Buying Time With Drugs

Ozempic semiglutide injection

I hate to say it, but we still haven’t located the fountain of youth. Unfortunately, that means there’s no current medical breakthrough that will meaningfully reverse the global demographic problem.

It’s probably too late for all the boomers in our lives, but there is one class of drugs that could potentially improve long-term health: GLP-1s (aka Ozempic). These reduce obesity and inflammation by mimicking the hormone that slows stomach emptying and makes you feel full for longer. However, these drugs are too new and expensive to count as a solution.

Some countries are going to be worse off than others, especially those that lack a large enough young generation to replace retirees. At the end of the day, the only proven way to extend healthy, productive lives is a lifelong investment in health.

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Transcript

Hey, all Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from a slightly chilly Colorado. Today we’re taking a question from the Patreon page. And specifically, are there any medications out there in anti-aging or anti Alzheimer’s that I think are going to change the math when it comes to global aging, specifically in the American and the Chinese context? Short version is no longer version. 

There is something called monoclonal antibodies. The idea is it destroys or inhibits the growth of the, the bad cells in the brain, basically, that contribute to dementia and Alzheimer’s specifically. But they are fabulously expensive and they really are do a job of what they say they do. According to the literature, which is all glow, it only reduces cognitive decline by like 30% over an 18 month period, which is not enough, really, to move the needle in any meaningful way. 

The problem is, is starting about age 59 or 60, we all start going through a cognitive and physical decline, and it really accelerates at age 62 to 63. And then that’s one of the reasons why we retire at age 65, and why a lot of people take early retirement before that. So if you really want to solve this problem from a demographic issue, a labor force issue, a tax receipt issue, you have to extend the age of retirement well past 65, at least to 70. 

And you need a medical treatment that allows people to be productive for all of that extended period. Remember, people are already starting to slip before age 65. There’s also an issue of timing. Remember that the baby boomers, the largest generation in American history, are mostly retired already, and the youngest ones are already 60. So you’re talking about less than one quarter of the cohort. 

If the drugs were ready today, could have their working lives extended for a few years. For most of them, it’s already too late. And the next generation down Gen X, it’s my generation. There just aren’t enough of us to really move the needle, even if we all could work an extra five years. And I assure you, we do not plan to. 

As for the rest of the world, the situation is actually far worse because in the United States at least, our baby boomers had kids. We know those as the millennials. And maybe these technological leaps, these drugs that don’t yet exist, will exist by the time it’s time for the millennials to retire. That’s another 20 years from now. But for the rest of the world, there really isn’t a millennial cohort. 

So the people who are retiring right now in Japan and China and Korea and Taiwan and Germany and Italy and all the rest, you know, this is it. And so if the drugs aren’t ready today, it’s already too late. Now, there is one, one medication out there that may, may make a difference. And that’s this class of drugs that is represented broadly by Ozempic. 

The idea that you can have people lose a lot of weight real quickly. Well, you know, being overweight, having cardiovascular disease, having heart congestions, that’s not good for your health. And if these drugs do end up working in the long run, as advertised, they can reduce inflammation throughout your body and keep your body weight down. Well, there might be a conversation to be had there, but these medications are new. 

They’ve only been around 2 or 3 years for any practical data, and we just don’t know what the long term impacts, good or bad, will be. So even if they were immediately one tenth the cost that they are right now because they’re very expensive. And even if we could apply them at mass, and even if they were 100% positive with no side effects, very doubtful for all of those things, it’s still only a maybe because we just don’t know yet. 

But for the Americans and the Chinese, where their equivalent of the baby boomers already one foot into retirement, no, it’s too late. We don’t even have a drug that’s on the horizon at the moment. That looks like it can solve the problems that we need to. About the only approach you can take is what they’ve been doing in Korea into a lesser degree in, say, Scandinavia, where they focus on human health from birth. 

The reason why the Koreans and the Swedes and the rest in that class live so long is they get a lot of exercise, they have a very good diet, and they have a high standard of emotional living writ large. It’s not very sexy, requires a fair amount of elbow grease and you have to start young. But that is still the only and best way to extend life that we’ve figured out so far.

The U.S. Inches Towards Iran Conflict

Flags of the United States and Iran blending. Licensed by Envato Elements

U.S. strikes against Iran appear imminent, with two aircraft carriers being positioned in the Persian Gulf. Trump has presented Iran with negotiation terms that would effectively end Iran’s status as a regional power, so it’s no surprise that negotiations have stalled.

The terms laid out by Trump would end Iranian nuclear enrichment, force them to give up long-range missile capabilities, and stop supporting regional paramilitary groups. Spoiler alert: that’s Iran’s entire strategy and security model. Any conflict would likely start in the air, then move to targeting strategic assets like Kharg Island. Once that happens, Iran would be crippled.

Outside intervention would be unlikely, and removing Iranian oil from global markets wouldn’t be the end of the world. The main concern would be destabilizing the region and risking the formation of new terror groups, although things like that take time.

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. It’s the 23rd of February, and we’re going to talk about Iran, because what the United States has been moving into the region in terms of military hardware gives us a good idea of the, type of strike that the Trump administration is considering. The headlines are that one third of all currently deployed U.S. naval assets are in the region, which is really a bad way to look at it, because the Middle East, it’s in the middle. 

It’s between things. So it’s really not strange to have a lot of stuff there because it’s coming and going. So let’s talk about more specifics. The USS Abraham Lincoln, which is one of the Nimitz super carriers, is off the coast of Oman. And that’s a country on the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, right at the mouth of the Gulf. 

So if the United States wanted that carrier in the Gulf would take a day or two wherever it needs to go. Second, the USS Ford, which is the newest of our super carriers, by far the largest, most powerful military platform humanity has ever created is currently in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was sighted this morning off the coast of Crete. 

Crete is an island that’s in the southeastern part of the Greek territory. So it could be going through Suez in a day or two if it wanted to. In addition, there’s at least 60 aircraft in Jordan. If there was going to be a strike, we’re now basically looking at the capacity of hitting hundreds of targets in a very short period of time and suggesting an air war with a duration of a month or less, probably closer to a week or two. 

