Economic Warfare in Siberia

There’s been a series of explosions along one of the main lines of the Trans-Siberian rail network. To fully understand the significance of these attacks, we must look at Russian exports, alternative options, and what maintenance looks like.

These explosions could cause disruptions to Russian exports, specifically those bound for China, but the lack of alternative routes and limited maintenance capabilities could be the nail in the coffin.

Ukrainian officials have claimed responsibility for these attacks – unofficially, of course. Regardless, Russia’s economy could be facing a severe blow if these explosions continue.

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First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TranscripT

Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from chilly Colorado. The news is that last week, on Tuesday the 20th, I believe, a series of explosions hit a couple of pieces of Russian infrastructure in the Far East in southeastern Siberia. Specifically the Sarah Mosque tunnel, which is part of the Trans Siberian network, specifically the Buckle Aylmer main line were hit.

And then a few hours a day later, details are a little fuzzy. A similar line in the vicinity of the tunnel was also hit, which is serves as the backup for the tunnel, a place that they call the Devil’s Bridge. Some anonymous Ukrainian security officials have claimed responsibility for the attack. I can’t tell you if that is true or not.

What I can say is that we’ve got three things going on here. Exports, options and maintenance. So first, exports. Since the Ukraine war began, the Russians have only found it more and more difficult to get their product to market. The Europeans were the natural market. They were the closest for most oil and gas, even a lot of the minerals.

And so when they decided, for whatever reason to stop buying it, a lot of this stuff ended up in China. And for that, the Koreans Siberian rail system is critical. It provides probably 80% of the cargo capacity for land based stuff. And more stuff is going on lands than ever before. Also, all of these lines of which there are basically five, you’ve got one that’s the least important that kind of goes down into Kazakhstan before going over into emersion, Zhejiang.

That’s the least used and the most Frankenstein, the other for all parts of the Trans Siberian system that does cross over the mountains on the passes into China at different places. But all of them collectively are the only way to get things to China. And they’ve all been running at more than 100% capacity, which, you know, we’ve been kind of waiting for a safety situation to boil up, to knock things off line.

And now it’s been done, at least in part by an attack. And when a blight is being used at more than 2% capacity, that means you can’t just ship it to alternatives, even if you’re willing to turn your train around for off people, can you back up the trains you depot? Anyway, point is that one of the four lines, at least for the moment, is off line completely.

Second options. You’ve got these four lines, one that crosses through Mongolia, two that go into northeastern China and one that goes all the way over to the Russian Far East, where things can be kind of repackaged and put on ships. No one lives in Siberia because they want to. I mean, there’s a reason why this is where all the prison colonies were.

Some of the more stable lines, like the bomb line that was hit, are on permafrost, which is not particularly stable. Something happens to the permafrost. The whole thing just kind of sinks in. And it looks like, at least on one of these attacks, a rail car that was full of fuel was hit. So we’ve seen in other parts of the conflict in Ukraine how that can go bad really, really quickly.

Because of this. There are not a lot of population centers along this entire route. In fact, less than 10% of Russia’s population lives along this line. Everybody else is on the western Russia where it’s, you know, warm. And because of that finding, repair crews in the first place might be really difficult. You’re dealing with a lot of tunnels, a lot of bridges, a lot of canyons, a lot of permafrost, a lot of territory where if there is damage, you don’t just slap down some fresh line and start up.

And a road takes years. When this line was built back in the seventies and eighties, the Russians wouldn’t even allow any foreign observers to see it because it was so shoddily put together and it could only operate reliably over about a third of its length. And this was when the Soviets actually had engineers. post-Soviet Russia really doesn’t. And as we’ve seen with the Kerch Bridge, which connects the Russian mainland to Crimea, you know, that was hit over a year ago now, and it’s still not running at full capacity.

So doing repairs in this area is no minor issue. Of course, getting information out of this area is no minor issue as well. Anyway, third maintenance. The Russian educational system collapsed 35 years ago and so there aren’t a lot of people who are, I would consider to be fully capable of claiming the term engineer. In fact, the younger of them turn mid-sixties this year.

