The Armow. We've been talking to a fair amount today, as we have for a while now, and how unsettled the world is in all kinds of different ways, the economy, the world order, military situations, variety. There's this virus that I've heard about. Ah, it's always great when we get a chance to talk to Ian Bremer, who is the president and founder of You Raise Your Group, a political risk research and consulting firm whose job is to figure out what's going on, not to please us politically, but
to protect its clients, etcetera. Uh Ian joins us, Now, how are you sir? Hey, how are you men? Good to talk to you, Happy New Year. Thank you Sam. You Before we get started, we want you to know that something you said on your last appearance on The Armstrong and Getty Show has become a fan favorite. We play it all the time, Michael, if you'd be so kind, I thought we were going to play the long version of it. Hell, do you people not talk to each other?
Rather be in Washington or in Beijing? Are be in the United States? Right? I don't I don't know if you recall saying that. And we've we wondered at the time, like did was that a slip of the tongue where you just excited? Did you forget we were on the air? Did you think we're a college radio show? We were just wondering what was going on? Did I thought I thought that you allowed um, you know, sort of more
casual obscenities. We should. It's it's mighty hottest to promote to allow bull s to be used on the air. But now, yeah, we have millions and millions of podload downs, podcast downloads, but it starts as a radio show. So anyway, we are not sking you I and we are glad to be chatting with you about the Global risk list. It is compelling as always. Uh Now, as as former DJs, we might want to count down to number one, but let's just start with the number one. What what? What
is number one? This year? Number one? Number one? While we've been living with this pandemic for the last two years, so it's hard to throw it out, especially with the gaudy number of cases that you know, seven fifty thousand yesterday in the US, and it's assure as an undercount.
The name of the number one risk is no zero COVID and what that means because you know we're focusing on the whole year, is that Actually the biggest problem is China um the country that did the best job responding to COVID once they admitted to it back in because they could test and trace, they could walk down,
they could quarantine. They're going to have an enormously hard time dealing with the newest variant O maicron, because, as you've seen from a bunch of Biden advisers the last couple of days, we need to pivot to living with the virus. We've got the therapeutics, we've got the vaccines, and it's not about case numbers anymore. It's about hospitalizations and depths. The Chinese can't do that, and they can't do it number one because their vaccines don't work in
any way to stop omicron spread. Number two because no one in China has actually gotten the virus yet, so they have very low antibody levels and they're focusing on stopping spread. So they will shut down a city of thirteen million people with a handful of cases. They have
the ability to do it. The impact of that this year on the Chinese economy and on the Chinese supply chain to the rest of the world is going to be really, really big, and no one's really focusing on this yet, so that that strikes us as the biggest problem out there. Okay, so you got to that at
the end there. That makes sense because while I'm I'm not a horrible human being that doesn't care about people, are not that concerned about how many people in China end up getting COVID, the fact that it affects the supply chain for the rest of the world. You think that's gonna be a noticeable problem. Yes, the second largest economy in the world, and it's the factory for the world.
And you know, if you ask Americans what they're most concerned about right now and what's driving Biden's comparatively low popularity, they'll say inflation. Where do you think that comes from? I mean, you know, we've had real difficulties getting goods from China. We've had real challenges with port facilities and with containerships and the rest of that. That should get fixed a lot faster if we're all able to live
with the virus. But if the world's second largest economy and biggest producer of stuff that we need is actually locking down like crazy all year and by the way, you know, they won't even license western m RNA vaccines like you know Fizer and Maderia. They're waiting for their own Chinese mRNA vaccine, which they're pushing hard. But it's not going read until the end of the year for for big for big league population rollout. So is a
problem here, It's it's just really interesting. I'd say it is, hey and not And I want to get too far off of your your list of risk because we look forward to it every year. But how big a deal is it that we found out this year that she is actually a communist. I mean he's not just like a Putin style dictator who wants to be rich and powerful. It would seem as an actual communists like reigning back the you know, the successful businesses and sectors. In a
weird way, that seems like good news for us. Uh. You know, the Chinese economy right now is more unequal than even the United States, and for an ostensibly socialist country. Um, that's a problem. And so what you have is she's and thing acting like an authoritarian populist saying no, I don't I don't care about jack ma, I care about the working class in the middle class, and and and that means I'm willing to take some hits in terms
of my private sector. So I don't know. If you saw the Chinese government a few months ago said if your kid you get two hours a week on video games, you don't lose, you don't use them, they don't roll over to the next week. You know a lot of American parents that would love to put that in place too. But the fact is that that that's basically, you know, cut an enormous amount of wealth generation out of the companies.