If you want to do anything more, you’re gonna need a lot more supply ships in the area, for replenishing bombs and missiles and whatnot. But it does look like the Trump administration is preparing for a scenario where the Iranians are utterly incapable of striking back at US forces, so they decide to attack Israel. Air go, all of jet aircraft that are in Jordan. 

There’s a handful of F-35, so you can see them from satellite imagery, and the rest are basically there to intercept drones as they’re going through. This is a significantly larger deployment into Jordan than what they had, during the last assault last year when they attacked the nuclear program end Iran with mixed results. This is intended to drop a lot more ordnance on a lot more places. 

And considering that even if all they do is go after the nuclear program, where there may be 50 sites, they’re going to have a lot more, subsidiary strikes in the areas to take out command and control and air defense in the rest. The question, of course, is whether the Iranians can do much about this. And the answer is no. 

Not only did American and Israeli strikes over the last year really gut the air defense network over Iran. No one has been able to step in and replace the equipment. Your options are Russia or China. The Chinese stuff, to be perfectly blunt, is really shitty. And the Iranians are really not interested in getting it unless it’s the only thing that’s on offer. 

They’d rather have offensive weapons to serve as retaliation than defensive weapons that really aren’t going to do anything. As for the Russians, the Russians are locked down in the Ukraine war and can’t make enough jets to replenish their own supplies. So while there have been a number of contracts signed to get things like the su 35, which is a fighter bomber jet, to Iran, the Russians just don’t have any to give. 

So the only thing that the Russians have been able to provide is some relatively low tech, anti aircraft systems called verbals, which are MANPADs, shoulder launch kind of things. You can use those to take out helicopters, maybe some very low flying jets, but not the sort of strikes that the United States is going to be making. 

They’re more about making a statement of solidarity than anything else, because any of the equipment that the Russians could provide is already in use. And as the Israelis and more recently the Ukrainians have proven, even the top notch Russian stuff like the S-400 really isn’t as hot as the Russians have tried to make it sound these last 30 years. 

And if they can’t stand against Ukrainian MiGs, they’re certainly not going to stand against American F-35s. So as to the goal here, remember that the Americans are demanding that the Iranians shut down their missile program, their nuclear program, and shut down all funding to paramilitaries throughout the region, which is basically the equivalent of them demanding that the United States shut down the Marine Corps, the Army, their entire air force, and decommission the Navy. 

So from the Iranian point of view, if they do this, they’re done as a strategic power. And so what we will probably see is the two of them heading to a collision. And if Trump gives the order, we will have a gutting of a lot of the industrial base in Iran. And it basically just becomes a sea. The state kind of like North Korea, but with not as many sharp, pointy sticks to point at everybody else. 

This would destroy their economic capacity to wage meaningful war, because right now, oil income is 90% of their earnings, in 90% of that oil income comes from one spot. And the idea that this administration in this moment is not going to take advantage of that, is pretty slim. 

I do want to point out one really weird thing about this, though. Iran doesn’t export a lot of crude anymore. Between sanctions and more importantly, their own idiotic approach to foreign investment that basically penalizes anyone who’s interested in investing in the country. Iran’s oil sector has been in a nosedive for the last several years after degrading for a generation. 

So total exports out of Iran are really only about a million barrels a day. And if the export infrastructure is just, disrupted, you know, it’s not going to come back anytime soon. The market can five that right now. And in a post Iran scenario, what’s going to happen is more or less what’s been happening in a pre Iran scenario. 

And that Oman and Kuwait and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates and especially Saudi Arabia will be able to send their crude not to the United States for net exporters, but to the East Asian rim where the vast majority of it goes for China. So, ironically, we’re in a situation here where the strategic. 

What’s the word I’m looking for overhang of the United States not liking Iran in a run that like in the United States, that goes back to 1979, it’s kind of outdated. And an economic strategy point of view. No longer is Middle Eastern crude supporting the American ally network. It’s supporting China. And so we’re now in this weird situation where strategic thinking in the United States hasn’t caught up yet. 

And we’re considering going to war with a country that has no impact on our ability to fight whatever’s next. Whether you think that’s worth it or not, of course, do your own strategic math. But the old argument that we need to keep oil flowing from the Persian Gulf to support the allies against the Soviet Union, that became outdated more than ten years ago, and now it’s it’s kind of funny that it’s still driving decision making really anywhere. 

And I don’t mean that as a pure critique of the Trump administration. That’s a critique of Tehran as well. They just haven’t moved on either.

China’s Alleged Nuclear Test

nuclear bomb with a mushroom in the desert

The Trump administration has accused China of conducting a small nuclear test in 2020. The claim is that a seismic event was detected in Western China around that time. A lot is going on here, so let’s unpack it.

A nuclear blast creating that small of a seismic reading would have to be from a small weapon in a massive underground containment facility. However, developing a weapon that small and testing it doesn’t add up. So, could there be a political rationale for raising this accusation now?

One theory is that the Trump administration wanted justification for restarting U.S. nuclear testing (which has no military support) to garner leverage in negotiations. The Cold War showed us this is a fairly strange path to go down, but we’ll just have to wait and see what comes of this.

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Transcript

Hey all. Peter Zeihan here coming  to you from Colorado. Super windy day today. So we’re doing this one inside. Well that hair is out of control, isn’t it? Anyway, today we’re talking about the US government’s, the Trump administration’s accusation against China that the Chinese did a unofficial and banned, nuclear test back in 2020. They’re saying that somewhere out in western China, which is the, Chinese testing grounds, that there is a subterranean explosion five, six years ago, which the Chinese blew up a bomb that is in contravention of pretty much every nuclear treaty that has left. 

And there aren’t a lot of those left. This one’s quizzical. So we’re going to look at the technical aspects of that more than say yay or nay. 

There is a worldwide detection system for seismic activity primarily designed to detect earthquakes and help forecast where the aftershocks are going to go to help with things like disaster recovery. 

Because of this, all of these sensors have been basically double tasked to also look for underground nuclear explosions because they send out something somewhat similar. And the US government is saying that something in the range of a 2.75 on the Richter scale was registered, 2.7 times is a really, really, really low. That’s like fracking levels of earthquakes, something that is largely undetectable to humans who are standing directly above it. 

