Maple Syrup and Soft Power

Uh, we talk about the big beautiful budget Bill, what that means. Some interesting disagreement between me and Marco on that. Um, I basically try to get myself canceled by wading into issues related to Israel Palestine antisemitism. And then we close with some thoughts about South Africa. Um, which is in the news for all sorts of strange reasons. So hope you enjoy the episode. Uh, we've appreciated your feedback so much. You can keep writing to me at jacob@jacobshapiro.com with more feedback.

I forward it all to Marco and I promise here. Um, in the next week or two, we will get a podcast specific email so that you can make sure you send things to both of us. Uh, really shouldn't take that long, but it's been a crazy, crazy couple of weeks. So, um, we're so grateful to have you all along for the ride. Thank you for listening. Thank you for leaving a rating. Thank you for leaving a comment and especially thank you for sharing with anybody you think would be interested in this podcast.

Uh, we'll see you at, take us away, Marco.

But really, really the way I did it is, I call it the EMU five. So the five largest economies in the European Marre Union, which is Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. I just took them all. Uh, with the expectation that over the next 30 years, which is really our time horizon for this, you know, 10 to 30 years, uh, they would integrate further. Jacob then went, uh, with Turkey on, uh, with the fourth pick, which was, I guess the first surprise.

I countered with another pretty, you know, pretty sort of down the middle pick of India with fifth Jacob. I think you surprised again, sixth Russia. That's what I do. That's what you do. Yeah. You're looking for the, for the projects. Um, and Russia will be like a reclamation project. It's like a 43-year-old basketball player that's like played in Euro league and you're gonna bring them back into, uh, into, uh, the NBA.

I then, uh, went through my first, uh, surprise picked South Korea, uh, which of course, uh, flies in the face of everything we know about demographics. I then proceeded to, uh, shit on demographics as a tool of analysis, which I'm sure irked a lot of people. I. Jacob then went, uh, with a really nice solid, you know, eight Brazil. Uh, I countered with my insane pick of Canada, which clearly is a home bias. I literally have a British Columbia poster right there.

It was a, a little, uh, interesting, uh, deviation from Marco's nihilist Dlo indifference by being a Canadian nationalist.

Then a surprise pick went with a city state Singapore, although I think, uh, solid one, I ConEd with Saudi Arabia. Then slipping all the way to 14 is, you know, Japan and then Icon with Ukraine. Uh, and now we are at 16 pick. And it's your turn, Jacob?

Um, all right, so we're gonna pick up where we left off and then maybe do some, some analysis of, of things, right? Is that, is that the plan? Yeah. Yes.

But when I sit down and think about, well, can Mexico make anyone do what Mexico wants them to do? Eh, like, that's pretty tough 'cause they're so dependent on the United States. Um, so I, I think actually, um, I, I struggled with this 'cause we're in that sort of. Weird nebulous space of what happens next. Uh, but I'm, and I, I think this could be a bust. This is a high, high risk, high volatility pick.

I think I'm gonna take South Africa off the board here too, and I know we'll get to South Africa a little bit later. I like their geography. I like their resources. I like their potential. I like them as a potential regional leader in Sub-Saharan Africa. And there's really not an African country on our list quite yet. And this is where population growth is gonna be happening. I think the new scramble, like geopolitical scramble will happen in Africa.

And if there is going to be a regional leader who's going to like, you know, uh, take advantage of that, it's probably going to be south, uh, South Africa. Now, the problem is there probably won't be a regional leader and probably foreign powers will just use Africa like a check checkerboard and South Africa's internal socioeconomic cohesion. I don't know. It might take more than 30 years, if ever, for that to immers into a, a true nation.

But I'll, I'll take the potential and I'll take the risk and I'll take them off the board here at 16.

I, I think you did something more though, Jacob, your Iran pick was good because it's not about what Iran can do today to compel behavior. It's about what Iran is going to do over the next, let's say 10 to 30 years. So I think that you did more than just say, you know what I can do today. And, and I think that that was a really good analysis. I use the quantitative index that I've created before at BCA research. It's called the BCA Geopolitical Power Index. And then I deviated away from it.

Mm-hmm. Uh, so on this index us is number one, China's two, India is three, number four is Germany, number six is France, and then Italy is number nine. Spain is 13, Netherlands is 17. So as you can see, I, I actually stuck to that. So US is first. Um. Picked, EMU, third punished India a little bit. Mm-hmm. I picked it fifth, uh, but just a little bit. Uh, I just have some questions there about India. Uh, I then ignored, uh, a couple of countries.

I mean, you picked Russia, which is fifth on our, uh, on this index. Um, Japan is eight. It's slipped to 14. I did pick South Korea seventh, and by the way, it's number 10 on the BC geopolitical power index. Mm-hmm. So, you know, not that much of a crazy pick. You picked Brazil eighth. It's actually 11th on the index. Canada is 12th on the index. So I actually did not pick Canada that far up. Um, and then we got some, um, criticism, you know, and one of them was Mexico.

We also got criticism for Indonesia. And I do think that we are missing a South Asian, a southeast Asian power. Now you picked Singapore. Um, I'm, I'm actually going to pick Indonesia here. And, um, I struggle 'cause I have two other countries that I kind of want. But I do think that that criticism from outside was good. I have written a lot on Indonesia for work, uh, for my clients. I do like it. I do think it's a very interesting, uh, country And using your own definition.

Jacob, what's interesting is they've already compelled behavior from other states, including from China. Indonesia famously slapped tariffs on export of raw nickel. China could have retaliated and said, listen, we need this for our batteries. Um, so no, we're gonna slap tariffs on you. But instead what China did is it moved $20 billion worth of CapEx to Indonesia to build them a processing. Nickel processing industry from scratch.

So Indonesia's now, uh, one of the world leaders in processing nickel, and, uh, from what I understand, they're gonna slap tariffs on that too and compel China to move their battery production facilities to Indonesia. So it's a country that even China can't ignore and can't really punish. So I'm picking Indonesia number 17.

Uh, the 52nd state, if Canada's got the 51st state sort of locked down, but 30 years from now, if you've got US China decoupling and a big trade war and the United States is that much more dependent on Mexico demographics favorable. Um, I'll take it. I, I'm worried about the cartels. I'm worried about the future of Mexican democracy. Like there's lots of sort of landmines there.

And I'm also just worried about Mexico's overall state of dependence on the United States, but may maybe 30 years they'll have leverage over number one and that should at least like, get them some consideration in the top 20.

Famously, in the 1970s, the United Kingdom was begging the EU to let it in the EEC as it was called at the time. And famously, Europeans had to wait for Charlotte to gold to die to let the UK in. But the UK was on its knees begging, and then it just, you know, after basically a post. World Wari, two decades of absolute shocking moles. It reinvented itself and launched a pretty difficult conflict with Argentina, which for the United Kingdom in 1980s, in 1982 was, was a difficult one to do.

I mean, it was very far the Fal ones. Mm-hmm. So, I, I mean, it's a nuclear power. It's a leader in many technologies and I think the fact that it slipped to 19 is, is kind of, uh, you know, shocking. But it's also, I think, uh, maybe we're a little bit of prisoners in the current moment when it's gotten a lot of flack for Brexit and for being largely irrelevant.

Like, are we getting the return of 17th century British politics and not even being able to dominate the island, let alone like project power in other places. But they also have nuclear weapons. Like you said. They also, I mean the pound sterling is not what at once was, but it's still like, has a bigger role. Yeah. The world. A lot of different other current, like, you know, it's, the UK is relevant and as long as the UK is not gonna fall apart at the seams, like it will probably.

