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The Unraveling: How Trump's Iran War Exposed the Empire's Hollow Core | Silk and Steel · UK Column Radio

0:02
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Silk and
0:05
Speaker 1: Steel Podcast. I am your host Carlos. Today we have
0:09
Speaker 1: back on our show our regular guest, doctor Warwick Pale
0:12
Speaker 1: from Australia. Welcome back to the show, Warwick. We have
0:16
Speaker 1: a lot to discuss. You know, things have been getting
0:20
Speaker 1: really busy lately. You know, it's only been two weeks
0:23
Speaker 1: since we talk. Where it since? It feels like a
0:27
Speaker 1: year has come past already.
0:30
Speaker 2: Really, I haven't noticed what's been going on. Tell you
0:37
Speaker 2: it's a crazy world at the moment, isn't it. Kyle
0:39
Speaker 2: and I remember what a couple of days after we
0:44
Speaker 2: last spoke, I was at a lunch on a Saturday,
0:47
Speaker 2: and the lunch topic turned to Iran and the question was,
0:52
Speaker 2: you know, who thinks that there's going to be something
0:54
Speaker 2: happening there? And I said it's inevitable anyway. By that evening,
0:58
Speaker 2: of course, the attacks had begun. And and what I
1:04
Speaker 2: think for Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth and you know, the
1:10
Speaker 2: central core of the American political administration thought was going
1:14
Speaker 2: to be a wham bam, thank you ma'am in and
1:17
Speaker 2: out teach them all the lesson fix the problem. Activity
1:23
Speaker 2: has turned into a problem that in many ways embodies
1:31
Speaker 2: the decline of the empire, and in a way that
1:35
Speaker 2: I'm not sure the empire has a way out. That's
1:40
Speaker 2: dangerous by the way, you know, when the empire has
1:43
Speaker 2: got no way out, because because the empire still has
1:46
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of things to throw around,
1:49
Speaker 2: what do you reckon?
1:50
Speaker 3: Well?
1:51
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously this was done with minimal planning and foresight.
1:56
Speaker 3: You know, this has been experts for.
1:59
Speaker 1: Years have warned that going to war against your wrong
2:02
Speaker 1: is a terrible idea. And in fact, even the past
2:06
Speaker 1: seven US presidents have resisted pressure to go to war
2:11
Speaker 1: against you wrong, and now we have Trump doing it.
2:15
Speaker 1: You know, it makes you makes you think, what what
2:20
Speaker 1: is in those Epstein files that haven't released yet that
2:23
Speaker 1: was so horrible that they must launch this war?
2:26
Speaker 3: You know they call it epic fury.
2:29
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not coincidence, you know, So that's that
2:33
Speaker 1: is so when you type in Trump and ep in
2:36
Speaker 1: Google search engine, you will not show up Trump Epstein first.
2:41
Speaker 1: You know, they're trying to literally trying to game the
2:43
Speaker 1: search engine right now by launching a war, and we
2:47
Speaker 1: know they have no long they didn't do planning because
2:52
Speaker 1: US is very quickly running into the same problem of
2:56
Speaker 1: low ammunition, particularly standoff A munitions and miss out interceptors.
3:01
Speaker 1: That was a problem during the Twelve Days War last
3:05
Speaker 1: year and nothing has changed. And on top of that,
3:09
Speaker 1: US has been drawing down a strategic petroleum reserve, you know,
3:13
Speaker 1: back you know, back in Biden's days.
3:16
Speaker 3: Trump prior to start.
3:19
Speaker 1: This war, he didn't bother to fill up the US
3:22
Speaker 1: strategic oil reserve. So by all indication, yes, they thought
3:26
Speaker 1: they thought this was going to be a quickie. You know,
3:29
Speaker 1: he has some really bad advisors, give him some really
3:31
Speaker 1: bad advice. I think also the whole vee Isuel and
3:35
Speaker 1: operation have given them, you know, got them to their heads.
3:40
Speaker 1: They got a little bit overconfident. They thought, Okay, we'll
3:44
Speaker 1: do the same thing with Iran. We'll do what decapitation
3:46
Speaker 1: strike against their senior leadership and rest of the Uranian
3:50
Speaker 1: government will fall into line. Well that's not what happened.
3:53
Speaker 1: You know, Roan is actually a regional power, and he
3:56
Speaker 1: showed he has demonstrated he has pastscity to inflict a
4:02
Speaker 1: lot of damage, you know, to the US basis all
4:06
Speaker 1: around the region.
4:07
Speaker 3: And even worse than.
4:10
Speaker 1: That is you know, the whole US Empire alliance system
4:15
Speaker 1: in West Asia rest on the premise that the United
4:19
Speaker 1: States offer a security am act them from the big
4:29
Speaker 1: bad Iran, but also to protect them from their own people.
4:33
Speaker 1: Well that all those premises are gone up in smokes
4:36
Speaker 1: right now, and as US Bass counter under Iranian attack,
4:41
Speaker 1: and there's nothing US could do to protect them, much
4:45
Speaker 1: less to protect their so called allies. All the golf
4:47
Speaker 1: countries are complaining about depletion of their own missile interceptors,
4:52
Speaker 1: and US just say, oh, sorry, can't help you, because
4:54
Speaker 1: we need to hold all the resources to protect our
4:57
Speaker 1: golden boy, Israel. And that's what happened was reported in
5:02
Speaker 1: South Korea. Now they're dismantling that that system, that anti
5:06
Speaker 1: missile system that was put in place in Korea to
5:09
Speaker 1: you know versus China. Now they're dismantling them to ship
5:12
Speaker 1: them to West Asia. You know, it turns out the
5:15
Speaker 1: pivot to Asia did happen. It's just a pivot to
5:18
Speaker 1: West Asia and it's a for on retreat in the
5:22
Speaker 1: West West Pacific.
5:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's quite remarkable because it's one of the biggest
5:30
Speaker 2: own goals. I think you could actually ever, you know,
5:34
Speaker 2: see anybody make it exposed a system, a production system
5:41
Speaker 2: and a supply chain system that was clearly run down
5:44
Speaker 2: and has troubles keeping up. That's one thing, but it
5:49
Speaker 2: also I think, as you said, it was not only
5:53
Speaker 2: a lack of planning, but the kind of planning that
5:56
Speaker 2: went in had a very particular character. And it is
5:59
Speaker 2: this idea that America could secure whatever it wanted to
6:06
Speaker 2: through a quick, heavy intervention. And this is kind of
6:14
Speaker 2: the pattern that has existed in American warfare for a
6:19
Speaker 2: long time, because the American system has been built around
6:24
Speaker 2: this idea of having enough in the arsenal to do
6:26
Speaker 2: heavy hits, expend that relatively quickly, but overwhelm the opponent,
6:35
Speaker 2: get what you want, and then spend the next period
6:38
Speaker 2: of time replenishing again, and then you know, continuing your
6:42
Speaker 2: escapades around the world. And it tried to do the
6:46
Speaker 2: same again. And I think that there's this very deeply
6:49
Speaker 2: baked in mentality that the US is strong enough to
6:52
Speaker 2: be able to just do things quickly and force the
6:56
Speaker 2: other party's hand, and when that doesn't happen, it actually
7:00
Speaker 2: is left totally exposed. Its arsenal, of course, as you say,
7:06
Speaker 2: is seriously exposed, but so too is its entire supporting infrastructure.