And if this was indeed a nuclear explosion, it would be something in the tens of, tons not even reaching a kiloton. Even if that was true and it was a nuke, the only way that you would have been able to contain it without, you know, some sort of activity is to have an underground cavity that is probably at least 100ft on a side and at least, six, seven, 800ft deep. 

The, the physical stress on any sort of construction at that depth is immense. And it’s not clear that that is within the Chinese technical capacity. And even if it was, it’s unclear what a bomb of that size would achieve for the Chinese. Most modern bombs are in the tens to hundreds of kilotons or more likely in the megaton range. 

If you’re talking city flatness and bombs of that size are actually below the range of most conventional explosives. And when you consider that conventional explosives are an order of magnitude easier to manufacture and store, not much in use because you have to worry about fallout. It’s difficult to see why there might be a need for a bomb of that size that is so tiny. 

A nuclear bomb of that size, about the only thing that might, might, might, might, might make sense is if you were to use it as a kind of a bunker buster, because the shockwave that comes off of a nuke is significantly different from the shockwave that comes off of a conventional penetrator weapon, and it might do more damage to things that are subterranean and hardened. 

But the only things that are subterranean and hardened at scale are, ironically, the Chinese nuclear system. And it’s difficult to see the Chinese researching the development of a weapon that they would then use on themselves. Anyway, lots of questions. There is not a single arms control expert on the planet who thinks that this was an actual nuclear explosion. 

And these are a very, moralistic, idealistic and loud crowd. And they’ve been angry at the last several American administrations for basically letting all the nuclear control treaties of the Cold War, post-Cold War era lapse to the point that, the last big one just lapsed last month. So the question is, what is going on here? If if if the Chinese are testing in violation of norms and treaties, then obviously that’s a big deal for any number of reasons. 

But this was from 5 or 6 years ago, so it’s difficult to see a immediate implication of it. Second, there is a theoretical possibility that you would do something like this on a trigger mechanism rather than the general nuke, just to see if your plutonium still works. But since it’s so mechanically simple, and relatively inexpensive to spin down the plutonium and separated in a centrifuge, it’s difficult to say how that would make sense. 

The Chinese are in the business of expanding their arsenal, not maintaining a set number of pieces like the United States. So again, it doesn’t make much sense. The only other theory that is out there that if I heard, is that the US administration under Donald Trump, wants to restart testing of nuclear weapons. This is something that has no support within the US military community, because it’s designed to fight a conventional fight. 

We don’t maintain an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons anymore. Really haven’t since the Cold War. We only have the strategic city flatness, and if those are used, it’s not really a military question. It’s a purely political question about whether you want to risk nuclear Armageddon or not. It’s primarily a deterrent force because the US conventional capabilities are so far and above. 

What any potential threat could be. And if it’s a paramilitary threat, like we say we encountered in the global war on terror, you’re not going to solve that with nukes. So the leading theory is that Donald Trump personally wants to be able to blow up some nukes as examples to push negotiations forward. Now, Trump has not said that personally. 

This is something that has leaked out through the administration. I don’t know if I should take it serious or not. But the idea of setting off nukes as a negotiating point doesn’t strike me as a particularly effective negotiating strategy. Unless, of course, the people on the other side are doing that already. And before you discount of that, keep in mind that that was part of the logic during the Cold War is that one side would innovate a new nuclear weapon, demonstrate it, and then the other side would go set off a test immediately to prove that their nukes still worked, and then develop their own weapon. 

And the cycle would repeat until we got to Gorbachev and everyone realized that, hey, maybe this isn’t the best way to carry out negotiations. So no firm conclusions here. What? The only thing that is clear is the administration really is pushing this line is not shared any information with the wider world that would suggest that was actually a nuclear test that actually happened. 

Obviously, there are classified intelligence gathering techniques that are not being shared here. But again, the Trump administration has been pretty liberal with sharing those bits of information whenever it serves a political purpose. So a lot of weird little mysteries here. And the only explanation makes any sense is this is coming directly from the white House for reasons that until they are revealed, remain unseen.

U.S. Boots on the Ground in Nigeria

Silhouetted soldier against a black background

Following the Christmas Day U.S. airstrike on a jihadist target in northern Nigeria, the U.S. has deployed 100 troops, more so advisors, to train local counterterrorism forces in Nigeria.

This is important for several reasons. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country and a dominant power in West Africa. Russian influence has stretched across Africa and into Nigeria, so U.S. involvement could help counteract that. And this marks a significant shift for the Trump administration, as the U.S. will get firsthand insight into Nigeria rather than relying upon speculation.

We’ll see what Washington does with the information gleaned from the boots on the ground, but U.S. policy in West Africa could be reshaped in the coming months.

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Transcript

Hey all, Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. Today is the 17th of February, and the news is that 100 U.S. troops have just arrived in Nigeria to help train local forces in anti-terror operations. It’s the first batch. Another hundred or 200 is expected to come in the next several days to weeks. Why Nigeria? Why now? What matters? So if you go back to Christmas season, December, the big story that was making the rounds in MAGA was that Nigeria was massacring Christians and oh my God, we got to stop them. 

And so on Christmas Day, Donald Trump bombed a, jihadi, stronghold in northern Nigeria. First time we’ve done military operations in Nigeria. The Nigerian government internally was kind of pissed off because this is a country of 230 million people. It has dozens of ethnicities. The northern part of the country is more Islamic and drier than the South, which is more Christian and tropical. 

But, the militants that have been operating in the north, they don’t care who they, kidnap, they kidnap anybody, so most of this was just a collective MAGA, fabrication, which, you know, we’ve seen a few of those before. But this time it resulted in the United States actually bombing someone, which is generally not a good reason to do it. 

Anyway, the Nigerian government was really pissed off. But rather than be pissed off in public, they said, you know, you’re right. We do have a militancy problem. Why don’t you come help? And Trump did. Now these are not combat troops. These are advisers, but they are now getting enmeshed into, this situation in Abuja. And further north, and we’ll see what happens. 

This matters for three reasons. Number one, Nigeria, 230 million people. Significant energy producer, based on the day, exporting somewhere between 1 and 3 million barrels a day, although it’s pretty chaotic. So it’s usually on the lower end of that. 