Continue to be relevant and I honestly think I've revised some of my pessimism on the UK in the last six months. I've been very bearish, the UK really since Brexit, and it's only in the last six months with the Trump administration pushing so hard against Europe that I've sort of changed my tune a little bit because it looks like the UK now can maybe, it can be this middle ground between Europe and the United States, or maybe the UK is gonna be an integral part of whatever European.

Confederation emergence, whether that's officially on the inside or some kind of nascent satellite agreement. Um, and then that takes away some of the risks of, you know, Scotland trying to break off or, you know, Northern Ireland, Ireland, well, if you're all in some kind of EU cohesive entity anyway, does it really matter? Like it, it's taken some things off the board, so we probably need to, to go back and, and think about that.

Um, for the last pick, I, I'm really, I, I feel like we're not, uh, I don't wanna insult these countries. We're not, uh, skimming the bottom of the basement, but I mean, there's a couple different directions we could go. We still have some nuclear powers on the table, like Pakistan, hundreds of millions of people, nuclear weapons. Uh, we've got Israel on the table, which today, if it was just a geopolitical power ranking of today, on my definition, would have to be much higher.

I'm extremely pessimistic about Israel's medium term future, and I know we're gonna get into that a little bit later, but they do have nukes and they more than anyone have been active in shaping the region around them. So it's probably not good to discount them. Um, and also sitting there staring at me. Uh, you know, far away from lots of different problems. Like, okay, they're not gonna project power anywhere besides the South Pacific, but the South Pacific isn't nothing.

Um, and maybe there's some important things there, and maybe that will become more important over time. So I, I think, I think gun to my head, I'm, I'm gonna take Australia for the last lot, but I don't feel overly, um, I, I feel like we're really the, the, the bottom of the barrel here in terms of the index. We're thinking about, oh, like, you know, regional power that can project power in this very small region, um, and has a lot of different, um, weaknesses.

Like Australia's biggest defense partnership, the United States biggest economic relationship with China probably can't defend its own sea lanes. Completely dependent on trade issues of climate change, blah, blah, blah. But I'll, I'll take Australia 20 to round us up.

Um, it looks at demographics in terms of the pop population, aged 15 to 64. It has, um, military expenditure imports and arms exports, um, GDP, primary energy consumption. So, um, it's, uh, it's a little bit more modified. So population is actually, uh, looking at dependency ratios, uh, not just young people. That's what it focuses on. Uh, economic relevance. Um, it's, it looks at basically, um, um, imports. So the greater, the greater the import share, uh, the greater the bargaining power.

So to your point, ability to compel behavior by being a consumer market that obviously benefits the US massively. Then arms exports. We don't look at it from a perspective of who has a large army, because that's irrelevant. It's more, uh, high tech. Also, one of the, uh, indicators is r and d spending, uh, which mm-hmm definitely is the reason that Israel is one spot higher than Australia on my quantitative measure. So it's 19th.

Um, so just, uh, uh, to your point, I do think that keeping Israel off is a mistake. Um, having Argentina as high as it is, I think that's probably the one.

So I, I guess we should just go into analysis. I mean, what I would say from this Israel not being on the top 20, I think is a mistake, but it's also a call on the future, which I agree with you on other countries that we didn't, uh, put here that are on the quantitative, uh, index Poland. Um, although mm-hmm I just basically assume that Ukraine will. Effectively, um, you know, actually overtake Poland on the index. Ukraine, by the way, is 23rd on my index of quantitative measures. 23rd. 23rd.

So not much lower than Poland. And I do think that it's gonna benefit massively from both influx of capital and technology. Um,

Netherlands is 17th. Poland is, 18th is missing. Israel's missing 19th. Australia. 20th. Iran is 21st. So Pakistan is 22nd. Ukraine is 23rd. Belgium 24th. Thailand, 25th. I do feel like Thailand or Malaysia probably could have made our list of top 20. I guess You chose Israel with Singapore? I chose with Indonesia. What do you think? Are we making a mistake?

When you look at trade as a percentage of, of GDP, um, that's not true for Indonesia. Indonesia is still very early on. They have been, they, you go back and read World Bank reports or IMF reports from the 2010s. Indonesia is the redheaded stepchild because they're resisting the neoliberal world order. They're doing all these things. The World Bank and IMF can't possibly entertain a sound policy.

Like I'm sure the economist was writing articles at the time, lambasting them, uh, but they were preparing for this world. Like this is the world that now you look at Indonesia and they're like, ah, they were sort of forward thinking. So when you put together all those things, I think Indonesia is the big in terms of population. In terms of like, size of economy and resources is the big play.

And Singapore is, uh, in some ways is an interesting one on the list because it's about, can a very, very small city state exert power in a meaningful way? And I think Singapore can use AI and automation and relations with China and financial capital and all these other different things, a stride, the right of Malacca to have this kind of power over what is gonna be a completely contested trade zones.

But, you know, if, if Singapore gets into a shooting war with Thailand, uh, you know, I mean that's not gonna happen, but like, it's gonna be really hard for Singapore to defend itself. So it's a much different sort of indicator of power, I think.

Um, the fact that it has been eroding it, I do think has been a mistake. Could have maybe ended up on our top 20, had it kind of had, uh, something unique on the foreign policy front. Bangladesh is 28th, the country that I really wanted to put on the top 20, but it's really difficult to do. So, uh, I'm just a huge suite of file. So, um, Sweden actually comes in the 29th.

Malaysia's very interesting, particularly if semiconductor, um, knowhow starts migrating from Taiwan and China to a neutral country. I think Malaysia. Should make our honorable mentions. Um, lemme see, Philippines is at 30 on my quantitative index. Egypt is 31. Um, nah, nah, you know. Yeah. There's no way. No way. No way.

Uzbekistan, um, double landlocked country, but it's literally the country that makes all the stands connect to each other. And in times where trade has been threatened, like there was a reason Uzbekistan was at the middle of the Silk Road. Yep. So if you did have meaningful conflict in the maritime space or meaningful volatility to where goods couldn't move there, that's sort of what China's belt and Road initiative is all about in case, you know, yeah.

Sea lanes break down, can you move things over land if that happens? Uzbekistan I think is actually placed really well to be a sort of regional leader in Central Asia to use that, but I think that's a very sort of speculative play.

Uh, and that is the operating system that the United States of America operates on, that it, uh, downloaded from the United Kingdom. Um, the seas are the highways of the world, and if you control them, you can pretty much show up in front of anybody's capital city and threatened them.

You can also trade, you can control trade routes, but there is an alternative operating system, which none of us have really taken seriously since probably Hitler, and it's the me kinder and the me kinder looks at the world from the perspective of the world island, which is what e erasure is. So from Ireland to Ka chop cut, there's this world island.

And if you control the world island, you don't have to spend a single cent on a single ship, like Americans can run around with their, like fancy schmancy ships, but you don't care. You've got all the technology, all the consumer markets, and all the natural resources you would ever really need. There's nothing that you, Eurasia doesn't have.

And, uh, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, if you suddenly just shift your thinking towards that kind of a kinder operating system, I think Uzbekistan is not a crazy pick.

But let's say I'm wrong about that. And let's say that some of these African nations are able to congeal into nations and sort of project power. Um, two on my list, one would be Ethiopia. Um. On the horn, really young, uh, motivated population. Uh, you mentioned Egypt, like the Nile begins in Ethiopia and there's already been tension between Ethiopia and Egypt. But so I say that because Ethiopia is damning the Nile, it could literally control everything down river from the Nile.

And if you have control of the Nile, you like, generally speaking, civilizationally, you've been a pretty powerful entity. And you know, they can project to the horn. Now they're technically landlocked. They're having problems with Eritrea and some of these others. Also, they just fought a civil war in which hundreds of thousands have died. Like there's so many problems with them, but they're one that I think deserves. Honorable mention, or at least put them on the watch list.