7:14
Speaker 2: When it is a long way from home as it is,
7:17
Speaker 2: it needs to have platforms and infrastructure, either by having
7:20
Speaker 2: bases in a region or of course having floating bases,
7:24
Speaker 2: and the bases that it had in the region have
7:26
Speaker 2: now been totally decimated. Now that, in fact, I think
7:29
Speaker 2: is the most significant outcome of this war so far,
7:33
Speaker 2: That the Americans did not actually have the ability to
7:40
Speaker 2: defend their most significant regional assets, and their regional assets
7:44
Speaker 2: was actually the basis because without that, suddenly you're having
7:48
Speaker 2: to approach your arn from a lot further away. You
7:52
Speaker 2: don't have the refueling capabilities near at hand, and so
7:59
Speaker 2: your rhythms, your cadence changes. You're not in a position
8:03
Speaker 2: to deliver as many sorties over a period of a
8:08
Speaker 2: given time as you once were, because you now need
8:11
Speaker 2: to refuel. You've got to come from further away. And
8:16
Speaker 2: once this physical infrastructure is destroyed, whether or not the
8:21
Speaker 2: United States will ever be back in the Gulf, I
8:25
Speaker 2: think is going to be the big question now. I mean,
8:29
Speaker 2: the other question is the unthinkable question, which is the
8:32
Speaker 2: extent to which sections of the American political system and
8:37
Speaker 2: sections of the Israeli political system will respond as victory
8:44
Speaker 2: becomes more of a fantasy and the reality of defeat
8:47
Speaker 2: becomes more obvious. But assuming that the non crazies prevailed
8:55
Speaker 2: and that we don't catalyze a nuclear conflict of one
8:59
Speaker 2: sort other, the question that I have in my mind
9:02
Speaker 2: is how will the Americans be able to get their
9:06
Speaker 2: footback in the region. Will the golf monarchies, for instance,
9:10
Speaker 2: once again be welcome and open arms. I doubt it.
9:16
Speaker 2: The days of the petro dollar are over, and golf monarchies,
9:22
Speaker 2: I think, are whilst they're treading both sides of the fence,
9:26
Speaker 2: ave been, no doubt, through back channels, trying to find
9:31
Speaker 2: ways of reducing themselves as targets and perhaps opening an
9:39
Speaker 2: upper pathway to a post us future in the region.
9:44
Speaker 2: Obviously not going so well at the moment, But I
9:49
Speaker 2: can't imagine a set of golf monarchies not doing that
9:54
Speaker 2: in the name of self preservation. Yeah, exactly. There.
10:00
Speaker 1: There's already talks about the golf countries are you know,
10:04
Speaker 1: meeting to discuss to scale back their prior financial commitment
10:09
Speaker 1: to the United States. You know, on the on the
10:13
Speaker 1: pretext that they need that fund to reinvest in their
10:16
Speaker 1: own country for rebuilding after the war, you know. So
10:20
Speaker 1: so forget about hundreds of billions of dollars they need
10:24
Speaker 1: to continue to funnel into the AI bubble in the
10:27
Speaker 1: United States because those money are not coming, you know,
10:30
Speaker 1: because the golf golf country is their own economy is
10:33
Speaker 1: reeling right now. They depend on continue to sell their
10:36
Speaker 1: oil and gas asset and the straight of Hormuzi has
10:39
Speaker 1: been closed. And they also dependent on food imports from
10:42
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. So the longer that the
10:45
Speaker 1: war drag out and the war sea gets for them.
10:48
Speaker 1: And and the thing is that they now realize they
10:51
Speaker 1: have zero say in terms of U US power foreign
10:55
Speaker 1: policy in the region because you know, US when ahead
10:59
Speaker 1: this war without consulting them, apparently, and they they're the
11:04
Speaker 1: ones who have to bear the consequences. This is what
11:07
Speaker 1: South Korea is finding out.
11:09
Speaker 2: You know.
11:09
Speaker 3: South Korea has when you know, spend a lot.
11:12
Speaker 1: Of political capital, burner bridge with China when they first
11:15
Speaker 1: allowed United States to deploy that system under soil and
11:20
Speaker 1: now without without the you know, any consultation, US just decide,
11:26
Speaker 1: you know what we need to protect our golden boy Israel.
11:28
Speaker 3: That is our top priority.
11:30
Speaker 1: That is who we prioritize you are much lower on
11:34
Speaker 1: the food chain. You know, we don't really care about you.
11:36
Speaker 1: And another thing for the so called US partner and
11:40
Speaker 1: Ali East Asia is to realize, you know, look at
11:44
Speaker 1: what Yurnga is doing right now in the golf hitting
11:46
Speaker 1: all the US spaces hosted by in the golf countries.
11:50
Speaker 1: That could be you. If a war to break out
11:53
Speaker 1: in over Taiwan between US and China, all the US
11:57
Speaker 1: bases in the Western pacifics world up in smokes, and
12:02
Speaker 1: and you know US will not be able to protect you.
12:05
Speaker 1: China has magnitude more missiles and much more advanced missiles
12:09
Speaker 1: than you run And right now US is scrambling to
12:12
Speaker 1: protect its own assets. In the Gulf, they got they
12:16
Speaker 1: have about total of eleven fat systems, and Uranians managed
12:21
Speaker 1: to took out three or four radars for those stat systems.
12:25
Speaker 1: And without radars, those that systems, those billion dollar fat
12:29
Speaker 1: launchers are useless because they're blind, totally blind.
12:32
Speaker 2: They don't know what you shoot. And yeah, it rings
12:37
Speaker 2: to some very interesting sort of second order questions, doesn't it,
12:41
Speaker 2: Because obviously, as you mentioned, the blockage of the Strati
12:47
Speaker 2: holl moves obviously stops the flow of oil and gas out,
12:51
Speaker 2: which is the first order question. The second order question though,
12:56
Speaker 2: or there's a series of second order questions or implications
12:59
Speaker 2: I think that are worth thinking through. Firstly, it's actually
13:02
Speaker 2: what happens to the production systems themselves. Many of the
13:07
Speaker 2: upstream systems in Iraq, for example, ones that basically have
13:15
Speaker 2: water pumped in at one end to create the pressure
13:18
Speaker 2: to push the oil out the other. Now, if you
13:23
Speaker 2: stop that from happening, the effects that that has on
13:26
Speaker 2: the wells is quite dramatic from what I've read looking
13:31
Speaker 2: at the engineers who are responsible for these sorts of systems.
13:36
Speaker 2: The risk to continuity should you actually put a cap
13:41
Speaker 2: on these is huge. You might not actually get some
13:45
Speaker 2: of these wells going again. Now, the reason why that
13:50
Speaker 2: would become a problem is because the storage is starting
13:53
Speaker 2: to fill up. So as storage fills up, you're still producing.