Also, everyone that the Russians have who can repair physical infrastructure is in the Ukraine theater right now because the Ukrainians have been blowing up rail depots and rail lines in bridges and roads and everything for a year and a half now. So there just isn’t a lot left that the Russians can use if all of a sudden they’re getting hit on a very, very exposed, vulnerable place 4000 miles east of Moscow.

If this was the Ukrainians or really if this was anyone who really means the Russians ill will, this is an excellent strategy because the Russians barely have the military capacity to patrol their own lands in western Russia abutting Ukraine, much less 4000 miles. The other direction, 5000 miles, the other direction. This is something that can really hit to the heart of their economic plans in a postwar scenario, because if they can’t get the stuff to the Chinese, the Chinese aren’t going to pay for it.

And there’s really only three other lines now that this stuff could be shipped. And so if this is real, we’re going to find out about it really, really fast because there’s just so many points of exposure and so many failure points throughout this part of the Russian system. It would be an easy way to take down the Russian economy far more effectively than anything we’ve seen with sanctions so far.

All right. That’s it. Stay warm.

The Problem with the COP28 Climate Change Conference

COP28, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, is underway in Dubai. As with many of these foo-foo summits, I’m not expecting much to come out of it.

COP28 is a progress report on countries’ emission reduction commitments, equating to a parent-teacher conference where all countries get Ds or Fs on their report cards. The current focus of this year’s conference is adding protocols around methane.

Methane is the low-hanging fruit of climate-change talks, so it’s a no-brainer to add regulations surrounding it. However, China’s reluctance to abandon coal production (and, as a by-product, methane) underscores the difficulties in addressing emissions on a global scale.

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Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TranscripT

Hey everybody Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from a snowy Colorado. Today, we’re going to talk about what’s going on in the Persian Gulf. There’s something called the COP 28 conference going on, which is the United Nations Global Climate Change Update conference. The acronym stands for Nothing, so don’t look for it. As a rule, I don’t comment on these things because any organization where Djibouti and Japan are both represented generally does nothing and there’s not a lot you should expect to come out of these talks at all.

It’s really just an update on where everyone is. Folks made commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions a few years ago. This is kind of progress report. And the bottom line is pretty much everybody gets a d/f. Not a lot has happened. Two things. Number one, the way these things are negotiated is you have political authorities and you have scientific authorities.

The political authorities are the ones who actually have to get stuff done. And the scientific authorities tend to be the ones who set the thresholds and the targets. And oftentimes the two of them don’t discuss things very often. And so the political statement and the scientific statements often have very little to do with one another. Nothing really different here this time around.

What is different this time around is they’re trying to add a completely new category to the greenhouse gas emissions protocols. So until now, it’s been focused mostly on carbon dioxide, which is by far the number one source of climate change. But this time, they’re trying to add methane. Now, methane, a.k.a. cow farts, a.k.a natural gas, is a much more potent greenhouse gas emission, but for a shorter period of time.

So CO2 lasts in the system for centuries with a moderate warming effect, whereas natural gas usually dissipates within about a decade but has a much stronger impact in that time. So if you’re looking for the low hanging fruit in climate talks, methane is where you want to go. And in cases of like the United States, most of our methane emissions are linked into oil and gas production in some way.

In a lot of oil production and shale fields, natural gas comes up as a byproduct. And so really, all you need to do is have better sealant on the pipelines and the production system. You would have a pretty outsized impact on methane emissions from a climate point of view. In addition, a lot of these things pay for themselves because natural gas is a product that can then be sold into the power system or the chemical system.

So the Biden administration is in the process of perfecting some regulations with the goal of reducing American methane emissions by about 80% over the course of the next decade, which I think is an actually fairly achievable goal that I don’t think the oil and gas industry is going to push back against too much because, again, it’s a product.

But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be involved in these cop talks at all because of the Chinese. Give you an idea of just how hypocritical some of these talks are and how little progress you should expect. The Chinese are against involving methane as an emission target because most of their methane is a byproduct of their coal production.

And if they’re going to continue to use coal for the vast majority of their power, then they’re going to kick out a lot of methane as a side effect. And unlike in the United States, where this is something that can be solved by sealing up pipes, all you have to do in China, if you want to not have the methane, is to shut down the coal, the coal mines.

