosure. Quince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpod Whatnot: Download the Whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription order Ethos: Get a free quote athttps://ethos.com/impact Incogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impact ATT Business: Switch to AT&T Business at https:// https://incogni.com/impactbusiness.att.com http://business.att.com Pique: 20% off at https://piquelife.com/impact Order Andrew's new book 'Outsmart Everyone' TODAY and get IMMEDIATE ACCESS to your ‘Operators Guide to Outsmart Everyone’ before Andrew's book hits the shelf: - Step 1: Visit the official site for Andrew's book by clicking here https://outsmarteveryonespy.com/ - Step 2: Purchase the hardcover, audiobook, or eBook. - Step 3: Send the receipt for your purchase to Andrew's team at: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] - Step 4: A real-life human being will respond to your email with a personal link to download your ‘Operators Guide to Outsmart Everyone!’ - BONUS STEP: For those who want to celebrate with Andrew personally, if you BUY 5 COPIES of the book, you’ll get a PRIVATE INVITE to JOIN ANDREW on LAUNCH DAY for an EXCLUSIVE LIVE VIDEO CALL! Just send your receipt and highlight that you bought 5 copies (or more!) of the book. Want to learn more from Andrew? - Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/ImpactTheory082026 - Follow Andrew on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@Andrew-Bustamante - Explore Spy School: https://everydayspy.com/ - Support Andrew's sponsor: https://axoltbrain.com/andy See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Let's talk about the moment your side hustle becomes a real business. Now, I see way too many founders stay stuck running their business like it's a hobby. And then they wonder why nothing ever feels real. It doesn't feel real because it's not. I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs build real businesses through Impact Theory University. And the first step in the path to building a legit business is registering it. And Taylor Brands will help you do just that in a few clicks. An LLC, a limited liability company, is an official business structure. It's inexpensive to form and very simple to maintain. It's how you open a business bank account. It's how customers know they're dealing with a real company. And Taylor Brands doesn't stop at the filing.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. Andrew Bustamante, welcome back.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Tom.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  Dude, as always, given what's going on with Iran, with China, I have been very eager to sit down across from you. Now, the last six months of us going to war with Iran has really been an audit of American power. What do you think China is taking away from the results?

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I feel like China is in its second big rally. Nobody realizes that China's first opportunity to really learn from the United States and benefit from our errors was the war on terror. It was when we were in Afghanistan and Iraq for 21 years. Pouring money, pouring focus, pouring policy. And during that 21 years, from 2001 to 2021, China went from being a country that made plastic widgets to having the second largest telecommunications company in the world, Huawei. They created their own indigenous fighter jets. They created their own indigenous internet systems.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  They wired their, they completely skipped the part of history where you're supposed to create landlines to connect houses. They just evolved right past it, stealing from Western IP and then building their own copies of it. And not only were they able to build it all, but they also got into the export business, pushing it to Latin America, pushing it to Africa, pushing it across Asia, and of course, even pushing it to the United States. That's why Trump had to blacklist Huawei in his first term. Because we were buying Chinese telecom over our own indigenous American telecom, even though the Chinese telecom was a knockoff copy of ours. So China's been down this road once.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  They had 21 years to skip steps up the evolutionary, social, geopolitical ladder. And now with Iran, they're doing it again, five years later.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  What is the exact opportunity, though? Is it watch us fumble the bag? Because I thought you were going to go somewhere else in terms of, okay, we run out of missiles. I've got my eye on Taiwan. This might be a good time to move. But that's actually a really interesting hypothesis that they're watching something slightly different. So the opportunity of watching us go to war, what, what is that opportunity exactly?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  It's three different opportunities kind of rolled into one. So first, they get to watch us lose the court of public opinion. They get to watch us say that democracy works while we shortcut democracy. They get to, they get to watch us say that we're the most powerful military in the world. Nobody should trifle with us. And then get outmaneuvered in the battlefield by a broke, small, defunct country. While we're also trying to make friends with other small, broke, defunct countries like North Korea. So they get to see this embarrassment on a public stage. That's the first benefit they have. The second benefit they have is they actually get to build an alliance with Iran and with Russia.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Because now they can both overtly and covertly support the Iranian continued persistence of conflict. They are actively helping them develop new rockets. They are actively providing them the chemical resources they need for solid state rockets, which are the most dangerous type of ballistic rocket. Iran is actually making more progress towards a long range ballistic rocket now than they were before the war.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Because of China?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Because of China and Russia. China is giving them precursor chemicals, precursor resources, the actual tools they need to go into the rocket. While Russia is giving them intellectual property, design schematics, strategies, satellite and intelligence support. So the whole reason that Iranian drones are even able to penetrate airspace in the Middle East is because of Russian intelligence and Chinese capabilities. Meanwhile, Trump can threaten the whole world with, if you help Iran, we're gonna blacklist you too. Well, Russia's already blacklisted, so what do they care? And China, their big card is, go ahead and try to blacklist China. Like, you really think the United States can survive without China?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Go ahead and try, because we don't think you'll actually pull that trigger. So the second big benefit to China here is that they get to exacerbate and continue the burning of American resources against an Iranian opponent, while simultaneously building alliances with Iran, building long-term commitment with Russia, and not spending any of their own military resources. They're just spending precursor chemicals, technology and resources that they can trade for oil. And then the third big benefit that China gets is as the United States continues to spend attention, resources, diplomacy, reputation on a war that we started in Iran, China's just further validated about what they want to do in Taiwan.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Whether they want to assassinate the Taiwanese prime minister, whether they want to take it by force, whether they want to shut it down with a cyber attack, whether they want to launch their own economic D-Day. China's no longer the enemy doing something for the first time. Because the United States, the leader of the free world, has already done every conniving trick that, that China could ever hope to use.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  If you're not the US, Russia, China, Iran, and you're watching all of this happen, what do you have to lose if America loses?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  That's the question I think 157 countries are asking themselves. If they're pegged to the US dollar, like many countries in Latin America, the dollar is going to be their first thing that they have to hedge against. If the dollar starts to lose value, then the Panamanian currency loses money and the Argentinian, Argentinian currency loses money. Like, multiple countries in Africa and Latin America, as the dollar sinks, so will they. And as the United States sinks, the dollar will sink as well. Because whoever's winning is going to take a bigger share of national reserves, a bigger share of international trade, a bigger share of investment. So all those countries that are close to the American dollar, close to the American import, exports, if they're reliant on American diplomacy, if they're reliant on American technology,

• 7:17Speaker 01

  they're all asking themselves, how do I split my portfolio? How much Chinese should I buy? And how much American should I sell? To be in a place where I can go either way. But the whole world knows that there is a shift in power right now. A shift in geopolitical and economic and military might. They just don't know how it's gonna end up. And it certainly doesn't look good to the United States that we have this bombastic president making huge promises that don't seem to come to light.

