Joe Rogan Experience #1921 - Peter Zeihan

1. 0:00 – 0:59

   Zeihan’s framework: economic development, geography, and “pulling strings” in global systems

   1. PZPeter Zeihan0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. PZPeter Zeihan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music)

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      Hello, Peter.

   5. PZPeter Zeihan0:13

      (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      What's going on, man? Nice to meet you.

   7. PZPeter Zeihan0:15

      Right back atcha. It has been a crazy year.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      Yeah. It's been a crazy year for everything, right?

   9. PZPeter Zeihan0:21

      Yeah. It's, uh, it's one thing when you talk about how the world's going to be coming to an end. It's quite another when it's, like, here and now.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:26

       Yeah. Um, well, you've been working on this type of material, this, this subject matter for quite a long time, so t- tell everybody your background.

   11. PZPeter Zeihan0:35

       Uh, let's see. My background's in economic development. It's all about figuring out what works where and why, and why if you try the same policies in the next town over, it's usually a disaster. And then I worked actually here in Austin at a company called Stratfor for 12 years and I was their, their sole generalist, so it was my idea to kind of plug everything together and figure out, uh, what the map of the world looks like and how if you pull s- a string on one side of the world, something changes on the other side.

2. 0:59 – 2:33

   Why Russia’s invasion was predictable: geography, logistics, and the “access points” problem

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:59

      Well, your perspective on sort of global interactions with China and Russia and the United States and the energy supply and the food supply, I have not heard before. I, I haven't heard it as comprehensively as I've seen you put it together, so I'm kinda excited to talk to you about this. So when, uh ... Let's, let's ... I guess we should start it with Russia. When Russia invaded Ukr- Ukraine, you, you were not surprised.

   2. PZPeter Zeihan1:27

      Not even, not even a little, no.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:29

      You expected this and you felt like this is inevitable and this is just something that was always gonna happen and it's not gonna just stop at Ukraine.

   4. PZPeter Zeihan1:37

      No, not even remotely. Uh, the Russian space is among the worst farmland in the world, and so they've never been able to generate enough income to have a road network. Everything has to be moved by rail. And their frontiers are just huge and they're open, and if you've got a force that can't maneuver itself, your only reasonable defense strategy is to be forward-positioned and use geography to help you out. So you expand until you reach mountains or oceans or deserts and then you anchor on either side of those and plug the access points. Unfortunately for Ukraine, there are two of those access points on the other side of Ukraine, so the Russians were always, always, always going to try to push through and retake that territory, territory that they had controlled for most of the last 350 years. Uh, unfortunately for them, in the 30, 35 years since the Soviet system collapsed, uh, the Ukrainians have developed an identity and now they would like to be something other than a road bump.

3. 2:33 – 3:48

   NATO provocation vs. Russia’s impossible security demands

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:33

      So one of the narratives that was going around was that the reason why Russia was pushing into Ukraine was 'cause NATO was moving their arms closer to the border of Russia.

   2. PZPeter Zeihan2:44

      There, there is something to be said for that. Uh, you just have to put it into context to really understand it. So the Russian point of view is, for us to be secure, we need to expand until we reach a point where invaders cannot overwhelm us. We have to be able to plug those access points. But to give the Russians what they want, you have to sign over the future of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Belarus, Ukraine. Oh, let's go on. Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, all the -stans. Basically, the, the Russians, in order to feel safe, you ha- they have to be able to occupy total populations that are twice of their own. And I'm sorry, but that's just not feasible. So, you know, technically, the people who claim that NATO provoked this are correct. Uh, NATO can't have what it wants in Russia in order for Russia to feel safe. But for Russia to feel safe, they've gotta occupy over 180 million people, and that was never part of the game.

4. 3:48 – 9:20

   Battlefield trajectories: mobilizations, Western aid, and the logistics war

   1. JRJoe Rogan3:48

      So what did you ... What do you think they anticipated was going to happen when they started the war?

   2. PZPeter Zeihan3:53

      Well, I don't think it was just the Russians who anticipated it. Uh, Ukraine, the last war in 2014 basically rolled over. They, they proved to be militarily incompetent. They were corrupt and they couldn't put up any sort of resistance. Crimea fell in just a matter of a couple of days. Uh, and I think a lot of us who are in the security side of things thought that this was gonna be, to a degree, a bit of repeat. Now (coughs) ... Excuse me. I was probably one of the more optimistic people for Ukraine, 'cause I had seen them develop a culture and seen them arm and train and had seen it be meaningful, but Ukraine's still a flat country and the Russians are still one of the largest militaries in the world. So even I was saying that within six months to a year, this was all gonna be over. But the Ukrainians have surprised to the upside and probably most importantly, the Europeans didn't just roll over and let this happen like they did the last seven times that the Russians have gone on the warpath since 1999. And that's changed the game fundamentally.

   3. JRJoe Rogan4:51

      And when you look at it going forward, i- if, if people didn't anticipate that the Ukrainians were gonna be able to fight back as well as they have, and then you look at it going forward, like, w- where does this go?

