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China does not benefit from this war continuing. They would like the Russians to have a ceasefire. It is undermining China's relationship with Europe, especially the frontline states, which they would like to be more stable. It is making it harder for the Chinese to have flexibility globally. They really don't like the Russia-North Korea relationship. They want this war over. As you said before, the Chinese need stability. The Russians are chaos actors, so they're not fully aligned in this. If I were Trump, I would absolutely reach out to the Chinese to be a part of this solution.
Ian, where does this podcast find you?
I'm in New York, in our new headquarters. Your Asia Group's top risk report for 2025 is out. In the report, you say we are heading back to the law of the jungle. That's dramatic. Where the strongest do what they can while the weakest are condemned to suffer what they must. What did you mean by that?
For the last 35 years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the wall, we talked at least nominally about the idea that we're living in an increasingly globalized world. That the United States is a democracy that supports the rule of law around the world, supports other democracies, collective security, all of those things. And yet the reality is that order is breaking down.
It's breaking down for a lot of reasons. It's breaking down because the Russians are not a part of the West. They're in decline structurally, they're really angry about it, and they blame the U.S. They've now allied themselves with China. They're actually becoming, in many ways, a more consolidated dictatorship under Xi Jinping. They're putting more pressure on the private sector and supporting more privately owned national champions and state-owned enterprises. That's causing much more conflict in the most important geopolitical relationship in the world.
Most importantly, the U.S. in particular has just fundamentally rejected the idea of being global leaders supporting the rule of law and multilateral institutions. It's America first, baby. It's our way or the highway. We're going to tell other countries that you're going to work with us and do the things we want our way, or there's going to be hell to pay.
So yeah, that sounds a lot like a reversion to the law of the jungle. The powerful and strongest countries and people get to do what they want. I think Trump is much more of a winner than he is a leader. I think that Elon is much more of a winner than he is a leader.
What do you mean by that?
Well, leaders are people that, in their organizations, bring people together. So if you're the leader of the United States, all American citizens look and say, "This is my leader." Your leader in a corporation, all the people in that corporation say, "This is my leader." If you're a winner, you divide. You're a winner. There are other winners and then there are losers.
I really think that is a fundamental challenge that American democracy has and American capitalism has. We've moved away from being a country of leaders trying to make a difference for their fellow man and woman and fellow citizens in the world. Instead, we're winning individually, but we're very tribal, very divided, including inside our own country and with our allies. That makes the world a much more dangerous place.
If you're a loser, you got to suck it up. You got to accept the rules that the winners are making because they won. If you're Mark Zuckerberg, you better change your attitude, my friend, because it's not about how successful you've been. It's about are you on board with the winners? That's true for everybody. If you're the French, the Germans, the Brits, you better get on board. If you're the Canadians, right? I mean, Trudeau just resigned. Did he resign a little faster because he screwed up with Trump?
Yeah, I think so. I think Trump pushed him. He was shot in the face by Chris Freeland, his Deputy Prime Minister, but he was still on life support until Trump shived him. Now he's out. I think there's a lot of that happening in the world today, geopolitically as well as in your world, Scott.
So just a couple of theses I want you to respond to or get your reaction in terms of the law of the jungle. My sense is we're the king of the jungle, we being the U.S. That is, I look at our enemies, adversaries. So let's start with Iran, Russia, and North Korea. You can throw China in too if you want to.
Well, I think of China. I'll come back to that, but I think China is what I call an adversary or competitor, but not our enemy.
I completely agree. It's a different category. But it's interesting because they're weaker now than they were a couple of years ago.
100%. So this is your thesis, and you respond to it. In terms of our enemies, we're kicking their ass. Iran's air defenses have been penetrated by Israel. Their proxies, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah have had their hands cut off, and Assad's gone. Basically, the ally of Russia has had to flee to Russia because of a collapse there.