13:59
Speaker 2: So as you go upstream, the decision is going to
14:02
Speaker 2: need to be made. What do you do. I've got
14:05
Speaker 2: no more storage capacity and nothing's moving through the straight
14:08
Speaker 2: of full moves? Do I burn off gas and just
14:15
Speaker 2: keep the system going? And just burn it off? And
14:20
Speaker 2: do I dump the oil into the environment and keep
14:24
Speaker 2: again the pumps going, and the decision to do that
14:28
Speaker 2: may make some sense if it was a short term
14:31
Speaker 2: or the expectation was that the straits would only be
14:34
Speaker 2: shut for a short period, a few weeks. You know,
14:37
Speaker 2: you'll do that for a few weeks and then you'll
14:39
Speaker 2: be ready to keep going again. But if the strait
14:42
Speaker 2: stay blocked substantially for much longer than that, the ecological
14:49
Speaker 2: effects and the economic costs of maintaining the operations of
14:54
Speaker 2: these upstream systems will begin to weigh heavily. You can't
14:57
Speaker 2: keep running them, so decisions will begin to be made
15:00
Speaker 2: to curtail production and eventually shut things down, knowing that
15:06
Speaker 2: once you shut them down, a lot of them won't
15:09
Speaker 2: get started again. Right. So that's number one second order problem.
15:15
Speaker 2: Number two second order problem is that oil is actually
15:21
Speaker 2: the basis of a whole range of other industrial byproducts
15:27
Speaker 2: through its process of manufacturing and refining. One of them
15:32
Speaker 2: is sulfuruch and once you constrain the global supply of sulfur,
15:39
Speaker 2: you now need to think about what that gets used for,
15:43
Speaker 2: and that gets used for lots of different things. We
15:48
Speaker 2: also have the issue of the fertilizers that are made
15:52
Speaker 2: from the gas that ammonia then becomes urea, and we
15:58
Speaker 2: know that about forty of the world's urea comes through
16:02
Speaker 2: the straight uform moves, so that's going to have a
16:05
Speaker 2: very significant downstream impact on global food systems. But the
16:10
Speaker 2: sulfur one, I think is very interesting because it affects
16:13
Speaker 2: all sorts of other production systems that make lots of
16:17
Speaker 2: other different things, things like copper. Without sulfuric acid, you know,
16:24
Speaker 2: you're not making copper. And if you're not making enough
16:28
Speaker 2: copper in the world, then there are going to be
16:31
Speaker 2: activities that depend upon copper that will become more expensive
16:35
Speaker 2: or constrained. One of those activities, of course, is the
16:39
Speaker 2: augmentation of electricity distribution networks in response to demands from
16:44
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence data centers. If that happens, the costs of
16:51
Speaker 2: grid expansion in the United States will rise even more.
16:57
Speaker 2: The cost of electricity, of course, will rise as a concept.
17:00
Speaker 2: Data centers in the short term will pay that, but
17:03
Speaker 2: think of what the consequences are to everyone else who
17:06
Speaker 2: is dependent upon those electricity grids for electricity. As the
17:10
Speaker 2: electricity price goes up, there'll be industries that will have
17:14
Speaker 2: to shut down because they operate on very very thin margins,
17:17
Speaker 2: households will be confronted with rising electricity costs. So not
17:22
Speaker 2: only have we got a first order oil shock, you've
17:27
Speaker 2: actually got an infrastructure shock as a result of the
17:31
Speaker 2: byproducts from oil processing. Obviously, we also have things like
17:36
Speaker 2: impacts on diesel, but also things like plastics that are
17:41
Speaker 2: used in all sorts of other products. These second and
17:47
Speaker 2: third order effects are very wide, incredibly wide, and just
17:55
Speaker 2: talking about some of these just touches the surface. And
17:59
Speaker 2: if we only think about the electricity system impacts, you
18:04
Speaker 2: know in America, they're significant. Obviously, we've got the gas
18:09
Speaker 2: station impacts in terms of you know, gas prices. I mean,
18:13
Speaker 2: we've seen pictures, no doubt you and your viewers have
18:16
Speaker 2: seen pictures all across social media from different states where
18:20
Speaker 2: prices are anywhere from what you three dollars to eight
18:23
Speaker 2: dollars a gallon already and yet only what a few
18:30
Speaker 2: weeks ago. At the State of the Union address, President
18:34
Speaker 2: Trump talked about low gas prices as evidence of the
18:41
Speaker 2: administration's economic prowess. He promised in twenty twenty four that
18:47
Speaker 2: gas prices are under a Trump administration, would be two
18:50
Speaker 2: dollars a gallon, right, But these pressures will start to
18:54
Speaker 2: build in the system. We're going to have industries that
18:59
Speaker 2: are of is the oil dependent, which will fill the pinch.
19:03
Speaker 2: Will then have industries that are dependent on the byproducts
19:05
Speaker 2: and the things that get made from the byproducts of
19:08
Speaker 2: the oil system that will then start to fill the pinch,
19:12
Speaker 2: and these things. These effects won't be felt for three months,
19:17
Speaker 2: six months, or sometimes twelve months, but they're already baked in, Carl,
19:23
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter what happens if tomorrow the straightsfomoves was
19:26
Speaker 2: opened up. The path dependency that has been shifted by
19:33
Speaker 2: virtue of this last ten days or so has already
19:36
Speaker 2: baked in some of these consequences. If this goes on
19:40
Speaker 2: for another two weeks, three weeks, or six months, we're
19:44
Speaker 2: going to see massive systemic docks and adjustments in ways
19:52
Speaker 2: that I don't think anybody of this current younger generation,
19:59
Speaker 2: anybody from the late sixties onwards, we'll actually have a
20:05
Speaker 2: living memory of because the last major shock was of
20:07
Speaker 2: course in the nineteen seventies, right, so you know, we
20:13
Speaker 2: have the financial system shocks. But this is going to
20:15
Speaker 2: be a shock in a very different way because it
20:18
Speaker 2: will cause a whole bunch of economic activities to no
20:20
Speaker 2: longer be possible, not because they're financially unviable, but because
20:25
Speaker 2: they don't have the material inputs anymore. On the other hand,
20:30
Speaker 2: you've got a place like China, So heaps of people
20:32
Speaker 2: talk about this conflict as this is an attack on China. Well,
20:37
Speaker 2: if China was incredibly dependent upon Iranian oil, sure that
20:44
Speaker 2: would be a logical conclusion to reach. But in fact,
20:47
Speaker 2: China isn't that dependent on Iranian oil. Chinese economy will
20:51
Speaker 2: be impacted, of course, like everybody, but the Chinese economic
20:56
Speaker 2: system as it's grown, has also seen a much more
21:01
Speaker 2: a significant diversification of its energetic systems. It's far more
21:05
Speaker 2: electrified today than it's ever been. It reached peaked diesel
21:09
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four, and so the extent to which
21:14
Speaker 2: the system as a whole is affected by the straits
21:17
Speaker 2: of hor moves is actually far less than a lot
21:19
Speaker 2: of people would think. It's certainly less than what it
21:23
Speaker 2: was ten years ago. Ten years ago it was big,
21:26
Speaker 2: and of course twenty years ago it was quite significant.