   4. PZPeter Zeihan5:04

      (inhales deeply) Well, there, there's two paths here, and the, the problem is we haven't seen either side fight in their full glory yet. And until we have that fight, we really can't judge.

   5. JRJoe Rogan5:14

      In their full glory, like, meaning?

   6. PZPeter Zeihan5:16

      Well, the, the Ukrainians are the underdog, but they're in the process of rapidly arming with s- more and more sophisticated equipment. And by the time we get to May, they will have been able to do a lot of deferred maintenance on the equipment they captured from the Russians, which was more equipment than they started the war with, and there will be 60,000 Ukrainian troops that have trained in NATO countries with more advanced equipment back in the field. So, you know, we get our Athens, if you will. Uh, on the other side, the Russians will have finished their second mobilization and they will have at least another half a million men in the field. Now, they will be badly trained and badly equipped and badly led with low morale, but troops like that have a technical term attached to them: Russian. There's nothing about this war ...... that is unique in Russian history. The first year is always an absolute shitshow. And then the Russians throw bodies at the problem until it goes away, and in half of those wars, the Russians ultimately win. So, by the time we get to May and the mud season is over, we'll have a more advanced Ukrainian force fighting a much larger Russian force, and we will get our first real glimpse at how this is going to go, and we should know which way it's gonna break. Now, it'll still take time, because if the Russians are going to win, it's gonna take them a year to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses, and then they have to occupy the country, and that's gonna kill a couple million people. Or the Russians are gonna be able to completely break the logistical supply chains that allow the Russians troops to even exist, and we'll have a half a million dead Russians, and the Ukrainians will be able to put the, push the Russians out of Crimea in the east. Uh, and then we get to talk about the next stage, 'cause this is just the opening phase of what is going to be a multiyear and perhaps even multi-decade conflict.

   7. JRJoe Rogan7:00

      Jesus.

   8. PZPeter Zeihan7:01

      Yeah. Welcome to Russia.

   9. JRJoe Rogan7:03

      (exhales) So, how do you think it goes? Like, if, when May rolls around-

   10. PZPeter Zeihan7:09

       Yeah, ask me again in May. (laughs) Uh, right now, the balance of forces clearly are edging more and more towards the Ukrainians. They've proven to be more adaptable. Uh, when the Russians made it clear that they were going to do a second mobilization, that seemed to have broken the logjam in a lot of countries, most notably Germany, and we now have armored vehicles up to and including some light battle tanks, which I know all the tankies out there are gonna hate that term, but-

   11. JRJoe Rogan7:32

       (laughs)

   12. PZPeter Zeihan7:32

       ... anyway, armored vehicles that have some serious firepower are gonna be coming now, uh, the Bradleys from the United States specifically, and that is a, it's a tool that the Ukrainians have not had. So, every time the Ukrainians have achieved a tactical breakthrough, they can only push as far as their infantry can run. Now, their infantry is gonna be mobile, and in a war of movement to this point, the Russians have proven that they're absolutely incompetent.

   13. JRJoe Rogan8:00

       And why is that?

   14. PZPeter Zeihan8:02

       (smacks lips) Part of it's graft. The guy who is the defense minister, Shoigu, is, he's arguably one of the least competent people on the planet, uh, but he's a friend of Putin, and so he's been able to milk the Defense Department for everything. Uh, best guess is that he has taken a third of the budget himself for procurement and his flunkies have taken another third, so very little gets to the military itself.

   15. JRJoe Rogan8:23

       So, it's corruption?

   16. PZPeter Zeihan8:24

       Huge corruption, and that means no training, or if the tr- if there is training, it's basically a parade. And when you're using a force that can only supply by rail, you're completely dependent upon trucks for local distribution, and that's why the Ukrainians went after the trucks with the, um, all the Javelins that they got early in the war. They didn't really go after tanks. They went after the trucks, and they've destroyed roughly 2,000, maybe 2,500 of them, and that has reduced the Russian military to going back to Russia, confiscating city buses and literally Scooby-Doo vans and bringing them back to the front. And, uh, just think of a Scooby-Doo van, now fill it full of artillery shells. You know, every time you hit a bump, "Ah!" And that is their primary ammo supply system now, because the rail system into Crimea got blown up, the Kerch Bridge, and what's going into the east is all under artillery range, so they have to use truck, and they're just not very good at it.

5. 9:20 – 11:34

   Nuclear escalation math: when nukes are (and aren’t) likely

   1. JRJoe Rogan9:20

      Now, for a lot of people, the big fear is that if Russians start, Russia starts really getting desperate, then they use nukes.

