Pod Insights The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway The State of the World — with Ian Bremmer About this episode Ian Bremmer, the President of Eurasia Group, returns to the pod to discuss the latest around Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including what it means for the rest of the world. We also get an update on US-China relations, the protests in Iran, and how Ian thinks about social media regulation. Follow Ian on Twitter, @ianbremmer.
Scott opens with his thoughts on the idolatry of innovators.
Algebra of Happiness: the death bed test.
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Transcript 10,507 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:18 Scott Galloway? Episode 201. 201 is the area code of northeastern New Jersey. Did not know that. In 2001, the first Harry Potter movie released, Apple released its first iPod. Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise got divorced, and Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears were still together. True story, I call my penis Tom Cruise. It does [BLEEP]. True story, I'm writing an HBO show. It's about a group of rich moms who get shaken up when another young mom shows up and gets a job. Also, Nicole Kidman as the emotional lady. Go, go, go!
1:56 Scott Galloway? Welcome to the 201st episode of the Prof G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group and the author of the new book, The Power of Crisis. We discuss with Ian the state of the world, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine, US-China relations, developing countries, and why he still believes in a G zero world. Okay, what's happening? Elon is supposedly moving forward or plans to proceed with the acquisition of Twitter. Why? Because he had no fucking choice, because he signed an agreement and it was about to be upheld in the Delaware Chancery Court. And he tried to bluff and Twitter called his bluff, or at least Twitter's board, and sued him. And his lawyers, a few days before the trial was set to begin, likely sat him down and
2:40 Scott Galloway? said, boss, you're gonna lose. And rather than endure that humiliation and more revelations about what went on behind the scenes, which make him look bad and make his friends look worse, he's decided to move ahead with the deal. What also probably helps is that even despite its check back recently at 5 or 10%, Tesla's stock still is massively overvalued. So he has the capital, doesn't want the embarrassment. Is this a bad thing? I don't think it's as bad as people think. I don't think he has time to run the thing. He has these kind of opaque, strange, cloudy, make no fucking sense views on free speech, which he will soon put to the side. Maybe he lets Trump back on the platform. I think that's probably the biggest change.
3:23 Scott Galloway? But we should have, as Ian Bremmer says in our interview, platforms that anyone can own that are not a threat to society. And I don't think it's that big a deal. I believe people who think it's a threat or an existential threat of Elon owning Twitter are probably overestimating that threat. But where are we? He was about to lose. He didn't want to lose publicly, so he's going to move forward with something he did not want to do, and that is acquire Twitter. It's gonna be interesting. Okay, in other news, there's a lot happening, speaking of Elon, around the idolatry of innovators. What's the idolatry of innovators, you ask? It's our society's obsession with entrepreneurs who have best exploited our faith in technology. Um, who might, who could that be? Anyways, we thought we'd go a little longer without talking
4:07 Scott Galloway? about, you know, who, but here we are again. The texts are just crazy. It's just, it's rich people porn. The texts include unproductive messages to Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, including, what did you get done this week? I, I'm an asshole and I'm just gonna start, I don't know, being critical of you for no reason. Gayle King noting that Twitter takeover is a gangsta move. Oh, Gayle, you're so down with the youngins. Jason Calcanis admitting that he was out marketing securities without the permission of Elon and then dropping to his knees like a cheap whore who's just been caught stealing his John's watch to fellate him, hoping that he'll forget he was, uh, stealing from him? I don't know. What's the term when you're out marketing securities?
4:48 Scott Galloway? You're not supposed to? He said that, "You need to stop it, Jason. You're embarrassing me and the bankers think you're exploiting our friendship." With friends like Jason, who needs total fucking sycophants? I U C above Jason. One of the more ridiculous texts came from Larry Ellison, who casually offered Musk a billion dollars to get the deal done. I mean, who hasn't had a friend text them and offer them a billion dollars?
5:16 Scott Galloway? Anyways, what kind of society are we where we have billionaires who are able to throw around that amount of cabbage as if it's pocket change? Well, we're in a society with income inequality and we need billionaires. It just seems, I mean, this just seems strange and supposedly Sam Bankman Friedman, I can never get this right. The crypto guy, the crypto guy with the big hair, offered five to 10 billion dollars. Uh, the thing I take away from this is that, uh, uh, and this sounds strange, but I think if you get a room together of people making average livings and then a group of people who are very wealthy in a room, you can discern the difference. One group of people are more creative, harder working, and granted luckier. If you get a group of wealthy people together in a room and a group of billionaires, my experience is you
5:58 Scott Galloway? cannot tell the difference. I know a lot of billionaires. I know a lot of very wealthy people and for the life of me, if you line them up, And did a full interview of them and their backgrounds, you would not be able to discern the two. Why? Because billionaires are very talented people, similar to most professionals and or most uber-successful professionals who are just really fucking lucky. The only problem is, is that they like to credit their grit and their character and not recognize their blessings. I find there's a virus that infects especially the valley where they conflate luck with talent. And also, something happens where they decide to start shitposting America and don't realize that their luckiest or their smartest move was bringing their rocket companies and their SPACs to the United States. There aren't a lot of people