So the Chinese are kind of dead set against this category in general anyway. We’ve seen this in environmental regulations before with the Chinese, where in a lot of the advanced countries, most notably the United States, it’s an issue of kind of cleaning up after yourself and a lot of it pays for itself. Something very similar happened back in the eighties, in the nineties with something called the Montreal Protocol, which is something that banned chlorofluorocarbons, which is something that used to be in freon and air conditioning systems.

We banned it because it was bad for the ozone layer, gave everybody sunburns and we replaced it with something called HFCS, which were an order of magnitude better. Now, the Chinese were the ones at the time were produce most of the world’s freon, and they didn’t think that the replacement technologies are something that they could master. So for technological sovereignty issues, they refused to go along with it until the rest of the planet had made the switch and then they finally joined on the tail end.

We’re probably going to see something like that with methane in the talks this week. Okay. That’s it. By.

Dutch Politics: What Geert Wilder’s New Coalition Means for Europe

The Netherlands has recently undergone an election of its own, so let’s look at the incoming coalition and how it will impact Dutch politics.

In the Netherlands, voters cast their ballots for a party rather than individuals, giving them a multi-party system with countless coalition possibilities. Geert Wilders will likely lead the incoming coalition, but bringing together at least four parties is no easy task. All that to say, Wilders will have to compromise on some of his more extreme ideas if he wants to build this coalition with any semblance of speed.

The Netherlands has long operated as a broker for Europe. The previous PM, Mark Rutte, played that role perfectly, but I’m not as optimistic about Wilders. The longer it takes to form his coalition, the more the plot will thicken…

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First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TranscripT

Morning, everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from a chilly New York City in Central Park. We’ve had a fresh election in the Netherlands, which looks like it’s going to generate a couple of interesting effects. So I thought it was worth talking about it. Specifically, the outgoing government of Margaret Ruther is now giving way to an incoming coalition that will be led most likely by a guy by the name of Gert Viel.

There’s who’s got frizzy hair. He’s oftentimes called the Dutch Trump because of his views on immigration and other countries in general. It’s nothing like that. This is still very Dutch, which is to say center, center right. Fairly calm politics. But a lot of people are worried that this is going to break a lot of European issues, perhaps causing complications for Ukraine policy and the short version is we’re just not there yet.

The Netherlands has a very different electoral system for the United States. So in the United States, we have a first past the post single member district system, which is a fancy way of saying that when you go to the ballot box, you vote for a very specific person who’s going to represent a very specific group of people in a delineated geographic area, whether it’s your state or your district.

That’s not how it works in the Netherlands and the Netherlands, you go and you vote for a party. And if a party gets 30% of the vote, as Wilders party did, they then get 30% of the parliamentary seats. This is an interesting system that allows for maybe a little bit more of a pure democracy system, although you don’t know who you’re going to necessarily get because it’s on a party list.

And if they get 30 seats in the top 30 people on their party list, get the seats. But the Netherlands has a weird way of doing things because they really don’t have a floor. There’s 150 seats in the parliament. And if you get 1/150 of the vote, you get a seat, which means you get a lot of parties.

And I think there’s going to be something like 11 in the new parliament. So Wilders isn’t simply going to be prime minister. He first has to cobble together a coalition of a minimum of four parties in order to then establish a government. This is a lengthy process, even when everybody sees everything from the same point of view. So the outgoing government of Ruth, for example, took them nine months to build their government last time, I think eight months the time before that.

So we are not going to see a new Dutch government this year. And it’s entirely possible, considering how actually I say this personality challenge to builders is that we might not even see it next year. Now, you shouldn’t necessarily expect to see huge shifts in policymaking in the near term because some of the builders more from the Dutch point of view, egregious ideas are going to have to go away if he’s going to build a coalition.

In addition, there’s really not a lot of argument anywhere across the political spectrum in the Netherlands about Netherlands place in the world. The Netherlands is pro-American and pro-British and pro-European for reasons that are different from a lot of other countries. Specifically, they’re pro-European because they don’t really like the Germans or the French that much. And the general idea is if you can get the French and the Germans into an institution where other members can kind of dilute their influence, then everybody wins, especially the Dutch, because they handle the trade between the French and the Germans.

They like to keep the Brits close because it’s, again, a hedge against Germany and France and let’s keep the Americans close for the same reason. Keep in mind that the Netherlands is a small chunk of territory, roughly the size of this state here, and as a result, it has a little problem with the fence because it’s completely flat and it’s its borders are completely exposed to its neighbors.