   2. PZPeter Zeihan9:28

      Sure, and it, it would have to be very desperate. Um, I have never, I've not been as concerned about the nuclear question as some folks, because there's really only four scenarios. Uh, scenario one is the Russians consider throwing one against the United States, but we've made it very clear from our intercepts and our sharing of information with the media that we know exactly where Putin is at any time. We're listening to his phone calls. We're reading his emails. And so, he now knows very clearly that if he throws a nuke at the United States, we're gonna throw one, not at Russia, we're gonna throw one at him. And there's no version of this where he survives. So, he has tamped down the rhetoric quite a bit since last March. Uh, option number two, nuking Ukraine, that doesn't make sense. They wanna occupy Ukraine. You don't wanna have your troops in a place that's a radioactive wasteland. There may have been a case last year for nuking Poland and Berlin and Stockholm, uh, in order to disrupt the weapons flows into Ukraine. But after the battles of Izium and Kherson, the Ukrainians have more Russian gear now than they know what to do with. It's gonna take them months to bring that all online. There's a lot of deferred maintenance that needs to be done. And so disrupting the weapons flows no longer is a critical issue because the weapons are already there. So, the only scenario I can see where the Russians would seriously consider nukes is if Ukraine doesn't simply win, but decides to carry the fight across the border into Russia proper. In that scenario, where the very existence of the Russian government is threatened, that would probably change the math. But I don't find that likely without a significant shift in mindset in Washington, 'cause we're, we're not just providing the Ukrainians with the weaponry and the ammo, we're providing them with the intelligence and most of the steps of the kill chain. Without that, the weapons are of limited usefulness, especially at long range, and the Ukrainians have no desire to rupture that relationship, so we're talking about a theoretical that is at, at a minimum seven months away, probably further.

   3. JRJoe Rogan11:30

      This whole thing is such a terrifying conflict-

   4. PZPeter Zeihan11:33

      Mm-hmm.

6. 11:34 – 18:29

   Russia’s grim endgame: casualty tolerance, demographic collapse, and Putin’s purges

   1. JRJoe Rogan11:34

      ... b- being that Russia is a nuclear superpower and the history of Russian wars, I mean, there's such a long history of sacrifice and death, and they have, uh, it's like they're accustomed to it in a way.

   2. PZPeter Zeihan11:50

      Oh, we can do better than that. We can make you a lot more depressed.

   3. JRJoe Rogan11:52

      Okay.

   4. PZPeter Zeihan11:52

      So-

   5. JRJoe Rogan11:53

      (laughs)

   6. PZPeter Zeihan11:53

      ... uh, let me give you two things. Uh, number one, the Russians are relatively casualty immune. They, they fight in an area where they fight with numbers. They've never been technologically advanced versus their peers. Uh, they've always just thrown bodies at it. So, there has never been a conflict in Russian history where they have backed out without first losing a half a million men.We're at about 100,000 now. We have a long way to go before the Russian military breaks.

   7. JRJoe Rogan12:17

      So the Russians have lost roughly 100,000?

   8. PZPeter Zeihan12:20

      That's the best guess at this point.

   9. JRJoe Rogan12:21

      How many Ukrainians have been lost?

   10. PZPeter Zeihan12:23

       Probably about a third of that. But that is a third in terms of military forces. In terms of civilians, we really don't know. Uh, it could be as much as 250,000 at this point. We just don't know.

   11. JRJoe Rogan12:33

       Really?

   12. PZPeter Zeihan12:34

       Yeah, well, it's ... The data exists on the other side of the front line. All we know are about what has happened in the territories that have been liberated. And if you think of things like Bucha and Izium, um, German radio intercepts told us as far back as May that there were at least 70 places behind Russian lines that had suffered massacres, like Izium, I'm sorry, like, um, like Bucha. And when we've had additional liberation since then, it corroborates that general assessment.

   13. JRJoe Rogan13:04

       So ... (sighs)

   14. PZPeter Zeihan13:06

       Well, so that, that's piece one-

   15. JRJoe Rogan13:07

       Okay.

   16. PZPeter Zeihan13:07

       ... you can be a little depressed about. Piece two, uh, the Russians see this as an existential fight for their survival. They feel if they don't get those blocking positions, they're doomed, and they're probably right. But we now know that the Russians are fighting so badly, they're doing much worse than the Iraqis did in 1992. That if-

   17. JRJoe Rogan13:24

       Really?

   18. PZPeter Zeihan13:25

       Oh, yeah. If we had a direct fight now between NATO and Russia, it would be 1,000:1 in casualties, and I don't know anyone at the Defense Department who's happy about that. Because if the Russians see this as an existential conflict and they know they can't hold a match to NATO, the nukes are their only option. So, the primary reason why everyone in the West has sh- gotten shoulder to shoulder on this is they know that if Ukraine falls and Poland's next, there will be a direct fight, the Russians will l- lose, and then there will be a general nuclear exchange. So, there's plenty of really solid reasons to root for the Ukrainians on this one.

   19. JRJoe Rogan14:07

       (sighs) Jesus Christ. Now, when this whole thing broke out, what, uh, what do you think the R- that you think the Russians expected Ukraine to just give up?

   20. PZPeter Zeihan14:18

       Absolutely. That's what happened in 2014 for the most part.

   21. JRJoe Rogan14:21

       And what are the possible scenarios for Russia? I mean, if... It, it seems like they're completely committed to this.

   22. PZPeter Zeihan14:29

       They are.

   23. JRJoe Rogan14:30

       And if they don't win it?

