EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,238 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- PZPeter Zeihan
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
- JRJoe Rogan
The Joe Rogan Experience.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music)
- JRJoe Rogan
Hello, Peter.
- PZPeter Zeihan
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
What's going on, man? Nice to meet you.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Right back atcha. It has been a crazy year.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. It's been a crazy year for everything, right?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Not even, not even a little, no.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
So what did you ... What do you think they anticipated was going to happen when they started the war?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- PZPeter Zeihan
(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.
- JRJoe Rogan
In their full glory, like, meaning?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah. Welcome to Russia.
- JRJoe Rogan
(exhales) So, how do you think it goes? Like, if, when May rolls around-
- PZPeter Zeihan
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- PZPeter Zeihan
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
And why is that?
- 15:00 – 30:00
Have they really thought…
- PZPeter Zeihan
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Have they really thought about this, in that term? Like ...
- PZPeter Zeihan
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
And you, you believe that they're aware of this, that they, they can't survive past 2050, 2070-
- PZPeter Zeihan
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... whatever it is?
- PZPeter Zeihan
I think that's what's been driving them, because 2022 was the last year where they had a sufficient number of people in their 20s to even attempt this. So, uh, from my point of view, not only did the war always have to happen, it always had to happen by now.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus. Now, is this just because of the nature of a dictatorship that's run by someone like Putin, that it's just completely mismanaged 'cause he's just dominated the power structure and made sure that everybody f- falls in line with his ideology and his reign? Like, what, what caused all this to be so poorly managed?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Well, Russia has always been poorly managed and authoritarian. But under Putin, it's taken a much darker turn, uh, because of the nature of the end of the Cold War. Uh, if you remember back to 1982, there was a coup in the Soviet Union, and Chernomyrdin and Andropov and Gorbachev were FSB, well, then KGB agents who basically overthrew the old system of Brezhnev and took over and tried... Because they were the only ones who really had a full understanding of what was going on. They controlled the information. Uh, they were not able to save the system, and so it broke. And Putin is the successor to that legacy, because he was also in the KGB. And we're now in an environment that between the terminal demographic structure of the Soviet/Russian system and Putin's personal paranoia, so he's gone through and purged what was left of the KGB, FSB, of anyone who has personal ambitions to succeed him. We're left with an entire political elite of only about 130 people, and Putin has removed anyone who has leadership ambitions.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, geez.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Now, they all see the world the same way. They all kind of agree with Putin on what's at stake here. Uh, but it does mean that when this generation is gone, this is it. This is all the leadership talent that the country has.
- JRJoe Rogan
So because of his sort of top-down approach-... he's eliminated all the possibility of future leaders in some way.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah. Even if Russia did have a replacement generation coming up, and it doesn't, he's taken steps to make sure that they can't challenge him. And so any sort of leadership talent has left or been killed.
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Demons?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Gay?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Gay demons, yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
What?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah. Russian propaganda's a hoot.
- JRJoe Rogan
Please explain the gay demons.
- PZPeter Zeihan
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) But how do they-
- PZPeter Zeihan
demons fighting us in Ukraine.
- JRJoe Rogan
But why- why gay demons? Like what is-
- PZPeter Zeihan
Uh, well-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is there a mythology to that?
- PZPeter Zeihan
(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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hm.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Well, if you say…
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, if you say they're going away, clearly they're not just gonna lay down.
- PZPeter Zeihan
No, they'll di-
- JRJoe Rogan
They're gonna try to adjust.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah, they'll die. Um ... (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
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?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs) Whew.
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
And when you say refuses to access, what do you mean by that?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
W- how do we know this about him?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you mean by that? What do you mean? Like, so no one talks to him about anything?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Anything. I- if you look at the-
- JRJoe Rogan
So, he's just terrifying to people?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah, exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because he murders dissidents, he murders anybody that is-
- PZPeter Zeihan
He doesn't murder everyone.
- JRJoe Rogan
He murders a lot of people.
- PZPeter Zeihan
But there's a lot of people in prison.
- JRJoe Rogan
And th- well, there's also a lot of billionaires that got disappeared, right?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
And a- any dissent.