Russia is bogged down in a war they were not expecting to go this long with these types of results. Then let's move to, as you said, our competitor/adversary, not our enemy. Their economy has just been underwhelming the last 10 years, whereas ours has accelerated. I mean, it's better to be lucky than good. I see Trump as inheriting the strongest hand he could have in America on almost every dimension, other than the fact we hate each other and a lot of our prosperity is not being distributed equally.
On a balanced scorecard, on a relative scorecard, we are kicking everyone's ass. Your thoughts?
First, let me add to your list because you mentioned enemies and adversaries/competitors, and I do think that's the right way to put it. I think China is not the axis of evil or a pariah state the way that the North Koreans, Russians, and Iranians are. Those are chaos actors that want to destroy the international system. They want to defeat the Americans. The Chinese actually need a stable global economy to prosper themselves.
So even if they would like to defeat the Americans, they know that doesn't work with their system. But in addition to that, America's allies are also weaker, right? Technologically much weaker. I mean, think about where the Americans are in terms of entrepreneurship and semiconductors and AI and all these new companies and the markets and the strength of the dollar. Where are the Europeans? Where are the Japanese? Where are the South Koreans? Where are the Canadians? The answer is nowhere.
Their governments are so weak. The U.S. has just elected Trump, and unlike last time around with Biden winning and January 6, I mean, Trump has a mandate. Unlike 2017, Trump has coattails. The Republicans see that they need him, not the other way around. So he's appointed a whole bunch of loyalists. You don't have any Rex Tillerson in this group, no Jim Mattis in this group, no Nikki Haley in this group, no Mike Pence in this group.
So he's consolidated, he's strong, and he's willing to use American power. America's allies are incredibly weak. Their governments are falling apart: South Korea, Germany, France, Canada. All of these countries. So everywhere you look, the United States is stronger now.
I also think at home the U.S. is not in decline, not at all. The people still want to come to America. The American economy is doing very well. The American military is doing well. Its technology is doing very well. But of course, you said, except for the fact that we hate each other.
Not just that, not just that, Scott. Except for the fact that our political system is increasingly not representative. It's increasingly captured by money and special interests. The U.S. system is increasingly a two-tier system, and it's not Democrats versus Republicans. It's access to power versus no access to power. That is uniquely dysfunctional in the context of advanced industrial democracies.
So you've got a political system that is not working, that is arguably in crisis. I mean, if Narendra Modi, who is the most popular democratically elected leader of a large country in the world today, were to have a phone call or meetings with heads of state and CEOs and bring in good money, you and I would rightly state this country is an oligarchy, it's a kleptocracy.
And yet that's precisely what's happening with Trump and Elon right now, and it's completely normalized. I do think that we can't just say, "Well, with the exception of the fact that we hate each other and the political system doesn't work." Actually, that's a pretty cool thing about the United States, the fact that the U.S. has a political system that other countries are supposed to admire, are supposed to be more aligned with.
We've got values that set the standards for the rest of the world. The rule of law is something that the rest of the world wants to be a part of. Our worldview is supposed to be the dominant collective worldview. That's not true anymore.
So we're very powerful, and in the law of the jungle, we're the big ape. Absolutely. But the law of the jungle is a much more brutal, nasty, and dangerous place than a world that has laws and accountability and responsibility and institutions and architecture that the United States is leading with its allies in trying to get other countries to increasingly align with it. It's a radically different place.
You bring up an interesting thought on that. We're now 50% of the world's market capitalization. Our stocks, there's one company in the U.S. that is more valuable than every stock market with the exception of Japan. But if there is a global crisis that emerges, as strong as we are, we just can't go it alone. We need allies.
I don't care if it's World War II or repelling Saddam out of Kuwait, whatever it might be. Even addressing COVID, there needs to be global cooperation. There needs to be a certain level of goodwill. There needs to be alliances.
I think first and foremost, I think of how successful NATO has been in keeping the peace since World War II. Is it fair to say that those alliances have been dramatically frayed, thereby making it a more dangerous world for America despite its strength?
It's an interesting question, Scott. On the one hand, the level of trust of American allies for the United States that the U.S. would be there when push comes to shove has eroded dramatically. If collective security is somehow fundamentally based on the notion that you believe in each other, you're accountable for each other, I think it has weakened.