6:40 Scott Galloway? using SPACs as vehicles to transfer wealth from retail investors in Brazil or in Norway to people who can go on CNBC and pump and dump their stocks. There's no one firing rockets out of Seoul, South Korea. There are people firing rockets out of North Korea, and we'll talk to Ian about that. But anyways, in 2021, income inequality increased for the first time since 2011. It's actually getting worse. The income share of the lowest 80% declined in 2021, yet increased for the top 20%. In a pandemic, typically in a crisis throughout history, what you've had is a crisis is sort of a leveling effect. And that is the factories get bombed and you need workers to rebuild the factories. So the guy who owned the factory, and let's be honest, it's always the guy, gets a lot less wealthy and workers kind
7:23 Scott Galloway? of level up, if you will. What was different about this pandemic is we decided that a million Americans dying would be bad, but the Nasdaq going down would be tragic. That we have to make sure that rich people stay rich. So we pumped 27% of GDP into the economy. Three quarters of it ended up in the top quintile of economic earning households. That's right. We decided we didn't want rich people to get any less rich. America used to be the best place in the world to get rich. Now it's the best place in the world to stay rich. Why am I economically secure? Because in 2008, when recession hit, and they always hit, and that's okay, that's a natural part of the cycle, we let the gale-force winds of disruption blow. We let them wail. And what happened? Apple and Amazon stock dropped
8:05 Scott Galloway? to 10% of where they are now. And people who were coming into their income-earning years, i.e. yours truly, got to buy Apple and Amazon stock. That doesn't mean there's not pain along the way. But when you bail out a baby boomer who owns a failing business, all you're doing is robbing opportunity from the younger person who would like to come in and buy that restaurant for pennies on the dollar. So maintaining the status quo, entrenching the incumbents is nothing but a transfer of wealth from young people to old people. We need churn. We need disruption. Of the G7 nations, the US has the highest level of income inequality and is comparable to developing nations. In some, the wealthy in this nation have weaponized government and have decided it's capitalism on the way up with our rugged individualists who deserve all their millions and billions. But when shit gets real and they might lose their
8:50 Scott Galloway? money, or Delta might go out of business, we're all in this together. No, we're not. Fuck you. We weren't in it together on the way up. Why are we in it on the way down? You should incur the same disruption that rich people have incurred for the last two centuries. We have decided it's more important to keep people rich, which by the way, robs people of the ability to get rich. According to a report by Bloomberg, the CEOs of the thousand biggest publicly traded companies in the US garner 144 times more than their median employee, and it keeps going up. So back to the texts. What can we really take away from these texts? I think the biggest takeaway and the learning for a young person is that people need guardrails. Try and find people in your life who are inclined to disagree with you. Your kitchen cabinet needs to be stocked with people who are going to push
9:32 Scott Galloway? back on your ideas. They're going to question your thinking. They're going to see the issue from another vantage point. They're going to offer you guidance and have your best interests in mind. How? How are they going to have your back? By disagreeing with you to your front, by saying, well, have you thought about this? Or maybe that's not a good idea. Or boss, boss, you are fucking up. And guess what's going to happen? You're going to get angry and you're going to like them less for a few minutes. And then a few hours later, you're going to realize that that's what good friends do. They offer guardrails. We'll be right back for our conversation with Ian Bremmer. Support for the show comes from Superhuman. The pace of modern work can be relentless. You're getting a constant influx of messages from a ton of different apps. You haven't closed all your browser tabs in a year. Everything seems urgent and staying on top
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12:29 Scott Galloway? Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group and the author of the new book, The Power of Crisis. Okay, Ian, I have a very thoughtful question to kick us off. What the fuck? Even I'm freaked out and I usually ignore most of this stuff. And is my, is my freaking out justified? What is going on here?
12:49 Ian Bremmer? I think your spidey sense is tingling.
12:52 Scott Galloway? Yeah. Say more.
12:56 Ian Bremmer? Are we on?
12:57 Scott Galloway? Yeah, we're on, boss.
13:00 Scott Galloway? We're on, yeah. I actually speak that way on the podcast.
13:03 Ian Bremmer? No, I know that. I know that. I just couldn't quite tell.
13:08 Ian Bremmer? We are, well, first of all, when, when you have leaders writing you saying, how will the West respond if Putin uses a nuclear weapon? Like, that's, I have never gotten inbound notes like that in my life. I mean, people are really concerned that the last week, the war in Ukraine has escalated more than at any point since the start of the invasion, February 24th. Putin is in a horrible position and, and it's not clear that he has any good ways to respond. And so people are starting to think the unthinkable.
13:49 Scott Galloway? So let's talk about that. What are some of the vehicles or means of escalation?
13:53 Ian Bremmer? Well, one vehicle is that he's more likely to take this fight to NATO.
14:02 Ian Bremmer? There's almost certain that the Russians will not be providing any more energy to Europe going forward this winter. They've already, just over the weekend, they cut off the gas going to Italy. I suspect they will cut off the gas going through Ukraine. That, believe it or not, right now, there's still Russian gas being pumped through Ukraine that goes into Europe and everyone's paying for it. I think that stops real soon. And Turkstream, which goes through Turkey, is the only remaining pipeline. I suspect the Russians cut that off, too. So the economic impact of all of this on Europe is going to be very sharp, very severe, and is coming real soon.
14:44 Ian Bremmer? The likelihood that the Russians would engage in strikes against pipelines, sabotage, against fiber optics, that they would even perhaps engage in strikes against weapons depots and the like in NATO countries as opposed to just in Ukraine. If you look at Russian state media over the past two weeks, they admit that they're losing territory. They're no longer pretending that they're winning everything, but they're not losing to the Ukrainians. They say they're losing to NATO, that NATO is fighting them. It's NATO intelligence, NATO weapon systems, NATO training. Sometimes they even say that there are NATO soldiers on the ground that are infiltrating, depending on who you watch.