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs) Whew. And what is their plan?
- PZPeter Zeihan
The Chinese?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, do we have any idea-
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Right. …
- JRJoe Rogan
rule of law on people that had existed in more or less a Westernized democracy.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, wha- how do they control that?
- PZPeter Zeihan
The Chinese?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I mean, h-
- PZPeter Zeihan
Well, Hong, Hong Kong would probably be one of those cities that splits off. Uh, but for that to happen, you first have to have the northern section basically fall in on itself. As long as there are security services, these southern cities can't go their own way. But as soon as something happens to those security services and they're focused on the homeland in the north, then the si- the southern cities are gonna bolt.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, what does China think about ... Do they have an understanding of this collapse or is it just-
- PZPeter Zeihan
S-
- JRJoe Rogan
... because of Xi's power over everyone that- that none of this gets discussed so there's no planning?
- PZPeter Zeihan
See, this is w- this is one of the beautiful things about authoritarianism, is they start telling stories and eventually they believe them. Happened in Russia, it's happening in China. Uh, Chinese academics as recently as 10 years ago were very, very aware of this and it shaped government policy. They wanted to make sure that the, the democrats, little d, uh, in Hong Kong didn't get too uppity, they tried to make sure that there were people from the south on the Politburo, but as we've gotten into a more ossified and centralized decision-making system, all of the lessons of the past are going away and it's all about central control. And they're, once again, because this is another trend that just pops up in China over and over again, they're forgetting their own history.
- JRJoe Rogan
But China has always been thought of as a country, at least the narrative has always been that they plan long game.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah, it's a bunch of crap.
- JRJoe Rogan
They plan ... Is it?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah, no, the Chinese are just as bad as everyone when it- when it comes to ideological blinders and short-term decision-making and the more isolated and concentrated the decisions -- I'm sorry, the, the tools of power become, the more problematic that becomes.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, what is their plan on getting through what you think is a, a 10-year timeline for their demise?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Uh, beat the nationalist drum so that when the food and the energy run out, everyone is banding together simply because they're Han Chinese.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's it?
- PZPeter Zeihan
That- that- that's as good as it's gonna get, because there is no trade option out of this without the United States.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do you think the world looks like in 10 years?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
This really is the end of the world.
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whew. Uh, uh, uh, how does China come through this, though?
- PZPeter Zeihan
They don't.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, what happens to them if they don't?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you think by famine?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Uh, this assumes no famine. This is just aging.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just aging?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah, if you have an energy breakdown or a food breakdown, it happens a lot faster.
- 1:00:00 – 1:15:00
Break in, in what?…
- PZPeter Zeihan
a town, you shoot it up. You do kick over the old lady, you do take her purse, you make the people scared of you. That's the point of this. Drug running is a side gig. We are here to be powerful, and drug running is just one of the ways we make that happen. And he has taken the fight to every cartel and the Mexican government, and they're in the process of trying to break into the United States.
- JRJoe Rogan
Break in, in what? Economically?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah, El Chapo and the Sinaloa became the largest drug trafficking organization in America under the Obama administration, and one of the reasons our birthrate went down so far so fast is they basically either co-opted or killed, uh, American gangs. So they killed the people who were doing the killing, not a lot of Americans got killed after that. All of the other cartels control the access points into the United States, but Jalisco New Generation now is challenging every single one of them, trying to break through, and if they do and they bring their business acumen, if you will, north of the border, they're gonna start killing white chicks named Sheila and Phoenix, and then we're gonna have a very different conversation in this country about the drug war and about trade with Mexico.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, what- what- when you say that they've killed the gangs, like, what- in what way? Because that is an interesting thing that you don't hear a lot about American gangs anymore.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Well, that's because they're not there to the same degree. So, the Sinaloa, they- they co-opted the Hispanic gangs, especially the Mexican gangs because there wasn't a language barrier there, uh, and they really targeted and gutted a lot of the African American gangs. They took over drug smuggling and distribution from them to deny them income, and then they just shot a lot of people.
- JRJoe Rogan
And when did this take place?
- PZPeter Zeihan
That happened during the- the 2000s. It was pretty much completed by the time we got to 2013.