On the other hand, the Europeans are spending a lot more on defense now than they were, and the Japanese are spending a lot more on defense now than they were. Mark Rutte, the new Secretary General of NATO, former Prime Minister of the Netherlands, is now working with the Europeans to move to 3% GDP spend on defense, which they're doing outside of the EU mechanisms so that the Hungarians can't veto it.
That means they are moving. I think that's going to happen, which means that by the end of the Trump administration, the Europeans will be paying about as much percentage of GDP on defense as the Americans do. That's a stronger NATO.
When Trump demands that NATO allies spend more on defense, that's not a pro-Putin message. That's the exact opposite of what Putin wants them to do. It's kind of interesting, right? I mean, in the same way that America is not in decline, but its political system is, the alliances, like the soft power, the willingness to engage with each other on the basis of "we like you, we trust you, this matters to us," has eroded a lot.
Yet with America as a much more powerful country that other countries have to align with or else, actually, the Americans can drive a lot more. You saw this in our risk report. We have red herrings at the end, things that people think are going to happen that we think will not. One of our herrings was Trump fails.
You see this a lot in the mainstream media: "Oh, this guy's a buffoon, he's incompetent, he only cares about himself, so of course he's going to fail all over the place." We don't think so. We think that Trump is going to say a whole bunch of stuff, and people are going to get on board. They're going to align with him.
If you think that Facebook and Apple are kissing his ass in Mar-a-Lago, that's nothing compared to how foreign governments who are aligned with the United States and know they can't afford to do anything else, the Mexicans, the Europeans, they're going to want to find a way to ensure they don't have a crisis with this guy. So he's going to have a lot of wins in the early stages.
It's interesting because, to be fair, what I think you're saying is Trump's, I don't know, I wouldn't call it a middle finger, but his rolling his eyes or his lack of fear of saying aggressive things about allies has resulted in an increase in spending.
If you will, we still might be the world's policemen, but other people are now buying their own squad cars. This has been a direct positive result of Trump's actions and adversarial tone with our allies. Do you agree?
I do. I do. But also, I would say that the gap is big. It's going to take a long time for them to spend at that level to get close to capabilities to really defend themselves. This is not going to get resolved in four years, even if their level of spending at that point percentage-wise is equivalent to the U.S.
Some countries are already there: the Baltics, Poland, some of the Nordics, that kind of thing. But also, there's a question of the fact that the Americans have the capacity to be a global policeman. Even with support, Trump has no interest in doing that.
Trump was the one that cut the deal with the Taliban that Biden then executed on. In Syria, you've got a government that's now in place in Syria that's very unlikely to stabilize that incredibly complex and volatile territory. You've got over 2,000 U.S. troops stationed in Syria right now. Trump doesn't want to keep those troops there.
If Trump pulls them out, it's not like France is going to send those troops. It's not like the UK is. It's much more likely that the Turks are going to be on the ground. They're going to hit the Kurds hard, no longer jailing ISIS on the ground, and the potential for that to become fertile for a new caliphate is real.
The absence of the U.S. as a willing policeman will save American taxpayers. It will put fewer lives at risk, but it will lead to more ungoverned spaces. It will lead to more depredation, more forced migration that will affect other countries to a much greater degree than the U.S. because the U.S. is geographically very well located, between Canada and Mexico and two big bodies of water.
But the world will become more dangerous and more unstable. So, you know, there's that.
I don't know if this is a function of living abroad now, but when I come back, I don't feel as in touch with America, which is a good and a bad thing. I'd like to think it's offered some perspective, but I am mildly horrified—minus the mildly—at what I see.
This full embrace by not only our leaders but by acceptance by our media and the general public of what is just an obvious, naked, unafraid, and unashamed kleptocracy. If you look at the inaugural campaigns, I think of all the big ten or the magazine ten, there were like a couple $200,000 donations to the inaugural campaign or inaugural celebration of Biden.