   24. PZPeter Zeihan14:32

       The, the Russian position is that our demographic structure is, is in such diseased and aged and terminal decline that the Russian state will be turning the lights off sometime, at least, between 2050 and 2070 anyway.

   25. JRJoe Rogan14:47

       Anyway?

   26. PZPeter Zeihan14:48

       Yeah. The, uh, they've had a series of big melon scoops out of their birth rate throughout the history, uh, World War I, World War II, the collectivizations under Stalin, Brezhnev's, uh, mismanagement, Khrushchev's mismanagement, uh, the post-Cold War collapse, and a lot of these stack on top of each other. And the biggest one stacked on top of the post-Cold War collapse. So, there are more Russians in their 50s than their 40s than their 30s than their 20s than teens. And then they lie about the data, the teenagers on down. Uh, which means that there isn't, there aren't enough Russians ha- that have been born in the last 30 years to carry the ethnicity forward much farther. And so they're thinking if they can forward position their military and plug those gaps now with their last generation of young people, then they can kinda die on their own terms 50 years from now. But-

   27. JRJoe Rogan15:36

       Have they really thought about this, in that term? Like ...

   28. PZPeter Zeihan15:39

       Yeah. This, this... One way or another, this is the end of Russia. The question is whether it dies in the long term on their terms or in the shorter term when they're completely unmoored. 'Cause if they fail to secure those borders, then they've got a 2,000-mile open border with countries they consider to be hostile, and they have no way of moving troops around in a way that would allow them to defend it. They'd just be waiting for somebody to come over and knock them over. That's-

   29. JRJoe Rogan16:03

       And you, you believe that they're aware of this, that they, they can't survive past 2050, 2070-

   30. PZPeter Zeihan16:09

       Right.
7. 18:29 – 24:42

   Propaganda, Putin’s health rumors, and the absence of a coup pathway

   1. JRJoe Rogan18:29

      Now, what do they hope happens and what, how, I mean, when- when everything's going so poorly, like, what do we know about how they're assessing things?

   2. PZPeter Zeihan18:39

      Well, they're obviously not thrilled with the way that things are. Uh, they're using one bit of propaganda after another to justify it, saying that, you know, we're fighting all of NATO or like, you know, demons are involved. That was my personal favorite.

   3. JRJoe Rogan18:49

      Demons?

   4. PZPeter Zeihan18:50

      Oh, yeah, you know. When it came to the Kherson offensive and it became clear that there was more going on than just NATO weapons, the Ukrainians actually knew what they were doing. Uh, they changed the- the line from that these are all Nazis to these are actually gay demons. Uh, the-

   5. JRJoe Rogan19:03

      Gay?

   6. PZPeter Zeihan19:03

      Gay demons, yes.

   7. JRJoe Rogan19:05

      What?

   8. PZPeter Zeihan19:05

      Yeah. Russian propaganda's a hoot.

   9. JRJoe Rogan19:08

      Please explain the gay demons.

   10. PZPeter Zeihan19:09

       Oh, I don't know if I can explain it. I'm just saying that this is the official line right now is that we have homosexual-

   11. JRJoe Rogan19:14

       (laughs) But how do they-

   12. PZPeter Zeihan19:14

       demons fighting us in Ukraine.

   13. JRJoe Rogan19:17

       But why- why gay demons? Like what is-

   14. PZPeter Zeihan19:20

       Uh, well-

   15. JRJoe Rogan19:21

       Is there a mythology to that?

   16. PZPeter Zeihan19:22

       (laughs) Not really. Uh, the guy who's in charge of the Orthodox Church is a Putin crony. Uh, Kirill is his name. Um, he's kinda like the Eastern Orthodox Pope, if you will. And he has been a partner with organized crime and with Putin since the beginning. And so he is coming up with ever more creative approaches to the propaganda. And so this is a way of ... How can I say this without pissing off half of the people listening? Imagine Trump using his influence with evangel- evangelical Ch- Christians to come up with a theological reason why something didn't go his way. It's kinda the equivalent of that.

   17. JRJoe Rogan20:06

       Hm.

   18. PZPeter Zeihan20:06

       And so gay demons is what he came up with.

   19. JRJoe Rogan20:08

       Gay demons.

   20. PZPeter Zeihan20:09

       Yes, and they ran with it, so that's on state propaganda now.

   21. JRJoe Rogan20:11

       Really?

   22. PZPeter Zeihan20:12

       Yeah, it's wild.

   23. JRJoe Rogan20:13

       And what's the epicenter of the gay demons?

   24. PZPeter Zeihan20:16

       Oh, Kiev, obviously.

   25. JRJoe Rogan20:17

       Kiev.

   26. PZPeter Zeihan20:17

       Yeah, so we've got a Jewish-Nazi gay demon.

   27. JRJoe Rogan20:22

       (laughs) Wow.

   28. PZPeter Zeihan20:24

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan20:24

       And-

   30. PZPeter Zeihan20:25

       Truth is always weirder than fiction.
8. 24:42 – 27:54

   ‘The End of the World Is Just the Beginning’: globalization built on U.S. security + favorable demographics

   1. JRJoe Rogan24:42

      Now, the, the title of your book is The End of the World Is Just the Beginning.