15:26 Ian Bremmer? This is, it is clear that Putin is setting this up to be a much broader fight than just Ukraine itself. And, look, if Russia uses a nuke, the United States is going to start attacking. They will enter the war. They will start attacking Russian troops on the ground in Ukraine. That message has been delivered directly to Putin. If the Russians were to blow up a pipeline or two or fiber optic networks, I honestly don't know what the West can do to respond. I mean, you know, short of war, you've already got maximum sanctions against the Russians. I'm just not, there aren't many levers left.
16:07 Scott Galloway? But if you so imagine they cut off all the energy in the middle of the last century, we sent frigates and P 51s and battleships and gasoline to the Allies. Couldn't we do the same thing here? I mean, it'd be a terrible winter, but at the end of the day, wouldn't this be medium and long term? Kind of like taking an addict off of crack, the crack cocaine of cheap Russian energy? I mean, haven't we sacrificed more before for lesser outcomes?
16:38 Ian Bremmer? Long term, I think you're absolutely right, Scott. The question is what happens in the short to medium term? Right now, the Germans are already prepared, even the Green Party in Germany is prepared to accept fracking gas from the United States to LNG terminals in Germany. That was unthinkable seven, eight months ago, unthinkable. So absolutely, and the Americans are doing a lot for Germany, and I suspect they're prepared to do more. Let's keep in mind, the Germans this winter, they're up over 90% storage in terms of the energy they'll need to get through it. But that's because the Russians have been providing gas to Germany and to Europe all this year.
17:22 Ian Bremmer? This winter, they'll drive down all of those stores. Next year, they won't have the Russians to refill it. The Americans will do a lot, it won't be enough. If you talk to the German leadership, they will tell you that they do not have confidence about next winter, because the hole that they'll be in will be too gray. And so, look, again, if you ask me in three to five years' time, can the Europeans get through this? The answer is absolutely yes. Will there be economic carnage in Europe as a consequence in the short to medium term? I fear the answer to that is yes as well. Also, as we help the Europeans, the Russian economy, which was one of the fastest growing
18:05 Ian Bremmer? economies in the world and now is contracting by 5%, so this year's been a big hit, but nothing like the hit they're going to have over the next three to five years. So as the Europeans get through this with pain, the Russians are going to contract by 30 to 50%. What happens? To the G20, this G20 economy, as they are no longer able to build anything. Their auto manufacturing is 3% of what it was a year ago. They've got no semiconductors to build their military capabilities. They were the second largest defense exporter in the world. What happens to Russia as their economy literally collapses? What do they do? What do we want to have? What's the end game? I mean, right now, everything is pointing towards escalation.
18:46 Ian Bremmer? And for good reason, the Russians have invaded Ukraine and the Ukrainians are defending themselves. But at some point, you want this war to be over. And right now, nobody has good ideas about how that's going to happen.
19:01 Scott Galloway? So Sun Tzu, and I realize this is sort of, I don't know, pretty retail strategy.
19:06 Ian Bremmer? What, is this golden bridge you're gonna give me?
19:08 Scott Galloway? 100%, so predictable. And I realize, I mean, this is, this is what I read in the 11th grade. So I'm a little bit embarrassed bringing it up. But is there a golden bridge here? How do you give? I mean, what was it? Unless you want to totally slaughter your enemy, you always give them an out? Is there a viable out? They somehow, or are we just saying his era is over? It's time for the people around him at some point, like they did with, I don't know if they did it with Stalin. At some point, the people around him go, okay, this guy's a liability and they kill him.
19:37 Ian Bremmer? So let me say two different things to respond to that, neither of which are going to be very popular. The first is that if this were a war going on in some other part of the world, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, the international community, and by that I mean the US and its allies and the G7, the rich countries, the rich democracies, the response would be condemnation, ceasefire, stop the fighting immediately and then start negotiations, right? That is not what we are doing right now. We are saying, no, we absolutely support the Ukrainians. We want the war to continue so that they can take this land back. We're not saying we want the war to continue, but the reality, that is, that is the American policy,
20:22 Ian Bremmer? the NATO policy, the entire G7 policy on the ground. And it's understandable why, given the war crimes, given the complete lack of justification for the Russians to invade. But I want to be clear that the reason, part of the reason that the US does not have support from the developing world. From India, for example, on this issue, from China on this issue, from South Africa on this issue, from Brazil, is precisely because they see enormous hypocrisy and double standard in the way Ukraine is being treated compared to the way we would respond to other such crises in other parts of the world. That's number one. Number two, I have been saying over
20:59 Ian Bremmer? the past months that while it is important to do as much as possible to support the Ukrainians to defend themselves and to stop the Russians from taking over their territory, it is also important insofar as it is possible not to humiliate Putin. Now Putin has made it very hard to avoid humiliation because in any circumstances, he's going to be in a radically worse economic, geopolitical and security position than he had been before he invaded. That is just the reality. So there is a level of humiliation that is unavoidable here.
21:38 Ian Bremmer? But I want to be clear, I would not support, I would not support Versailles-type behavior towards post-Ukraine invasion Putin. I would not support massive, you know, sort of war reparations that would bankrupt the Russians. I would not support an effort to try to try Putin as a war criminal, even though those things are completely justified in terms of international law, completely justified in terms of what the Russians have done to the Ukrainians. And the reason I don't want to do that is because these guys have thousands
22:18 Ian Bremmer? of nuclear weapons and have the capability to absolutely ruin everybody's debt. But, you know, the fact is that I do believe that the Ukrainians should be able to take all of the territory that was lost since February 24th. I think those are minimum table stakes. I also think that Crimea is a different story. Crimea was autonomous under independent Ukraine. I've spent time there. It was run by local Russians. Everyone there speaks Russian. Majority of the population was ethnic Russian. They had a local parliament with a Russian tricolor flying on top of it.