21:29
Speaker 2: So the Chinese system, by virtue of intensively over the
21:35
Speaker 2: last fifteen years, it's far better place to deal with
21:39
Speaker 2: this than anyone else, because it can actually come out
21:41
Speaker 2: the other end quit quicker. The other interesting thing which
21:46
Speaker 2: all of this sort of reminds me of, you know,
21:49
Speaker 2: and I think we've talked about this on and off
21:51
Speaker 2: in the mainstream Western commentary on the Chinese economic model,
21:56
Speaker 2: there's a whole lot of talk about wasteful investment, excessive investment,
22:02
Speaker 2: excessive capacity, and EVS and high speed rail have been
22:09
Speaker 2: two examples that are often put up there as cases.
22:13
Speaker 1: In port.
22:15
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you what right now, in the wake
22:19
Speaker 2: of the closure of the Straits of hor Moves, I'd
22:23
Speaker 2: rather have a transport system that was intensely electrified than
22:28
Speaker 2: one that wasn't. I'd rather have a rail network that
22:32
Speaker 2: was electrified rather than one that wasn't. And I'd rather
22:37
Speaker 2: have a domestic passenger and cargo transport system that is
22:42
Speaker 2: increasingly electrified than one that wasn't. I'd also like to
22:47
Speaker 2: have factory capacity to make me a lot more of
22:51
Speaker 2: these things so that I can accelerate my move away
22:55
Speaker 2: from oil and diesel dependency for transportation. And frankly, if
23:01
Speaker 2: I was anyone else in the world, I would be
23:05
Speaker 2: beating a path to Chinese manufacturers trying to get to
23:10
Speaker 2: the front of the line to get as many electric
23:13
Speaker 2: cars as I possibly can, and electric trucks and other things,
23:16
Speaker 2: because this shock is going to cause an acceleration of
23:22
Speaker 2: global demand for electrified transportation, whether it's rail road or
23:30
Speaker 2: indeed shipping, and arguably we would say air transport as
23:35
Speaker 2: well drones. But all of those people who for the
23:41
Speaker 2: last fifteen years threw stones of China for its wasteful
23:47
Speaker 2: investment in electrification, I don't think we'll hear an apology
23:53
Speaker 2: or a mere kulpa from them. But anybody who is
23:56
Speaker 2: reading the commentary now and sees these people poking their
24:00
Speaker 2: heads up going on about wasteful investment, et cetera, et cetera,
24:06
Speaker 2: should really remember that if the Chinese political a legion
24:11
Speaker 2: policymakers paid any attention to them in the last fifteen years,
24:15
Speaker 2: China itself would not be as well prepared today for
24:18
Speaker 2: these sorts of shocks.
24:21
Speaker 3: I just saw the latest data.
24:23
Speaker 1: It says China exported about one point five million vehicles
24:27
Speaker 1: in the first two months of twenty twenty six, and
24:31
Speaker 1: I'm assuming a huge percentage of that is EVS. And
24:35
Speaker 1: what's what just happened now is just only going to
24:38
Speaker 1: supercharge that process. You know, Chinese evs and Chinese solar panels.
24:42
Speaker 1: You know, there will be a huge demand for them.
24:46
Speaker 1: And I'm so happy. I'm so happy personally. I bought
24:50
Speaker 1: a Chinese ev last year and so my next next
24:54
Speaker 1: thing on my list is put solar panels on my
24:56
Speaker 1: roof so I can be in the in the tendant.
25:01
Speaker 1: And and this is something a lot of people will
25:03
Speaker 1: have to think about, especially people in the Global South.
25:06
Speaker 1: When you know their their their energy grid is not
25:09
Speaker 1: that stable in any any case. You know that now
25:13
Speaker 1: now they will have other options.
25:15
Speaker 2: Uh.
25:15
Speaker 1: You know one thing China was able to do, uh
25:19
Speaker 1: to help Cuba is you know, as people know, Cuba
25:22
Speaker 1: is currently under a oil embargo by the United States.
25:26
Speaker 1: China has supplied Cuba with a lot, a lot of
25:29
Speaker 1: solar panels that was enabled them to generate you know,
25:33
Speaker 1: their own energy and that you know that that has
25:36
Speaker 1: helped Cuba a lot in this time of crisis. I
25:39
Speaker 1: mean for for many people that that will increasingly be
25:43
Speaker 1: the preferable option.
25:46
Speaker 2: Absolutely. You know, renewable energy generation is quick to implement,
25:53
Speaker 2: throwing batteries with it, and you've got an ability to
25:58
Speaker 2: have distributed solutions, and again it's quick because you don't
26:01
Speaker 2: need lots of big grids, and of course you can
26:05
Speaker 2: progressively build out little micro grids. Microgrids are very very
26:08
Speaker 2: useful because they enable load load equalization across the network
26:13
Speaker 2: of users, and it also helps it's a bit of
26:16
Speaker 2: risk mitigation, right, So if somebody's got a problem in
26:20
Speaker 2: one part of a community, could be a factory that
26:23
Speaker 2: needs to boost its production, or something being in a
26:26
Speaker 2: micro grid that can actually access a little bit more
26:28
Speaker 2: energy than it would normally need. So micro grids, renewable energy,
26:32
Speaker 2: et cetera is hugely important, and I think we're going
26:35
Speaker 2: to see also at a much bigger scale, renewed interest
26:40
Speaker 2: in other types of clean energies, you know, whether it's
26:45
Speaker 2: nuclear or what have you. Right, But they're big systems,
26:49
Speaker 2: they take a lot more time to build, to design
26:52
Speaker 2: and build. You don't get lots of them popping up quickly.
26:57
Speaker 2: But in the meantime, the sorts of things you've just
26:59
Speaker 2: described are going to become part and parcel I think
27:02
Speaker 2: of the global development landscape. It's kind of funny, you know.
27:05
Speaker 2: I mean a friend of mine, I would probably classify
27:09
Speaker 2: him as a bit of a prepper. And of course
27:13
Speaker 2: what we're seeing now is we're going to have a
27:15
Speaker 2: whole bunch of normies, urban normis who actually will become
27:20
Speaker 2: urban preppers and all over the place. But these are
27:27
Speaker 2: the sorts of systemic adjustments that we're going to start
27:30
Speaker 2: the sea unfold, right, And Cubas are very very interesting
27:34
Speaker 2: case in point. As Cuba's storage systems improve and the
27:41
Speaker 2: load equalization and spread over the course of a day
27:44
Speaker 2: is then better manage with batteries, it will actually become
27:49
Speaker 2: a much more stable situation as well. But these are
27:55
Speaker 2: the systems we're going to start the sea unfold. Even more,
27:58
Speaker 2: I would also have it again that over the course
28:03
Speaker 2: of the next ten years, assuming that there's no nuclear event,
28:07
Speaker 2: and which sort of makes these discussions a bit moot,
28:10
Speaker 2: but over the course of the next ten years, we're
28:13
Speaker 2: going to see three main things happening I think in
28:17
Speaker 2: the global energetic sense, all under this umbrella of electrification.