It is the clear superpower of West Africa. It is the most populous nation on the continent. It matters in a great many ways, and in times when Nigeria is able to hold itself together, it projects power to an entire neighborhood. And in areas when it’s not able to hold it together, it falls into civil war. So anything that helps Nigeria hold itself together is generally good for the region and US power production regardless. 

Number two, we are seeing some of the outcomes of the Ukraine war on another continent here. So one of the things that the Russians did right when the Ukraine war was getting going is they tried to stir the pot everywhere they could to cause as much chaos. And civil conflict as they possibly could. And in the Sahelian region, that’s the dry area that’s south of the Sahara Desert, but north of the tropical belt. 

They targeted the French position and they basically went in under the guise of counter terrorism, counter Islamic terrorism. They encouraged Islamic terrorism to continue. And cut deals with regimes that were in the process of having coups. We called it the coup belt for a while, to push the French out. The French have now left all of French West Africa, Burkina Fastow, Mali, countries like that. 

And so we now have these, arrangements of pro-Russian tinpot dictators that are basically raping their country and running mining interests for the Russians, whereas the militant groups have been able to spread beyond those countries into places like northern Nigeria. So anything that pushes back of that tide is generally a good thing too. And again, consolidation Nigeria is probably the best bet at this point because the first line of defense, the French forces in the region are now gone. 

Sorry, U.S. forces for that matter. So that’s number two. Number three. 

The Trump administration just put it into a position where it has now has sent forces into an area specifically with the goal of finding out what’s going on. That’s the first time that’s happened in this administration. Usually they just rely upon rhetoric and whatever circling through the conspiracy sphere. Now we actually are going to have a couple hundred troops interfacing with the Nigerians on a daily basis, getting a feel for what is a very, very complex country and a very, very complex security environment that doesn’t match the story that you hear on the web. 

What they do with that information is going to be really, really interesting. I don’t mean to suggest the United States has, like, immense interest in this region, but as a rule, anything that holds Islamic terror at bay and keeps them in worthless territories is a good thing. If this is able to penetrate into central or, God forbid, southern Nigeria, then we’ve got a very different situation where the entire region would become unmoored. 

So, you know, kudos if this works out. But right now the government of the United States is still very, very, very early in a fact finding stage. And once they have the information in front of them, they will then have to make a decision and balance against what we are hearing in the MAGA sphere, which is largely the opposite of what is actually happening. 

That’s going to be an interesting conversation that will happen a few months from now.

Ukraine Goes on the Offensive

A ukraine soldiers patch/flag on their uniform

Starlink cut service to Russian forces along the front line, leaving these troops largely isolated. Ukraine has taken advantage of the situation by launching localized offensives and reclaiming a nice chunk of land.

The Ukrainians remain outnumbered. However, since Russian units are scattered, isolated, and unable to communicate, they are left vulnerable. So, organized Ukrainian offensives are finding success…for now.

The Russians will likely adapt, or the Ukrainians will come face-to-face with entrenched units and minefields, but Ukraine has regained the offensive momentum for the time being.

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Transcript

Hey all, Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. Today is the 18th of February, and the news is a significant change in the battlefield in Ukraine. We did a video talking about how Starlink had been unofficially siding with the Russians in many ways until they got caught out and basically accused of several dozen counts of second degree murder. 

And so they have cut off, connections to their Starlink receivers throughout the front region, this time emphasizing the Russian side of the operation. And what we’ve discovered in the last 96 hours is that the Russian forces in the area were completely dependent upon Starlink for communication among themselves, and that communication is functionally stopped. Now, keep in mind that drones today are either first person drones that can be jammed or on a, tether, a fiber optic tether that has a limited range. 

And so the best way to jam is to have an electronic warfare unit in Ukraine needs to become the best in the world. That by far, far better than the United States. Which means that normal types of radio communications simply don’t work if you’re relatively close to the front. And now the Russians have been cut off completely. 

And even though the Ukrainians are outmanned and outgunned, they have gone on the offensive and captured about 50mi² over the course of the last several days. I doubt it’ll last. It’s only a matter of time before the Russians come up with backup plans, or the Ukrainians hit those massive minefields that stopped their assaults a couple of years ago. 

But it does allow, in the short term at least, the Ukrainians could, to completely liquidate Russian positions while on the offensive. Normally, you only attack and location if you enjoy about a 3 to 1 ratio. In vantage in troop numbers. The Ukrainians are doing it with far less than that, sometimes even being outnumbered. But because they’re able to isolate the Russian forces in detail, they’re able to completely wipe them out. 

Keep in mind that over the course of the last year, we’ve seen the Russian tactics change considerably. So instead of big massed assaults, assaulting, Russian positions, they sneak in 2 or 3 at a time and pepper the area through until a few of them survive. And then reinforcements can come in. That means you’ve got lots, dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of little spots where there’s two, three, 4 or 5, ten Russians holding the position and against a coordinated Ukrainian attack that still enjoys drones and communications. 

They don’t have much of a chance at all. So I doubt this will last very long. But for the moment, the Ukrainians are pushing forward in a way that they haven’t been able to for a couple of years, and their critics said was never possible again. But here we are.

The Ukraine War, Drones, and Starlink (Bonus Video)

A starlink rocket

Drones now account for the majority of casualties in the Ukraine War. One of the innovations that has allowed Russia to improve strike range is by mounting Starlink terminals to drones.

This highlights a broader evolution in warfare, in which private tech platforms can now control information flows and battlefield capabilities. Gone are the days of nation-states being the only big dogs at the table.

This new era shows that individuals and corporations can shape warfare, security, and media ecosystems at scale. This isn’t going to sit well with most governments, so expect a large geopolitical shift as a result.

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Transcript

Hey all, Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. Today we are talking about a new technology that is evolved and how it’s, linking into other social issues that we’ve been discussing from time to time. It involves drones in Ukraine and the company Starlink, which is owned by Elon Musk.

In Ukraine, about two thirds, maybe closer to 75%, based on who’s numbers are using, of the casualties had been inflicted in the last three years of the war, have been inflicted by drones and most of those drones, what you call first person vehicles.