22:59 Ian Bremmer? The Ukrainians didn't really consider it to be the same as the rest of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government was prepared to negotiate on Crimea before the war started. They were also prepared to negotiate some level of neutrality as opposed to NATO membership before the war started. So if the Ukrainians were able to take all of the pre-Feb 24 territory back, I would then support negotiations that would include those sorts of topics. But the point is that now that Putin has annexed these four territories and said that they are Russian territories, some of which he didn't even occupy at the time he annexed them,
23:43 Ian Bremmer? which has never happened before in history, and some of which he's lost in the last few days, I no longer think that that bottom line, basic, you know, minimum standard of negotiations between the two countries, it doesn't look at all feasible right now. So this is, this has become much more dangerous as a consequence of what Putin has done in the last two weeks. Much more dangerous.
24:11 Scott Galloway? Doesn't the EU and America say, okay, we're kind of more unified than we've been in a while? We finally found that common enemy that we've been searching for, right? That's, that's not us. That's not another political party within our own borders. And Europe's more, more of a union than it's been in a long time. Every day, this just gets worse for him. You know, why stop? Why give him an out? And I recognize, okay, nuclear war is a pretty good reason to try and bring this to an end. But it just feels as if every day it gets worse for him. And I don't, I don't understand, or you're of the mind that, look, this is, I won't put words in your mouth, but the existential threat that exists every day when you have a nuclear power being humiliated
24:56 Scott Galloway? and getting increasingly desperate, that risk is worth saying, okay, at every possible term, we have to try and negotiate a settlement and give him
25:04 Ian Bremmer? No, no, I'm not saying that. No, no, no, again, what I just said is that I think what Putin has done has made the possibility of an out much, much harder. My suggesting that we not create a post-World War I Germany situation is what I'm talking about.
25:21 Scott Galloway? But what about your idea? What about saying, hey, save face, you can now string the flag up on all of Crimea? And we'll, I mean, even we pulled missiles out of Turkey, right? We declared victory around with Cuba and Croatia.
25:37 Ian Bremmer? That was a secret codicil at the time. It wasn't known that we were doing that with the Soviets, but it was the deal that was cut to avoid nuclear war, and thankfully so. Turned out that we had to give something. And I think at the end of the day, we probably have to give something. But Putin has made the maximum that the US can plausibly give that would be acceptable to the Ukrainians, he has made it much, much less likely by adding 300,000 troops and annexing these four territories. Because I just don't think you can get from here to there. I mean, so Elon Musk basically promoting Putin's talking points,
26:19 Ian Bremmer? the talking points he's been giving to the Indians, the Chinese, the Kazakhs back during that Uzbekistan summit a couple of weeks ago. Elon Musk basically said, okay, here's the deal that you need to cut, or else there's going to be nuclear war. I'm deeply disappointed that Elon would come out publicly carrying Putin's water like that. I think it was deeply irresponsible. I know that he's not known for acting responsibly outside of his core areas of business, but still, you know, when he starts hitting geopolitics, he kind of makes me want to start designing electric vehicles, right? I mean, because I'm roughly as capable.
27:02 Scott Galloway? Yeah, the must tweet, I almost feel like I hate to even give it more oxygen because I just see it as, you know, I'm one of those guys that's constantly, you know, not staying in my lane. And I think people should be able to talk about things that, you know, maybe they don't have domain expertise in, but when you have 90 million followers. And I also want to acknowledge, he's been, he's been very useful in terms of providing the Ukrainians with communications with, was it called Starlink?
27:28 Ian Bremmer? Yep, very important.
27:30 Scott Galloway? But I just don't, I can't figure out, I'm convinced he just has a psychopathic need to be in the news every day or be the subject of the news every day regardless of what he says or the reaction he gets, but.
27:41 Ian Bremmer? Look, I think he's relevant, right here, because of the Starlink connection, because the Russian government has threatened his satellites in recent weeks, in part because of Starlink and because how poorly they're doing. And, and I think it is important when, you know, someone with the level of reach that Elon has is prepared to say, we need to stop supporting the Ukrainians the way we have. And the reason I say that, it's, it's relatively easy for Elon's followers to, to say, okay, he's not relevant on this issue. But we are watching right now, a small version of what will happen if Trump
28:26 Ian Bremmer? becomes the nominee for the Republican Party and starts saying the exact same thing, which he will. And, and you can't turn him off on this issue. And it will fundamentally divide and undermine US policy and leadership of NATO on this Ukraine issue. Possibly Putin's best out at this point is holding on, hoping that that's the outcome.
28:54 Scott Galloway? We'll be right back.
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30:36 Scott Galloway? So, outside of what's going on between Russia and Ukraine and its impact on the EU and even America, how does this war change the world?
30:45 Ian Bremmer? A couple of ways. First, the impact on the developing world. I mean, after two years of pandemic, now you have a year of massive supply chain disruptions, particularly on food and fertilizer. Massive inflation as a consequence that's hitting countries that have taken on more debt level and they Can't afford to pay for it. This will lead to more collapses of those economies like we've seen recently in Sri Lanka. That's a real danger. Those countries are not aligned with the United States on or its allies
31:26 Ian Bremmer? on continuing to pursue a war so that Ukraine can take its territory back. These countries all want this to just be over and they want to be able to buy food and fuel. So the Americans and the Europeans are going to have to do an awful lot more to provide international aid and support for these countries. There's something that is called the Human, the United Nations Human Development Index. And they put out a report every year that looks at all of these different measures of human development like education and lifespan and hunger and all the rest. And what we've seen is for 50 years, every year, the indicators have been getting better.