The other one is, is less a country, although I have a country that might benefit from this. But, you know, going back a hundred years, people have recognized the potential of what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mm-hmm. Just from the perspective of population, resources, water, where it is in Africa, all these other things. Now, of course, um, the DRC, what is today, the DRC, like, it's the subject of heart of darkness.

It is the subject of all of these d it's, you know, kingly, upholds, ghost, all these different terrible things have happened there. And that contin, uh, didn't even mention the, the Rwanda genocide and the second African war in the ni uh, world War in the 1990s, like one of the most deadly conflicts in the history of human beings. Um, like all of that is sort of in there and it's happening again today. Like there is restiveness and fighting.

Rebels running all over the place, Rwanda, arming rebels, and maybe even Rwanda military presence on the ground in the eastern parts of the DRC. So the, the country that's on my watch list is actually not the DRC because I'm, I'm, I doubt that the DRC is gonna find that national footing. Uh, but I think Rwanda deserves an honorable mention just in the way that it's changed in the last 30 years. It's military and, you know, security capacity.

Some of its investment in like, whether it's science, like they have some interesting things going from them and they have shown the ability to affect things in countries around them. Um, that's a great point in a way that Israel has. So they're on my list too, on honorable Mitch.

And that one is much more like a Cold War era index. It looks at, um, uh, total population, urban population, iron in steel production, energy consumption, military personnel, and military expenditure. And so it's very much, I think, old school. I modified that with my own, which emphasizes things like military exports. Why?

Because that's a way to show that you have technological capability, that you have actual, you know, ability to sell something that's sophisticated, not just buy it 'cause you're big. But the reason I mentioned this is that there, there are some African countries in this one that doesn't penalize you for just, uh, not being technologically capable. So Nigeria is actually 21st, the Congo's 35th, you know, to your point, Sudan is 38th. South Africa's 30th Rwanda's on neither one.

Um, but I think that that's a really nuanced pick. So I think I like that one. Ethiopia is also not on either one, which is interesting. Uzbekistan, is it? But I I get your Uzbekistan point. Um, if I wanted to add one, I think it would be the United Arab Emirates. And the reason I say that is because you, you mentioned Singapore as a potential place where AI could really play a role, but I think UAE is probably the one country that is potentially going to have the biggest role in AI development.

And you saw President Trump's trip to the Middle East. He was followed by a lot of people from the AI community and they selled a lot of deals, including with the UAE company, um, which is a, uh, front runner in some of this. Uh, this is the G 42 artificial intelligence company headquartered in Abu Dhabi. So why. Because UAE has this very interesting mix of small population, large capital pool, and an expat population that no one's going to cry about if they all get fired due to AI developments.

So when you think about very powerful lobbies in America, like American Medical Association is extremely difficult. You try replacing doctors with ai, good luck with that. It's not gonna work. You know, and it's not, not because you and I, like Jacob and Marco have a problem with AI doctors. It's because doctors have a problem with AI doctors, same with pilots or truck drivers.

Um, there are a lot of, you know, very vested interests, political interests that are going to prevent AI from being deployed fully. But a place like the UAE, were pretty much accountants, doctors, pediatricians, you know, like you name it, are pretty much all expats, non-citizens. They can all be fired tomorrow if a GI was to be developed.

So I actually think that of all the countries on the planet, UAE will be the first to deploy full AI systems in government and in education, in medicine and so on. So that's my, uh, honorable mention. So we have a good group, Nordic Union. No, and

If the Vatican ever wanted to like get like more muscular again, like that would actually be a really sleeper pick. Like the return of the Catholic, uh, the

And then I wonder if what's missing from our list is some of these city states, like the, the, this is, this is not a well thought out analysis yet, which good? You're coming here for entertainment, not for well thought out analysis. Uh, but like, when I think about the bearishness of the UK, for example, uh, that bearishness with the UK was always coupled with, but London will be extremely powerful.

So if the UK did fall apart, would London sort of become a city state or like would like around England or something like that? Like, could you have the rise of some of these different, uh, mega cities turn into like city states of their own right. And might they affect the map of the world in different ways in the future? I don't know. I it's, it's a, it's a very speculative concept that, as you can tell, I haven't developed fully yet, but it's in the back of my head.

Just follow the rules and you know, you'll be fine in a bipolar world, you can be a tiny country, just pick the right side. Mm-hmm. But in a multipolar world, like scale starts to matter. And so I do think that one of the failures maybe of our ranking, we do think of scale. Like, I like Canada 'cause it's huge and it can import another 40 million people. Like done. And suddenly it's a global power. But like, okay.

But we did not, and you know, we picked Indonesia but we didn't pick like Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand corridor, something like, you know, we didn't get like innovative on that point. And I think that. That might be something to think about. Maybe there will be more regionalization now.

So we may be missing, like with the combo of technology and, and some of these other things like the rise of companies or non-state actors that affect the world in, in different ways. 'cause there's none of that on our list right now.

I wanna do one final thing before, uh, I hand over, uh, the MCTU. I want you to take a look at this list and I want you to make one change. Now that we've had some time to digest, take some criticism in. You can either switch two of your picks, you know, you can basically trade them. Like, let's say you can say Turkey at four is too high, high and South Africa's too low. So you like, flip them.

Or you can take one of your picks off the board and put someone else on like, you made a compelling case for Israel or Uzbekistan or Nordic unit. So either one of those.

I want to, I want to hate on Canada right now 'cause I don't think it belongs like, because certainly not in the top 10, and I'm not even sure it belongs on this list to be quite frank. Um, but I, I, when I look at the list, I think my biggest mistake, um, is that Japan is likely too low. Um, and it should probably be slotted like Japan should probably have been, I. I don't know if it's before Russia or after Russia, but it's definitely in the top 10. It doesn't belong there.

Sort of languishing at the bottom. And the UK too, like was, was a little bit of a blind spot for me. I like some of those honorable mentions, but they're too speculative. Like I like them on the bubble and I see that they have potential to jump up, but you know, like an Ethiopia pick or Rwanda pick, um, Nordic Union pick. Like, I like them but there's not enough reality there for, for me to do it. But if I had to pick one, like I would boost Japan, probably five or six slots.

Oh, interesting. Okay. So Japan and then Brazil. Alright.

I, I picked Argentina way too high. I I thought you were gonna take it.

And it's below Iran. So basically Iran and Argentina, we kind of took them down a couple of notches because they are speculative and we're expecting a lot of things to go right in order for them. So I think it's fine that they're a little bit, you know, down.

Brazil, like my bullish, the level at which I took Brazil indicates to you that I'm actually very negative Argentina, not necessarily from a market or investment perspective. I'm actually very optimistic about Argentina from that perspective. But from a power projection perspective, I think South America is Brazil's, and I think it's either gonna be Brazil as a regional power or some kind of regional union. Or China or somebody else is gonna dominate it.

Like I don't see that Argentina is advanced enough at this state with where we are with multipolar competition to be a South American regional power. Now, maybe they can make up a lot of ground. Um, and, you know, certainly Melay has done some interesting things from a reform perspective. But, uh, I don't know. I need somebody who's not, uh, channeling his strategies from his dead dog before I, I start getting really excited about a country's capacity to do things geopolitically in the world.

So I'm, I'm ready to defend Canada. If you wanna, if you wanna take on the challenge, give it, give it to me. Yeah. And,

Mexico like does have Central America. Where it could project power. If Mexico could ever like, get control of cartels and be responsible for regional security and project power down all the way through Panama, uh, and sort of be a leader of the Latin American world in North America, like that there's, there are roots for them to develop their own power. They've just never done that. Everything has been northward facing for obvious reasons.