So it’s never going to be a military power. All it can hope is to entangle as many other military powers into its own interests so that the French or the Germans don’t just run roughshod across them. The problem we’re going to see is not with European policy per say. It’s not like things are going to change in the Netherlands, it’s just that for the next several months, maybe up to a year, we’re not going to have a government in the Netherlands that’s capable of playing what has traditionally been the other big role of the Netherlands in Europe, and that is of broker because the Netherlands is either considered the smallest of the large states or

the largest of the small states. They’ve got their fingers on a lot of pots, and it allows the Netherlands to broker deals with parties across the spectrum on economic size and wealth that you wouldn’t expect a middle power like the Netherlands to be able to pull off. And in this, Mark Rutte, that has been key. There’s been a lot that’s happened under his leadership.

He came in at the tail end of the financial crisis when the Greek bailouts were getting really crazy. He helped participate in the solidification of the expansion to include the new members. And now he’s played a central role in the next wave of expansion that is supposed to include a number of countries in the former Soviet sphere of influence up to including Ukraine.

And he’s been doing this while being a relatively reliable spokesman for American and British interests in Europe, as long as it doesn’t hurt Europe. So this sort of balanced, integrated player has been very, very, very important. Everything that’s gone down in Europe for the last decade because he’s been running the place for almost 15 years now, Villiers, regardless of what he says, does have a lot of experience doing this.

Yes, he’s been in the Parliament for the last quarter century, but he’s never been in a government. He reminds me a little bit of Joe Biden and that he’s never really had a big boy job. And so it’s going to take time for him to build the gravitas. It’s necessary to play that broker role within the European Union.

And until then, the French and the Germans don’t have the marriage counselor, and the rest of Europe doesn’t have their advocate of their handbrake. That’s assuming we get a government tomorrow and we’re not going to get a government for months. So the ability of Europe to manage in this environment just went down a very, very big Dutch shaped notch because the Netherlands at the moment can’t play its traditional role.

Argentina Elects A New President: Javier Milei

The big news out of South America is that Argentina has elected a new “libertarian” president, Javier Milei. So, what will this political shift mean for Argentina?

Since Milei won’t have enough parliamentary support from the Peronists, we should expect some unconventional tactics to bypass Congress. Milei also has a strained relationship with several BRICS countries – with China and Brazil topping that list – so hopefully they have some good translators.

The quick and dirty here is that Argentina will be the center of lots of drama for the foreseeable future. So you may want to hold off on your investments in this region and grab some popcorn while you’re at it.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TranscripT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Central Park in New York City. And on the topic of Skating on Ice, let’s talk about what’s going on in Argentina. They recently had just about a week ago, had a new presidential election and they have a new president by the name of Javier Malay, who bills himself as a libertarian.

Now before you libertarians get too excited, a libertarian in Argentina does not mean the same thing that you’re probably thinking of. In fact, nothing politically in Argentina means the same thing that you’re thinking of. Argentina does things its own damn way and it’s always really weird. So for example, the ruling Peronist are often lumped into the socialist camp.

Leftist camp. But really what they’ve done is they’ve combined the most counterproductive and self-destructive aspects of socialism with some of a really, really sloppy version of fascism. So leftist they are not. They just like to print currency. And don’t let that go to your head. Same holds true for Malaysia’s own thing, and you shouldn’t expect him to fit any pattern.

He’s not the Argentine Trump. He’s not anything. He’s himself. He’s also never been in government. So he may have some grand ideas about what it comes to abolishing the central bank or dollar raising the economy and doing away from the peso. Just keep in mind that he does not have sufficient votes in parliament to get any of this done without cooperation from the Peronist.

So we’re going to see a lot of loud policies, a lot of attempts to do end runs around the Argentine Congress. And whether it goes anywhere, it’s just early days, too soon to know for sure. It’s going to have a much bigger splash when it comes to foreign policy in Argentina, like in most countries, the political leadership has a lot more freedom in dealing with foreign policy than they do with domestic policy.