32:09 Ian Bremmer? In the last two years, the world has lost five years of human development. Five years, we're going backwards. And those five years of human development lost has been experienced almost entirely on the backs of lower and middle income populations. So if you want to talk about how the world is being affected by Russia, Ukraine, with the exceptions of the Ukrainian people, the 44 million that have been most impacted by the war, overwhelmingly, the impact has been on the poorest people of the planet. And far more so than you would expect from war breaking out in Yemen or Sudan or Libya or any of those places.
32:50 Ian Bremmer? Because of war between Russia and Ukraine, it affects so much natural resource that really matters for the functioning of the global economy.
32:59 Scott Galloway? So let's talk a little bit about Iran, which should be on the front page, but it's on page two, right? What do you see? Can you attempt to summarize what's going on there? And what do you think the long-term ramifications and any thoughts on could this be the, could this actually involve regime change? I mean, it's very exciting and heartening to see what's going on there on some level. And I would feel like it's just too bad it's happening right now because it's being overshadowed by a war. What are your thoughts on what's taking place in Iran?
33:27 Ian Bremmer? Well, I mean, some of it is very heartening in the sense that it's a whole bunch of women. It's thousands and thousands of women across the entire country, particularly in the Kurdish region of Iran, but across the entire country, who are just impossibly angry at both the religious police's killing of this young woman who refused to wear a headscarf, but also generally the repressiveness of a conservative religious elite and police over a population that is far more secular. And it's a leaderless movement. It's completely grassroots. It's emerged, you know, sort of with just gravitational pull.
34:09 Ian Bremmer? And these women are demonstrating in all sorts of ways, some anonymously, some very publicly, some through social media, though a lot of internet has been shut down, some in their schools and their universities, some on town squares. Over 100 have been killed. There's been a lot of brutality. There's been a lot of people that have been sent to jail, some of whom we might never hear from again. This is a danger for the regime. And we heard from the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, just in the last 48 hours, his first official response, saying that this is the fault, this was all planned by the Americans and the Zionist regime in Israel. Of course, that's a load of complete bullshit, but that has been his response.
34:54 Ian Bremmer? It implies an intention to continue to use repression to shut these down and delegitimize the movement. But at some point, I do expect that there's going to have to be a level of reform, that the government is going to have Have to listen to these people and is going to have to loosen up some of their repressive religious control, the way that we've seen, for example, under MBS in Saudi Arabia over the past five years. And so far, there's been no indication of that in Iran, but I suspect it will happen. Unfortunately, Scott, I think it is relatively unlikely that this series of revolts leads to an overturning of the Iranian regime.
35:37 Scott Galloway? Is there a scenario where either Iran or Russia could go through a regime change? And we could find ourselves similar to after World War Two, turning enemies into allies? Is there a, is there a possible silver lining that's bigger than the cloud here?
35:53 Ian Bremmer? Much more likely in Iran. I, I think if there were a regime change in Iran, um, you know, the, the, all of the ideological trappings of that regime would wash away very quickly. There would be immense diaspora engagement, but there'd also be immense engagement from all of these talented Iranians that are being repressed inside Iran, but are still there. And in the case of Russia, of course, there's just been this massive brain drain over the course of the past decades. And I mean, kind of every level of elite society in Russia has been affected by that. They just don't have, they haven't been funding that culture. They haven't been funding that education, those sciences for decades now. And so the country's really been hollowed out.
36:39 Ian Bremmer? I think in the case of Iran, it would be much easier to really turn around if the regime was suddenly overthrown.
36:46 Scott Galloway? So you advise a lot of for-profit companies and they want your view on the geopolitical chessboard. But in the context of how do we protect, preserve and grow shareholder value? At least a for-profit company, I assume is, is why they engage your firm. To be crass, is there a way to make money here? Is energy going to go down in price? Are there, when you look at the tea leaves of commodity prices, what firms win and lose here? What macro factors that your hedge fund clients come to you to predict? Do you see any major trends in terms of creating alpha around investment opportunities or opportunities for certain business sectors?
37:26 Ian Bremmer? Well, I mean, first, let me, I'll answer that question. But I also, I want to push back a little bit in the sense that I think there's a big difference between the way I try to approach what we do for big corporations and what lots of consultants do. In the sense that I really do believe that the global order is changing a lot. I think that, you know, coming out of this G zero world, what, you know, Fareed Zakaria calls a post-American world, there's going to be a lot of fragmentation. We've got to deal with global climate change.
37:58 Scott Galloway? Where there's no superpower. That's kind of the definite way you think of this.
38:00 Ian Bremmer? No superpower. We've got incredible disruptive technologies. And I think that there are a lot of corporations out there, a lot of businesses out there, a lot of people dealing with capitalism out there that are not aligned with where the planet is today and where the planet is going. And so in part, I really believe that you will ultimately make a lot more money if you better understand the world and get your organization headed towards where the world is going, even if that involves dramatically changing your present business model and mission statement. And so it's not just about how do I make money with my existing mission statement right now? It's about how am I getting the world wrong? That I need to change who I am, what my organization is, what they do.