Now every one of them is lined up and put in a million bucks. I mean, this feels like literally an episode of The Sopranos where they walk into the local retailer and say, "You know, it'd be a shame if your windows got broken and this place got robbed. We need protection money."
This has now gone full kleptocracy, where Musk increases his wealth by 150 or 200 billion for no other reason, as far as I can tell, than they assume that because he put in a quarter of a billion dollars, the largest, deepest-pocketed customer in the world will throw money at him.
And anybody else who decides to pay for play. Have we gone, is it unfair to say we have gone full kleptocratic with the trajectory very strongly in that direction?
It was already bad before Trump. I mean, you know, three billion plus spent on our presidential election over two years doesn't need to be that way. The incredible willingness of special interests in the U.S. to capture the regulatory system, to write their own policies, that's not a competitive free market.
A competitive free market is one where you've got regulators that represent the public interest and companies have to compete against each other. It's not about who has more access to power and who has the ability to write regulations that support them and get subsidies. It's about who has the best product, who's the most competitive.
We're very far from that in the United States right now. We still have a great environment for small enterprises that start up with plucky entrepreneurs like you and I have experienced and benefited from throughout our lives. But in America, it's still great at that.
But in terms of big corporations and billionaires, no. We're talking about a country that is open to the highest bidder, and our allies see that, and they're worried about it. They don't like it, and it's not the way their systems run—not the advanced industrial economy anyway. It's closer to the way a lot of emerging markets run.
We should worry a lot about that, absolutely. That's where the Elon thing really bothers me. Less about freedom of speech and more about, you know, what does it mean? What does he get for his quarter of a billion dollars?
With Trump, we see how much access he has. We see that he has a position, a non-governmental advisory position in Doge. We see his ability to talk directly with competitor CEOs while he's sitting with the president or heads of state.
He can functionally even veto legislation when he speaks out against it, get people aligned. That's a pretty unique position. We've not seen anyone like that before. He's certainly the most powerful individual in the private sector that the U.S. has experienced since the Gilded Age.
What does that mean for the United States domestically, its political system? What does that mean for the U.S. with its allies in the global order? I don't think it's a good development.
We'll be right back.
So you touched on Syria and RIS number nine. You called it ungoverned spaces. Do you think, and you did begin to outline this, do you think what's happened in Syria is a net positive or negative for the West?
I think the fact that Assad has gone is a net positive for the West because Assad was an utterly brutal dictator who allowed more people around the world to believe that they could act with impunity in their own backyards and get away with it. He was an ally to not just Russia but Iran. He facilitated the illegal transfer of weapons from Iran into Lebanon, strengthening Hezbollah, which is seen by the U.S. as a terrorist organization and a principal adversary of Israel.
He oversaw the principal production of Captagon, an incredibly addictive, enormously debilitating illegal drug that was being exported all over the region and Europe, and some to the United States. I am delighted that he's gone, and I don't shed any tears about him getting poisoned in Moscow within a couple of weeks of the Russians accepting him.
What has replaced him is at best uncertain. This new government came out of ISIS-connected folks, and they are certainly showing that they want to be more inclusive, that they've turned over a new leaf. But does that really mean that they're going to be either capable or willing to run a more stable, more inclusive government that won't either collapse or won't launch a war against large numbers of its own citizens? We'll have to wait and see.
But no, it's clearly a positive, a net positive for the West and for everyone that Assad is gone.
So one of the few places I think we have a bit of a differing viewpoint is on Israel and the conflict there. I'll put forward another thesis: that Israel's bold and courageous actions, taking out more terrorists in six weeks than we took out in 25 years on our most wanted list, cutting off the hands of the proxies of Iran, incredibly bold PR, the most precise anti-terrorist action or operation in history with the pagers and Hezbollah.
Israel has demonstrated not only tremendous power but expertise in strategy here. In my view, their actions are going to make the Middle East a safer, more stable, more pro-West place because of their actions. Your thoughts?