   2. PZPeter Zeihan24:45

      That's the one.

   3. JRJoe Rogan24:46

      Why that?

   4. PZPeter Zeihan24:48

      We are dealing with the end of the world that we know. Russia is a more of a symptom of this than a cause. So, (clears throat) to go back a little bit, in the world before World War II, if you had coal, oil, food, and iron ore, you could industrialize and try to make something of yourself. But if you failed to have one of those, you were probably a colony. At the end of the war, the Americans abolished the imperial system and patrolled the global oceans for everyone, and as a result, now you only needed one of those four and you could trade for the others. And so for the first time in human history, we were all on the same path, you know, from different starting points and going at different speeds, but we were all industrializing and we were all urbanizing. The problem, well, let's start with the opportunity. When you urbanize, you move from the farm and into town to take an industrial job. When you live on the farm, you have a lot of kids because they're free labor. You move into the city, you have a lot fewer kids because kids are no longer free, they're really expensive and noisy and annoying and dirty pieces of furniture. Uh, and you have fewer of them, and so your population starts to shift. It used to be that you have loads of children, a few young adults, fewer re- retirees. Uh, it's kind of a pyramid. But as you urbanize, your pyramid opens up into a column because you have fewer kids, but everyone's living longer. And as long as your population is a column, economic growth is spectacular because you don't have to spend a lot of money on your kids, you're not old enough that you have a lot of retirees, but you got a lot of people in their 20s and 30s to build things and buy things, and then a lot of people in their 40s and 50s to do the investing. And the rich world wa- was a population column from 1945 to 1992. And with the end of the Cold War, the developing world became a column in 1992 until now. The problem is that this is all temporary because birthrate keeps dropping, people keep living older, and your column eventually inverts into an open pyramid, upside down, and now you no longer have children, you no longer have a replacement generation at all. And there aren't enough people in their 20s and 30s to buy everything, and there aren't enough people in their 40s and 50s to pay for the retirees. So this decade was always going to be the decade that most of the advanced world moves into mass retirement and the economic model collapses. And next decade was always going to be the decade that that happened to the developing world. And we found out recently that the Chinese have jumped the ship and this is their last decade too. So all of the globalized connections and consumptions that create the world we know, we are at the end of it, and we have to go back to a world where trade is more focused on the countries that have a better demographic and security, uh, infrastructure because the Americans are no longer patrolling the global oceans anymore. So we're losing the security ramifications of an open system. At the same time, we're losing the demographic capacity to support it in the first place, and that's all going down right now.

9. 27:54 – 31:38

   China’s vulnerable decade: demographic lies, rising labor costs, tech constraints, and import dependence

   1. JRJoe Rogan27:54

      So when you're- when you're saying that China has 10 years to go-

   2. PZPeter Zeihan27:57

      At most.

   3. JRJoe Rogan27:58

      ... what do you mean by that?

   4. PZPeter Zeihan27:59

      Well, we now know that they've lied about their population statistics and they're- they overcounted their population by over 100 million people, all of whom would have been born since the one-child policy was adopted. So this is one of those places where they've got more people in their 60s than their 50s, in their 40s, in their 30s than their 20s.

   5. JRJoe Rogan28:14

      Now w- what was the logic behind the one child? Was it that they were overpopulating?

   6. PZPeter Zeihan28:18

      Xiao was concerned that as the country was modernizing, the birthrate wasn't dropping fast enough and that the young generation was literally going to eat the country alive. So they went through a breakneck urbanization program which destroyed the birthrate. At the same time, they penalized anyone who wanted to have kids, and both of those at the same time have generated the demographic collapse we're in now.

   7. JRJoe Rogan28:39

      And the problem with that also was that they wanted male children.

   8. PZPeter Zeihan28:43

      Yeah, there's a cultural aspect to that too and obviously men can't have kids on their own.

   9. JRJoe Rogan28:48

      And what is the, like, ratio to- men to women in the younger people in China now?

   10. PZPeter Zeihan28:53

       Uh, (sighs) before the data revision with the last set of lies, it was about 1 to 1.2. It was the most distorted in the world, even more than Sri Lanka where there had been a civil war for 30 years. Uh, since then, we don't have good sex-by-sex data, but it's undoubtedly worse.

   11. JRJoe Rogan29:11

       And so what are the other problems that they're encountering that leads you to believe that they only have 10 years left?