So you’ve got a, a drone that is controlled by a radio controller, and it goes off and blows into something, but it’s directed by a person the whole time. And the chief technology and countering that to this point has been, jamming, which the Russians are pretty good at. And the Ukrainians are become very good at. So the way you get around jamming is you have a fiber optic spool of cable on the back of the drone that just kind of just let out as it flies.

And then that can’t be jammed. It has to be destroyed some other way, which is very, very hard to do. While the Russians have hit on a new strategy, Starlink is the company that has several thousand satellites up in orbit and is providing internet coverage to everyone who can pay for it, especially in remote areas like where I live and, well, The Russians have started using portable units. You’ve got your normal corporate units or your house unit, which you put on and you point up at the sky, but you also now have these smaller units that can basically mount on a car or even carrying a backpack. The Russians have started putting those on drones and using those to send drones, not the 1015 miles you can with a first person drone or a wire drone, but hundreds of kilometers so you can attack things deep within the country.

The legal implications of this are pretty dark. Because this isn’t like having a computer chip that you sell to someone and eventually ends up in a drone. You’re not controlling that computer chip or enabling it over its operation. But with Starlink, you are using the active satellite network for a data connection, and then you control the drone through the Starlink satellites.

So you can’t basically have it intercepted conventionally, and you can use it to drive it in whatever building you want. And we now have footage that has come out of Russian channels of the Russians using this to target things like government buildings and schools and playgrounds and malls and most famously of recently, a moving train full of civilians.

Elon Musk has, taken a very direct position to confronting this, he’s basically called the European ministers who have brought this to public attention, drooling morons and has said it’s not being used this way at all. And so the Ukrainians went through the wreckage and pulled out several dozen Starlink units, complete with their serial numbers, and said, guess again.

And in the last ten days, Starlink has started to change the way they regulate their receivers in the vicinity of the war. So, for example, if you’ve got a Starlink unit that’s going 45 miles an hour not on a road, it’s probably a Russian drone, and they’re starting to shut down some of these things, which is having some really big problems for the Russians on the front line, because over the course of the last couple months, this had become the primary method for inflicting damage on Ukraine.

And if you’ve been following news, you know, there’s been a lot of hits on power plants as well as trains that provide the fuel to the power plants. Almost all of those were operated by Starlink and powered drones.

From a legal point of view, this is a pretty big deal because here in the United States, when something is used in that way with you actively allowing and empowering your product to cause a death and destruction, it’s called depraved indifference. And if someone dies as a result of that operation, it’s a second degree murder charge. And now we have dozens of cases where it’s basically been confirmed that Elon Musk’s Starlink company was actively involved in abetting, Russian attacks on Ukraine that were deliberately designed to kill as many civilians as possible.

At the moment, that seems to be addressed, but that’s peace. One piece, too, is what’s going on elsewhere in the world. One of the things that you have to keep in mind is that when it comes to free speech, the United States has a relatively different position compared to the rest of the world. We’re really iconoclastic about it.

And we especially when a new technology is involved, we want to like, see where it’s going to run before we put any restrictions on it. So the iconic example is The Telegraph, which came out after the Civil War during reconstruction. The way media worked in the United States before that was everybody was basically a local newspaper. There really weren’t any regional, much less national papers, because you couldn’t get the paper delivered in time for it to matter.

So you had all of these local papers, and all of them basically had their own political views, and they basically lied about the other side. But because it was all local, no one really cared. Once the Telegraph came out, the lies could go national instantly. And we started to get a much more visceral politic, which has continued to this day.

And it even got the United States involved in a war, because if you remember Pulitzer, he basically accused the Spanish of blowing up the USS Maine in Havana Harbor. That’s not how it went down. It was just an internal ammo explosion. But the Spanish got the blame. Americans got all riled up. We went to war.

We’re kind of in an echo of that situation now, elsewhere in the world, where they take a much more nuanced view to things like free speech. They’re starting to get upset with what in the United States is functionally a right to lie is what it’s starting to be called, because it’s exactly what it is. The idea is that no matter what you say, no matter what the social media platform is, you can’t be held legally liable for it, regardless of what you said and what your intention is.

That’s not flying very well in the rest of the world. So in some countries, like Brazil, they’re establishing a national authority that evaluates what people are saying, what they intended, and if it’s false and the intended harm, they’re starting to prosecute people in other countries. They’re simply restricting the use of social media for minors with 16 years old kind of being the general threshold against these people.

Elon Musk is also very, aggressive, calling them totalitarians or dictators, specifically the Spanish, prime minister, who Spanish is the most recent country to kind of follow that path. We also have a number of European authorities, French, most notably, they starting to raid, Elon Musk Company’s offices, specifically X or Twitter to everybody else, because we now have programs running in the background of Elon Musk, media companies that, will if you just ask them, take a photo of anyone and turn it into a porno for you.

And, you know, that’s a little ugly. And apparently it’s really popular among the pedophiles. So we have this captain of industry in the United States that is basically arguing that child porn is an inalienable right, and that really doesn’t resonate with a whole lot of people. And so we’re starting to see this combination mindset starting to bubble up in a lot of places, most notably Europe.

That Elon Musk personally and his companies in general have become both a cultural threat, a safety threat, and on the other side, a security threat because of what’s going on in the Ukraine war. I don’t have a good solution for this, but I think it’s worth pointing out that live in an era where the nation state was basically the determiner about what happened with things like physical security and media.

We now have this person, Elon Musk, in his company, Starlink X, and the rest that have built this alternate constellation of power that doesn’t just control information, but now can control military munitions. That’s not something we’ve really seen since the early days of the telegraph and industrialized warfare, but this time it’s much more personal and precise with its application where this is going to go, I don’t know, but I can guarantee you that Elon Musk will not be the only one.

He won’t be the last one. And we will see things like this picked up by nation states in the years to come, so that we have not just conflicting and deliberately clashing narratives, but conflicting and clashing security systems in a way that most countries can’t even pretend to deal with. Starlink already has thousands of satellites up there. How do you combat that?

So bottom line from all of this, it’s a brave new world already. And we’re going to see nation states like the European start to see what they can do to rein in or redirect institutions like the one that Musk is building, which of course, will lead to some sort of at least indirect clash with the administration on this side of the ocean.