Well, first of all, the only risk that shows up in our report on the Middle East is that oil prices are likely to be low, which means less money for the Gulf States, both for themselves as well as to help countries in the region that need and have benefited from their aid, like Jordan, for example, Egypt, for example, Tunisia, for example.
Secondly, Iran is a significant risk in part because their regime is on life support. They've lost their empire, and the Americans and the Israelis might well decide this is the opportunity to really hit them. Those are the risks.
We didn't have in the report Hezbollah or the West Bank or Gaza because the Israelis have shown that they are militarily dominant. They determine the nature of escalation, and their enemies can't do anything to them. That includes, frankly, the Iranians.
So I certainly accept the fact that the Israelis have defeated their enemies in a pretty spectacular fashion over the last year and a bit following October 7th. I agree with that.
Where you and I probably disagree, and we've had discussions about this in the past, Scott, is that I don't believe that you can resolve the Palestinian problem by blowing them all up. I just don't. I think that if Hamas is an army, they're defeated. If Hamas is an ideology and an idea, you probably made them stronger because you've radicalized people for generations.
What I see in Gaza and the lack of humanitarian support and the comparative breadth of bombing and lack of willingness to be accountable for the risks to the civilian population, I'm not in any way trying to say that Israel shouldn't want to blow up Hamas. I absolutely accept they're a terrorist organization. They've done horrible things to the Israelis and to their own population.
But ultimately, the fact that as a result of this war, the Palestinians are facing far greater depredation than they were on October 6th, and also the Palestinians in the West Bank have lost a lot more territory. They're living under more of a security state. They are much farther from having a state.
I believe that will lead to more radicalism. I believe that will lead to more violence against Israel, against the United States, and more broadly in the region.
I believe that now. I mean, how do you balance those things? Because, again, at the end of the day, Israel is a tiny country. They're very wealthy. They're incredible in terms of surveillance. If they keep their eyes on the ball, as Netanyahu did not before October 7th, they will have great control over their borders.
So, you know, I think in the context of that, maybe they can effectively occupy Palestinian territories, and the Palestinians will just live as an imprisoned people. It's possible, and that that won't be a threat to Israel. I don't believe that that's humane. That's not a world I want to live in, but I also don't think it's true.
Even if you don't care about the Palestinians as people—and there are a lot of people that don't—I believe, and I do, but I understand that there are people that just have decided, "That's my enemy, and I don't care."
But I actually believe that these are people that are industrious, they are capable, and with advanced technologies, they will increasingly find ways to make their voice heard. I worry about that. I mean, I worry about that in the same way that I worry about when the CEO of United Healthcare is assassinated by some pretty boy idiot, that a whole bunch of people on the internet, and by the way, some establishment Democrats, seem to lionize the guy.
Oh, I understand what he did. This is what happens. You radicalize people. They do crazy things, and they have supporters. I worry that the Palestinians are increasingly going to be prone, larger numbers of them, to do crazy things with supporters.
This idea, and a lot of people hold it, that you can kill people but you can't kill an idea, I would push back and say we, for the most part, killed communism. We, for the most part, at least we thought, killed fascism. At the end of World War II, we were bombing Hamburg. We killed 40 service or military and killed 40,000 civilians, and we had already won the war.
When asked, the generals and Eisenhower asked why they continued to devastate Hamburg, they said they need to know they lost. I know that sounds brutal, but I would argue that we would have done worse had we been as viciously attacked.
When you actually look at the data, specifically the deaths of combatants relative to civilians, the Israelis are prosecuting this war more humanely than any Western nation has prosecuted another war. Your thoughts?
I accept the fact that the United States, in the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, also saw massive amounts of civilian damage and brutality. I accept that completely.
But let me—I was focused when I said I take exception to the way the Israelis are prosecuting this war. I've talked about the utter lack of humanitarian aid getting into Gaza, and I also talked about taking more land and the greatest security state in the West Bank. Again, I think those things matter.
Now, I don't think you need to blow up Hamas and still allow food in for the Palestinians. My view is that if you're a friend of Israel, as I am, you want Israel to do well and sustainably long term. That means criticizing Israel when you think it's up.