28:22
Speaker 2: The first finance we've discussed is I think a proliferation
28:25
Speaker 2: of clean, renewable energy based micro grids. We're also going
28:30
Speaker 2: to see in pasts the world some of these bigger systems,
28:35
Speaker 2: mainly nuclear. Okay, so that'll be the next thing. Eventually,
28:39
Speaker 2: we'll see in forty years time, things like fusion really
28:42
Speaker 2: play the central role replacing the renewable systems as they
28:49
Speaker 2: become obsolete. But the other thing that I think we're
28:53
Speaker 2: likely to see emerge is the scaling up and rolling
28:59
Speaker 2: out of a technology that we call triboelectric nanogenerators tanks tngs.
29:10
Speaker 2: It's pretty geeky, right, but it's essentially technologies that enable
29:16
Speaker 2: the capturing of energy from the natural environment in very
29:22
Speaker 2: very small amounts and to make that available for devices
29:28
Speaker 2: at the very edges. So application cases include things like
29:34
Speaker 2: very very small sensors, such a sensors that are put
29:39
Speaker 2: in water, which will naturally just replenish their own energy
29:44
Speaker 2: by capturing the energy from the bobbing in the water.
29:48
Speaker 2: We'll see a lot more of these sensors being deployed
29:52
Speaker 2: where the breeze itself will enable the capturing of the
29:57
Speaker 2: energy which is enough to power the sensor and the
30:00
Speaker 2: transmission of the data from the center. And this will
30:04
Speaker 2: enable a proliferation of distributed information systems as well. And
30:10
Speaker 2: the reason I mentioned this is that I think it's
30:13
Speaker 2: also going to be transformational. So the third order effect
30:18
Speaker 2: of these changes is that it will enable the transformation
30:25
Speaker 2: of the global information architecture. For thirty forty years or so,
30:33
Speaker 2: the majority of global information systems have been American hardware
30:40
Speaker 2: and software, as well as the means by which information
30:44
Speaker 2: is transmitted. That's going to change. And one of the
30:49
Speaker 2: reasons it's going to change, amongst others, in light of
30:52
Speaker 2: the risks that we're observing at the moment, is that
30:57
Speaker 2: places that once could not afford all of these big,
31:00
Speaker 2: expensive systems will actually have access too much, low cost,
31:06
Speaker 2: energy efficient, distributed energy enabled data collection and processing systems.
31:12
Speaker 2: And that's going to happen over the next ten years.
31:16
Speaker 2: So in some ways, the end of the Petro dollar empire,
31:23
Speaker 2: so to speak, which I think we're witnessing right now,
31:27
Speaker 2: is also the beginnings of a future in which a
31:32
Speaker 2: more a digital Westphalian architecture will emerge, where countries will
31:40
Speaker 2: be more energy independent, will be more information systems independent,
31:46
Speaker 2: but nonetheless be able to interoperate with each other because
31:49
Speaker 2: of standard protocols and security agreements and those sorts of things.
31:54
Speaker 2: And that's going to be a vastly different world to
31:57
Speaker 2: the world that we've become accustomed to over the last
32:00
Speaker 2: where the United States is controlled energy by virtue of
32:07
Speaker 2: controlling these major energy regions. It's controlled the financial means
32:14
Speaker 2: of payment, and of course it's controlled the information architecture
32:18
Speaker 2: that's enabled all of this stuff to coordinate. That's all changing.
32:25
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting because I saw a lot of you know,
32:28
Speaker 4: throughout the course of wars, there's a lot of copium
32:32
Speaker 4: and and you know, essentially war propaganda by produced by
32:36
Speaker 4: these conservative think tanks in the United States.
32:40
Speaker 1: I saw an article from Hudson Institute basically saying, this
32:44
Speaker 1: is Trump playing five dimensional chess against China by controlling
32:49
Speaker 1: the energy supply, you know, first going after Venezuela and
32:53
Speaker 1: and Yourang, and then that will have a huge leverage
32:58
Speaker 1: over China by by the American control of these oil
33:01
Speaker 1: producing regions. But nobody, I don't know who who's these
33:07
Speaker 1: days still believe that Trump is capable of playing five
33:10
Speaker 1: dimensional chess and the idea that somehow this is this
33:16
Speaker 1: is gonna, you know, damage China. They need to look
33:20
Speaker 1: at what is doing to the economies of the so
33:23
Speaker 1: called US allies in East Asia, Korea and Japan, both countries.
33:29
Speaker 1: It was Korea, Japan, Philippines and also India as well.
33:33
Speaker 1: They all heavily depend on the import of the golf
33:37
Speaker 1: oil and they in case of Korea and Japan is
33:41
Speaker 1: about eighty to ninety they whereas China they have other options.
33:49
Speaker 1: China's largest energy supplier is Russia right next door. This
33:55
Speaker 1: is why now you know, recently India have asked for
33:59
Speaker 1: a waiver so they could continue to purchase Russian oil.
34:03
Speaker 1: And that's why Scott Betson talking about now they're thinking
34:07
Speaker 1: about unsanctioned some of the other Russian oil because I
34:10
Speaker 1: think they realized its screwed up. They screwed up that
34:13
Speaker 1: now they have to allow some of their so called
34:16
Speaker 1: US partner countries to purchase Russian oil to offset this
34:21
Speaker 1: going offline of the.
34:25
Speaker 2: They need more oil in the market, right that this
34:28
Speaker 2: is this is the thing. But you're right, Look, Japan, Korea,
34:31
Speaker 2: the Philippines are you know, facing some very significant headwinds.
34:37
Speaker 2: Arguably Japan has got a bit more of a runway
34:40
Speaker 2: because it does have large reserves, but but you know,
34:45
Speaker 2: at some point they run out. But I think they've
34:47
Speaker 2: got reserves, but a career in the Philippines are really
34:50
Speaker 2: in the firing line. And you know, the Philippines trying
34:54
Speaker 2: to diversify to some degree successfully but mainly to North
34:58
Speaker 2: American energy, and it's going to be I think, very
35:06
Speaker 2: severely affected. So not only is it going to be
35:09
Speaker 2: physical availability questions, but obviously the price volatility that we've
35:15
Speaker 2: seen clearly market manipulation. But at some point reality will
35:24
Speaker 2: prevail and it will push prices up quite high if
35:26
Speaker 2: the war continues, and that's going to be it'll be
35:31
Speaker 2: bone crushing for these small countries that have limited foreign
35:35
Speaker 2: exchange reserves. And I think the other thing that we're
35:39
Speaker 2: going to seek out of all of this is a
35:42
Speaker 2: continuation of the trend of supply chain shortening and localization.
35:50
Speaker 2: So within the Asia Pacific region, for example, China of
35:58
Speaker 2: course is the center for trading partner for just about everybody.