So over a 30 year time horizon, is that something they could do? Like Yes, and that's possible. And same with Canada.

Like I guess if, if you're making the positive Canada argument, you can talk about, uh, the polar ice cap melting and Canada being the king of the Arctic and you know, the Arctic is the new Mediterranean and Canada is one of the powers that is gonna benefit most from it. Uh, but I don't know. I'm just not buying it. It seems to me that I, you know, I think that, uh, please separate. Uh, our president's, uh, demeaning attitude towards Canada, from what I'm about to say.

'cause I don't think Canada should become the 51st state, but Canada is woefully dependent on the United States. Nobody gives a shit what Canada says. Think about all the things that have happened to them in the last couple of years. China kidnapped their people didn't give like, whatever, like nobody actually helped them or did anything. They picked a fight with Saudi Arabia over things like women's rights. Saudi Arabia was like, cool, we're not gonna trade with you anymore.

And like, just like, go away until you apologize. And eventually they had to apologize. You know, United States wants to pick a trade war with, with them. They're, they try to fight for it. United States doesn't care. Literally the leader of the United States is like, great. So my best offer is that you just become part of our country. How, how's that for you?

And the best we can do is like, you know, globalist Mark Carney coming in and saying like, no, I'm really gonna do, like, be tough with them. Um, like, okay, yes, they can immigrate a lot of, they can welcome a lot of immigrants. They also have lots of fault lines within the society itself. Like, uh, we've got Quebec, we've got, you know, murmurings in the west that, you know, Alberta will break off some of these other things.

Like, it, it just, like, it, it doesn't look to me like a coherent power that's gonna project power in any meaningful way. They're gonna be tied to the United States, um, for the long run. And I don't see a, a world in which, you know, China, like, imagine this is 20 years from now, is China gonna be afraid of kidnapping some Canadian diplomats because of what Canada's gonna do to them? Like, no, like Canada, like China's still gonna kidnap their diplomats.

If I'm China and I'm drafting which countries I want as allies, like if we just put all politics aside and I just want to take pure pieces off the board to build some kind of Chinese LED alliance that allows me to have a Chinese LED world order, Canada would be very close to the top of that list. Right? 'cause they are a really crucial ally. And for the United States too, they have to be really at the top of that list. So I think as like as value is a partner, Canada's really high.

But if we're just talking about like Canada's ability to shape the world around it and project power, like I don't think it has any juice there whatsoever. Like I would put it, like I would trade Iran, I would trade Singapore, I would trade Saudi Arabia, and you know, I'm not a Saudi Arabia fan. Uh, I would probably trade, uh. The uk, Indonesia for sure, probably the uk. Uh, I would put ahead of Canada too if it's just like who I would trade on the list, like Absolutely.

Where you're just like, you turn a key and like the Burger King in the back starts like operating, you know, the like Dairy Queen, like ice cream machine starts buzzing. That's Canada for the west, it's this bunker. And the reason I say that is that if anything bad happens to the United States of America, like Canada has everything US has just like ready to be scaled up. So if there is any sort of a domestic disturbance in the us, Canada becomes the US overnight.

Precisely because it is the exact same in many ways. It's just ready, like if, if the US had some sort of a calamity, there are 50 million American refugees in Canada tomorrow, and that's just, that's now a hundred million dollar, a hundred million dollars, a hundred million people country. So that's the first thing I would say. Um, it has institutions, governance.

Those soft things that make Canada interesting to me are, are that it has basically Western IP and Western operating system is just smaller, is the size of Spain in terms of population.

Canada will will definitely benefit from it because the growing seasons will, um, expand and you'll have multiple growing seasons. This is the Saskatchewan and Manitoba play. It's not actually that much about Ontario or British Columbia. It's really about those prairies that suddenly become extremely good. It has water, endless water, uh, as water as far as di can see. It has massive, um, hydroelectric potential.

It hasn't even tapped Quebec as a country is an exporter of energy, purely because of what, uh, it's done on the hydro side of things. It just invented hydropower, just built some dams on these lakes that nobody even really knows how to get to. There's no roads up there. Um, so the natural resources one is the big one. And then finally technology.

I think that, uh, you're, you're underestimating just how. Important Canada has been to Western technological dominance. Um, research in mode, in motion obviously doesn't exist anymore. It's been overtaken by other things, but I think that rim is an important example of what Canada has done in the past. It's innovated massively. The reason we have cell phones that work today are rim patents that, um, are still being used in iPhones and in, uh, modern mobile telephones.

The other issue is nuclear energy as well. It's another example of how Canada has uh, uh, punched above its weight. Quantum and fusion. Two things that Canada does really well and the reason for that is that it's universities are top class. Nobody really talks about 'em 'cause they're not fancy and they don't have sports, but they're very, very good. And again, it's kind of a hedge if, if you don't want to live in the US and you know, you posted on Twitter something interesting.

How many PhDs in the US. Their performance, I think based on where they're coming from. Mm-hmm.

It is easier to build the infrastructure and have an aggressive immigration than to fix governance in institutions that haven't been modernized for like, you know, 50, 60, 70 years. So, um, that's, that's what, that's kind of why I have Canada. Maybe it is too high at number nine. I think maybe it should get that Iran, Argentina. Like, uh, yeah,

Also, Canada, not to get too, God, I can't believe I'm gonna be the one who talks about rivers on the podcast, but like, there's no Mississippi River Network in Canada. You don't that shit anymore. Come on. It's not the, you definitely do. You de I'm sitting here at, at the bottom of the Mississippi. It still matters, uh, for, in a big way. What

And I think, actually, I think you're right that Canada geographically is bound to do well as a result of global warming. But Canada's institutions, some of the mechanisms around its agriculture are actually fairly antiquated. And I bet you some Canadian farmers wouldn't mind if some things weren't, uh, I'm thinking specifically about milk, but like I don't think that the system is actually that great.

In some ways it's been so easy for them that they haven't had to invest in some of these things. So I would take the flip side and say, yes, they have natural advantages, but like it's, and um, it's not like they're the only game in town. And my list has producers like Russia, Brazil, um. Australia. Like there are some ag producers on here, so I don't discount it. I just don't think that it makes Canada, um, particularly unique. I accept your point about institutions.

The biggest argument for Canada, to your point, is they have institutions. They could be a beacon for immigrants. They could get some of the best and brightest from the rest of the world to come to Canada instead of the United States. The problem with that is just that I think it's gonna require a lot of Canadian investment in becoming a leader in some of these things, and I don't see the political coherence or will to do that quite yet in Canada Now. 30 years is a long time.

Maybe it pops up and they realize the United States is in decline in that sense, or is abdicating this position and they're perfectly suited to sort of soak up that. So I, I take your point there, but I would push back on the first two.

I think it's because of great schools, because of quality of life. Um, and uh, the other issue that I would point out is energy. You didn't mention anything on energy.

True and Dish, you know, the way that NDP and the Green Party performed in the election was a clear rebuke by the, uh, Canadian population against this kind of like very extreme environmentalism. Um, where it, it's, it's kind of silly like Canada's gonna produce these hydrocarbons. Why limit their export if they're gonna be produced anyways? Why are they all going to the us? And so that energy infrastructure, I think is gonna be interesting.

And it could make Canada very, to your point, that it doesn't really have a lot of, uh, pool in the world. It doesn't because all of its, uh, trade is with the us.