The United States, which has been the strongest supporter of Israel, bar none, no one else is close, over the last year has been incredibly critical, mostly privately, of the fact that not enough aid has gotten in.
So again, my point here is simply that I believe there's going to be greater radicalization, and we need to move to thinking about how, after they've lost, do they know they've lost? It's not just the war since October 7. The Palestinians have known that they've lost for decades now.
They have less and less territory. They've been moved farther and farther out. Their opportunities—economic opportunities, educational opportunities—are more and more constrained. A lot of that is on their own poor governance, don't get me wrong. It's not just all about Israel. A lot of that's because they were forgotten by the Gulf States. A lot of that's because the Americans don't care about them. The Europeans don't care about them. No one cares about the Palestinians except the Palestinians.
They do. The Palestinians care about the Palestinians. Ultimately, I think that's going to cause a problem. Qatar sent over a billion dollars, which they decided to spend on tunnels and rockets. Haven't they been the beneficiary of a tremendous amount of aid?
Qatar has been the single biggest supporter on the ground in Gaza over the past years, and of course, that's now been cut off. Absolutely. But if you look at what kind of support the Palestinians have had on the ground to build their economy compared to other countries, actual countries in the region, the answer is very, very little.
And look, you know that my mother's side of the family is Armenian. You know, 125,000 Armenians just ethnically cleansed from Nagorno-Karabakh, and no one's talking about it. You're not going to ask me about it. It's not in our top risk report. We didn't write about it at all, even in ungoverned territories. We didn't even bother to mention it because nobody cares.
And that's what I'm saying: law of the jungle. The fact is we could have a very long conversation about why it got to this situation where 125,000 civilians got tossed out of their homes, left with nothing, places blown up, occupied, all their historic monuments, their churches blown up. Nobody talks about it. It bothers me as a person, you know.
But the fact is, I mean, look, we talk about the Palestinians because it gets a lot more attention, but there are so many places where these are the same conversations.
But again, I want to stop you because I feel like I'm sitting across the table from someone I respect immensely, and I can have a civil conversation around things I recognize I feel strongly about. But I don't know what I don't know.
You talk about we're not having these conversations around the 120,000 people who have been disappeared in Syria under Assad or what's happened in Yemen. Isn't it mostly because when Jews kill people, it's seen as a different crime against humanity than when other people kill people? Isn't there just a tremendous double standard here?
Look, I think that there are all sorts of double standards, but they don't just go one way. I mean, the Holocaust has been seared in the collective historical memory and the imagination of everyone that lived at that time and since. For a long time, the Jews were seen to be the principal global victim, and we all had to ensure that never happened again.
Today, that is not true. Today, Israel is the dominant military actor in the entire Middle East, not just vis-à-vis the Palestinians, and they are the ones that get to decide. Now, we in the United States love an underdog. I think there has been a shift for a lot of young people in the United States that suddenly don't see support for Israel as support of the underdog.
They think that we're somehow the bad guys because we're in favor of the powerful and not in favor of the oppressed. The Ukrainians are in the position that the Israelis used to be in. So I think there's some of that.
I think there has been a massive surge in anti-Semitism around the world, very disturbing, and that certainly has to do with the fact that there are a hell of a lot more Muslims than there are Jews, and a lot of them are on TikTok, for example. You see that performing algorithmically, not because TikTok is nefarious, but just because it performs with those eyeballs.
There's some of that, and also the fact that there's just a lot of media occupying that space. This is an area that has a lot of journalists on the ground covering it. There ain't no journalists in Sudan or Yemen writing about it. This part of the world matters economically, technologically. It doesn't—Sudan? Nobody cares, right? It doesn't have a market impact.
There's no one that's going to school there that's going to come and talk about it. There's not as much of a diaspora in the West as there is when you talk about the Israelis and the Palestinians. I think there are lots of reasons, and you can't simplify this to just one factor.
You and I would not do that about any other discussion we'd have. We certainly wouldn't want to simplify this in that way.