We’re only the very beginning of this sort of overhaul of how the world works, and I have no idea what it’s going to look like five years from now, much less on the other side.

Finding Rare Earths in Japanese Mud

A close up photo of colbat rocks

Japan has identified a large rare earth deposit of its own, but it’s not going to change global supply dynamics. Here’s the situation.

Rare earths are typically a byproduct, so the bottleneck isn’t ore access; it’s processing capacity. And China has a monopoly on the processing. Japan may have found a massive deposit, but that’s just step one. The deposit is located near Minamitorishima Island, under 8km of water, and extraction just isn’t economically viable as of now.

This is just another example of Japan having to get creative with the hand it’s been dealt.

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Transcript

Hey all, Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado, several people have written on the Patreon page asking about the new Rare Earth project that the Japanese are poking into offshore. It’s called the Minamitorishima, I think way too many syllables. Anyway, the idea is that it has significantly higher concentrations of rare earths and some of the production sites around the world today. 

And is this something that is going to change the math of rare earth production? Probably not. Let’s start with how we do it now. Rare earths are not something we use in large volumes. Like, your car probably has less than a 10th of a gram of the stuff in it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not critical. 

It changes the electrical properties of a lot of things. And so we’ve got, I think, 13 different rare earths that we use in different concentrations, in different things, just in microscopic amounts, typically. Well, what that means is there really, until recently, hasn’t been anything called a rare earth mine. What you do is you produce something else. Iron ore, copper, silver, for example. 

And then you take the tailings and you process the tailings that might have a higher concentration of, these things, which sends it through several hundred vats of acid over several months and from somewhere from a half a tonne to several tons. After that amount of time and that amount of acid, you get one ounce of the stuff. So it’s really available in very small volumes. Now, the, the mud that they have dredged up from meto Minamoto or Ashima, has a reasonably high concentration somewhere in the range of 6 to 8000 parts per million, which, compared to a lot of the mines out there, is pretty low. But if you compare it to the handful of mines that have popped up in recent years as part of this kind of geopolitical scramble, for the stuff, some in China, mountain passes the United States, for example. 

It doesn’t compare all that great, the richest rare earth mine, if you want to use that term, is in South Africa, and it’s about ten times the concentration of what the Japanese are dredging off the seafloor. Mountain pass is probably about 4 or 5 times the concentration. It is richer than some of the clays that the Chinese are mining. 

But you got to remember when you’re talking about South Africa, a mountain pass or, China, you can basically drive a truck to it and put a shovel on the ground and start doing it. The mean a meter or Cima deposit, while huge, absolutely huge, is at the bottom of the seafloor on the abyssal plain under eight kilometers of water. 

So you have to bring it up and then dry it and then start the processing. So you’re already talking about costs that are on average, in order of magnitude higher than anything, anywhere else. About the only thing about meter millimeter or Cima, that is really interesting is the concentration variation. There’s two different kind of buckets for rare earths, lights versus heavy. 

And most of the deposits in the world are for the light ones, and the heavy ones are the really rare ones. Whereas the Japanese on this abyssal plain have found one where it’s about a 5050 split. But in order for it to be economically viable, you’d have to see the price of these things not go up by a factor of 2 or 3 or 5 or 10, but probably 50 or 100, in order to justify economically the infrastructure. 

And at the moment, there’s no sign that that’s going to happen, because, again, rare earths are a byproduct of other mining. And the limiting factor is not not, not not the actual access to the or the limiting factor is the processing capacity, which the Chinese basically have a lock on at the moment. 

We are seeing that change in pollutants, places like Mountain Pass are building it out, and there are a number of countries out there, Australia, Malaysia come to mind, that have some of these facilities dormant. 

But for them to be economically viable, the price of the stuff has to go up. So the Chinese will continue to have the leverage until such time as countries decide to kind of marry national security to their economic decision making on these things. And if that happens, this will all kind of work itself out in a year or two. 

And even in that scenario, I really don’t see the Japanese stuff coming to the forefront. Just keep in mind that the Japanese, among the major powers are the least resource rich country in the world. And so they will be always trying out new technologies and new places to see what they can make work. And most of them will never pan out. 

But, they have to try. And every once in a while generates, big advances and things like efficiency, which is one of the reasons why Japan is the most energy efficient of the major countries in the world, because it’s been forced to by its geography, kind of think of what’s going on with railroads in that category.

Armenia’s Not Getting Off the Struggle Bus Just Yet

Flag of Armenia in front of an apartment complex

Armenia’s landlocked position between Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran has left Yerevan with few good options in the post-Soviet world. Armenia is one of Eurasia’s least-economically vibrant states; the fact that they bisect regional arch-enemy Azerbaijan in half doesn’t help, neither does their history with Turkey.

For decades, Armenia believed that aligning itself with post-Soviet Russia would help solve its chronic energy and security issues. Recent history—especially following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine—has shown the limits of Russian cooperation. While Iran has unusually good ties with Armenia, Tehran has precious little of anything to offer anyone at this time.

So where does this place Yerevan? Sandwiched between two enemies to the East and West, and facing decaying regional powers to the North and South, Armenias last, best and only hope is to either completely capitulation to the whims of an energy-rich Azerbaijan or… throw a Hail Mary pass to the Americans. It would still involving selling out completely to an outside power, but for the Armenians that will not be anything new.

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Transcript

Hey all, Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. Today we’re going to talk about what is going on in relations between—or among—the United States, Russia, and Armenia.

Now, Armenia is a small country in the Caucasus Mountains, sandwiched between Russia and the former republic state of Georgia to the north. Down south you have Iran. To the east you have Azerbaijan, which is a close political, economic, and cultural ally of Turkey, which is to the west.

So, landlocked, not a lot going on. Its population has fallen in the post-Soviet period to now about four million people. It is one of the most economically destitute parts of the Eurasian world, and there has really been no meaningful prospect for the place to improve its situation.

The core issue is one of identity. The Armenians see themselves as besieged by Muslims and Turks in all directions, and so they have basically relied upon the Russians to provide a degree of security cover for them ever since they broke away from the Soviet Union when it collapsed in the early 1990s.