• 7:51Speaker 00

  What do you think the world is watching for? So if I'm trying to figure out what am I going to do with my portfolio of everything? Who I ally myself with, where I buy things from, who's gonna manufacture what? What is the thing that they're watching for that tells them now's the time I can make my decision?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Again, I actually think there's three things that are happening, right? So first, I think countries are asking themselves, how do I want to diversify my infrastructure for the future? How do I want to prepare for not only how I filter my water and how I deliver my electricity? Do I want to use American tech or Chinese tech? But they're also asking themselves, how do I want to structure my government? Because do I want to structure a government that is a democratic government? Because I want to be on the US's good side? Or do I want to structure a government that's a strong man government? Because that's how I would win the Chinese side. And the Chinese know that the Trump administration is much more of a strong man government than it is a democratic government. So the first question countries are asking themselves is, how do I want to invest in my infrastructure? The second thing is, how do I want to pick my conflict?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Because this is the perfect time for any country in the world that has a beef with their neighbor. Whether it's Azerbaijan, whether it's Pakistan, India, whether it's, you know, Colombia, Venezuela. Any country that wants to pick a beef with their neighbor right now? It's a good time to do it. The United States is distracted. So the big peacekeeper of the world isn't going to really have much to say. And this is part of why you see Afghanistan and Pakistan at it right now. It's why you see Israel running rampant in the Middle East right now. You, you have this freedom that you never had before because we're in this place where I have for a long time, kind of suggested that we are seeing what World War III looks like.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  As I say, you, you have said here on this show, we're already in the middle of World War III. Uh, certainly unnerving, but yeah, it gets harder to deny that every day. It becomes very easy to start putting the pieces together and look at this stuff. Um, in turn, meaning you see how it could escalate in all the different conflicts. What I want to understand though, there's going to be a thing where they'll look at, okay, the US pulls out of the Iran war, they declare victory and that's how, uh, country watching knows America's weak. There's going to be something like that where it's going to be, um, when the British Empire sort of officially fell.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Everybody called it the Suez Canal moment. So, once they couldn't defend the Suez Canal, Egypt took back control of that. That was when we knew the British Empire is not what we used to think it was. This feels like the Suez Canal moment for me, that we can't get control of the Strait of Hormuz. The more pressure we tried to put on it, then they just started putting even more pressure on, uh, the, uh, Bab el Mandab Strait. So it's like, that didn't work. And now as we, um, Besen has come out and said, okay, we're going to now use economic sanctions, the likes of which nobody's ever seen before. And coupled with the naval blockade of the Strait, we got it, we're going to choke them out, it's done deal.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  Um, how do you think that will look if we, let's run both scenarios. Scenario one, it actually works and Iran really does break under the sanctions and the blockade. And then it doesn't work and Russia keeps using the Caspian Sea to send things to Iran. Iran just always has enough of what they need because we, obviously the Caspian Sea is landlocked. So there's no way for the US military to put a blockade in there. So we have this leak point. Give me those two scenarios. What happens if we actually break Iran? And then what happens if we clearly just lose grip?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  We, there's no option one, there's no place where we break Iran.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Really?

• 11:33Speaker 01

  I don't think that's ever going to happen. I think the only way that Iran actually ends up changing its government and becoming a whole different country is if the United States essentially gives permission to Israel and Israel backed by other Arab Gulf coast or Gulf states all wage a full-scale war on Iran. The United States having a full-scale war with Iran is going to look almost exactly as the United States having a full-scale war with Afghanistan. And the Taliban are still in power there, right? A religious government is not something we have very much success defeating. We might rush, we might put them into hiding, we might run them underground. We might just create the next generation of zealots.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  But even if we commit all American forces into taking Iran, it's going to be like when we committed all American sources, forces to taking Afghanistan. We've been down that road, we know it doesn't work for us. So I don't think option one is really even a realistic option. That this place where Iran collapses because of our action, I don't know that that's realistic, especially.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  What do you think keeps them alive? Is it the, the hole in our blockade via the Caspian Sea or?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  I don't think it's, I don't think it's a logistic or like tactical anything. I think it is a strategic and ideological thing that keeps Iran alive.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  But if we're really sanctioning them to the point where, so right now they have, uh, just under a hundred percent inflation on, um, I think food, they have inflation basically sort of across the board CPI style living increase. And then they have food increase and they're both extraordinarily high. Theoretically, there is a point to which you could push that where you can't pay your soldiers, you can't feed all of your civilians. They, I think we end up in a moral quandary because I think the world will turn against us if, if literally Iranians are starving. But I can run scenarios in my head where if we can stop supplies reaching them from Russia and we can keep China at bay so that they're not able to offer material support,