38:45 Ian Bremmer? I mean, we're seeing that, of course, in the most obvious way with fossil fuel companies today, but it goes much broader and deeper than that. I think that, you know, a company like Facebook is going to have to come to terms with that or they're going to be in very serious trouble. And the more we can, that we can play a role in helping them critically address their own mission statements, their own business models and how, and what the world really is, what a G zero, post-American world really looks like. I think we all end up in a much better place.
39:18 Scott Galloway? Who are some role models for that? Who do you think's pulled that off?
39:22 Ian Bremmer? Well, I actually believe that in so what one of our biggest clients slash partners on the global stage is Microsoft. And I believe in part because they've been around for a longer period of time. They're more B to B as opposed to B to C. They've all they also were almost ended as a company decades ago when they kind of went through all of the anti-trust stuff. They are more aware of how much the world can change and can suddenly completely subvert their business model. And their willingness to ask fundamental questions about how the world might be different than they think it is and what that might mean for who they are now and in five and in 10 years, I think is really interesting. I think it's very interesting.
40:04 Ian Bremmer? For example, that if you were to ask political leaders in NATO, what are the countries that are doing the most to support the Ukrainians from a defense perspective right now? They would say number one, the US, number two, the UK, number three, Microsoft. I think that's really interesting. Yeah. And Poland would be number four. I think that's really interesting. But there are other companies.
40:23 Scott Galloway? And how is Microsoft supporting the war effort?
40:26 Ian Bremmer? Well, I mean, for everything on digital and cyber. I mean, the first attacks on Ukraine actually hit Redmond, Washington on February 23rd, not the 24th, because they were hitting the cloud and the cloud was being sourced and defended and identified by Microsoft, which which they knew they had due after the original not Petya attacks that came a few years ago. You remember the ones that hit the Ukrainians, caused 1% of their GDP to just go up in smoke and then almost made Mers go bankrupt globally. Right? So that's not happening this time around in part because those guys are involved.
41:01 Scott Galloway? The last time we spoke, you didn't see TikTok at the kind of same threat level that I perceived it. Do you still hold that view?
41:12 Ian Bremmer? You know, I, yeah, I still, you're right. And that was, if I remember correctly, the most tweetable portion of our last podcast. I remember that explicitly. I won't repeat that because it's not as much fun the second time around, but you can go back and see it. But yeah, look, I, I think that there is a level of decoupling between the US and China that is important. And it is where we can identify direct and definable national security implications for one or the other country that will be undermined if we allow for interdependence. So when I look at Huawei and critical infrastructure and 5G and their relationship with the Chinese military, I say, I want them to have no part of US critical infrastructure. I want them out.
41:57 Ian Bremmer? And not only that, but I want the US to use American power with American allies to do as much as possible to ensure that those allies aren't using Huawei either. I'm fine with that. When I see TikTok as, you know, absolutely a really addictive, strong AI algorithm-driven social media platform that all the kids are on, which I'd rather them not be on. And I'd like to see the US government have a much more intrusive regulatory policy towards what is and isn't okay for young people to do online. I, I think we are abdicating responsibility for our kids, frankly.
42:43 Ian Bremmer? But I don't see much of a difference between whether that's TikTok or whether that's Facebook. I just don't. And I accept the fact that there is an enormous amount of data that the Chinese government will have access to as a consequence of that. But I, for me, that goes beyond the definition of national security, where we need to ensure that there is no interdependence. I actually think that there is a level of robust interdependence between the United States and China and also between China and the rest of the world's economies that actually helps to ensure global stability. Helps to ensure that we don't go to war against each other. I think it's valuable.
43:26 Ian Bremmer? So that's my pragmatic reason for it. And I also think that even if we were to say, no, we just need to decouple much more broadly from the Chinese economy. Our allies like Germany and even Japan, and I was just in Japan last week and I met with the entire cabinet while I was there. I talked to them at great length and I've known many of them for 20 plus years. They are much more threatened by China in terms of security than we are in the United States. They're also much more intentionally exposed to the Chinese economy than we are in the United States. And they very much intend to maintain that level of interdependence. And they tell the Americans, we want a closer relation with you on defense and security, including on things like Taiwan and the South China Sea.
44:11 Ian Bremmer? But we do not want a cold war with China economically. And they firmly believe that they can do both of those things. And I happen to agree with that.
44:20 Scott Galloway? So let's acknowledge that nations that do business together are less likely to start firing missiles at one another. I always thought that the best defense for Taiwan was Apple. And that is the Chinese need Apple and Apple needs China. But do you see any threat that it would be really easy for the CCP? If you believe that there isn't a Chinese wall between the CCP and Chinese owned companies? Do you think the temptation for them to put their thumbs on the scales of content that is anti-American? Such that the streaming platform that young people under the age of 18 spend more time on than every other streaming platform, that they could very elegantly, without us ever
45:02 Scott Galloway? knowing, raise a generation of civic, nonprofit, business and military leaders that just feel a little less positive about the country they're in?
45:11 Ian Bremmer? Yeah, of course. I also think that American social media companies are doing that. They're not, they're just not doing it intentionally.
45:17 Scott Galloway? Hundred percent. Yeah, I agree. They're not strategic about it. It's for money. It's not, it's not geopolitical.
45:22 Ian Bremmer? The fact that it's being done unintentionally, but is even more damaging than what the Chinese would do intentionally is, so I think that we should have, we should be talking more about that. And I know that you do, by the way, Scott, which is, you know, this is not, this is not a slight. And you feel at least as strongly about this issue as I do. So we are confederates here, and I use that in the more, you know, sort of in the less historic use of that term.