Let me press again. First comment: I absolutely love these conversations, so thank you. You said that TikTok is not because TikTok is nefarious. Another thesis: TikTok is largely influenced, if not controlled, by the CCP, who has a strategic reason to depose us or make us weaker.
If they can't beat us economically or kinetically, why wouldn't they put their thumb on the scale of content that polarizes us, resulting in 52 pro-Hamas videos for every pro-Israel video, which, according to the research I've seen, is taking place on TikTok?
In some, I would argue TikTok is nefarious and purposely trying to delegitimize or create polarization amongst our public.
I think social media is nefarious, and I agree that TikTok is certainly influenced by the CCP, the Communist Party of China. We should not trust that. They have said that they are not giving any information to the Chinese Communist Party. That has been proved in many investigations, Wall Street Journal and other reports, to be not true.
I'm not comfortable with the idea that TikTok is just a free market corporation that's only seeking profits and nothing matters. But to the extent that the Chinese have been involved in cyber operations to influence U.S. elections, and the Russians have been involved, the Iranians and the North Koreans, the Russians are actively promoting information that is trying to increase a sense of racism, rage, violence, hostility, maltreatment.
They're flooding the zone in ways that really is trying to disrupt and undermine U.S. democracy and stability. China's cyber influence on the U.S. elections was overwhelmingly intelligence-seeking. It was to get inside the systems to figure out what they're really doing so that we can take advantage of it.
It was also to get inside critical structures so that just in case things go badly, we might be able to blow these guys up. I'm someone that believes that I don't know what I don't know. I know what I know. I am not inside. I know the CEO of TikTok. I've met him many times. I'm not inside their decision-making process. I don't know what they're saying to the Communist Party.
But I know what I see, the evidence from what the Chinese have done in other areas. There's no reason for me to believe that that would uniquely and somehow be different with TikTok than it is with their entire national strategy, which has been risk-averse and influence and information-maximizing for them directly.
It has not been breaking and blowing up the United States. I also think that there's a much simpler explanation for why young people would get a lot more pro-Islam and pro-Palestinian content than they would get pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. It's because TikTok is a global platform with enormous numbers of people from Pakistan and Indonesia on it.
It's also oriented towards younger people that are already, even in the West, much more pro-Palestinian than they are pro-Israel all over the world, and that's just being driven algorithmically. I think that's the simplest argument.
So that's how I feel about that.
Let's talk about Ukraine. Give us your state of play in Ukraine.
You'll remember back at the beginning of 2024, you and I talked about this, and I said, and I wasn't happy about it at all, I said I think Ukraine is going to get partitioned. You were one of the first people that ever said that out loud. I want to point that out. You said, "Look, this land, they're never getting it back."
It's essentially what you said.
Yeah, and I mean, I want to be very clear. I really don't want that outcome, but it's not for me to be telling everybody what I want. It's much more about where you think things are going. The Ukrainians, I think, increasingly understand that they're now trying to position themselves for the best possible negotiation where they are going to have to lose most, if not all, of the territory that the Russians presently occupy.
They'd like a little leverage, which is why they're continuing the offensive incursions inside Russia, so that they have something to trade that will make the negotiations more fraught but give them leverage. The Russians also would benefit from a breather.
They've got 15,000 North Korean troops that are not fighting well and are dying in large numbers, but they're having a harder time raising significant numbers of troops for the war effort, and their economy is increasingly performing badly under the strain of sanctions and lack of human capital.
I think that Trump is going to succeed in getting a ceasefire. I don't think it's going to take a day. It's going to be hard, but when he tells the Ukrainians they need to accept what I'm telling you or else, first of all, he's creating some cover for Zelensky to say, "Look, I've got no choice now because of the Americans," which is helpful to Zelensky, frankly.
But also, he does know that the Americans will cut off aid if he doesn't. So that will move. The French, Macron, has also delivered that message just yesterday to Zelensky. He's heard it from the Germans and others, so he's getting that pressure.