36:02
Speaker 2: It's the largest trading partner as jan and vice versa,
36:06
Speaker 2: and that trend is going to actually be consolidated because
36:11
Speaker 2: of all of this. The idea that you have long,
36:14
Speaker 2: stringy supply chains is one that you will seek to
36:19
Speaker 2: over time and as quickly as possible overcome by having
36:23
Speaker 2: them as short as possible. You want to be mitigating
36:27
Speaker 2: your exposure to things like transport cost risks. We're also
36:32
Speaker 2: going to see some other interesting things, which is the
36:35
Speaker 2: acceleration of transport infrastructure integration between China all the way
36:40
Speaker 2: down to Singapore through electrification, and that's to move people
36:45
Speaker 2: and when push comes to shove in the event that
36:49
Speaker 2: there are problems with maritime traffic, to be able to
36:53
Speaker 2: move goods as well. Obviously moving things by ship is
36:58
Speaker 2: more cost effective, but it's a fantastic backup to have,
37:02
Speaker 2: and we're going to see a lot of these sorts
37:04
Speaker 2: of redundancies emerge in Southeast Asia. We'll see electrification hasten
37:09
Speaker 2: right across Southeast Asia as well. They'll want their own factories,
37:12
Speaker 2: of course, and those that can do that will be
37:16
Speaker 2: trying to get their factories up and running as quickly
37:18
Speaker 2: as possible. But in almost all cases it involves deepening
37:23
Speaker 2: some connection to a Chinese electrification supply chain somewhere or another,
37:29
Speaker 2: whether it's with an EV manufacturer or with the battery
37:33
Speaker 2: supply chain, one way or another. This transformation that we're
37:38
Speaker 2: likely to see over the next five to ten years
37:41
Speaker 2: will see the regional supply chains actually tighten up and
37:47
Speaker 2: become more intertwined, not less intertyed. And when you add
37:52
Speaker 2: that economic reality to what you mentioned earlier, which is
37:56
Speaker 2: the fact that the American security umbrella that everybody had
38:03
Speaker 2: huddled under proves to be attempt and village security umbrella,
38:10
Speaker 2: then the big question will be asked by all of
38:14
Speaker 2: these places. And in fact, I have no doubt in
38:17
Speaker 2: the corridors of power, the little quiet chats. The question
38:22
Speaker 2: that no one ever asked before is being asked now,
38:24
Speaker 2: which is can we afford the Americans to be here
38:28
Speaker 2: much longer? You know? And they know the answer, right.
38:35
Speaker 2: So the question that probably isn't yet being asked in
38:39
Speaker 2: the open, but is already in the back of the
38:41
Speaker 2: mind is and what do we do when we put
38:45
Speaker 2: when we ask them to leave? What are they going
38:49
Speaker 2: to do when we asked them to leave? How are
38:51
Speaker 2: we going to handle this? And what happens in the vacuum,
38:55
Speaker 2: because that's your flipside, right. So in Asia, the vacuum
39:00
Speaker 2: is of course one that Japan would love to fill.
39:05
Speaker 2: No one's going to let them do that. How that
39:09
Speaker 2: happens and how Japan is not allowed to do that
39:12
Speaker 2: is going to be a real test of the diplomatic
39:16
Speaker 2: skills of the region in containing that. I'm hopeful maybe
39:25
Speaker 2: not confident, but hopeful that with a passage of time
39:28
Speaker 2: that can actually be managed and Japan's ambitions to in
39:32
Speaker 2: a sense become a major military power in the region
39:35
Speaker 2: will be catailed because no one wants it. But the
39:40
Speaker 2: issue of the Americans essentially having their position in Asia diluted,
39:45
Speaker 2: just as it's happening in West Asia, will create a
39:49
Speaker 2: need for an alternative set of arrangements. What those arrangements are,
39:54
Speaker 2: I think is the question that people really should be
39:58
Speaker 2: talking about and thinking about now, because that isn't going
40:01
Speaker 2: to appear out overnight or fall from the sky, right.
40:04
Speaker 2: It's going to be something that will uh demand a
40:11
Speaker 2: lot of careful consideration and a lot of dialogue Asian style.
40:21
Speaker 3: Yeah.
40:22
Speaker 1: Actually, in fact, even in the case of Japan, I
40:25
Speaker 1: think the best chance for Japan's future is to integrate
40:30
Speaker 1: into the Chinese supply chain, uh, you know, because that
40:34
Speaker 1: they still have some comparative advantages in some areas like
40:39
Speaker 1: advanced my conductor. You know, there's still some pockets of
40:44
Speaker 1: the words Japan excel they could still make, you know,
40:49
Speaker 1: they could make do bye bye by making them part
40:53
Speaker 1: of the Chinese supply chain and share the spirity that
40:59
Speaker 1: come with this. So I'm actually surprised by the approach
41:02
Speaker 1: that was adopted by h Japanese Prime Minister Sanayatakaichi by
41:07
Speaker 1: you know, aligning itself even more closely with United States,
41:12
Speaker 1: you know, just going down with a sinking ship essentially.
41:17
Speaker 1: I mean it's very obvious for for like outside observer,
41:21
Speaker 1: the Japanese destiny is within East Asia bye bye. By
41:27
Speaker 1: integrating further with the with the East Asian supply chain
41:31
Speaker 1: center in China, that's that's that's hope for Japan.
41:35
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, you know, the Chinese saying is a pangunner
41:37
Speaker 2: ting don juju me and and maybe that's Japan's dilimmer
41:43
Speaker 2: at the moment. You know, those on the sidelines can
41:47
Speaker 2: say see things clearly, those in the middle of it don't.
41:50
Speaker 2: And uh and but I think you're right, you know,
41:54
Speaker 2: I mean, at a structural level, the future for Japan,
41:59
Speaker 2: uh would be best serve if industrially it integrated into
42:04
Speaker 2: the broader Chinese supply chain network, if it also integrated
42:08
Speaker 2: into the Siberian and that sort of Northeast Asian energy
42:13
Speaker 2: agriculture network as well, because that's where energy and food's
42:16
Speaker 2: going to come from for that part of the world.
42:19
Speaker 2: Same story goes for Korea. And I think we've had
42:23
Speaker 2: this conversation before, but that's the logical if you will,
42:27
Speaker 2: if you had a blank sheet of paper, when everyone
42:29
Speaker 2: had goodwill and there was no sort of historical baggage
42:33
Speaker 2: and all of that. He said, these are the resource endowments.
42:36
Speaker 2: How do you think you can organize yourself so that
42:38
Speaker 2: everyone gets on and has the best outcome. That's probably
42:43
Speaker 2: what it will look like. So how do you get
42:44
Speaker 2: there from an environment at the moment where the current
42:49
Speaker 2: Japanese administration has sort of doubled down on some aspirations
42:53
Speaker 2: of becoming a new military power. It's done that under
42:58
Speaker 2: the umbrella of American protect which, as we have seen
43:03
Speaker 2: in the last couple of weeks, is seriously in doubt. Now.
43:07
Speaker 2: Not only did it not have the capacity to protect
43:11
Speaker 2: the Golden Child as you call it, it hasn't had
43:14
Speaker 2: the capacity to protected its bases, which of course is
43:16
Speaker 2: central to its ability to protect the Golden Child. And
43:20
Speaker 2: it's run out of stuff. So now it's rating East
43:25
Speaker 2: Asia of equipment, leaving East Asia exposed for what that's worth.
43:35
Speaker 2: Because having a SAD system in Korea, quite clearly based
43:39
Speaker 2: on the experiences of what's happening in West Asia clearly
43:43
Speaker 2: tells us that it wasn't going to do much right.
43:47
Speaker 2: But the umbrella, the umbrella is it is really a
43:54
Speaker 2: bigment of the imagination, and that's all it is. Now.