• 13:41Speaker 00

  that we could choke them out. Um, it does seem a bit unlikely. What is the mechanism by which it becomes impossible?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  It's a question of what's probable. Keeping China at bay has an improbable notion.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Okay. So they're going to get involved, they're going to push.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  They're already involved, they're already involved, they are closer to Iran, they are bigger than we have insight into. The, the iron curtain of the current day is really American insight into what's happening in China. It's just, it's, it's way outside of what we have control over. If we underestimated Iran, just imagine how much we're underestimating China.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  With their wealth, with their power, with their reach, with their influence. So, it's, so China has every reason in the world to not only help Iran now, but ramp up help to Iran in the future because Iran is a giant thorn in the side of the United States. Iran is a giant thorn in the side of all of the Gulf Coast states or all the, the, the GCC countries. Because any of those GCC countries that's backing the United States is also feeling threatened by Iran. It's the perfect chance for China to say, hey, guys, do you really think the United States can be your long-term solution to security? Or do you think you want to partner more with China? Maybe we should get some of your oil, maybe we should get some of your tech, maybe you would like some of our engineers.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  And all you have to do is distance yourself from the United States. So China has every strategic reason to support Iran and Iran knows that. Russia has every strategic reason to support Iran and Iran knows that as well. And the Iranian people have spent the last 70 years under oppression. That's a generation and a half has come up only knowing the current normal. So even though people love to say like, oh, look at these pictures of Iran in 1950s and the 1960s when, you know, before the fall of the Shah. Like, yeah, that existed, but those people are 80 years old now, they're not warfighters. And the age that is a warfighter right now doesn't really believe that war is an option. And they, for sure, they don't.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Internal war.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  Internal conflict, mounting an uprising, creating a resistance. We can't even imagine it, but what they've lived through is walking down the street and seeing a person in plain clothes pull out a gun and shoot down another person in plain clothes and then walk away. Like, because that's the, the security forces in Iran live and hide in everyday life. So they have no sense of public trust. In the United States, we still believe we could actually like meet in a person's house and plan the downfall of the government and we would be safe. We might even believe that we have privacy laws that protect us having that meeting.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  We might believe, yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  But that's not what they think in Iran. The Iran conundrum, every day that it survives, just empowers Iran and degrades the United States. And that makes all of our adversaries ensure that this will continue.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. There's a reason Quince sells cashmere for $60 and it isn't the cashmere. It's real 100% Mongolian cashmere. It's the same stuff luxury labels charge a fortune for. Quince just works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middleman. So there's no need for a markup and no logo tax. The $60 goes to the actual sweater, not the fancy name on the tag. That's why everything they make runs 50 to 80% less. And it's not just the cashmere. I ordered a few things myself, their fleece joggers, a couple of their tees, which I wear obsessively.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  First thing I noticed was the quality, soft, well-made, built to hold up. They make down jackets and wool outerwear now too. So upgrade your stuff to things you'll actually wear. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns, now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Impact Theory. It's the best way to support the show. Let's talk about what it means to actually be visible in today's day and age. When you build something public, whether it's a business or an audience, anything on social media, you become a target.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  This is something that legitimately keeps me up at night because our data isn't just on the obvious broker sites. It's on old news portals, public forums, obscure directories, places you would never think to look. That's where Incogni's exposure scanner comes in. It hunts down your personal information across the wider web, not just the 420 plus broker sites. Incogni already removes your data from automatically. They can't harm you if they can't find you. Go to incogni.com/impact and use code IMPACT for 60% off an annual plan.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  Try it risk-free for 30 days. That's incogni, I-N-C-O-G-N-I.com/impact and use code IMPACT. Let's talk about how much you're paying to stay safe online. Count it up. A VPN, a password manager, something to block ads and trackers? The service to scrub your data off of broker lists, a tool to flag scam emails? That's five, five subscriptions, apps, logins, and most people still have gaps. That's the problem Surfshark solves. It's not a VPN. It's an all-in-one security suite, one tool that protects your connection, your personal info and your devices all at the same time.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Go to surfshark.com/tomb or use code TOMB for four extra months of Surfshark, backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee. That's S-U-R-F-S-H-A-R-K.com/tomb. Surfshark.com/tomb. Use code TOMB for four extra months of Surfshark.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Okay, so scenario one's not really plausible. That's sort of off the table. Okay, so scenario number two, we end up losing in a way where anybody watching this with interest goes, yeah, America can spin this however they want, but this really was their Suez Canal moment. They're not the empire that we thought they were. They're not the empire that they thought they were for sure. And now you're living in a world where, call it 90% of the world's beefs could have previously been stopped by the US just saying, don't do that. Now that won't work anymore. Now we actually have to fight every fight if we want to stop somebody from doing something. That may be economic, but we still have to exert like a level of force that we previously wouldn't have been able to. And we're seeing now the cracks in that. Who wins? Who loses in that scenario?

• 20:37Speaker 01

  I want to answer it two ways. The first way I want to answer is what if our Suez Canal moment was Afghanistan, not Iran? Because we haven't had much success since the downfall of Afghanistan. Outside of the illegal rendering of the president of Venezuela, right? We haven't really done much to succeed anywhere else. We didn't shut down drug cartels. We haven't cut off Fentanyl. We haven't degraded Chinese power. We haven't prevented Ukraine from falling to Russia yet. If anything, Russia's back on the offensive. More fighting in the last five months than happened in the previous four years. So we're not really showing a lot of success in anything since we invaded Afghanistan in 2001. So perhaps our Suez Canal moment has already happened. But

• 21:21Speaker 01

  the second way to answer that is if the Suez Canal moment is happening now, we're going to see a reaction from the world that's not that different than the reaction that we've seen in the last four years. Allies don't believe in the United States coming to help them anymore. Questions about our ambiguous policies, like our ambiguous policy about Taiwan, those questions are now no longer, people no longer assume that that ambiguity is strategic ambiguity. They now believe it's political CYA ambiguity, so that we can kind of choose what we do, we can decide later on. People are not rushing to invest in the United States. People are not rushing to gain access to the United States. We've had an immigration crackdown that makes people feel

• 22:02Speaker 01

  like they're not welcome here. We've had a crackdown on American freedoms, American transparency, American justice system. Even Americans are predominantly growing dissatisfied with the United States. We have the largest exodus of wealth that we've ever seen. We have persistent issues in our labor market with inflation, with job openings, and on top of it, you layer in AI. So a giant technological disruption, in addition to a self-imposed military disruption, that's on the tail end of a political disruption that that has been going on since we haven't been able to hold a president for longer than four years.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  To me, that says multipolar world, China's going to take its place. How does this play out? Is it China makes a move on Taiwan, it forces the issue, and now the US either makes a move or they completely back off and retreat to their hemisphere, or something else?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  The step-by-step order of how things are going to play out is difficult to predict. There are certain anchor points that seem like they have to happen. The brinksmanship is going to happen in Iran. Will China help Iran, or will China not help Iran in the face of economic D-Day as dictated by Donald Trump? Because Donald Trump is saying anybody who helps Iran is cut off completely.