I created Israel's 19th, the one from the Cold War, which obviously emphasizes just raw things like size of military, size of population. Mm-hmm. Israel is 40th still pretty good for a country of, you know, 10 million people. Still pretty impressive that it makes it nation Yeah, it makes it to that list. Uh. Top 40, uh, but it is 19th on the geopolitical power index I created, um, using some of this quantitative stuff. Um, so yeah. Yeah, I

So in some ways, I think we're looking for the next Israel, I'm not sure that Israel's gonna go back and reinvent itself the way that it did in 1949. Now it does have nuclear weapons and it does have institutions and it does have an existential need to exist and all these other different things. So like I, I see it. Um, but you know, in some sense their need to dictate action in their regional sphere, um, is. A sign of weakness and like they're losing.

Like I think the relationship with the US is fraying and who is gonna be like the security guarantor? 'cause Israel has always needed some Big Mac daddy in the background who's gonna help them. Um, they've never done this alone. And it's, it sure seems like they're starting to embark on a world where they're having to do it alone. And that should be very frightening for Israeli strategic decision makers.

But to your point, they've done it in the past and they do, like, they're, they're not starting from zero like they were before. So,

My point is that technology always, always, always, always wins. You know? Always wins it. Like just, it just does. That's why I picked South Korea as high as I did. 'cause I'm betting that their unique mix of necessities, insecurity, all this stuff, you know your point about North Korea being subsumed at some point, which is good too. I didn't even think about that. But to me, South Korea is number seven because of technology. Yeah. India I think can also do the same.

And then obviously the standard US China, EMU five. My concern is when I look at our list, some of the countries that I picked that don't have, oh by the way, Canada too, like my point is Canada has endogenous technology, great universities, and has done it in the past. It's proven in the past that it can actually innovate in like globally relevant ways. My concern is when I look at this list, the countries who haven't really been able to do that. Uh, so you are a pick of Mexico?

My pick of Argentina. South Africa actually has innovated technologically, so it's not like. That's a silly Ukraine. I picked Ukraine in the top 20 because they've proven in this conflict that they can innovate, uh, massively. Some of the, yeah,

But what we, I think, I think Israel and UAE are honorable mentions and Nordic Union Sweden has, I. Sweden punches way above any country on the planet when it comes to technological innovation. Like you're talking about a country of 10 million people as fighter jets that people buy. Come on. This is like serious, serious, serious capability. So anyways, I think that probably we should have thought about that a little bit more. I, I do worry about my Indonesia picket 11.

You know, I worry about Turkey at four, although they have shown the ability to innovate and they have absolutely. Turkey at

But anyways, the technology factor is what worries me because your example of 19, us sitting, sitting and doing this in 1946, if we were sitting and doing this in 1946, like who would've picked that? Israel would be one of the greatest technological, uh, wellsprings of innovation. Um, and I think that that's what has kept Israel as high as it has been. So I do think that that maybe is something we are understating by focusing still. It's, it's so funny.

We're trying to resist the pool of demographics and rivers and humans and wheat. Yet, I mean, Indonesia picket 11, you know, like Argentina, Mexico, a lot of these picks are based on some of those, maybe a little bit over, um, stated geopolitical qualities.

It would probably look like us Soviet Union and then what the United Nations would be third, like Japan wouldn't be on there like, uh, German, like all these different countries that like really defined the next three decades would probably not be on the list. 'cause the world just came out from a war and everybody was bombed. Wait,

You know, they're gonna, like, in industrialize, I think Miles's gonna shift from being a guerilla soldier to being a modernizer err wrong. You know? And that's what it would've been so exciting to actually do.

It's like, well wait, if I use things like demographics, which are slow moving rivers, geography, natural defenses, natural resources, I should produce a relatively correct list. And that's my point.

In 1946, you would've picked, not you, but like one would've picked fairly, like consistently the same countries, and yet it is the Netherlands and yet it is Israel, and yet it is some random South Korea that's like barely, I mean, that was like pushed to the very East China Sea, you know what I mean? Like it, it is these countries that end up outperforming expectations because true innovation and true, true power and, and true like. Abilities come out of necessity, not the plenty.

So everything I say like if Iain to speak about them, it's actually a sign of respect. If I don't respect you, I probably won't use your name at all. Like I have a healthy level of respect even when I disagree with them. But I think we were taught actually that there are no immutable principles that rivers can change and that technology can be created that makes what was a previously really strong like longstanding thing change overnight.

Like the rise of precision guided munitions and the semiconductor in industry. And everything that happened with it completely revolutionized geopolitics basically overnight. And that happens in the late 1950s. And I think we were actually taught to be highly attuned to that, that the hardest part of geopolitical analysis is yes, you're looking for the thing. That feels immutable today, and which defines the center of gravity today.

But you also have to be flexible enough in your mind to throw it all out of the window tomorrow because you read some article in the, you know, Uzbekistani post that suggests that it's all going to change in the next 10 years. And being able to throw out your old mental model and embrace a new one and say, okay, this is the new immutable principle for the next 30 years. Like, that was the training that I got.

And I feel like, you know, geopolitical analysts who have started resting on their laurels, that's when they start going back to, and the river is here and the demographic pyramid says this, and I'm just gonna, you know, extrapolate from this going into the future.

Whereas like the really hard thing, like I said, is for us to be here next week, let's say some discovery gets made for fusion, and we look at each other and we're like, all right, everything we've said for the last 10 years to our clients, it was all fucking wrong. Like, we gotta change everything. Like we have to start from scratch and you have to do that exercise like constantly. Um, in this business, not.

You know, they just, and they, and they, they might matter on a 30 or 50 year time horizon, but they don't matter on a five or 10 year time horizon. Countries do revolt against their geographic prisons, against their demographic prisons, and they revolt against them through innovation. Through productivity and through surprising, you know, and that's, again, going back to 1946. I think we pick a lot of these countries in 1946 and we end up being wrong.

You know, we, we ignore Europe, we ignore the Netherlands, we ignore Israel, we ignore South Korea. Um, and we're shocked by what, what comes after.

Well, so we'll do a future episode on geopolitical imperatives, and I'm gonna take the reins here and use that as the perfect segue, because speaking of revolting against constraints, um, let's start sort of our 30 minutes around the world with this narrowly passed sweeping tax cut bill from President Trump and the Republicans that is on its way to the Senate, uh, different, you know, independent sources saying it's gonna add 4 trillion roughly to the US deficit over the next decade or so.

Um. Well, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pretend to be humble. I said two things at the beginning of the Trump administration that he wasn't gonna be able to double down on tariffs, and that there was no way in hell that this administration was going to be fiscally conservative. Uh, and we've seen Elon Musk has exited stage left. Uh, he's very chagrined by his support. And the Republicans and the Trump LED White House are going to blow out the deficit.

I think that's the news, um, of the week there. I'll let you cook from there, but I think it, I, I say it's a revolt against constraints because I wonder how you think about this. Like the, the extent of US debt in and of itself has become a constraint. I think you can see that in the way the dollar's behaving and the way that US Treasury yields are going and the way that other countries are dealing.

With the United States, with the Moody's downgrade, like the debt itself has become so big that it is a constraint. And rather than President Trump sticking to the guns that got him sort of elected with your Elon Musk and your, you know, your fiscal hawks and things like that in the background, he's going, screw it. Let's do another 4 trillion. Let's do more than we did with the pandemic and with the, the previous tax cuts combined. I'll let you cook from there.

Now, the reason that I don't think President Trump campaigned on fiscal conservatism at all. He campaigned on prophecy. He, his promises and, you know, various think tanks, like actually tried to put math behind his sort of, you know, campaign promises that he would think of in the moment. His campaign promises, if they were actually affected, would've added 10 to $15 trillion. Mm-hmm. To the deficit. So let me just put that very clearly. Let, let's take the low end of that.