So in the case of Malaya specifically, he’ll loathes President Lula of Brazil, who is a more classical leftist, if you want to use that category against not perfect, but it’s more it’s more fitting for Brazil than it is for Argentina. And so Lula has already announced that he’s not going to be at the inauguration, getting the relations off to the best possible foot.

And that means a Mercosur, which is the common market, the free trade zone of the Southern Cone that involves Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina is basically dead in the water from both an economic and a diplomatic point of view. Oh, hey, I got a visitor. Anyhow, we’re just going to crop him out. Sorry. Anyway. Or maybe not. New York.

What do you do? Anyway, this was one of the world’s great trade zones, and it’s basically on ice now. Beyond South America, things are also going to get fun because Argentina was just given admission is to the BRICS alignment. Now, BRICS is an association of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa that has well, it’s never punched up to its weight.

It’s always been kind of an odd grouping. And Malaysia has made it very clear that he hates all things Chinese. And since China is Argentina’s largest trading partner and is the dominant power in the BRICS, this is colorful really soon. So the thing you have to keep in mind about all of this is when it comes to Argentina, there can be a lot of smoke without being fire and a lot of noise without anything real happening.

But when you apply Argentina, his own pension for drama to other groups outside the country who have more flavor than substance, things like BRICS, things like Mercosur, things can get really crazy really soon because he’s going to call a spade a spade and he’s going to throw a lot of monkey wrenches into the works. Probably the thing that is going to have the biggest single impact is going to be the Mercosur attempt to have a free trade zone with the EU.

Now, this deal has been under negotiation for how we’re pushing 20 years now, and they believe that they finally have it worked out. Now, Lula decided he wanted to get this all shoved through before Malaya was inaugurated, but then he flat out asked the Europeans for a multibillion dollar bribe to get it done. So pretty much that trade deal is done, too.

So if you’re looking at investment into Argentina or Brazil for the foreseeable future, anything that requires value added work and like manufacturing honestly should just kind of write off for the moment because the entire legal framework is going up in smoke right now.

Why I’m Done With Twitter (or ‘X’ or whatever you call it)

What was once a platform where you could access open-source information that was reliable and free…has now been laid to rest by Elon Musk. Yes, I’m talking about that little blue bird we’ve known and loved for years.

I’m not one for beating dead horses, but at the very least, I’d like to explain my reasoning. #1 is misinformation: the lax content moderation policies have opened the floodgates of disinformation. #2 is a lack of meaningful interactions: what was once a breeding ground for stimulating conversations has become a vat of unintelligible sludge. #3 is Elon Musk: I simply can’t support anything that man does anymore.

While I’m saying goodbye to Twitter (X) for personal use, we’ll still distribute my videos there. However, the best place to get my updates is via the newsletter or my YouTube channel (both of which are linked below)…

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Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

Support medshare's ukraine fund
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TranscripT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from New York. I know normally people don’t like it when I do a video from my hotel room, but I’ve got a view of the cathedral right here, so I figured maybe we’d make an exception the day I’d stay here and talk about distribution channels and specifically why I’m leaving Twitter completely

So three things. First of all, I used to love Twitter because it provided me access to firsthand information in places that the mainstream media, for whatever reason, couldn’t or wouldn’t go. The best example I can give you is the Ukraine war. As technology has become more important in global media, the number of people who were employed in that space has dropped.

And so there’s a lot fewer eyes and fingers touching any particular story that has one of the reasons why we have a lot more opinion in our news than we used to. And a lot less fact checkers. Your editors, fewer people see anything. And so when something new starts up, especially when there’s something new, is kind of neo violent and dangerous, there just aren’t enough people within the existing media landscape to redirect in this case to either side of the front line in Ukraine.

And so Twitter was where individuals who had personal contacts in the area could provide information. And sure, there’s a lot to vet, but the point is, it was a source of information. Now, when the Ukraine war began, the old Twitter management went through and purged Russian bots from the system, which all of a sudden opened up Twitter to be glorious in any number of venues because it was no longer being spammed by disinformation.

It was not to the same scale. But then Elon Musk came in and as part of his commitment to free speech, he destroyed all content moderation and allowed encouraged the bots to come back in force. And so now I would say on my feed, my curated feed, it’s about 90, 95% misinformation. And so I’ve gone from spending an hour to thumbing through Twitter, getting a feel of what’s going on in the world, to spending 12 hours and having no idea what’s going on because it’s just crap.