• 23:29Speaker 00

  China's already said, we're going to be dismissive of that. We will not acknowledge your sanctions at all, literally on camera.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  So now, now that means that China is learning from situations like what happened in Greenland, when Greenland didn't back down from all of Trump's threats, when Mexico didn't back down from all of Trump's threats, when Canada didn't back down from all of Trump's threats. Trump has been successful only in as much as he makes a threat and people break. But when he makes a threat and people stand up and resist, what we found is that oftentimes the White House changes their policy drastically, leaves no explanation. So now China's just doing the same thing. So if economic D-Day isn't really following, they don't really follow through with it, then that brinksmanship that's coming from China is sending them a message that they can exacerbate this. So we're going to see brinksmanship in Iran. We're already seeing it. We should expect

• 24:20Speaker 01

  to see brinksmanship in Taiwan. Whether that is full-on military brinksmanship, whether that's diplomatic brinksmanship, whether that's policy brinksmanship, China doesn't want to go to war. They understand from watching us that war is expensive, war costs lives, it costs reputation. There's a small boost to the economy in a wartime economy, but not a long-term benefit from it. So China wants to avoid all-out war. But does that mean they avoid a skirmish? Not necessarily. Does that mean they won't use naval resources? Not necessarily. They might like a small controlled military action, similar to what the United States did in Iran, but they're not going to carry out a full-scale invasion. I've never suggested that. I don't think it'll happen. It'll

• 25:04Speaker 01

  be more like what happened in Hong Kong, when they changed the policy and then had police action that was violent. So we should expect to see something in Taiwan. We should also absolutely expect to see something between Russia and Ukraine. The fact that Russia and Ukraine is not top of mind to people right now, to me, is not only mind-blowing, but it's indicative of the lesson that China is learning right now in the world. It was a complete violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The entire Western world promised support. There was a flood of modern-day technology and the orchestration of a counterattack, a counteroffensive in the summer of 2023 that surprised the world. People thought Ukraine was going to win. Some people still think Ukraine is going to win.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  I think they've got a shot, don't you?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  If they have a shot, it is a fleeting shot.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  And I mean to negotiate. I don't think they're going to win a military conflict, but with what they've been doing with the drones hurting the actual infrastructure of Russia feels like, and maybe I'm just in a algorithmic bubble, and so I'm not seeing everything, because I am surprised to hear you say that Russia is now back on the offensive. My read has been that Ukraine is on the offensive?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  They're both on the, I mean, they're both claiming the offensive. Sure. The big difference is questions of corruption have finally become mainstream inside Ukraine.

• 26:24Speaker 00

  Really?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  And that was something that I, when we talked three years ago, I was like, Ukraine's a corrupt country, not a democracy. It's not a fight for the defense of democracy in Ukraine. It is a corrupt fucking satellite country of Russia. People didn't believe it until about two years later, when all the corruption and the loss of trillions of US dollars became transparent to people.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  So how or why are they fighting so hard? Because you're not going to get a country that doesn't believe in itself to put up the resistance to Russia that they're putting up?

• 26:53Speaker 01

  We're not saying Ukraine doesn't believe in itself.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  But you said they're a satellite country of Russia?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, like they, they are a country that modeled itself off of Russia. Like, their corruption is Russian corruption. Their culture is Russian culture.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  By design, not affiliation?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Correct. Correct. They wanted to be part of NATO, but they still wanted to be able to steal money from, you know, in the back door. So now what you have is Zelensky facing off against his own former defense minister, who's accusing Zelensky of no longer being fit to lead, and demanding elections in the middle of a wartime scenario. And Zelensky is saying that, I would love to not be president, but I have to be president because the country needs me. And Fedorov saying, you shouldn't be the leader. This country has been going through incredible corruption. We've lost more resources in this war under your inner circle, because you guys have been stealing money and pilfering from the Ukrainian people. And no matter how this war ends up, you're going to be living up, living large on some island somewhere as the hero of

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Ukraine. It's like, no, we need to change this whole foundation. And of course, Russia wants to see that internal political debate inside Ukraine. And the Western world is wondering, is Ukraine more democratic now than it was before, or is it just another dictatorship? They've been accused of, of human rights violations, because they made it impossible for people, for men of fighting age to leave. As much as Russia is accused of terrorist acts.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Let's talk about your sales pipeline reviews. If your CRM is half-empty fields and notes nobody finished, every review turns into guesswork. I've seen it so many times in my own sales team, and that's where today's sponsor, PipeDrive, comes in. An intelligent AI-powered sales CRM that is loved by growing sales teams. PipeDrive just launched Meeting Intelligence, built right into the CRM. Before the call, it pulls the deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes. After, it drafts the CRM updates for your rep to review and approve. The record stays complete, and you see what's actually happening. Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join the over

• 29:02Speaker 00

  100,000 companies already using PipeDrive. My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. So make sure you use it. No credit card or payment is needed. Just head to pipedrive.com/impact to get started today. That's pipedrive.com/impact, and you can be up and running in just minutes.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  ...attacking civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Ukraine's targets in Russia are predominantly civilian targets. Oil refineries, logistical supply hubs, airports, their military tools that use those airports, and military tools that use the electric grid, and military tools that use the oil. But the whole reason that Ukraine's attacking the oil capability of Russia is to hit them economically. And so when Russia attacks the energy grid, attacks dormitories, attacks heating supply centers and exchanges in Russia, in Ukraine, Ukraine says that that's a violation, but they're both doing the same thing, which makes this whole thing a mess for the criminal court when it's all done.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  You said you were mind-blown that people aren't paying attention to it. As somebody who covers this routinely, I'm surprised to hear you say that you're surprised that people aren't paying attention, just because it doesn't seem to have the implications that the US-Iran war has. So what are we missing? If we look at it, we are certainly aware of it, but we're not giving it the credence that we give to US versus Iran?