The problem is also military. Turkey could wipe Armenia off the face of the earth in a matter of a few weeks with a military campaign, should it come to that. And Azerbaijan, which used to be completely incompetent militarily, defeated Armenia in a war a few years ago using Turkish drones, which basically obliterated the entire Armenian military in a matter of a couple of weeks.

So it is largely defenseless. It has nothing economically going on for it. And with the Russians now locked down, they didn’t come to Armenia’s aid when the Azerbaijanis attacked. We basically had a situation where the Armenians are completely out of luck, which means they’re in the wind.

Because what has been happening until this moment is that the Russians quietly encouraged the Armenians to invade Azerbaijani state territory on multiple fronts. That has all been rolled back in just the last couple of years now, and that is no longer an option.

And if Armenia is able to fold itself into any other economic and security paradigm, then the Russian position in the Caucasus basically goes to zero. So there are a lot of reasons for a lot of countries to be very, very interested in what’s going on here. And this is why U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance was there a couple weeks back in order to see what could be agreed to.

And the issue it basically comes down to is whether you can keep the electricity on. Because if you can’t, then nothing else really matters.

So, Vance signed some agreements with the Armenians on nuclear power. Why nukes? Well, back during the Soviet days, the Soviet Union installed a nuclear power reactor outside of the capital of Yerevan. And even today it provides most of the power for the country.

It is generally considered to be the least safe nuclear reactor on the planet, complete with gaps in the reactor shell and the outer casing of the buildings so that the climate can just come right in—complete with tree roots.

The Armenians, however, have no money to update it, no money to put in a new power plant, and the Russians have been providing them with nuclear fuel to keep the country functional. So the question now is whether or not this thing can be repaired or replaced.

There is no infrastructure in place to put in any other type of power plant unless you’re going to do it from scratch. And then you have to get the fuel to a landlocked country that considers itself in a state of near de facto war with Azerbaijan, which is really the only place the energy could come from.

So really, this can only go one of two ways.

Number one: Armenia throws itself at Azerbaijan’s mercy, agrees to everything that Azerbaijan is even thinking about without exception, and in doing so gets a natural gas pipeline into the country. They build a couple of natural-gas-burning power plants, and then they are forever dependent upon the country that they see as their single largest enemy.

Or option two: they get a new nuclear power plant and have a degree—a modicum—of independence, probably with fuel supplies from the United States.

The problem here is that Armenia has no money at all. And if they were able to replace their nuclear power plant, they would have paid the Russians to do it 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. So if this is going to happen, the United States is going to have to pay for almost all of the plant, and then the Armenians can probably pay for the fuel.

Will that happen? That remains to be seen. But the bottom line is Armenia is now officially for sale to the United States. And if the United States wants to spend two, three, four, six billion dollars to just buy a country and lock it into the American orbit, this would be the cheapest way to do it.

We’ll still have to do that in league with the Turks, because the Turks control the entire western periphery. Most meaningful access between Armenia and the rest of the world either has to go north through Georgia and out, or through Turkey.

If—if—if—if—an American administration, this American administration, decides to make that decision, then relations with the Turks become very, very important.

But the leader of Turkey these days, a guy by the name of Erdogan, who has been in charge since 2001, I think, has a very Trumpian approach to the world, especially when it comes to the Europeans. And so there is a stable basis, for the moment, to work within bilateral relations in a way that really doesn’t exist between the United States and any other country in the world.

So, I am cautiously optimistic. Just keep in mind that this would not be free. And it does involve the United States investing in nuclear technology in a country that is so poor that any aspect of this is going to be a proliferation risk.

So you are going to see a lot of different levers of American power come together if this is going to work, in addition to a not insignificant amount of cash.

Cuba Is Running Out of Time

Man walking in front of Cuban mural

Since the U.S. shut down Venezuelan oil exports, Cuba has been sliding towards a severe energy crisis.

Cuba is being cut off from its alternative energy suppliers too. Washington has pressured Mexico not to sell them any. China and Russia are too far or don’t have the capacity. So, Cuba has already run out of aviation fuel and a prolonged energy shortage is likely. With energy collapse in motion, it could be the end for the Cuban government (which would open up a whole new can of worms).

The U.S. is nudging Cuba toward systemic collapse, but the fallout might hit Florida and domestic politics harder than expected.

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Transcript

Hey all, Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. Today we’re going to talk about Cuba. Ever since the U.S. government ousted Nicolas Maduro, the former president of Venezuela, the talk has always been about what’s next. And I’ve always said that it’s probably going to be Cuba. Cuba is not only proximate to the United States. Not only has a government that has been hostile to the United States for decades now, not only is a Russian ally, but it’s also very vulnerable because it gets almost all of its energy products from Venezuela at reduced rates. So simply removing Venezuela from the board means that all of a sudden they’re in an energy crisis. And anything they do buy on the open market is going to cost them at least twice as much. On top of that, the United States has leaned on Mexico to not sell energy products to the Cubans. 

The only other non-American suppliers in the region are, the Dutch have a couple refineries in places like, the ABC Islands, and that’s it. Any other fuel shipments have to come from somewhere else out of region. Theoretically, you could get some from Brazil, but Brazil’s an energy importer. And now you’re talking about the Eastern Hemisphere. 

So even if the Cubans can come up with the cash that is necessary to buy open market fuel from another hemisphere, you’re now have to add on a month that it’s going to take for the stuff to get there in the first place. The reason I’m bringing this up right now is because over this past weekend, the Cubans told all airlines that they would not be able to refuel at all in Havana because they are already out of aviation fuel. 

And for a country that is not that very large, simply getting a tanker to bring aviation fuel across the Atlantic Ocean, isn’t really a viable option for them. So we’re looking at a protracted fuel crisis in a country where their electricity system was already running on duct tape and baling wire. 

So we’re looking at a prolonged energy crisis. And the best case scenario for the Cuban government. That is assuming the US doesn’t push on anything and does not lean on its allies in the Western Hemisphere or twist arms, to prevent fuel from coming. Really, there are only two countries that might have a strategic interest here. One is China, and they do export a lot of refined product, but they’re on the far side of the Pacific, and they would have to shuttle anything through the Panama Canal, which the United States is in the process of asserting more direct control over. 