43:58
Speaker 2: Once that real settles in and once strategic thinkers, defense thinkers,
44:04
Speaker 2: strategic analysts and others actually internalize that in places like Tokyo,
44:11
Speaker 2: sol and Manila, then I think we'll start to see
44:15
Speaker 2: very different conversations. I think you and I both know
44:18
Speaker 2: that intelligent people actually have the ability to intuit things
44:26
Speaker 2: well before they begin to articulate them. And there are
44:28
Speaker 2: penny people across this region who actually, deep down just
44:32
Speaker 2: know how to articulate it. When to articulate it in
44:39
Speaker 2: a way that doesn't get themselves smacked down is the
44:44
Speaker 2: big question. And I think the same issues emerging also
44:47
Speaker 2: on the island of Taiwan, where you know, all these
44:51
Speaker 2: think tankers keep talking about how all of this is
44:54
Speaker 2: you know, bolding in the mainland, et cetera, et cetera.
44:58
Speaker 2: I haven't heard so much learning for a long time.
45:02
Speaker 2: The mainland actually doesn't have to do anything different. The
45:07
Speaker 2: big question that is actually the big dynamic that's going
45:11
Speaker 2: on is actually the recalibration of thinking in type A.
45:18
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the rethink that's going on. And if
45:23
Speaker 2: they took a look at the basis and the destroyed
45:26
Speaker 2: fads and everything else across the Middle East, the logical
45:33
Speaker 2: conclusion is the civil war must end, and the sooner
45:38
Speaker 2: it ends, the better, and it needs to end in
45:42
Speaker 2: a way that there's no bloodshed lost. Deep down, people
45:49
Speaker 2: know this already. Some are articulating it, they get smacked
45:53
Speaker 2: around a bit, but there are people there in the
45:59
Speaker 2: high Iraqi to actually know that this is the only way.
46:06
Speaker 2: It's just going to be a question of how and when.
46:11
Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
46:12
Speaker 1: I mean, I also see a lot of commentator on
46:16
Speaker 1: social media say, oh, why don't China move on Taiwan
46:19
Speaker 1: right now? You know, but look for China, the Taiwan
46:25
Speaker 1: issue always remain the top priority. But China will resolve
46:28
Speaker 1: the Taiwan issue on its own timetable. It's kind of
46:32
Speaker 1: irrelevant what the United States or the US Empire do elsewhere.
46:36
Speaker 1: And the top goal has always been a peaceful unification.
46:41
Speaker 1: But you know, China will always will not remove force
46:45
Speaker 1: from the from the from the table of options. But
46:48
Speaker 1: they still prefer a peaceful unification. They're waiting for for
46:52
Speaker 1: you know, Taiwan basically to ripen and fall into their lap.
46:59
Speaker 1: And and this you know that China. The last thing
47:02
Speaker 1: China want to do is to risk an unnecessary war.
47:06
Speaker 1: You know, this is why a lot of the outside
47:09
Speaker 1: commentators don't understand. They think, okay, oh, this is the
47:14
Speaker 1: whole world is just like a risk board, you know,
47:16
Speaker 1: like the game of risk. Now would be the time
47:18
Speaker 1: for China to go in to take Taiwan's Like why no,
47:21
Speaker 1: China China wants you know, China's preferred method of unification
47:27
Speaker 1: would be for Taiwan willingly to be reintegrated into the motherland,
47:34
Speaker 1: not not a you know, a forceful uh unification that
47:39
Speaker 1: carry out on their force of threat.
47:42
Speaker 3: That this is sometimes I think people.
47:44
Speaker 1: Just they they talk about this because they have fundamentally
47:49
Speaker 1: have no skin in the game. The Chinese people actually
47:53
Speaker 1: do have skin in the game. You know, this is
47:55
Speaker 1: this is this is going to be their future, and
47:59
Speaker 1: so their very careful on how to go about it.
48:02
Speaker 1: And you know, this is why I kind of just
48:04
Speaker 1: tune out when people like talk like that, what change
48:08
Speaker 1: you do?
48:09
Speaker 2: Well? And think of it like this, and this is
48:10
Speaker 2: what people outside actually need to get into their minds
48:14
Speaker 2: to actually understand this. If military action was taken, what
48:19
Speaker 2: that really means is that somebody is going to be
48:21
Speaker 2: shooting somebody's grandchildren and great grandchildren. That's what it means.
48:28
Speaker 2: That's why there is an incredible reluctance to do this.
48:32
Speaker 2: There is a civil war, it's not concluded, but nobody
48:36
Speaker 2: wants to be in the business of reigniting something that
48:41
Speaker 2: involves the killing of somebody's grandchildren and great grandchildren. That's
48:46
Speaker 2: the first point. The second point, and this really extends
48:49
Speaker 2: from your observations, and that is if you reunify something
48:54
Speaker 2: under force, the likelihood is that you will also create
49:01
Speaker 2: a level of resentment that will be harbored in sections
49:05
Speaker 2: of a population that will be a problem for a
49:07
Speaker 2: long time. And we see this in other parts of
49:10
Speaker 2: the world too, right where populations are divided through sort
49:14
Speaker 2: of forceful divisions and joinings and stuff like that. And
49:20
Speaker 2: I think the Chinese government on the mainland is very
49:23
Speaker 2: mindful that if you don't have to, then why would
49:29
Speaker 2: you go out of your way to create a thorn
49:32
Speaker 2: in your side. It's already a thorn in the side
49:36
Speaker 2: to the extent that it hosts American military capability, So
49:41
Speaker 2: why would you go out of your way to have
49:43
Speaker 2: the people become resentful? And I think we're starting to
49:49
Speaker 2: see a lot of change in attitudes too, where obviously
49:54
Speaker 2: there's a recognition that the American protection umbrella is really
49:58
Speaker 2: just a fiction. That's the first thing. The second thing
50:01
Speaker 2: I think is becoming more evident is that the idea
50:05
Speaker 2: of the mainland being you know, the poor communists, and
50:09
Speaker 2: we don't want to be like the poor communists. We'll
50:11
Speaker 2: forget about that. They're the rich socialists and we want
50:15
Speaker 2: more of that, right, So that's the second thing. And
50:19
Speaker 2: I think that there's one more thing in all of this,
50:21
Speaker 2: which again I think we've touched on it, but is
50:26
Speaker 2: emerging again stronger than ever before, and that is, despite
50:30
Speaker 2: twenty odd years of attempt to sanitize the Chinese heritage
50:36
Speaker 2: of people on the island, that there is a generation
50:39
Speaker 2: that is rediscovering what it means to be Chinese. And
50:48
Speaker 2: that process is actually being accelerated by all this stuff
50:52
Speaker 2: going on around because you're starting to hear people say, well,
50:58
Speaker 2: I'd rather be protected by the pol because I'll be safe, right,
51:03
Speaker 2: and that sense of transformation of public attitudes isn't widely articulated.