• 30:33Speaker 01

  What we're missing is that Russia's success or failure in Ukraine becomes the springboard for American success or failure in Iran, Chinese success or failure against Taiwan, and essentially what the next 50 years of military conflict looks like worldwide. If Ukraine defeats an overwhelmingly powerful force that is well-regarded around the world as being corrupt, violent, anti-freedom...

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Oppressive, if Ukraine can win, that gives hope worldwide that the little guy can still win, that democratic principles win out, that that just cause defeats villainy. That's hope and and hope is what created our country, right? The hope that a small ragtag group of revolutionaries could take down the largest superpower in the world at the time during the Revolutionary War. That's what happened in the United States. That became the story of a century. Everybody believed in the United States and the United States, the American dream and the vision. So if Ukraine wins, that becomes part of what rallies Taiwan and part of what, you know, makes people believe in the just cause of the United States and democracy over places

• 31:49Speaker 01

  like, like Iran. But if Russia wins, if if people give up on Ukraine, that's essentially analogous to people giving up on the democratic dream. And it's supercharges the idea of a strong man government. So now all of those governments that are teetering in Latin America, Central America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, all those governments that are teetering right now between are we democratic, are we strong man? Are we dictatorship? Are we fair election? They're all gonna fall in line with whatever the predominant promises of the world. We just have so much successful strong man activity right now. Netanyahu, corrupt politician, strong man leader. Zelensky, corrupt politician, strong man leader.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Trump, corrupt politician, strong man leader. Xi Jinping, corrupt politician? We don't know because China keeps saying that they're attacking corruption and Xi Jinping is above all that. So now they're the only country in the world that we actually believe from a consistent media point may not be corrupt.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  Believe in what way? That they're not corrupt?

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Believe that the the strong man leader is doing what he believes is best for the country.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  Because I'm obsessed with Chinese history, especially recent history and understanding everything they went through with Mao and the reforms that coming out of it and how you're seeing almost a U-turn background towards Mao on behalf of Xi Jinping. I'm way less likely to believe that the guy putting people in concentration camps and the guy purging people in his own military and the guy making Jack Ma disappear and get reeducated, that he's not corrupt. And certainly I don't buy that he is accurate in what is good for his country because anybody

• 33:40Speaker 00

  that believes, hey, I see things so clearly that I can just run this all by fiat. The very thing that I think America proved, and I do want to talk later about whether America has any remaining moral authority, but the very thing that made America the richest nation on earth was we were the only government that understood that man tends towards tyranny. And so we have to build a system that protects us from the men who may start out with good intentions, but inevitably begin to believe, well, I know what's best, so I'm just gonna do this really bad thing, but it's all for the sake of the country. And that impulse, that knowing that that's what people do is the very thing that we have to protect against.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  Man, sometimes I feel like I'm out of step with the world and it is so shocking to me. But when I look at Xi Jinping, all I see is the glaring flaw of authoritarianism that when it breaks, it breaks so devastatingly that you you just can't do it. It would be the way that I feel looking at China is the way that I would feel if there was an F1 driver who stood on the back of his car and like had Harley bars and no helmet and was just driving the car. And if he's out front, I'm still like, guys, if somebody nicks one of his tires or the wind, you know, hits the spoiler just wrong, this guy's dead.

• 35:06Speaker 01

  No, layer in American ideology on top of that. And what if he doesn't get nicked? What if he becomes the one that crosses the finish line for the first time ever in an F1 racer with monkey bars?

• 35:17Speaker 00

  And in many ways, they have.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  And that's what I'm saying, like.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  For now.

• 35:20Speaker 01

  I don't think you're, I don't, I would never dream of saying that you're out of step with the truth. My question is, how many Americans do you think are paying the kind of attention that you're paying? How many Americans are using the rubric you're using? And that's just Americans. How many Zimbabweans? How many Thai? How many Japanese? How many Vietnamese? How many Mexican or Uruguayan? How many of them do you think are as attentive and analytical as you are? And now all of a sudden you start to realize that China doesn't make the headlines for corruption. China makes the headlines for the new giant modern day torpedo submarine that they created,

• 36:03Speaker 01

  the brand new aircraft carrier that they launched, the, well, the negotiation that they're trying to close between Palestine and Israel. That's what people talk about when they talk about China. They don't talk about Xi Jinping's political issues. They talk about American political issues and Israeli political issues and Putin's political issues. They don't talk about, they talk about the economic concerns, but they talk about the economic concerns and they can't resist also talking about how they're still growing at almost 5%.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  So in a world of bad news, the best news stories are coming from China, from a state-controlled media agency and a very controlled narrative. I'm not saying for a second that I believe Xi Jinping isn't corrupt.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  But what I'm saying is the messaging has been so shaped and sculpted that when it reaches us, what reaches us is pretty heavily sculpted in a favorable fashion compared to what we're reading about our own domestic policies.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  And that's, for me, that's going to be more successful in today's world than the alternative. The alternative being mass misinformation, disinformation and political unrest. So that's why does China take the approach that they take? And of course, Xi Jinping is turning the whole country back towards Mao. Xi Jinping is a princeling, meaning he is the descendant of one of Mao's inner circles. That's what the entire CCP is built on, is this idea that princelings from the original families were the ones that were groomed to take power. So who do you think they're grooming to take power next is the same sort of ideology. But what's really fucked up, man, is if it works, if they cross the finish line with

• 37:47Speaker 01

  monkey bars on an F1 racer, that's gonna become the new dream for the future. That's the American dream.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  The red dream.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  I I am old enough to remember when the world was basically having a debate whether we were gonna be communist or we were going to be democratic and democracy ended up winning and it was a great time, man. The 90s were special, the 80s were special. It was really incredible. I had never thought that we're now re-asking that question and that we are once again, the the world is once again sitting on the sidelines, watching the two behemoths go head to head. And it is a larger question of who am I gonna emulate or who am I going to try to flatter by mimicking?