   12. PZPeter Zeihan29:17

       Well, without young people, we've seen their labor costs increase by a factor of 14 since the year 2000. So Mexican labor is now one third the cost of Chinese labor. Their educational system focuses on memorization over skills, so despite a trillion dollars of investment and a bottomless supply of intellectual property theft, they really haven't advanced technologically in the last 15 years. Uh, Mexicans' labor is probably about twice as skilled as Chinese labor now, even though it's one third the cost. Uh, they've consolidated into an ethnic-based paranoid nationalistic cult of personality, and it's very difficult for the Xi administration to even run it because it's not an administration anymore. No one wants to bring Xi information on anything. So like Putin lied to his face, for example, be- last fe- last February about the war, saying, "Why would I invade Ukraine?" And you can see in some of the- the presses the- the defense guys in the back of the room like ... They didn't want to say anything because Xi has a history of shooting people he doesn't like.Uh, and so they, th- the Chinese were the only country that was caught with their pants down when this all went down. Uh, the Biden administration is basically taking the trade policy of Donald Trump and running it through a grammar checker and putting it into the institutions. So, we now have tech barricades that prevent the Chinese from buying the equipment, the tools, or the software that's necessary to make semiconductors. In fact, he went so far as to say any Americans working in this sector have to either quit or give up their American citizenship. Every single one of them either quit or was transferred abroad within 24 hours. So, the tech system is stalled. They don't have the young people to go consumption-led. They're completely dependent on the US Navy to access international trade. They are the most vulnerable country in the world right now. And based on how things go with Russia, we're looking at a significant amount of raw materials falling off the map, specifically food and energy. And the Chinese are the world's largest importer of both of those things. So, there, there's no version of this where China comes through looking good. And the challenge for the rest of us is to figure out how do we, in as smooth and quick as a process as possible, figure out how we can get along without them? Because they are going away, and they're going away this decade for certain.

10. 31:38 – 47:09

    Taiwan, Xi’s isolation, and crisis compounding: energy, food inputs, and potential fragmentation patterns

    1. JRJoe Rogan31:38

       Well, if you say they're going away, clearly they're not just gonna lay down.

    2. PZPeter Zeihan31:43

       No, they'll di-

    3. JRJoe Rogan31:43

       They're gonna try to adjust.

    4. PZPeter Zeihan31:44

       Yeah, they'll die. Um ... (laughs)

    5. JRJoe Rogan31:44

       Right? They're, they're ... But, but how so? Do you think this is because, uh, like, what is ... Other than, well, here, here would be a big problem, right?

    6. PZPeter Zeihan31:53

       Mm-hmm.

    7. JRJoe Rogan31:54

       Taiwan. Like, if, if we impose the kind of sanctions that we've imposed on Russia, if, if China decides to invade Taiwan and the world stands up and the world imposes sanctions on China, how does that go?

    8. PZPeter Zeihan32:08

       Uh, very ugly for the Chinese. So, you know, say what you will about the Russian economy. It's corrupt, it's inefficient, it's not very high value add, but it's a massive producer and exporter of food and energy. You put the sanctions that are on the Russians on Beijing, and you get a de-industrialization collapse and a famine that kills 500 million people in under a year. And the Chinese know this. They can only push so hard. Uh, also, you know, you can make the argument that if the Russians succeed, they actually solve or at least address some of their problems. Even if the Chinese were able to capture Taiwan without firing a shot, it doesn't solve anything for them. They're still food importers. They're still dependent upon the United States. They're still energy importers. And even if they take every single one of those semiconductor fab facilities intact, they don't know how to operate them because they can't operate their own. And their own are among the worst in the world, not the best.

    9. JRJoe Rogan33:07

       (sighs) Whew.

    10. PZPeter Zeihan33:08

        Yeah, the o- the only reason, in my opinion, to be concerned about a Taiwan war is because Xi has so isolated himself that when one person is making all the decisions and that one person refuses to access information to make the decisions, strange stuff happens.

    11. JRJoe Rogan33:24

        And when you say refuses to access, what do you mean by that?

    12. PZPeter Zeihan33:27

        He does not have normal information flows anymore. Like, even at the height of the Trump administration when Trump was, basically isolated himself from the entire intelligence community, uh, he was still getting the daily briefing. There was still information being put in front of him. But Xi is so isolated himself, he doesn't want to hear anything except for what he wants to hear. And since no one knows what the status of the conversation with the voices in his head in on any given day, no one wants to bring him anything unless they're ordered to.

    13. JRJoe Rogan33:56

        W- how do we know this about him?

    14. PZPeter Zeihan33:58

        Because there's no one to listen to anymore. That's one of the fun things about Russia versus China right now is that the, the Russian information security is so poor that American intelligence is literally listening in on everything. But in China, we can hear into the office, but there are no conversations happening.

    15. JRJoe Rogan34:14

        What do you mean by that? What do you mean? Like, so no one talks to him about anything?

    16. PZPeter Zeihan34:17

        Anything. I- if you look at the-

    17. JRJoe Rogan34:19

        So, he's just terrifying to people?

    18. PZPeter Zeihan34:20

        Yeah, exactly.

    19. JRJoe Rogan34:21

        Because he murders dissidents, he murders anybody that is-

    20. PZPeter Zeihan34:25

        He doesn't murder everyone.

    21. JRJoe Rogan34:26

        He murders a lot of people.

    22. PZPeter Zeihan34:27

        But there's a lot of people in prison.

    23. JRJoe Rogan34:28

        And th- well, there's also a lot of billionaires that got disappeared, right?

    24. PZPeter Zeihan34:31

        Yep.

    25. JRJoe Rogan34:32

        And a- any dissent.