He doesn't care. So I do think that that's going to be a hit for a number of really, really profitable Chinese firms. I want to be clear. That's very different than say Chinese semiconductor industry, which they are putting an enormous amount of money and they want to be world class. That's very different from artificial intelligence and smart cities and sensors and autonomous driving, where the Chinese want
their companies to be world leaders. So I think that you may be over egging the putting a bit by saying that this is the year we found out she is a communist. Yeah, cut it out, ye over egger Um. We could We could talk for the next month about China, but let's move on to number two, which I found so interesting, the techno polar world. The report says, the physical world is a mess because no countries are willing
or able to provide global leadership. Digital spaces even more poorly governed, do tell but we're so everyone is angry at the big tech companies now because so much disinformation, because there's so many challenges in terms of cyber at tax and personal security getting hacked and critical infrastructure getting hacked, and so you're hearing people say, well, government has to
do something about this. Companies. Tech companies are gonna get richer and more powerful faster than governments can catch up to regulate them. And that means more disinformation, more anxious populations, more problems in in governance and elections. You know, when you and I were kids, we would if you wanted to figure out how screwed up we are, we would say, well, it was either the way you were brought up, its nurture, or it's your genetics. It's nature. Increasingly it's actually nature
versus nurture versus algorithms. It's you know, the it's the virtual world and the way that kids are getting information and connecting with people as intermediated by these algorithms driven by tech companies. And you know we're doing that without testing them on on anyone. First. You wouldn't do that with the drug, you wouldn't do that with the GMO crop. But we're doing that with literally the the thought processes of the brains of our children. And I don't see
how that isn't becoming a much more significant ristmers society. Wow. As a as a guy who's raising a nine year old an eleven year old boy right now and dealing with a lot of that, that is, man, that's a heap and help on the stuff to think about right there.
That is really interesting. Well, you know that these the executives from these companies don't let their kids on this stuff, right, So, perhaps I'm an idiot because I thought, um, and and about half the audience is saying, perhaps, um, I I thought the US midterms is going to be fairly predictable and probably not a great note. You disagree, obviously, that's
behind your list at number three, tell us what you're thinking. Well, look, I mean this is in part this is because the election is so critically important for UM, and in part it's because the United States is fundamentally more politically dysfunctional and divided than any of our major advanced industrial allies. I mean, we've had elections in the last few months in Germany, Japan, in Canada, they've all been fine, free and fair. Will happen the next few months. In South
Korea grants no problem, we can. We can no longer have free, fair, legitimate national elections in the United States. The losing side thinks that they're illegitimate and stolen. And that started in sixteen with the Russia collusion story. Hillary Clinton didn't support it, but a lot of Democrats did. It got much worse in because Trump himself pushed the big lie and has been doing it very effectively with
his supporters for the last year. And now we're setting up for the midterm elections where I mean, you know, the Republicans led by Trump are very likely to take the House, maybe the Senate, and key gubernatorial and state legislatures, which are going to be critical for certifying the election in So this is kind of a tipping point for what is likely to be a much more problematic and dare I say crisis cycles in the run up number five on the list, skipping. Another China related topic is Russia.
There's a huge divide in the United States between people who are critically interested in that and people who say it's a border dispute in Eastern Europe. What the hell do we care? Why should we care? Well? Um, we care in part because the Europeans are our most important allies.
The trans atlantic relationship matters. Um. And we also care because the Russians engage in a set asymmetric power efforts to undermine us UH and weaken our trans atlantic relationship, and and the incursions into Ukraine, the invasion back in was a part of that. So Russia, look, they're making a lot of money off of higher energy prices, and as the winter is coming, the Europeans need Russian gas
and they're facing shortages. So this is high time for the Russians to cause trouble for the West, and that's why they put a hundred thousand troops on Ukraine's border. We got together with the Europeans and said, if you invade UM, we're gonna sanction you so hard. Your your economy is going to be destroyed. And the question is, are the Russians prepared to call that bluff in full
or in part. And if they if they call that bluff in part, is it possible that the Americans are on board and the Europeans are not and Biden looks really weak and the relationship really blows up. I would like to congratulate you for getting through this much without any of your trucker language that nearly cost us our FCC license last time. But um no, I mean, who's who's going to think about the children? It's important exactly.
We were just talking about the op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal today by a couple of think tank experts about how Biden's got a tough decision to make, like in the coming weeks maybe about Iran. Do you rank that we're screwed on Iran? Can I say that? Yeah? Good? Um? I mean this is the one policy, foreign policy that Trump actually destroyed. Um. I mean, there a lot of things Trump did to overturn stuff that Obama did, and then we went back, so Paris Climate Accord, he pulls out,
we go back in nobody cares. Um. You know, he says We're gonna leave the World Health Organization, the Middle pandemic Biden recommits. Nobody cares. He leaves the Iranian nuclear deal, which Rex Tillerson, you know that the Secretary of State for a hot second actually said that the Iranians were complying with Everyone supports us staying in the deal. He leaves. Biden wants to get back in. We can't get back in because the Iranians said, nope, we're we're fully We're
full speed ahead with our nuclear program. There are now four weeks away from nuclear breakout capability, four weeks allied, four weeks, four weeks in terms of highly enriched geranium stockpiling, four weeks away from having the capacity to developing were weapon. Do we strike them in a major military way the way the Wall Street Journal op ed piece suggests, I mean, certainly the Israelis will up their sabotage game, and the likelihood that this becomes a military confrontation is going up.
This is this is a crisis that is now directly on Biden's lab because the US unilaterally decided to rip up the deal. We will have a link to the Eurasia Groups two risk Report Top Risks two if you want to look at the rest of it, And as always, we can talk to you all day, but you have a limited time. We thank you so much for the inc We look forward to the next dance to talk. Happy New Year, gentlemen, be good you two thanks. Four weeks his number for when Iran has breakout? Are you
pooping me? So? If there's gonna be a military strike, it's coming soon. Yeah. Hey, we know a lot of Trump fans can't stand it. He he calls, calls him as he sees him. He thinks Trump made some big mistakes and he doesn't care who who's mad. We think he's an interesting guy, so we talked to him. Yeah. I think the Iranian thing would have turned out the same way either way, but it's slight change in timetable maybe honestly strong and yet