'cause let's say 15 trillion was always going to be impossible. His campaign promises would've added 10. This bill adds 2.3 over 10 years. So it's a fifth of what he promised. And the reason for that is that the sequencing here, I think Jacob, is that it was the bond market riot in November and December, which many people didn't even experience, but people who trade fixed income, they definitely know it happened. The Fed cut interest rates a hundred base points.

The fed controls the short end of the curve. Usually when the Fed cuts interest rates, the long end comes down too. So you, you are borrowing rates of for your mortgage or for your credit card. They get adjusted lower when the fed cuts rates. That didn't happen in November and December of 2024 for the first time in 50 years of US history. In other words, the long end. Acted the way Brazil's long end would act after the election of a populist president.

And it was that selloff in the bond market in November and December that forced the house to become a lot more conservative, or not forced, but gave them the sort of backing. They got emboldened, oh, look at what the bond market is seeing. And it forced President Trump to do two things. He didn't wanna do Doge, he didn't wanna do that, but he did it because of that bond market move in October, November and December as the bond market was rioting due to his election.

And finally he selected Scott Beson for the Treasury Secretary. There were rumors that Howard Lutnick had basically outmaneuvered him and his call Bestin shows up last minute and actually calms down the bond market just by being there. He the White House, just as a human being. So the sequence is this, president Trump becomes a viable candidate in September. People realize he's gonna probably cook Harris. Bond market starts agitating higher and higher.

It gets to 4.8% of the 10 year yield, and it was that move from 3.6 to 4.8. That freaks out everyone.

But I need to remind you that extension of 2017, tax cut alone, just that extension is $5 trillion. 4.8. So the fact that we're only adding 2.3 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years is to me a shocking outcome. Unexpected outcome because it means that that $5 trillion bill to just keep our tax rates the same. Let me just be clear. This isn't about cutting taxes.

It's about keeping the current legislative tax base the way it is, that in of itself costs money just to keep the taxes the same, costs money because in 2017, they were not paid for it. Therefore, the reconciliation bill required it to expire seven years later. We are seven years later, eight years later, 2025.

The legislation expires at the end of this year, that 2017, so we're spending 5 trillion purely on keeping things the way they are, and yet somehow they find enough cuts so that the deficit only expands 2.3 trillion. Now, a couple of things on this. I'm the guy who coined the term human steeper. President Trump is. Mm-hmm. Means that there's a sell off. But that already happened, and I think a lot of people look at this bill and they're saying like, oh, here comes the bond market riots.

And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was the bond market riot in November and December that got us this bill. So I'm not sure there's gonna be another really significant sell off in bonds because look, at the end of the day, the bond market always knew the 2017 legislation would be extended. It'd always do the math of it, that it's $5 trillion. And it always knew that it would be highly unlikely to find enough cuts to offset all of it.

So the fact that the deficit increases by 2 trillion is not that much. Plus the tariff tariff level of 10% is probably gonna stay. Right. I think we all at this point agree, Jacob, that we're gonna have some sort of a flat tariff of about 10% that brings in probably a hundred to 200 billion. So if you actually add that to this bill, honestly, it's kind of offset.

So

I was gonna say, if I was gonna do tips, I, I mean you plead a favor. Uh, alright. You

And then we're gonna add a VAT tax on our consumers also called the 10% import tariff. Yeah, let's call that for what it is. It's a federal VAT tax. Effectively. I see.

So actually, I think President Trump is running on a Nikki Haley policy because they're going to cut Medicaid benefits, they're going to cut welfare, they're going to have cuts, and they're raising consumption taxes on Americans through that 10% import tariff. And that gets you to very little fiscal thrust, and there's gonna be very little stimulative effort out of this bill. It's basically non-existent, that 5 trillion, again, we're spending 5 trillion to keep our taxes the same.

We're gonna expand the deficit over the next 10 years. Jacob byte 5 trillion. And it will have no impact on consumption or investment in this country. You are not gonna change your behavior next year if your taxes the same. It's not like you actually thought that 2017 tax cuts would expire. Nobody did. If Kamala Harris won as the president. President Harris would've extended the 2017 tax cuts. Like obviously no one's gonna let taxes go back up.

That does, like, doesn't happen in America, you know?

And also I think it's worth saying like, this still has to get through the Senate. We could see significant changes in the Senate, you know. Is it 2 trillion? Could it go up to 5 trillion? What is the cost if you factor in increased interest rates over time? Like there's, you know, what does military spending look like? Uh, is the growth real or not? I think one of my biggest criticisms would be that we're not, the United States is not setting itself up for meaningful growth.

Like, there isn't meaningful investment in things like infrastructure or innovation that is part of the spending. So this notion that you're gonna grow your way out of some of these things, like, 'cause part of this, like they're projecting higher growth rates along with that, and I think some of that growth is kind of empty. Um, I, I think you're also right to say that, um, Trump did not campaign only on fiscal conservatism. He talked out of both sides of his mouth.

So when he was with people, yeah. You know, he wanted to talk to the fiscal conservatives and he wanted to talk to the, you know, the populace and he merged them together. Um, but I always said at his core, he, he never wanted anything to do with the fiscal conservatives, but.

In the nod to Doge and to Elon Musk, like he did all of this grandstanding cutting U-S-A-I-D, cutting innovation funds, things like that without much benefit to the budget, actually probably damaged the US in the long run with some of these intangibles that the United States has always been so good at. And now he's going back to his tried and true sort of populace. I'm gonna blow out the deficit thing. And no, I don't think that this shows any sense of, um, of measure.

You mentioned Medicaid, they're not gonna cut Medicaid. Let me get this quote from President Trump. Uh, that, uh, two Republicans anonymous, anonymously told, uh, Politico that he'd been meeting with, um, some conservative hardliners on the budget who were pushing for deeper cuts to Medicaid. And here is the quote from President Trump to them. Quote, don't fuck around with Medicaid. End quote. Like, he's not, he's not trying to cut.

I know, but we're like, we still have to go to the Senate, like, and who, who says he is gonna sign, like he's gonna be the one that was like arbit of getting Medicaid. I, I don't even know what's gonna get through the Senate. Like, I I understand that we're early here, but, uh, I don't know. I I'm, I'll take the other side.

Uh, it just cannot, you're not gonna be able to get it through the house if you get any more aggressive.

And the bond market is sitting in the sideline right now. And if you are right and I'm wrong on the politics, then the bond market gets involved. Mm-hmm. And then I'm right again because, you know, and we saw this in January again, the house started talking about cuts, not last year. Donald Trump and his, Cory and his supporters did not talk about any cuts on anything. At any point in the campaign, doge came in and said, oh, we can fire bureaucrats.

Oh, because there's so many of them and they get paid so much. No, that's not gonna do anything. So Doge never seriously contemplated, actually, like anyone who understands how America works, understands there, like, you cannot cut $2 trillion out of American spending without going to Congress.

To me, that was a really big moment when republicans in his own party after an extraordinary electoral victory by the president, said no to him. And then in January they started adding cuts. And I think that the Trump administration basically gave into the cuts at all any cuts because of the bond market action from November to January. And so, unless they want bond yields to go back up to 4.8, where they peaked, um, and if they wanted to go to five.

Then have a carnage in stock market, which they can't control at that point. It's not about tariff levels, it's not about negotiations with China. This is now bond market saying, we don't like your deficits, but you are right. Deficits will expand. And actually what I think Jacob just says to us is the following, the delta in adding to the deficit is collapsing. You know, we went from adding like mm-hmm. 2 trillion in one year to 2 trillion in one year to 2 trillion over 10 years.