So that’s not a very viable option. And the only other one is Russia and Russia, because it is involved in a war, really doesn’t have the capacity to ship refined product either. It’s having shortages at home because the Ukrainians have been going after the refining infrastructure. So this could very well be the beginning of the end for the Cuban government. 

But before you celebrate that, too much, regardless of your logic or your politics, a couple things to keep in mind. First, if the Cuban government falls because of a de industrializing event that is triggered by an energy shortage, simply allowing the energy to come back in is not going to solve the problem. 

You are still going to have a significant degradation in the ability of whatever the next government is to hold together. One of the things that the United States maybe got wrong about Venezuela is by removing the guy at the top, but not in planting a broad based government that can actually run the place, just leaving the existing thugs in place. 

We’re at the beginning of a multi-year, maybe even multi-decade period where Venezuela is basically going to be running through chaos. It would probably be something very similar if you have an energy based collapse in Cuba as well. Which brings us to number two. Part of the reason that Cuba has been in the American mindset for politics for so long is over the years, waves of Cuban migrants have crossed the Straits of Florida to Miami, because they wanted to escape the economic or political conditions that were existed back home. 

If you turn off the lights and leave them off, you’re going to have more waves of that. So we already have a government in the United States that is just rabidly anti-immigration, to the point that it’s even willing to use its law enforcement to kill American citizens in order to make its point heard. Now, you’re probably looking at a mass, fleeing from Cuba, which will measure in the hundreds of thousands at a minimum, which is something even under the best conditions, would be a challenge for Florida if the federal government was in a cooperative mood. 

It is not clear that that is the case. So whether you’re in Cuba or Florida or in the United States with large, we are now at the beginning of a protracted rolling crisis caused by the United States nudging Cuba in the direction of economic collapse with everything that comes from that. So regardless of how this goes on for by the details, I can guarantee you that there’s going to be a show. 

And since they’ve already run out of jet fuel, it’s probably not going to be all that long from now.

I’ve Got This Bridge to Sell You…

The Gordie Howe Bridge under construction | Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Canadians built and financed a new bridge connecting Detroit and Ontario, but now Trump wants his 50%.

The bridge in question is the Gordie Howe Bridge. It will strengthen the supply chains in North America’s core auto industry hub and act as an alternative to the Ambassador Bridge.

Canada’s geopolitical reality is that the U.S. will always hold more leverage, because the Canadian economy is so deeply integrated with the American economy. This relationship typical manifests as the U.S. securing more favorable terms in infrastructure projects with Canada, and this is no different. Just your standard case of biggest kid on the playground.

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. Today we’re talking about trade with Canada specifically. There is a new bridge, the Gordie Howe, that is supposed to connect, Detroit to the Canadian province of Ontario. It’s been under construction for about the last decade, and it’s supposed to begin operations this year. But Donald Trump has said that he’s not going to allow that to happen unless at least half of the ownership is transferred to the US federal government. 

The Canadians paid for the whole thing. The idea is it’ll be a toll bridge. once its construction is paid off the income will be split 5050 between, Canadian investors and the state of Michigan. Trump of course, because of this is an international connection, has the ability to end it in a heartbeat. 

And that’s what he’s doing right now. The backdrop, Gordie Howe is a desperately needed transport connection right now. All of the road traffic and rail traffic that goes between Michigan, which is one of the big U.S. industrial states, and Ontario, which is Canada’s primary industrial state, goes through a single bridge called the Ambassador Bridge. And it is the single most cross bridge for commercial purposes in the world and is the backbone of the relationship for the US auto industry. 

Keep in mind that pretty much everything that happens in Ontario, from an industrial point of view, is integrated into the United States in some way. And this is the primary conduit. So adding another conduit would be a huge boost to, the American economy from a manufacturing point of view, not to mention good for Canada as well. 

The proximate issue is that the commerce secretary of the United States, guy by the name of Howard Lutnick, is buddies with a guy by the name of Matt Maroon. Literally. That’s how his name is pronounced, who owns the ambassadorial bridge and has been campaigning against anything that would build another link ever since the idea was first floated back in, I want to say 2012, because it would be competition for his project. 

Right now he has a monopoly, and I have never met anyone on Wall Street who has ever described Howard. Let me, because anything other than desperate to be corrupted. And so apparently he had a conversation with maroon and then had a conversation with Trump. And now Trump is campaigning against the bridge. Let me go, by the way, is the guy on the cabinet who showed up the most in the Epstein files, if you’re into that sort of scandalous details. 

Anyway, the bottom line here is not that this is a corruption thing or a trade thing. The bottom line is this is a geopolitical thing. Whenever you’re dealing with trans border transport links between the United States and Canada, the United States is always, always, always, always going to have the upper hand. Canada only has about 35 million people. 

They’re scattered across the entirety of the southern border of the country. And even where they are in dense concentrations like, say, Toronto and Quebec, they don’t like each other very much and try to limit their infrastructure. So every single Canadian province but one trades more with the United States than they do with one another. And any infrastructure on the border that is designed to facilitate links is always going to be done. 

The U.S way. So if you remember back to the 5060s, we had something called the Intracoastal Waterway system, which uses the Saint Lawrence River, which empties up through eastern Canada. But comes down and connects to the Great Lakes. Great lakes have things like Niagara Falls. There’s a lot of natural obstacles. And so there was an effort in Canada back in the early 50s to build out this massive infrastructure that would connect everything together. 

But that also meant connecting to the United States. And so the United States basically did some version of what they’re doing right now with Donald Trump said, you pay for pretty much all of it, in this case, about 75%, and we get full access. Some version of that will undoubtedly manifest with this new bridge, regardless of what is right versus wrong and what has been agreed to before. 

Donald Trump actually agreed enthusiastically to the creation of this bridge when he was president the first time around. But the first time around, his commerce secretary wasn’t nearly as desiring of being corrupted. So here we are, for Canada, this is just part of doing business with the United States. There is no other option. And so just like with the intercoastal, Canada gets to pay for it all. 

The United States gets the majority of the benefits. The alternative is to not build or use the bridge in which candidate remains fractured and loses access to the world’s largest investment and commercial market. And for Canada, that’s basically a choice between a first world country and being something less. Is it fair? Nope. Is it new? Also? Nope.