    26. PZPeter Zeihan34:33

        Yeah. Uh, it's, you're either executed or exiled, intimidated into silence. There's, there's a variety of options. And if you look at the, the third party congress that we had late last year, that's when they select the Politburo, everyone on the Politburo now is a personal flunky. There is no one from a different faction. There is no one that has a history of being incompetent.

    27. JRJoe Rogan34:53

        (sighs) Whew. And what is their plan?

    28. PZPeter Zeihan34:56

        The Chinese?

    29. JRJoe Rogan34:56

        Yeah, do we have any idea-

    30. PZPeter Zeihan34:57

        (laughs)
11. 47:09 – 1:16:33

    De-globalization’s winners, supply-chain reshoring, and Mexico’s pivotal role (plus cartel risk)

    1. JRJoe Rogan47:09

       What do you think the world looks like in 10 years?

    2. PZPeter Zeihan47:12

       I think we'll have a system of regional trade where you've got certain regional powers who have ... actually benefit from the environment. So, one of the fun things about the United States is that, uh, we've got more navigable waterways than everyone else in the world put together, about 13,000 miles. And it's about one-tenth the cost to move things by water as it is to move it by truck. So, with that sort of environment and ocean moats, the United States is an economic power whoever who i- is in charge. I mean, we've- we've had decades of bipartisan effort to try to screw this up and we haven't pulled it off yet. We're not gonna do it in the- under Biden. He doesn't have the energy. Uh, w- which means that globalization from our point of view, from an economic point of view, was a problem because we had one of the world's best geographies and we deliberately sublimated that in order to support our allies a- against the Soviets in the Cold War. We basically paid people with globalization to be on our side. And it worked. But we're getting away from that. And now, geography is gonna have a much bigger role to play. And if you layer demographics on top of that, if you have a country with a decent geography and a decent demography, they can kind of write their own ticket in the world we're going to. And there are a few of those. The United States is at the top of the list.Argentina looks really good. France and Turkey look great. And then Japan is kind of a consolation prize because they've managed to cut a deal with both the American right and the American left, and get themselves invited into kind of an American friends and family plan. So, you get these spheres of influence that don't necessarily cooperate or compete with one another, but are kind of in their own little worlds. And anything outside of those spheres of influence is probably a territory that is not very economically viable, and most of them don't have demographic structures that are sustainable at all.

    3. JRJoe Rogan49:01

       This really is the end of the world.

    4. PZPeter Zeihan49:03

       The end of the world we understand, yeah. We're, we're going back to something that's a lot more similar to the world as it existed in the early 1900s.

    5. JRJoe Rogan49:11

       Whew. Uh, uh, uh, how does China come through this, though?

    6. PZPeter Zeihan49:15

       They don't.

    7. JRJoe Rogan49:16

       So, what happens to them if they don't?

    8. PZPeter Zeihan49:18

       Well, I mean, this is one of the wild things and the hard parts of my job, is we have never faced a demographic collapse that wasn't caused by war. Uh, the closest would be the Black Plague, but the Chinese are gonna lose a greater percentage of their population in the next 20 years than Europe did during the, uh, the Black Plague, just from aging.

    9. JRJoe Rogan49:36

       And you think by famine?

    10. PZPeter Zeihan49:38

        Uh, this assumes no famine. This is just aging.

    11. JRJoe Rogan49:41

        Just aging?

    12. PZPeter Zeihan49:41

        Yeah, if you have an energy breakdown or a food breakdown, it happens a lot faster.

    13. JRJoe Rogan49:46

        And they have energy issues and they have food issues.

    14. PZPeter Zeihan49:49

        They are the world's largest importer of energy, about 14 million barrels a day. Remember, we're a net exporter. And they are the world's largest food imp- importer of food and food inputs.

    15. JRJoe Rogan49:59

        And are we the only major superpower that can generate its own, uh, natural resources in terms of natural gas, shale oil?

    16. PZPeter Zeihan50:09

        We're the only ones who can do it at scale. I would argue that Argentina can do a pretty good job of it, by Argentine standards.

    17. JRJoe Rogan50:16

        So, we're fairly safe in that regard?

    18. PZPeter Zeihan50:19

        Yeah. I mean, we'll always find things to stress about. I don't mean to suggest that the next five years are just gonna be a picnic. Uh, we're gonna have to double the size of the industrial plant as the Chinese system and the German system both fall offline. But that's an opportunity. You double the size of the industrial plant, obviously that's inflationary. But at the other side, you're building things at home using local resources and local workers. You're using less energy and less water. It's cleaner. You're selling to locals, and your supply chains are simpler and safer and shorter, and you're largely become immune to shocks beyond the horizon. This is a good challenge. It won't be easy, but to be perfectly blunt, we've done it before. We can do it again.

    19. JRJoe Rogan51:07

        Well, one of the things that came up during COVID was our understanding for, uh, really for the first time, of the supply chain-

    20. PZPeter Zeihan51:14

        Mm-hmm.