- JRJoe Rogan
But we weren't really kind of- this- this narrative didn't really go around. This is not something that I've heard before.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Well, yeah, look at the murder-
- JRJoe Rogan
It's making sense, what you're saying.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah. Look at the- look at the violent crime rates in the United States. They've been trending down really significantly since about 2004, and the drop from 2004 to roughly 2014 was amazing. That's largely Sinaloa.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, they have silently sort of invaded and taken over the distribution and taken over the gang activities.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Right, and this is El Chapo's cartel that is now getting broken up. And as soon as you have more players, more violence is going to happen, especially against one another, and that's one of the reasons that the murder rate in Mexico has skyrocketed in the last three years.
- JRJoe Rogan
Do you know who, um, Ed Calderon? Do- have you ever followed Ed Manifesto on Instagram?
- PZPeter Zeihan
I have not.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's, uh, he used to work for the government in Mexico and, you know, to- to fight off the cartels, and now he's made his way to America and he's just does a great job of highlighting all this stuff. But one of the things he was showing is they were using .50 caliber rifles to try to shoot down planes yesterday.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Have you seen that?
- PZPeter Zeihan
I have.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, what the fuck is going on over there? I mean, it- it seems like we concentrate so much on these conflicts that are happening all around the world, and there's a massive one-
- PZPeter Zeihan
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... happening in a place where we could walk to.
- PZPeter Zeihan
That's the disintegration of the Sinaloa cartel. So, uh, back in 2019, the- the Los Chapitos, I can't remember his name, I keep wanting to say an Octavian, and that's not it because that's a girl's name. Anyway, begins with an O. Uh, he was captured in 2019 and they weren't able to get him out of town fast enough, so all of his homies basically got together with assault weapons and descended upon the police units that did it, and they were forced to let the guy go.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I remember that.
- PZPeter Zeihan
This time, they were able to get him to the airport fast enough and he's- he's already in Mexico City. So, there was a clash, but not nearly to the degree that we had a couple years back.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, this is... Look at this here.
- PZPeter Zeihan
Oh, yeah. One of the things-
- JRJoe Rogan
This is a guy shooting at airplanes, which is fucking bonkers. I mean, what kind of airplanes are those? Are those-
- PZPeter Zeihan
Those are probably civilian.
- JRJoe Rogan
And why is he doing this?
- 1:15:00 – 1:18:44
Whew, uh, n- do…
- PZPeter Zeihan
Uh, but my background is in economic development, so you know, figuring out what works where and why. And once you kind of get the ideology out of it, you can look for patterns, and that took me to Stratfor and that took me to geography. And so just kinda combining the data patterns with the American strategy for World War II and beyond with the demographic developments that have happened because of that strategy, it leads you to some pretty unavoidable conclusions. And then it's merely an issue of filling in the blanks, and most of my career now has been filling in the blanks for the last 10 years.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whew, uh, n- do you have dissenters? Like, uh, how much pushback do you have-
- PZPeter Zeihan
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... about these ideas?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Oh, yeah, well-
- JRJoe Rogan
Do people think you're full of shit?
- PZPeter Zeihan
Oh, s- all kinds of people think I'm full of shit.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- PZPeter Zeihan
Uh, I am very sector and goal agnostic in my work, which means I don't really care what your investment strategy is if it doesn't play against demography and geography in a comprehensive way. At best, you're hoping that everyone just kinda sways in your general direction. And so there's no shortage of people in a room when I'm speaking who get really upset because they have an investment thesis or maybe they've bet their company on something that I just see as a non-issue. Uh, so, you know, obviously the folks in the crypto world, um, have never liked me, and I dropped a video last night about how EVs are just a disaster that aren't gonna be with us very much, uh, very much longer, and I got some... I've gotten some interesting communications because of that one. So, things like this happen with me with almost every presentation, and last year, I gave 179 presentations.
- JRJoe Rogan
What i- what is your perspective on EVs?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, how does the government, say, of California justify these mandates when they're saying something like, "By 2035, all combustion vehicles-"
- PZPeter Zeihan
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... must stop being sold in the state of California"?
- PZPeter Zeihan
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
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