So I’ve stopped. The second big issue has to do with interaction. Now, part of the thing that was wonderful about old Twitter is the people who were providing that firsthand information were accessible. And, you know, not to put too much of shine on it, but when you’ve got 100,000 or more followers, those people tend to pay attention if you ask them a question.

So for me, it became free information gathering and I could engage with conversations with potential sources as well as just normal viewers about what was going on. And it gave me ideas of what to do, for example, for these videos, because you guys could interact with me, you could access me, and vice versa. Well, that stopped basically the things that are in the for you category, a mention by you has disappeared from my feed.

And over the last six weeks I have had seven interactions with all of you combined. Now, if you want to spare me with porn bot that gets through and if you want to launch a crypto scheme and see if I’ll fall for it, that gets through. And if it’s a porn themed crypto scheme that absolutely gets through. But it’s gone from being one of the most rewarding parts of my job to just complete a time suck and a waste of everything that I do.

So that’s gone. And then there’s third is Elon Musk himself. What a wanker. It was one thing when he would blindly parrot whatever piece of Chinese propaganda came across the screen. And another thing, when he started doing the same thing for Russian propaganda and then Iranian propaganda. But of late, he’s gone down the white supremacist road in the anti-Semitic road.

And it’s almost like Musk has revealed to the world that in reality he’s not a green or a businessman. He’s just an unapologetic apartheid era, white South African, which apparently is exactly what he is. And so I’m done. I will still be using Twitter as a distribution channel for the videos. For those of you who are somehow able to find some sort of use for it, probably the crypto pros.

But for everybody else, I would just underline that the fastest way, the most reliable way to get the videos is to sign up for the newsletter w WW dot z e i h a incom slash newsletter sign dot com slash newsletter, which is always the first place that the video goes before Twitter, before YouTube, before everything else. So just sign up direct.

We will never share your data with anyone and the video remains free. Okay, that’s it. I’ll see you around. I’ll still be checking in on Twitter every few weeks to see if anything’s changed because, you know, God, it certainly can’t get worse, is my thinking. But then it keeps getting worse. But who knows? Maybe we’ll have a change in management.

Maybe we’ll have a change in policy, and it’ll be some version of what it used to be. But until then. Newsletter. All right. Ticker.

My Latest Interview on the NAIOP Podcast: Inside CRE

For those looking for some longer format content, here’s a recent interview from the NAIOP Podcast: Inside CRE.

LISTEN TO THE NAIOP PODCAST

I chatted with Christopher Ware about current U.S. demographic shifts, how the labor force is changing, and why now is the best time for businesses to hire and borrow. I also dive into China’s precipitous population decline, how the cost of manufactured goods will increase, and why we need to double the size of the industrial plant in North America.

I encourage you to tune in if you want a well-rounded, long-form discussion.

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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Modular Nuclear Reactors Are Not the Future of Energy

A while back, I talked about a few technologies I was most hopeful for – small modular nuclear reactors being one of those. Click below to watch that video…

Understanding the Limits of Innovation

Unfortunately, we’ll be drawing a line through it (for now).

As we enter a period of capital scarcity and top-heavy demographics, many companies working on these modular nuclear reactors have been forced to abandon ship. This complication adds another layer of complexity to the growing energy demands of the next decade.

So, if you were hoping to go off the grid with a reactor strapped to the back of your truck in 2030, it might be time to change your plans…

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

Support medshare's ukraine fund
Support medshare's global efforts

TranscripT

Hey everyone. Good morning from chilly Colorado. It’s a balmy ten degrees today. I got some bad news. So for those of you who’ve been following me for a bit, you know that over the summer I recorded a video of the five technologies that I was most hopeful one for. The issue we’re facing is that we’re entering into a period of extreme capital dearth and a shortage of people in their twenties and thirties, while the twenties, people in the twenties, in the thirties, and the folks who get together to imagine the future and develop the technology and a lot of cheap capital is required to bring it to mass manufacture.

And without those two factors, the pace of technological change that we’ve been used to seeing these last 2025 years is going to slow considerably. And that’s before you consider any sort of general dislocation because of demographic aging or drops of consumption or breakdowns in globalization. So the pace is way too slow, incredibly. And the question is which technologies are kind of already at the hub, where they’re just right on the edge of mass manufacturing mass application.