    21. JRJoe Rogan51:14

        ... and what happens when it gets cut off, when medicine, uh, so much medicine is produced in China, so many, uh, computer chips, so many, so many different things are made over there, that there's been a real conversation about the need to have all that stuff here and for the United States to be self-sustaining.

    22. PZPeter Zeihan51:33

        With the inflation, or I mean, I don't wanna come across as a partisan here, but the Inflation Reduction Act, while from a, um, an inflation point of view is ridiculous, there is nothing about that that addresses inflation, uh, it did put together a nationalist economic policy that we probably did need in terms of pushing the re-industrialization on some specific sectors. Uh, it'll probably be the first of a series of things that are coming. And a lot of this stuff is not particularly complicated. So, take the, the medication issue. Uh, it's 1950s technology for the most part. The medicines that we import from China and India are not the biologics or the cutting edge stuff or the cancer drugs. They're the day-to-day maintenance things that a lot of us use. And it is not particularly expensive or time-consuming to build out the capacity here. It's basic chemistry. But there has not been an economic incentive to do it yet. So, you get one act of Congress and splash a little cash on it, and it might cost us eight cents for a pill instead of 4 cents, but you know, we can argue whether or not that is worth the price. You get into more sophisticated manufacturing and it kinda does this weird split. So, the United States is a world leader at the very high end, whether it's semiconductors or vehicles or machinery or software, but we're also a world leader on the low end if it's input-intensive, so energy products and food products, uh, fuel, processed foods. Our problem is in the middle, places where it's not the natural bounty of North America that helps us out, and it's not the ingenuity and the skill of the American workforce that helps us out, the stuff in the middle. To be perfectly blunt, for that, we've got Mexico, and they're great at it. Uh, the American-Mexican trade relationship is already the largest in the world, and they're gonna be our largest trading partner moving forward for at least the next 30 years, probably a lot more. Are there hiccups? Oh, yeah. Plenty of hiccups.

    23. JRJoe Rogan53:31

        Well, I'm sure you're paying attention to the cartel wars that are going on right now.

    24. PZPeter Zeihan53:34

        Uh, yeah, it would be, it would be so much better if Americans did not like cocaine.

    25. JRJoe Rogan53:38

        (laughs)

    26. PZPeter Zeihan53:39

        I mean, just that, would just solve half of this overnight.

    27. JRJoe Rogan53:41

        Or if cocaine was legal.

    28. PZPeter Zeihan53:43

        Uh... The health studies that I have seen suggest that that is not the way forward.

    29. JRJoe Rogan53:49

        But, uh, you, do you really think that it would change the consumption?

    30. PZPeter Zeihan53:53

        Oh, it would definitely alter the consumption. How, I don't know. This is not something I'm an expert at. But most of the people that I've seen who have done the assessments suggest that any gain in terms of law enforcement and criminal activity, uh, would be lost in terms of work days and sickness. So, from a purely economic point of view, at best, it looks like it might be a wash.
12. 1:16:33 – 1:38:22

    Energy and climate realism: EV limits, material constraints, wind/solar geography, and nuclear’s waste bottleneck

    1. JRJoe Rogan1:16:33

       What i- what is your perspective on EVs?

    2. PZPeter Zeihan1:16:35

       Uh, they're not nearly as p- good on carbon as people think. Um, most of the data that exists doesn't take into the fact that most of the stuff is processed in China where it's all coal-driven, and it doesn't take into efack, uh, uh, effect the, um... I'm sorry, does not take into account the fact that most grids that they run on are also majority fossil fuels. And that extends the break-even time for carbon from one year to either five or 10 based on what model you're talking about. Cybertruck's far worse than EVs. Uh, but the bigger problem is we're just not gonna be able to make them much longer. If we really do want to electrify everything, that doesn't just mean EVs. That means the entire system that feeds into the EVs. We need twice as much copper and four times as much chromium and four times as much nickel and 10 times as much lithium and so on. We have never, ever in any decade in human history doubled the amount of a mainline material pro- production in 10 years, ever, and we need all of this by 2030? No. It's just not technically possible.

    3. JRJoe Rogan1:17:36

       So, how does the government, say, of California justify these mandates when they're saying something like, "By 2035, all combustion vehicles-"

    4. PZPeter Zeihan1:17:46

       Mm-hmm.

    5. JRJoe Rogan1:17:47

       "... must stop being sold in the state of California"?

    6. PZPeter Zeihan1:17:49

       Well, let's put the ideology to the side, 'cause I'm not even gonna try to explain that. Uh, I will give a little bit of defense for California though, 'cause I do consider myself a Green. I just think of myself as a Green who can do math, so I don't get invited to any of the parties. Um, California's state legislature gives a lot of authority to their state bureaucracy, so the bureaucracy will set the goalposts, no ICEs by 2035, knowing that the technology doesn't exist, knowing that the supply chains don't exist, but they will set the goalposts. If we get closer to that date, say 2027, and it's apparent that the technology is not proceeding at a pace that it will allow that target to be reached, they have the authority already to move the goalposts. And they do this on clean air issues. They do this on toxicity. They've done it on nuclear power. They will undoubtedly will end up doing it on EVs.

Episode duration: 1:56:40