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  And that is deeply distressing. Okay.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  The reason, just one last thought or one additional thought. The the reason that communism lost to democracy in 1991, because in the 80s it was still an open question.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Was because of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Because in an arms race where everybody was racing to grow their military capability, grow their space-based resources, et cetera, one person got outpaced, but they were largely operating in vacuums alone. That's not the kind of race we're in right now. We're not in a, a tech race, we're not in a military race, not like it was in the 80s. Now we're in this race for long-term resource access. We're not just trying to build different weapons behind closed doors, we're actively creating weapons and giving them to other active conflict countries to test them in the field, to actually test their success and to show the opponent exactly what we've been developing, whereas the Cold War was all about not showing anybody what you've

• 39:33Speaker 01

  been developing. So we're even seeing kind of the evolution of Cold War conflict, which is why no one's calling what's happening between the United States and China a Cold War. It's not cold. If anything, it's warm, it's hot, it's, it's a secret war, not a Cold War.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. The very fact that it's easy to explain what China's doing and very hard to explain what the fuck the US is doing, not that this is better, but that it's just clearer, it's simpler. There's so much energy for the Chinese model, even here in the US. Now, taking your new framework of saying, everybody's on the sidelines watching this, and which one of these is gonna win, for the first time, I'm like, oh my god. Like, there are going to be a lot of people that are going to choose the Chinese model. So walk me through how that's going to play out. So when we were going up against Russia, it was not in my hemisphere. And so that's what the Cuban Missile Crisis was about.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  It wasn't like Russia wasn't doing that kind of thing other places. It just wasn't 90 miles off the coast of Florida. And so the second it was, it became all the way to like, we're really both gonna shoot these nukes at each other, so this is getting very, very, very real. How will that play out now? China is a long way away. It feels like a lot of what we did in South America, Venezuela in particular, was to boot China out of our hemisphere. Is that gonna be the play, where we're gonna try to strong-arm everybody in our hemisphere to get on board with us? And we're going to react violently if China is trying to be anywhere in our hemisphere?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  So I don't think it's going to be a geographical battle at all. I think it's going to be an economic battle. Because the United States, I can only hope that our US government has landed on this conclusion as well, that our big vulnerability is not military. Our big vulnerability is not geographical, it's not defense-based. It's economics. That's our big vulnerability. We have globalized our economy, and we have made the whole world reliant on American technology, but we have overspent our economic poker chips. Which is why Europe is already cutting itself off of American technology. China cut itself off of American technology four years ago? Stopped using American social media, created its own.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Stop offering American software, created its own. So China separated itself already and showed the world as a test case, you don't have to belong to American tech. Because if you belong to American tech, it's like every Apple user out there. If you subscribe to Apple, they've got you in a vice. You need to have their phone, you need to have their computer, you need to have, you want every upgrade, you need every upgrade. And if you try to switch, switching costs kick in. And now you might lose all your photos. Because how are you gonna get those photos from Apple to Google? And there's only one other option out there. And you've been told as an Apple user for decades that everybody else is less secure. That's what China's playing for right now.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  China recognizes that if the United States loses enough reputation, enough faith in fairness and democracy and economic edge, or industrial technological edge, then all of the other countries of the world that are economically depressed because they were reliant on the US dollar, they're gonna look for a cheaper technical alternative, and China's ready. Alternatives to healthcare and medical technology, alternatives to surveillance technology and policing technology, the number one manufacturer and seller of electric vehicles worldwide, alternates in telecommunications. And the only reason that Panama isn't using China right now is because Trump said that if they do, he's gonna take away American support to Panama.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  So they'll use 30%, 28%, 15% Chinese tech as they continue to kind of turn up the dial of having a backup option in case America does collapse. And the problem for the United States is that every time 1, 10, 15 countries changes their amount of imports 5%, the collective economic input is huge. Because they're not reducing their reliance on the United States for a $7 trinket. They're reducing their reliance on the United States for a $5,000 technical tool. And they're putting that $5,000 into something else. And if they buy and run MBB, then they don't even have demand for the US dollar.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  So the vulnerability the United States is facing right now is an economic vulnerability. And the Chinese understand that they've already proven over the war against terror that they can build a competitor to all Chinese, to all American tech. Now they just have to build a market that wants it more than they want American tech.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  When you look at China, how strong do you really think they are? And I'll ask it on two dimensions. Militarily, their ability to project power beyond just the South China Sea? And then economically?

• 44:44Speaker 01

  I believe that China is just as precarious in their economic position as the United States is. We're not in a good economic position, neither are they. Both countries are massively in debt. The two countries leading in national debt right now are both the United States and China. And we are both bleeding our national debt because we are literally racing to build technology and militaries for a future potential conflict between each other. So while it's easy to point fingers at the real estate market in China, we got a fucked up real estate market here. And we're easy to point at the overspending in China, we got overspending here. And it's easy to point at the fiscal irresponsibility of China, we have the same thing happening here.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  So we really are two, like, mirrors looking at each other. Militarily, the advantage that the United States has is that we can project our military force all over the world, and we're experienced in executing conflict around the world. If we execute according to what we know to be effective. Iran's a good example of us executing outside of what we knew to be effective. We intentionally pursued a limited war, a limited conflict, and we didn't hit our goals. But Maduro is an example of another limited conflict where we did arguably hit our goals. The big difference is that China doesn't want to project global military power. They want to project immediate regional power. The South China Seas is all they care about.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  And arguably, they have the dominant position in the South China Seas. Even if the United States and China did go to war, nobody's imagining Chinese vessels attacking the United States. Everybody's envisioning American warships off the coast of China. And if that happens, Chinese hypersonic missiles get launched from the mainland and rain hell on American ships in the South China Sea. And when one hypersonic missile makes successful contact with one aircraft carrier, you lose an aircraft carrier. But if that hypersonic missile gets shot down, you launch another one. China wants conflict off of its coast because that's where it's powerful.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  The United States never wants conflict off of its coast, which is why it projects.