And one of the technologies that I identified was something called small modular nuclear reactors. The idea is you have a reactor that’s small enough to fit on the back of a semi-trailer and you can just plug it in to any other power system. So if you’ve got a coal plant, for example, that you were looking to decommission, you can pull one of these in or two of these based on the size, you know, up to ten and just plug them in and they’re good to go.

And the 20% of electricity that the United States gets from nuclear currently could continue in perpetuity. Well, over the course of the last couple of weeks, the companies that were involved in building the prototype of abandoned the project. They say the numbers no longer make sense. They couldn’t get enough sponsors. So if this technology is going to continue, it’s going to continue at a later time with different players in an environment of even sharper limitations on technological development and capital availability, which means it’s probably not going to happen this decade at all, which means the 20% of the electrical grid that is supplied by nuclear right now is going to fade away because with a

couple of exceptions, all of those reactors are older than I am and I turn 50 very, very soon. So not only do we need to massively increase the amount of power generation, we have to double the size of the industrial plant as the Chinese break apart, and we need even more power in order to do the green transition and maybe move to a more electric future.

We also have to replace 20% of our total energy supply, which is at the moment all baseload, which is something that wind and solar can’t come up with or can’t work with because they’re too intermittent. So we just saw our overall challenge for the next decade become inordinately more difficult unless of course, someone picks up this technology very, very soon.

Sorry. All right.

Ask Peter: Can Thorium Solve the Nuclear Problem?

Note: This video was recorded over the summer during one of Peter’s hikes.

Thorium is a potential substitute for uranium-based nuclear power, but will it solve our nuclear problems? If thorium could help with the proliferation of plutonium and make it harder to create weapons on the backend, adoption of more nuclear power might be easier….but thorium isn’t our knight in shining armor.

Here’s the grossly over-simplified uranium nuclear process: you take the usable uranium and separate it from the other isotopes, then convert it into something like a fuel rod, then it’s placed in a reactor which generates heat which spins a turbine. (Like I said, grossly over-simplified) Once that’s done, one of the waste materials is called plutonium.

The process with thorium is a bit more involved and requires different infrastructure, but you still end up with plutonium. Sure, it’s marginally less of the bomb-making stuff and in a bit more complex compound mix, but there’s STILL plutonium.

While this is an interesting tech that should be explored by countries with a bunch of thorium (like India), this doesn’t solve our proliferation issue. Plus, there’s still an entire set of other problems that need to be considered, such as disposal and storage.

Barring the development of fundamentally new tech, nuclear power might be losing its place in the US energy mix. As a result, growth in electricity production will be seriously hampered even if all this new Greentech works perfectly.

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

Support medshare's ukraine fund
Support medshare's global efforts

What Role Do the Cartels Play in US – Mexico Trade?

As industries like manufacturing ramp up between Mexico and the US, how will the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels factor into that equation?

These two cartels operate very differently. The Sinaloa treat their operation like a business, and violence is a means to an end. Jalisco New Generation treats violence and fear as an essential part of their operation.

Despite their violent tendencies, the cartels (1) are uninterested in the complexities of manufacturing, (2) lack the necessary skills to disrupt that sector (from the participant side of things, anyway), and (3) would rather target “easy to manipulate” businesses.

So far, issues caused by the cartels have been relatively manageable. The real risk lies in the power struggle between these two cartels and how that could reshape perspectives on US-Mexico trade.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

Support medshare's ukraine fund
Support medshare's global efforts

TranscripT

Hey everybody. Good morning from a chilly colorado. A lot of you have written in with some questions about what’s going on with the cartels. And that’s something we haven’t talked about a little bit. The big issues are that there’s two cartels to really follow. The first is the Sinaloa. That’s the the one that thinks of drug smuggling as a business.

And so, as a general rule, is not willing to shoot people who are among its consumers. And so they don’t think there should be violence in places where their businesses are critical. So they don’t want to shoot people in Mexican cities or certainly not on the north side of the border if they can help it. It’s not that they’re nice.