45:47 Ian Bremmer? We just saw that the Chinese were involved in an operation to spread disinformation using fake American citizens on Meta. And it was shut down. Now, by the way, if you did any digging into who these people were pretending to be, and how badly they were posting on time zones that made no sense for the American kids that would be using it, and with really bad English and the rest, it's pretty clear that this is only a nascent threat from China, and they are not yet good at this. But, you know, the history of studying China and technology is that they get good at stuff quickly. And so, yeah, I think we should be aware of that, and we should actively be spending
46:32 Ian Bremmer? resources to prevent the Chinese from spreading disinformation. But I think that's equally true on Facebook with Chinese citizens as it is on TikTok.
46:42 Scott Galloway? So you opened my eyes to something, and that is, you said that geopolitically, America's actually doing pretty well. The relative, if you benchmark us against our competitors and our allies, then America's actually doing well, maybe even great. But that internally, we're eating each other from the inside out. And it really opened my eyes to this notion that the call is coming from inside of the house. And I keep using that term. If it's a horror film, it's "we're the enemy." That for some reason, we've decided that people in the other political party are our mortal enemy, not the people pouring over the border in Ukraine, which I think is not only wrong, but it's just not accurate. Do you have any thoughts, when you look at other nations that manage to maintain a certain
47:25 Scott Galloway? level of cohesion or trust between citizens? I think of Japan. My understanding of Japan is that there's a tremendous amount of trust between the citizens of Japan, regardless of the political party. Do you have any thoughts on how America restores some of that connective tissue, such that we again realize that America will never have better allies than other Americans?
47:46 Ian Bremmer? You know, it's a lot easier in Japan, of course, which is a single-party democracy. The LDP basically wins almost everything. It's incredibly homogeneous. They allow in almost no immigrants. They have much less economic inequality. Social media, they're not allowed to do political campaigns on social media, for example. I mean, literally, I can point to like every single thing that drives inequality and Japan does none of it. So, I mean, part of it is you need to start addressing those issues inside the United States. But the problem is that this is not a new problem for America. This is a problem that's been growing over decades now. So, the solutions are going to take decades. I think that the biggest piece of the solution that we could do something major about in
48:29 Ian Bremmer? the near term is on the regulation of social media, the platforms specifically. We have to recognize that there is a responsibility. Some of it is by the companies, some of it is by the government, but a responsibility to regulate content and particularly a responsibility when it comes to access of young people to these platforms. The Chinese government literally shut down an entire industry that was making a lot of money, video games. They said, you know what? We're just not gonna let kids on these platforms for more than two hours a week. That's it. How many American parents would love to have the US government come in and do that? Right? No, it's not who we are. It's not what we do.
49:09 Scott Galloway? I don't know, Ian. I say this as someone who has kids. Keep in mind, we let our kids on screens so we can have time on screens.
49:13 Ian Bremmer? I know.
49:14 Scott Galloway? I mean, we like it in theory. I don't know how many.
49:18 Ian Bremmer? Well, look, I don't have kids, so it makes it so much easier for me. But Moose, Moose should not be on screens. It's very clear, and I would regulate that because he'd get up to no good. I think that we clearly have... So, for example, I'd be all in favor at this point of just saying all accounts have to be verified. Just have to be.
49:36 Scott Galloway? Okay. Put a pin in that. I put out a blog post called "Identity," stating basically that.
49:42 Ian Bremmer? Really?
49:43 Scott Galloway? That we should have some sort of decentralized form of identity that maybe doesn't have your name and your address, but at the end of the day, if an algorithm suggests you're promoting incendiary content or attacking people with multiple accounts, you should be unmasked or at least booted off the platform.
49:58 Ian Bremmer? Yeah.
49:59 Scott Galloway? And the level of pushback I got was immense, and it kind of summarized or distilled down to, easy for a rich white guy to say. And when you talk about poor people in developing nations, without anonymity, they get abused.
50:12 Ian Bremmer? Yes, we're not talking about, you and I have been talking about the United States. So let us, we're just talking about a regular, the EU has its own regulations on data and privacy. If you want to get on to, you want to be there, you have to like click and what kind of privacy do you want the rest? I'm talking about in the United States.
50:29 Scott Galloway? Just the US.
50:30 Ian Bremmer? We are a rich country. We have freedom of speech. We don't have the problems of authoritarian developing states, but we are heading towards having those problems. We have the ability to do exactly what you just said in the United States for American citizens. It would make a difference.
50:45 Scott Galloway? So verified identity, you want to post content on a social media platform, you have to have essentially a blue check and you have to show who you are, at least have your identity verified that you're, maybe not even your, your full identity, but something that says, we have checked that this is one person, not thousands of people or thousands of accounts being run by one person, but you're a fan of some sort of identity enforcement.
51:07 Ian Bremmer? Absolutely. Now, I mean, I understand that that means that Twitter will have like, you know, only 50% of the actual users that they pretend to have and it'll kill their advertising model. You know what? I don't care. I don't care. These companies are inadvertently, but, but absolutely complacently helping to destroy civil society in America. There is a cost of that. And the fact that that cost is not reflected in dollars and cents means that our values are fucked and we've got to do something about it.
51:35 Scott Galloway? So some breaking news, I want to get your feedback and then I'm going to let you go because I know this is a big week for your book, The Power of Crisis, and you have a lot going on. It was just announced that Elon Musk reportedly wants to proceed with Twitter, with the acquisition of Twitter and the stock is up, the stock has jumped. What are your thoughts on the Twitter saga and the idea of Elon Musk owning Twitter?