51:12
Speaker 2: I accept that, and you'll find in almost every opinion poll,
51:15
Speaker 2: you know, the idea that people just want the status quo. Well,
51:18
Speaker 2: the status quo is an easy one if you have
51:20
Speaker 2: a very simplistic view about the status quo, which is
51:23
Speaker 2: my life can carry on and everything's okay. But everyone
51:26
Speaker 2: knows that the status quo is fundamentally changing anyway. And
51:32
Speaker 2: so I suspect that those in Beijing and the different
51:39
Speaker 2: folk involved in this the question of the Taiwan issue,
51:44
Speaker 2: actually on both sides of the Straits, are starting to
51:47
Speaker 2: arrive at an implicit common understanding that sometime in say,
51:56
Speaker 2: the next ten years, there will be very serious talks
52:02
Speaker 2: about how to put all of that old stuff to
52:06
Speaker 2: bed and what the future looks like. And my instinct
52:12
Speaker 2: is that the only issue of import that needs to
52:18
Speaker 2: be really dealt with is the status of the Republic
52:23
Speaker 2: of China militia, and that obviously would need to be
52:26
Speaker 2: disbanded and absorbed. That there is one foreign policy. But
52:32
Speaker 2: I suspect that once that's done, there's not much else
52:34
Speaker 2: that will actually be on the table. They might actually
52:41
Speaker 2: need to have a few controls on how many people
52:42
Speaker 2: from the island want to go to the mainland, because
52:45
Speaker 2: I suspect that the direction of traffic will probably be
52:48
Speaker 2: all that way.
52:49
Speaker 1: Anyway, I don't think there's even going to be that
52:53
Speaker 1: much resistance about disbanding the military of Taiwan because not
52:58
Speaker 1: many Taiwanese youth are very eager to sign up right now,
53:02
Speaker 1: you know that they have been to win votes, the
53:05
Speaker 1: ruling party on Taiwan has been shortening the military service
53:09
Speaker 1: from two years to one year to six one and
53:12
Speaker 1: now they're going back to one year because Americans are
53:15
Speaker 1: pressuring them to. But it's you know, most of the
53:19
Speaker 1: young people see it's pointless why they have to spend
53:22
Speaker 1: a year away from family to to to go go
53:25
Speaker 1: do the military service.
53:27
Speaker 3: So if they get rid of.
53:29
Speaker 1: That, I do not expect too much popular opposition on Taiwan.
53:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look, you know, and the island itself obviously
53:38
Speaker 2: has a whole bunch of developmental issues. Now, you know,
53:43
Speaker 2: the outside world thinks of Taiwan as this super advanced
53:47
Speaker 2: semiconductor manufacturer on but it's just one factory. In fact,
53:52
Speaker 2: the economy in many other respects is you know, obviously
53:57
Speaker 2: industrialized early with a lot of external assistance, but it's
54:03
Speaker 2: nowhere near as advance as many of the more advanced
54:06
Speaker 2: parts of the mainland. And so you know, infrastructure, we
54:10
Speaker 2: know this now, you know, transport infrastructure, electricity, infrastructure, and
54:16
Speaker 2: so those things will become priorities. You know, when you
54:20
Speaker 2: people talk about type payers equivalent to you know, a
54:26
Speaker 2: medium level secondier city, you know you know that. You
54:33
Speaker 2: know there will be investments made too, you know, raise
54:36
Speaker 2: the standard and and in fact, you know, if you
54:42
Speaker 2: were in the business of orchestrating a reunification, part of
54:46
Speaker 2: that will be of course a substantial improvement in the
54:51
Speaker 2: in the public infrastructure of the island. You'd be crazy
54:55
Speaker 2: to not do that. So yeah, look, I the city
55:00
Speaker 2: suation in Iran. It is like a Pandora's box, right,
55:05
Speaker 2: and it unleashes all sorts of energy and forces in
55:09
Speaker 2: the world that have been dormant. You know, they're not
55:13
Speaker 2: things that haven't existed, but they're possibly not so dormant
55:17
Speaker 2: or a bit quieter, and they create spaces for stuff
55:21
Speaker 2: to emerge. They forced new conversations to be had, They
55:25
Speaker 2: force the recognition of certain realities that perhaps at a
55:30
Speaker 2: certain level. Many people have kind of just wanted to
55:35
Speaker 2: just deny for maybe another year or two, but it's
55:38
Speaker 2: brought it all forward. And here we are an American
55:42
Speaker 2: military industrial complex that overreached, that is now raiding its
55:50
Speaker 2: capabilities from everywhere else in the world. It's trapped in
55:55
Speaker 2: a war that it can't win. It opened up the
55:58
Speaker 2: Pandora's box of having its energy pipeline. Yeah, and there
56:05
Speaker 2: is no way out at the moment that would deliver
56:10
Speaker 2: to America something that you would call a face saver,
56:14
Speaker 2: because everyone knows that even if a face saver was
56:17
Speaker 2: given that that would be the humiliation itself.
56:22
Speaker 1: Well, given that Trump is a president, I mean, he
56:25
Speaker 1: will still try to spend it as a victory anyway,
56:27
Speaker 1: because that that man is shameless. So he will still
56:30
Speaker 1: claim total victory, you know, total US domination, and then
56:36
Speaker 1: he will call admission, accomplish, and then he will demand
56:39
Speaker 1: and alp his price.
56:40
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that's most likely ours.
56:43
Speaker 2: What And no one in the world is going to
56:46
Speaker 2: other than you know, independent commentators, but no other government
56:50
Speaker 2: in the world is going to say that's nonsense. Right,
56:53
Speaker 2: They're all going to nod because they know that there
56:58
Speaker 2: is nothing to be gained by saying actually, that's all nonsense.
57:03
Speaker 2: You're living in a dream and that just much rather
57:07
Speaker 2: America become more normal. And if this is the kind
57:11
Speaker 2: of thing that you need for America to become more normal,
57:14
Speaker 2: then they will be pragmatic and accepted. Yes, President, this
57:19
Speaker 2: has been you know, it's exactly as you say. Now
57:23
Speaker 2: you'll become normal. So interesting times.
57:27
Speaker 3: Eh, yeah, and it's only the third month of the year.
57:34
Speaker 1: Yah. Anyway, this has been a very enlightening conversation. Thank you,
57:41
Speaker 1: doctor Power for always making the time to speak to
57:44
Speaker 1: us to break things down in detail. If people are
57:47
Speaker 1: looking forward to follow your work, where would they go?
57:51
Speaker 2: They should follow me at substack worickpal dot substack dot com.
57:57
Speaker 2: And I'll put in a quick little plug. But we
57:58
Speaker 2: can talk about this next time round. I've got a
58:01
Speaker 2: book coming out on the fifteenth of March called Thermoeconomics
58:06
Speaker 2: in a Time of Monsters. It will be out on Amazon,
58:10
Speaker 2: and I've experimented with self publishing this time because my
58:14
Speaker 2: academic publishing partners make books that are too expensive for
58:19
Speaker 2: most people. So let's see how this goes. So if
58:22
Speaker 2: people are interested in some of these topics in a
58:25
Speaker 2: more heavier scholarship kind of setting. There's a book coming out.
58:30
Speaker 2: I look forward to that.
58:32
Speaker 1: And then it's very appropriate title given the time we're in.
58:35
Speaker 1: Thank you again, doctor Pal, and for my audience, thanks
58:40
Speaker 1: for tuning in until next time.
58:42
Speaker 2: Bye bye,