It’s not that they’re kind of it’s not that they’re murderous thugs. They are all of those evil. They just see violence as a tool rather than an end. And on the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got political new generation who has the opposite view. When they move into a town, the first thing they do is shoot the police chief and anyone who looks interesting because their whole idea is if everyone’s scared of you, then they’ll either work for you or get out of your way.

Two different theories, both very violent. One is more applied in that violence. So that’s kind of the background I’ve been going on and on and on and on and on about how Mexico is going to be an integral part of the American manufacturing and trading system moving forward for decades, if not over a century. That hasn’t changed. The question is, to what degree do the cartels complicate that picture?

Not as much as you might think. The cartels are into things that fit one of two categories. One are small, have high value, are easy to fit into a backpack and smuggle. Obviously, narcotics fall into that category. Methamphetamines falls into that category or they want industries that they can push a lot of cash through in order to launder it.

And that takes something into things like real estate or avocados, where there’s a very clear business on the other end that is integrated into the broader system. So those are kind of the two types of businesses they go for. Anything else gets a little complicated for them because it’s not their skill set. And when it comes to interfering with trade, it doesn’t really work.

So if they were to go into, say, a manufacturing facility in Nogales and try to take over, it’s not like they would know how to operate it. They would be just a protection racket, and that would mean they’d have to be there presently all the time. Assuming that Mexican law enforcement couldn’t deal with it, I think they could.

Then the American investors in that factory would probably lose interest in the whole thing would shut down. So there’s no profit center there. They could raid things that were going in and out of the facility. But manufacturing in Mexico, as a rule, deals with intermediate manufacturers. So you’re not dealing with a lot of finished cars or even finished carburetors.

You’re dealing with things like spark plugs and casings and seat linings. And, you know, if you get a semi full of seat lines and bolts, you know, that’s not exactly something that’s easy to dispose of. You then have to find the next step in the manufacturing chain that wants it, and that requires a degree of logistics that they don’t have a degree of understanding of the industry, that they don’t command and contacts that are completely unrelated to what they do currently.

The biggest risk that I see to the trading relationship is the fight between these two big cartels. Sinaloa is the number one organized crime group in the United States. How that’s going to generation is rapidly growing to be the number one within Mexico. And at the moment, Sinaloa and some other smaller cartels control all the plazas going into the United States for the smuggling of the drugs.

Politico is challenging those other cartels, especially Sinaloa, for control of each and every one of them. And if they do succeed in commanding a plaza and they do pour into our side of North America and bring their business model with them, then Americans are going to be thinking about Mexico and trade in a very different way. Now, that hasn’t happened yet.

They’ve been trying to get into this country for three years now, and organizationally they’re just not nearly as competent as the Sinaloa. Even after their leader, El Chapo, was arrested, extradited and says it’s a prison forever, it’s just a very different mindset. But if you’re going to worry about something in the trade relationship, I think that’s the number one concern.

So far, it’s proven manageable. So far, the culture clash, if you will, is working for us, but that would still be the dangerous spot. All right. I mean, go inside. It’s cold out here, but.

 

Ireland Needs a New Game Plan

Note: This video was recorded over the summer from the foot of Mt. Huron.

Today we’re talking about Ireland’s raw deal. It’s on the far northwestern extreme of Europe, has a shitty climate and limited cultural development – hence the need for Guinness and Jameson. The biggest problem is that it’s positioned on the wrong side of Great Britain, so London’s relations with Europe and the wider world have huge implications for the Irish.

However, the upside to this unfortunate positioning has been that Ireland has proven able to serve as a broker between the EU and USA, the UK and EU, and the UK and USA. Benefiting from access to the greater European market and development funds, Ireland underwent Europe’s most rapid economic transformation, surging from the poorest to the richest country (in per capita terms) in less than 45 years.

But rapid development brings up a myriad of demographic problems, which Ireland is now facing head-on. In addition, the UK is moving away from the EU and starting to negotiate its own deals, meaning the broker (aka Ireland) loses its purpose. To add insult to injury, the scarcity of capital in Ireland has hit alarming levels.

So Ireland will need to reinvent themselves and find a fundamentally new model moving forward. The issue is doing all that in the face of demographic degradation and without breaking trade links. Or we could all just drink more Guinness for our Irish friends…

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

Support medshare's ukraine fund
Support medshare's global efforts