That's a huge delta change towards conservatism. But it's not enough because to your point, wait a minute, it doesn't decrease the deficit over the next seven years. Exactly. And so what that means is that the difficult work will be left for either the last two years of Trump like presidency or the presidency in 2028. Whoever gets elected. If it's a OC, she's gonna no but, but she's gonna deal with the deficit one way or another, and she's got a solution to it.

You know, it's raising taxes or maybe it's Nikki Healy and she's gonna have a solution to it as well. It's gonna be a little bit different. It's gonna be cutting spending. So I think that the US is on an inexorable path towards fiscal conservatives. That's like, what's just gonna happen?

We, we did it really good. Um, okay, second thing, let's turn to, uh, we've talked about the Middle East quite a bit, so we're only gonna spend a little bit of time on this, but I do think it is worth talking about this a little bit, um, because you've had the Trump administration really change its messaging on Israel. Um, trying to get Israel tougher on stopping bombing Gaza into the middle of the middle Ages.

I mean, it's already done that it's, I guess now it's trying to return them, return them to the Bronze Age. I don't know. Um, so, you know, Israel has stepped up its attacks in Gaza. I think it sort of sees the writing on the wall and is doing as much as it can. You've also had reports, silly reports, because Israel can't attack Iran without US support, but reports that Israel is considering an attack on Iran because they're worried about some kind of nuclear deal.

And then the big news from yesterday that two Israeli diplomats were shot, um, outside an event at Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, dc Uh, the guy who they suspect did it as he was being hauled off into custody shouting free Palestine at, at the top of his lungs. Um. And I mean, I, we can cook on this in a bunch of different ways. I'm gonna risk getting canceled here and just point this out. And here's where I'll bathe myself in indifference.

And here's where I'm, uh, honestly, probably more cynical about this issue than probably anybody else you're gonna listen to. Because there were so many, um, social media posts, official statements about we condemn antisemitism, this is horrible, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, but these, first of all, this was an assassination of Israeli diplomats on US soil. So it wasn't, they weren't targeted because they were Jews. They were targeted because they were representing the Israeli government.

That doesn't make it okay, but there's this line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism that always gets blurred. Um, and I think it's just, first of all, worth pointing that out. So if you're condemning the assault on these two people, what you're actually condemning is somebody going after Zionism.

Not Jews and a lot of the people who are criticizing the antisemitism, it's o it's safe to criticize antisemitism, but it's not safe to, um, criticize anti-Zionism because Zionism, they're, that's the genocidal maniacs, the Zionists need to be destroyed, but of course, don't kill the Jews. It's like, Hey, you, you say this stuff long enough about one thing, they're gonna do the other thing. I don't know if that was very articulate, but that that's 0.1.

And the second thing I just want to say here is that no matter how morally reprehensible you think, what Israel's actions and Gaza or how morally reprehensible, reprehensible, you think Israel's actions and Gaza. Are, and I happen to think they are morally gross. I don't think you can argue any other way, like the extent to which we're here now, like it's morally reprehensible.

Even if you bathe yourself in a difference, like on an objective level, um, every time something like this happens, even the people who would support criticism of the Israeli government, um, on the insider, like, well, that could have been me. And so like the strategic logic for having a safe homeland for Jews, uh, makes a lot of sense. And we have to look the other way because if we don't, like, they're just, they're just gonna try and kill us all again.

Um, and so it, it excu, it excuses all manner of sins. I think I, I'm, I'm not saying that it does excuse the sins, I'm just saying that it, like, it creates this dissonance from the exact people you need. You need their minds to change. Like they're also getting attacked in this different vector and so they're gonna look the other way and continue doing what they're doing because they have post-traumatic stress disorder of their own.

So, I dunno, there's a lot in there that could get me canceled. But, uh, take it any direction you want.

You can't be like, oh, well I'm a two outta 10 antisemite. Well, that's two outta 10 too many. You know, like, so if only zero is acceptable, then if there's a zero to a 10 on Zionism, you, you have to accept some Zionism because Zionism, which is a very loaded term today, but really it was just in my very sort of bizarre nihilist interpretation of what Zionism is, is it's basically 19th century I. European style nation state movement. In other words, Jewish, it's Jewish

Let's make it into Italy, like it was Rome 2000 years ago. Italy is as much a Zionist entity for Italians. There were people in the boot that didn't speak Italian, for God's sakes, France. What France did. We today speak I de France French because it's completely destroyed different linguistic dialects, including some that were more like Catalan in the South.

So the Jews are sitting in Europe throughout the 19th century looking at what's going on around them while they're being persecuted every day for being Jews. Right? I mean, this isn't like a a, a new phenomenon, obviously. It's not a Holocaust phenomenon, it's a predates it massively. So if you're Jewish and you're sitting, you're looking at Germans creating Germany out of nothing, you look at Italians creating Italy out of nothing, and you look at the French, okay?

It's not fair to say the France didn't exist. It did, but it became much more dominated by El de France, French. I think Zionism comes from that history, and so it's simply doing what Europeans did in Europe, but for Jews somewhere, you know, anywhere it ended up being Palestine, of course, we're dealing with the consequences of that decision. But the point I think is that I understand your point, that's all I'm saying.

Like you cannot, no. And you cannot just say, well, I'm not, I'm a I, I I delore anti-Semitism, but you know, Zionism in the Jewish state are evil. And the point is, well, actually one solves for the other. You know? And I, and I get that. The question I have is, is there a pursuit of Zionism that actually is going to create stability over the next hundred years for. Israelis.

Jews, like everybody else in the world, should not commit war crimes. And if they do, they'll be punished like everybody else in the world. But as a people, they do have a right to a state as legally defined, blah, blah, blah. And the thing that I'm going after here is I, I'm raise my hand. I'm in print criticizing Zionism, like a self-critical like person who has like spent a lot of his time thinking about these things. Like, well, like I said, what Israel's doing, God were reprehensible.

But the thing that bothers me is the people who were saying, I hate antisemitism, but I know I have the receipts to say, okay, but you are also saying there should be no Jewish state, that it should be Palestine from the river to the sea. And that like, that, like you condemning antisemitism. Like, I'm not, like, that's what gets me. So no,

If you said that Italy should not exist, we should go back to, you know, uh, the papal states, as you and I actually kind of inferred earlier in this podcast, but like, you know, like Italy should be split up into Kingdom of Sicily and the Papal states and you know, like Venice should be its own city state. Like that would be, I think, antit Italian.

So I think it's interesting because, you know, what I think confuses a lot of people is that many people think that being Jewish is about a religion, you know, and obviously I'm, I'm walking on eggshells heels because I'm not Jewish, but I think that there is a, um, pretty deep historical ethnolinguistic component to a Jewish identity. In other words, you do not have to be observant Jew to be Jewish.

In particularly, in particularly because you know, when shit hits the fan in history, when they come to get you, they don't ask you if you can recite from the Torah. You know what I mean? You know what I mean?

There's always different factions who hate each other and won't listen to each other. And usually they start fighting each other, and then the Romans or the Persians or the Babylonians or the Ottomans come in and sweep them up because they can't have a unified front. Hmm. And the reason I'm so pessimistic about Israel over the next 30 years is that you, you're seeing that internally in Israeli politics right now where you've got the religious, um, demographics or increasing the secular Jews.

Are kind of dying out. There's an apathy on the, like the left hasn't been able to meaningfully challenge for, you know, um, the Israeli government in decades basically died with the end of the, the peace process before. There is such a large Arab population now that nobody wants to work with that it basically means you're gonna get center, right? Governments or the left is gonna have to work with the Arabs. And for as enlightened as the left is, it really won't work with the Arabs.