• 46:56Speaker 00

  Okay, so precarious economies on both sides, I will give you that. I think most people think China's economy is stronger than it really is.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 47:04Speaker 00

  Declining, but to your earlier point, they're still clocking in, but it's below expectation, but they're still clocking in at 4.5%, which is dramatically better than where we're at. Now, some of the estimates I've seen say that the 4.5 is grossly overstated, but I'd still say, at a minimum, they're growing faster than we are, even if they're growing at a declining rate. Also, as the manufacturer of the world, they're us right before and really right after World War II, where we can manufacture everything, people were coming to us for everything. Now the world's starting to globalize away from them, or deglobalize away from them. But that's still the part of their economy that's still working. It's a very small part, shockingly, of their total economy.

• 47:46Speaker 00

  When you really look at it by the numbers, exporting stuff is relatively small for them as a percentage of total GDP. But still, that is working, that gives them power over people, namely the US, that are trying to get things like drones from them having complete control. On the military side, you're saying, okay, they're spending, they're growing, they're not trying to project power, they're trying to draw us into something close. Is the only conflict you see there? Because obviously, the US, oh Jesus, do I pray that they're not so stupid that we would just, out of nowhere, preemptively be like, we don't like what you're doing in Iran. And so we roll up on their shores, I can't fathom it, even with Trump, I just cannot fathom that.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  But what I can fathom is that Taiwan forces our hand, or the one I haven't heard anybody really talk about is Japan. And China has said explicitly, we are not, and if you don't know the history between Japan and China, homie, look that one up. The Chinese fucking hate the Japanese because of the rape of Nanking, and I'm sure a whole host of atrocities. So when Japan was imperialist, they went after China in a big way. Just, I'll leave it at that for people that don't know much about it. But they've said explicitly, we're not going to let Japan become the Israel of Asia. And I was like, damn.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  So that is a quick, scathing indictment of both Israel and Japan. So yeah, how do you see that playing?

• 49:20Speaker 01

  For those of you who don't know what's happening in Japan, and I know you are not one of those that don't know, Japan is abandoning its commitment to not create an offensive military force. They are actively creating their own central intelligence agency. They have, the current prime minister melted the parliament four months ago, and had a whole new parliament built. Japan is restructuring towards an offensive military and intentional intelligence capability that is domestic and driven by domestic interests.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Everybody should kind of take note of that. Because that means the world order coming out of World War II, where Germany and Japan were forbidden from having offensive military capabilities and became heavily dependent on the United States for their nuclear and military umbrella. Both of those countries now in 2026, the German chancellor has said that Germany will grow the largest military in all of Europe, and they will become the leader of NATO.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  Every time they've done that, the shit gets wild, kids, so strap in.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  And Japan has said the same thing. We are no longer gonna be yoked under the American umbrella. We are going to create our own offensive capability. We are actively building our own central intelligence service. So the sign that the United States has lost influence in Asia and lost influence in Germany is empirical, as much as it is contextual. How much have we really lost? Maybe that's up for debate. But for sure, we are not living in the same post-World War II times that we used to live in. China...

• 51:00Speaker 01

  China doesn't want a conflict and I'll emphasize and I'll start there. They don't want a conflict because they don't want to run the risk of possibly doing poorly, being seen as less powerful than they really are. They watched the paper tiger effect that happened on Russia when Russia invaded Ukraine. They watched the paper tiger of what happened in Iran when the United States invaded Iran. So they don't want that. And that goes back to Sun Tzu art of war stuff. You don't want a conflict if you don't have to have a conflict. And I think what they are testing right now is whether or not they can move in some sort of aggressive way against Taiwan to bring Taiwan into the fold, to cut off Taiwan's promise of one day being a free and independent sovereign nation, and this idea that somehow they will be an ally to the United States off the coast of China. China's just trying

• 51:45Speaker 01

  to squash that. Japan is going to do whatever Japan is going to do. And you're right, China does not want to see Japan militarize or become a powerful, independent nation. But having just come from that country, culturally, Japan's going to need 50 years to actually change the mindset of its own people. We're talking about, we're talking about people who for the last 70 years have been yoked into being America's like pet, kicking, like creating American economic value, following American policies. Like, they are the farthest

• 52:26Speaker 01

  thing from a fighting people that I have seen in a long time. The only country I've ever seen as passive and reserved and nervous about their own future is when I've, when I've supported Portugal. Former Soviet-

• 52:41Speaker 00

  Portugal?

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Former Soviet, tiny little country. But in both cases, think about the histories. Portugal, they explored the world first. Portugal, the Portuguese had colonies all over the world. Now they're just this tiny little country that nobody talks about that makes wine. The Japanese were the people that created the kamikaze pilots. They were not just an atrocious empire in the early 1900s, but they had hundreds of years before that where they were the samurais, they were the shinobi, they were-

• 53:16Speaker 00

  The only ones that could stop the Mongol invasion. That one's crazy.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  And, and the Japanese raped Chinese and Koreans just to clean the bloodlines.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Jesus.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  The Chi, the fucking Japanese slaughtered Korean tigers systematically because they knew the tiger was a cultural symbol of, of power for the Koreans. So like the Japanese come from a rich foundation of violent imperial projected power. And now they sit silently on a subway, listening to their own devices, hushing you if you make too much noise. I don't think China's worried about them being a threat for the next five generations or the next three generations, the next 50 years. So China knows if they can squash anything that happens in Taiwan and cut off the east from the United States, they'll just win by having the Japanese buy Chinese telecom, the same way that Russia tried to win Europe