51:57 Ian Bremmer? I think Elon Musk is one of the most extraordinary entrepreneurs that our country has ever attracted and developed. I think it's incredible what he's done with electric vehicles. I think it's incredible what he's doing with space. And I'm really, really grateful that he's there for those things. I hope he does a lot more of it. When he gets distracted and throws his weight and considerable influence into areas he knows nothing about, he's enormously damaging. And we've talked about that already on Ukraine. And I think Twitter is the same thing. This is not a guy that has shown through, at least through his behavior on Twitter, that he has a great deal of interest for American civil
52:38 Ian Bremmer? society, or knows how to really be a part of it. And I don't know if that's because he's on the spectrum in terms of his personality. I don't know enough of his background on what his dad was like. I mean, people have written books about that. I don't actually care. But he's not the person I personally think will be useful in running that platform. But you know what? It shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter who runs the platform. It should matter that we have effective regulations that whoever runs the platform, the platform is not going to damage the country. And so ultimately, I think the answer is not in, let's get an incredible $100 billion person mogul to fix America. It should be that
53:17 Ian Bremmer? we are a nation of rules and laws that govern people. It is a representative democracy, and we need to act like one.
53:25 Scott Galloway? We're a nation of rules and laws and a democracy and need to act like one. Ian Bremmer is the president of Eurasia Group, the world's leading political risk researching consulting firm. He's also the author of 11 books, including his latest, The Power of Crisis. He joins us from, Ian, where are you?
53:42 Ian Bremmer? I am in New York City, my favorite place.
53:44 Scott Galloway? Oh, nice. There you go. Well, you are our first four-time guest, and every time I learn something. And we appreciate your time. And congrats on the book, The Power of Crisis, Ian. Thanks. Thanks again, my brother. I really appreciate your time.
53:56 Ian Bremmer? Scott, my friend, I'm so happy to be with you. Take it easy.
54:09 Scott Galloway? Algebra of happiness, the deathbed test. I am an atheist. I believe there will be a point in my life where I look into my son's eyes and know that our relationship is coming to an end. And that's okay, because it frees me up to be more courageous around the things I do, take little things less seriously, mostly because I know at some point, sooner than we all think, we're all gonna be dead. And the person who you're worried about offending, or the person you're worried about what they think of you, they're gonna be dead soon too. And I know that sounds macabre, and guess what? It's true. So I run almost every major decision through the deathbed test. And that is, I try and imagine I'm near the end. I have it all planned out. It's kinda strange, I realize. I know what music I'm gonna have, the pictures I'm gonna have, where I wanna die.
54:51 Scott Galloway? I've got it all planned out, like people plan out their wedding, or their 60th birthday party, or their bar mitzvah. I have planned, put a lot of time into my last days, because I'm gonna get to relive my life again, and I'm excited about it. And I imagine myself, I put myself there. And then I look at the decision I'm facing now. I'm in London. We moved here, and my youngest is having a difficult time adapting. Nothing out of the ordinary, probably normal, or I should say it's normal that he's having a difficult time adapting, because a 6th grader misses his friends. And he misses the normalcy of his life, and he misses living in Florida, where the weather's
55:30 Scott Galloway? warm, and going to the beach with his dad, and doing, you know, what Florida kids do. And he's struggling. And anyone who has kids knows that when your kid is struggling, the whole household kind of wilts. And the reason we made this decision, and by the way, he's gonna be fine, and the reason we made this decision is the deathbed test. Let's assume I hate it. Let's assume, for whatever reason, my kids don't settle in. I don't enjoy it. I'm already, I'm already losing a shit ton of money here. I make the majority of my money, or about 50% of my income, from speaking. I can't get back to Dana Point for a speaking gig for Mastercard. I can't get to Chicago for a, I mean, I could, but I'm just not gonna kill myself and commute
56:15 Scott Galloway? back and forth from Europe. So it's already taking a toll on us. But here's the thing. When I'm on my deathbed, I'm not gonna remember giving up the Mastercard engagement. I'm not gonna remember, at least I hope I'm not gonna remember, those one or two months where my son struggled a little bit. What I'm going to remember is that I took the opportunity to live in a different continent. And even if we decide we don't enjoy it here and we move back to the United States, I don't think I'm going to be sitting on my deathbed thinking, oh, I fucked up moving to Europe. No, no, this is an incredible opportunity. So few people get to do this. Run your decisions through your deathbed test. And I think you're going to find you're going to think longer term.
56:59 Scott Galloway? You're going to do more interesting things with your life. And you're going to have greater perspective around judgment and decision making. You never regret, you never regret telling people that you care about them. You never regret taking a risk around expressing your feelings with friends. You never regret trying to take care of your parents. You never regret any act of goodwill towards someone else. It might be embarrassing, it might be hard in the short run, but do the deathbed test. When I'm at the end, when I look back on this decision, what will I think? Was it the right decision?
57:33 Scott Galloway? Our producers are Caroline Shager and Claire Miller and Drew Burrow. Sammy Resnick is our associate producer. Our team is growing, which means our expenses are going up and you'll see a dramatic increase in quality. Whoa, you team. Anyways, if you like what you heard, please follow, download and subscribe. Thank you for listening to the Prof G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week.
58:16 Scott Galloway? I find I only give advice when I'm dipping Oreos into whiskey standing naked. It just makes me more humble about who I am and whether I should be talking about this issue.
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