The Russians also know, though, it's harder to pressure them in this environment. The U.S. has less leverage. They know that if they don't accept negotiations and a ceasefire, they're going to get tougher sanctions from Trump. I do believe that, and Trump has delivered that message.
I also thought it was very interesting. I mean, Trump's tweets aren't always interesting, but sometimes they are. There was one he put out a couple of weeks ago that said about Russia-Ukraine that also China can help. It was very interesting that Trump would say that.
I fully agree with it. China does not benefit from this war continuing. They would like the Russians to have a ceasefire. It is undermining China's relationship with Europe, especially the frontline states, which they would like to be more stable.
It is making it harder for the Chinese to have flexibility globally. They really don't like the Russia-North Korea relationship. They want this war over. As you said before, the Chinese need stability. The Russians are chaos actors, so they're not fully aligned in this.
If I were Trump, I would absolutely reach out to the Chinese to be a part of this solution. The first Trump-Xi Jinping call is going to be utterly fascinating for so many reasons, but this is one of them.
So just as we wrap up here, and we have a lot of young people listening to this podcast who are very focused on trying to develop their own careers, a lot of people listen to this and hear about your background in GZ Media and think, "God, that is just such a cool job in business."
What just give us just a cliff notes? I would imagine your business is booming. What is the friction right now in your business? When you look at 2025 as the founder of this consulting firm or media company, what are you most excited about and most worried about as it relates to being an entrepreneur and building your business?
Well, I mean, it's kind of funny because, of course, given that we try to help people understand the world, when there's more uncertainty, more people need us. That's true both in terms of the companies that pay us to do consulting and advisory work and also in terms of the members of the public that engage with our media channels and the rest.
We did a lot better growth-wise in the Trump administration than we did in Biden. Leaving aside the fact that tax rates went down, all the corporates did well under that. Generally speaking, there was much more uncertainty driven by the Trump administration, and we already see that starting now.
He's certainly acting as president with Biden doing much less. I expect that'll be true again, so that's not a point of friction.
The point of friction, and I think you'll appreciate this, is that we've got almost 250 employees right? For me, that sounds amazing because I started as a kid from the projects, and it just sounds like a headache.
Well, I've got a CEO. It's not like I'm running it, but I mean, 250 people is a small company in the grand scheme of things. It's a small company. The biggest point of friction is that we need to ensure that the bets that we make in a given year—there are so many places that we could go and engage and build the firm—different types of business, different geographies, different sectors we can invest in, different kinds of staff, all sorts of things we can do.
Yet, as a firm with 250 people, you can only make four or five of those bets in a serious way in any given year. So it's not about who your competitors are globally. It's much more about marshalling your resources intelligently yourself and making those bets so they're not singles, but a couple of them are actually home runs.
You really do, you know, you're constrained. I mean, it's kind of like you and I have so many hours in the day. You've got so many hours with the kids before they don't want to talk to you anymore. How are you going to spend that time with them that maximizes it?
We've got only so many people and so much money we can deploy. How do we do that in a big world with opportunity? There's too much opportunity in the world, and there's only one of me and only one Eurasia Group, only one GZ Media. How do you do that?
I'm an optimist. My eyes are always bigger than my stomach. Everything can work out. The people around me are meant to ensure that there is structure and reality around all of that, and I think they do a real good job.
Yeah, it's the charge of any leader is not what to do but what not to do, how you allocate capital to its greatest return.
Ian Bremer is the president and founder of Eurasia Group, the world's leading political risk research and consulting firm, and GZ Media, a company dedicated to providing intelligent and engaging coverage of international affairs. He's also the author of 11 books, including the New York Times bestsellers Us Versus Them, The Failure of Globalism, and his latest book, The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats and Our Response Will Change the World.
Ian, Alec Baldwin has hosted SNL 17 times. You have now been on Prop seven times. We are catching up fast. You are hands down our favorite guest. You're thoughtful, you're civil, you're creative. I just love these conversations. I really appreciate your partnership and friendship.
All right, brother. Take care. Happy New Year.
You too.