• 54:12Speaker 01

  by having Europe reliant on Russian energy.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  Damn. That is, I've spent a fair amount of time doing very novice style approach to research on Japan, but enough that I've really gotten a sense of the truth of the meme that said Japan any other time in history, and it shows them as like samurai, fucking swords wielding, heads being lopped off, and Japan now, and it's like Hello Kitty. Yeah, it's wild. They, what, what culturally happens, I think a lot of people think, oh, it was the bomb and that just sort of tightened them up. The reality is that they were so imperialistic and so out over their skis that when, and this was something I wanted

• 54:57Speaker 00

  to ask you about China, when Japan actually struck the US, it was a moment of decline. It was a moment of desperation. So they don't have many resources. So they were reliant on the US, the Netherlands, maybe the UK, I can't remember who, but the US and Netherlands for sure. They were getting all their oil. And then, this is during World War II, they realized, oh, they just signed a deal with Germany, and now they're pushing into China. This is all one big war. We can't have it. So we're going to cut them off from their oil supply. That's why they attacked. Cause they were like, okay, we've only got about six or nine months of fuel left. If we don't move now, then we're in trouble. Now, they

• 55:39Speaker 00

  knew that it was a very high risk endeavor to attack the US. We all know how it went. But by the time they got to that point, there were already people in Japan that were food insecure in the extreme. Some would say, some people were starving. They had trained the whole nation to expect that you're going to need to embody that same kamikaze spirit so that we're going to have one sort of big, final bloody battle to the death. And so the Japanese, by the time they do Pearl Harbor, they've already given up on the future. There's no sense of like, I as a Japanese person, look into the future and see me raising kids and all that. All I see is we're going to fight to the death. And so there's this book called Embracing Defeat, and it talked about why for Japan, when the bombs dropped, there

• 56:21Speaker 00

  were, and the total surrender was announced, there was a sense of relief of, okay, we don't have to keep doing this. And what I found interesting in that story is that, oh, this wasn't Japan at the height of its powers, and that's why it moved on the US. This was Japan that had just been cut off from oil, was already having economic trouble because they'd overextended themselves by being so imperialistic. And now their whole society sees nothing in the future, and that's when we make the move. Now, when I look at China and I see that they're actually economically on the decline, because I was always looking at this through the lens of Thucydides' trap, which is rising power in China, declining power in the US, peak danger. But it might be something slightly different, which is

• 57:06Speaker 00

  you've got this nation that has used to been being on this upward trajectory, suddenly finds itself with a massive demographic problem, coupled with a massive economic problem. And now they don't really see their way back out of the economic problem, especially as we begin deglobalizing. And so now it's like, oh, we're on a limited timeframe here while we still have the power. Now, given that America's softening as well, the calculus starts to get very complicated. But if it's true that the powers are actually more likely to attack when they're on the decline, which is exactly what Germany did in World War I, exactly what imperial Japan did, you could say is exactly what the US did in Iran,

• 57:50Speaker 00

  you have a declining power that's like, oh, we've got a limited window where we've got to push the advantage. So then the question becomes, does that actually increase the likelihood that something happens in Taiwan that is kinetic?

• 58:03Speaker 01

  The idea that China is in an economic decline, that's only true if you compare their current productivity GDP against their recent GDP or their goals of GDP. I don't know that they would say they're in a decline, especially not compared to everybody else in the world that's got, growing at less than 2%. So does the Chinese government, do the Chinese people believe that they're in a decline? Or do they believe that they're in a hiccup, a moment of stagnation? Maybe they even externalize their problems on us. And they're like, oh, the United States has caused all this war and conflict, and COVID created this issue now where people don't trust Chinese manufacturing because they think that we were, you know, taking advantage of all the supply chains. But do they believe that they're in an actual moment of decline? Cause you have to believe you're in decline

• 58:47Speaker 01

  if you're going to take a desperate act to prevent the decline. Second, does China believe that the world is deglobalizing? Or does China believe that COVID was a, was a spontaneous change in economics and that it's just a matter of time-

• 59:02Speaker 00

  Such a great way to say that's bullshit, but sure.

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Was, was it just a matter of time before all the diversified and expensive decoupling consolidates back to single source supply chains again? Do you really want to go and have one supply chain from China and one supply chain from Vietnam? Or are you willing to save that 20% and just get your supply from China again? That is a very Chinese, systematic, again, Sun Tzu way of thinking about it. Time is the greatest leveler of all time. So if you want them to come back to you, all you have to do is continue to be present. It's how prostitution works. It's how espionage works. You're always available until their time changes. And China could very well be thinking that. And then on top

• 59:51Speaker 01

  of all of that, we talk about their, their demographic issue. To us, it's a demographic issue. Is it a demographic issue to them? Do the Chinese believe that the widespread loss of their oldest generations is going to impact them negatively for the next thousand years? Or do they believe that it's going to be a very difficult transition for the next 25 years? But then after that, they're not going to be focused on being a manufacturing country anymore. They're focused on being a high-tech manufacturing country. They need fewer skilled people to increase the per capita GDP to make them a first world superpower.

• 1:00:32Speaker 01

  And they're never going to have that as long as they're carrying 1.6 billion people. So if we let 300 million people just age out, die without any kind of state-sponsored medical anything, who's going to police it anyways? They don't even have the infrastructure in the hinterlands of China to take care of those people anyway. There's still people in China with arched, there are people in Japan that can't stand upright, that are pushing carts at a 90 degree angle because they spent their whole life in a rice field. So of course they exist in China. Are those parents, are those people, are those children, are those the people that they're really worried about shaping next, the next generation's

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  GDP? China watched as millions of people died in a cultural revolution. Why do we think that they're not willing to just watch again as, as two generations of, of octogenarians just fade away and the per capita GDP of the country literally rises overnight?

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  That's it for part one. Make sure you are subscribed so you do not miss part two coming up soon.

• 1:01:40Speaker 00

  Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient-dense superfoods, everything that used to require six, seven different supplements, and perfect

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  planning now happens in one drink that takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gifts with your first subscription. You get a welcome kit, travel packs, vitamin D3 plus K2, and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.com/impact to claim this offer.