It doesn't want to. So it's just like this, uh, the, the way that Israeli demographics look going forward, especially if you're gonna add, if you're gonna conquer Gaza and you're gonna conquer the West Bank too, which is the path that Israel is on right now. Like, it just leads to the sense where Israeli society itself is not gonna be able to defend from the external threats that are coming. And that's always been the end of Jewish independence. Uh, see that's an interesting

Mm-hmm. If I, if I listen to you as an external, non-Jewish observer, an interpreter here, I would say that you're seeing, like, look, the risk here is that Israel in pursuit of security basically chews up too much territory and he can't digest it at some point. And so there is a point where maybe this is enough. Mm-hmm. Is that, I mean, and, and I, and I see what's going on in Gaza and like that piece of land, I mean, it has no real benefit at all to Israel.

I mean, you know, like, I mean it's, it's, it's truly, it has absolutely no geographical benefit. I mean it's,

The tens are, I see some tens out there who are saying anti-Semitism is deplorable. Okay.

Um, I dunno if we can get, uh, oo, to put this in the, to splice in the conversation that, uh, south African President Cy Phos had with Donald Trump and the incredible back and forth about, he's trying to get planes from everybody. Now, Marco, it's gutter's not good enough. He is asking the South Africans for a, for a plane. Uh, but this has been something that's sort of been in the background with the Trump administration since the very beginning.

And it's continuing, even without Elon doing the whispering in Trump's ear. Like, think about this executive order from, uh, February 7th, where the United States decided it was policy, uh, to not, uh. To not provide aid or assistance to South Africa and to promote the resettlement of Africana refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination.

Um, this escalated because in this meeting with Rama in the Oval Office, um, he basically was talking about, you know, genocide against whites in South Africa and putting this ambushing serial, Rama foso with this, um, he showed him a video montage that was supposed to prove this. And not only did, did did he do that? If you go to the White House, the White House has, has a release entitled President Trump is right about what's happening in South Africa. And like, here's the text.

I'm literally reading from the White House today. President Trump showed the world the shocking treatment of white farmers in South Africa, including with a video montage that highlighted the discrimination and violence targeted at the innocent minority victims and quoting some reputable newspapers, but also a lot of, uh, daily male and Breitbart and some other things. Apology New York Sun. Like apologies if you think these things are real.

Um. We put South Africa on our list, like there is this weird back and forth with the United States and South Africa. Anything you want to add here on this? 'cause it is pretty strange.

And I think that was the point that, um, actually one of the golfers, I don't follow golf, they never will. Sorry, I, I grew up in the third world. We use golf clubs for other things. So I don't golf, but there was Ernie else who I of course know. Mm-hmm. The other gentleman did say like, Hey, my brother has a farm. And yeah, he's been threatened, you know, by like criminals. So it's not that great. And so that's the, that's the thing. We're like, yeah, I do think South Africa should do better.

Like, sorry, like, yeah. You can't have, I know that this went to the Supreme Court of South Africa, and, uh, the leader of the economic, uh, freedom Fighters, uh, Malema was, you know, basically, look, it's, it's a free country. It's a democracy, this freedom of speech. He can sing whatever songs he wants. And Supreme Court of South Africa basically said something like this, this song where, you know, there's a line shoot the boar, kill the farmer.

Uh, the Supreme Court basically said like, look, it's a protest song. Nobody actually means that in today's context, you know? And. I get that. I kind of, I understand that, um, given the context and all that, but there is still a security risk to some of these people. And so I don't see what's wrong with the United States of America, putting pressure on a country to make sure that it's minority is, you know, treated fairly. Yeah. Um, I hear you. And that minority was complicit in appetite.

Like Yeah. That you're like, shit, that, that sucks. That's, yeah. But fair. You,

It is my job to defend the interest of the United States and sitting in judgment over an issue that you obviously know nothing about and which is not strategically significant with a government and a country that is very geopolitically important. If you're thinking about the future of geopolitics in a multipolar world and you're worried about Chinese influence in Africa and all these other things, it would be really good to have at least South Africa neutral, if not on your side.

Just look at a map like South Korea, excuse me, South Korea. South Africa, incredibly important strategic real estate, especially if Africa, in terms of growth and all these other things is gonna be important,

I think he realizes that it's important for South Africa to have good relations with the United States. But, you know, we're a week removed from President Trump telling everyone in Riyadh, I don't sit in judgment. That's for God. And then here we are literally sitting in judgment in the Oval Office.

But I would say that for South African future, you know, for South Africa for their own goods, they should not be, you know, like eliminating a whole minority of people or making it uncomfortable. I mean, the whole point of South Africa is it's the Rebo Haitian. Mm-hmm. You know, and if you start with the African, uh, farmers, by the way, you know, there's a short path from that to Ed. Mean pushing out the South Asians out of Uganda, like South Africa is not just white and black.

There's also South Asians and also an ethnic group that they term and they use the term colored for, which is a various mixes usually in the south, in the Cape Province, uh, Western Cape. Uh, the point is there are a lot of different groups in South Africa other than. Blacks and White African and all of those groups contribute to the Rainbow Nation. I mean, that was Mandela's like great contribution to humanity that he, you know, engendered that. And so I a hundred percent agree with you.

I stand corrected. Thank you. President Trump did focus on strategic imperatives of the US at the same time. He was kind of giving South Africa a helping hand, quite frankly, because they need to solve this and they need to make sure that, um, you know, like they're, they don't go down the path of other African countries that did turn quite racist towards their well minorities.

Like this story has not been written yet. But the thing that Mandela did was truth and reconciliation. Let's all say what we did and then let's figure out a way forward. And, uh, OSA even in the conversation, said to Trump, Hey, we need to talk about this. Mandela said this, like this is where we need to go. And that was a moment where the United States could have said, okay. Like, there are these problems live by your own creed.

Let's do truth and reconciliation again because you guys need an update to that. Because if not, you're headed in a bad direction. Well that's, you know, but that's not what was happening.

Genocide is an overused term in truth, it's happened very rarely since the Holocaust. Okay. And again, if I was Jewish, I would be so much more angrier about the use of the word genocide left, right, and center. Everyone's getting genocide now. Okay, everybody get in line. Get your genocide hat and t-shirt on. No. Just because there is no genocide in South Africa against the whites does not mean that they're not being discriminated now in sort of reverse discrimination in some ways.

And I think that that is a mistake there, there is clearly an exodus of white side of South Africa anyways. I mean professionals and so on, that there has been happening for the 20 years. I don't think that's a, that's good for the country. And I do think that Julius Malama should be pushed on again, a a, a little bit leaned against a little bit more. And I think that President Rama did a great job. I agree with you.

But there can be both President Trump in the right wing of Fri Connors who are talking about genocide. They can be wrong. Also South Africa needs to do a lot better. Yeah. And when I see the media, everybody in the west indexed on this issue. Well, there's no genocide. It's like, great, you know, like that is not a standard for how minorities are treated. Like, are you being genocided? Uh, I guess not. Okay, well then you're good and we're out of here. You know, like, well,

Maybe I'm over. I don't know.

It's like, hey, maybe like to down the shoot the board, like, you know, thinking maybe like, you know, if, if naidas are not acceptable, maybe like the celebrating of, uh, ethnic uh, violence is not okay either. So I think, you know, like, again, I think the, the way we're carrying this, first of all, everybody has A-P-T-S-D from Zelensky. And second of all, I think just saying that I can document in many ways how there's no genocide in South Africa or Civil War.

It's like, great, but that's just not enough, you know, for South Africa to be a viable state. I just think that they need to. Lean into the Rainbow Nation. And I think that this government, this coalition clearly has done that. So I'm definitely not criticizing anything the government has done. What I'm saying is that there is a security issue, there is discrimination against some people of different color in South Africa, and that's, you know, that's not what the country really was.

Yeah. Like in the nineties. No,