Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

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Anti-Semitism’s Enablers with Bret Stephens of The New York Times Jan 21, 2022

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Anti-semitism was tragically back in the news in recent days with the hostage-taking at the Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. But was this event covered the way it should have been? Barely. And this tells us a lot about anti-Semitism during these times. Is this period different? Have we entered a ‘new normal’ for anti-Semitism? Is it just the extremes or are there now more enablers? Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, joins us. Bret came to The Times after a long career with The Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently deputy editorial page editor and, for 11 years, a foreign affairs columnist. Before that, he was editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. Bret has reported from around the world and interviewed scores of world leaders. He is also the author of "America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.” Bret was raised in Mexico City, earned his BA at the University of Chicago and his Masters at the London School of Economics.

“Back in the USSR” with The Wall Street Journal’s Walter Russell Mead Jan 15, 2022

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In these conversations, we’ve talked a lot about tensions on the Russia-Ukraine border. But what we haven’t talked about is whether Putin is actually trying to re-assemble the former Soviet Union, whether the US and NATO are prepared to arrest his march, and whether Putin has successfully driven a wedge between the US and Europe. What are the stakes for us? Walter Russell Mead joins us. He is the Global View columnist for The Wall Street Journal. His column appears weekly. Walter is also at the Hudson Institute, Bard College, and at the Council of Foreign Relationship he was the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy. He has authored numerous books, including “Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World”, which you can purchase here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/special-providence-walter-russell-mead/1126488390

How does a war with China start? With Admiral James Stavridis Jan 07, 2022

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On this podcast series, and in many other discussions and debates in think tanks and in the media, we often speculate about the likelihood of a kinetic conflict with China – is it inevitable? Or is it highly unlikely? But today we want to consider how a war would actually start, however grim this topic may be. It’s often hard to visualize what the trip wires would be. Admiral James Stavridis co-authored an entire book with Elliot Ackerman on the subject. It’s called “2034: A Novel of the Next World War”. Admiral James Stavridis is a retired four-star U.S. naval officer. He is currently Vice Chair, Global Affairs and Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm. He is also 12th Chair of Rockefeller Foundation board. Previously he served for five years as the 12th Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He led the NATO Alliance in global operations from 2009 to 2013 as 16th Supreme Allied Commander with responsibility for Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, Syria, counter piracy, and cyber security. He also served as Commander of U.S. Southern Command, with responsibility for all military operations in Latin America from 2006-2009. He earned more than 50 medals, including 28 from foreign nations in his 37-year military career. Earlier in his military career he commanded the top ship in the Atlantic Fleet, winning the Battenberg Cup, as well as a squadron of destroyers and a carrier strike group – all in combat. Admiral Stavridis earned a PhD in international relations and has published eleven books and thousands of articles in leading journals around the world. His 2012 TED talk on global security has over one million views. Admiral Stavridis is a contributing editor for TIME Magazine and Chief International Security Analyst for NBC News. You can order his most recent book here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/2034-elliot-ackerman/1137207434

From Baby Boom to Baby Bust - with Nicholas Eberstadt Dec 31, 2021

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China is poised to pass one of the great demographic inflection points” – that’s according to the Financial Times. The inflection point the FT is referring to is that of diapers for the elderly growing into a larger market than diapers for infants. China won’t be the first. As far back as a decade ago in Japan, adult diapers started outselling infant diapers. What does that tell us about demographics, not just in China, but about the developing world as a whole? We are in the midst of a larger global trend that has not received enough attention: crashing fertility rates and shrinking populations. According to forecasts by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, the world population will peak at 9.2 billion around 2065, and then drop to 8.8 billion by the end of the century. That’s a stunning difference -- if you take into account that in the 20th century world population grew 600%, from one billion to six billion. The Lancet study also found what the lead scientist for the project called a “jaw dropping” result: the population of twenty-three countries -- including Japan, Italy, Spain, and Thailand -- would drop by at least half by the end of the century. The U.S. and the rest of Europe are also headed for a worrisome situation. This is a trend that will have far-reaching implications for the 2020s. It will impact economics, geopolitics, culture…it could radically change the very nature of how our societies are organized. To get a crash course on the issue, we invited someone who has been screaming from the hilltops about this trend for a long time. Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he researches and writes extensively on demographics and economic development generally. His many books and monographs include “Poverty in China”, “The Tyranny of Numbers”, “The End of North Korea”, “The Poverty of the Poverty Rate” and “Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis”. His latest book is “Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis”. Nick earned his PhD and masters degree in political economy from Harvard, and a Master of Science from the London School of Economics.

Revisiting The New Inflation - with Mohamed El-Erian Dec 30, 2021

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The Covid-19 recession technically ended in April 2020. At two months, it was one of the shortest economic recessions in history. Since then, we have experienced record inflation. Last summer, we sat down with Mohamed El-Erian, who was an early voice warning about the coming inflation, how to understand it, and what its implications could be. But were the inflationary trends already in place prior to the pandemic? Did the covid response policies of governments here and abroad accelerate those trends? And how do we unwind an inflationary cycle? Today we are reposting that conversation with. Dr Mohamed El-Erian is President of Queens' College, Cambridge University. He serves as part-time Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz and Chair of Gramercy Fund Management. He’s a Professor at The Wharton School, he is a Financial Times contributing editor, Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and the author of two New York Times best sellers. He serves on several non-profit boards, including the NBER, and those of Barclays and Under Armour. From 2007-2014, Mohammed served as CEO/co-CIO of PIMCO, which has over two trillion dollars under management. He worked at PIMCO for a total of fourteen years, and was chair of President Obama's Global Development Council. He also served two years as president and CEO of Harvard Management Company, the entity that manages Harvard’s endowment. He has been chair of the Microsoft Investment Advisory Board since 2007. He holds a master's degree and doctorate (economics) from Oxford and received his bachelor and master degrees from Cambridge University. Mohammed is expert in a lot of things when it comes to the financial markets and the macro economy, especially inflation. So he’s going to help us make sense of the madness. Is this inflation transitory or is it here to stay for a while, and if so, what should we do about it?

Revisiting China’s Great Wall of Steel - with Matt Pottinger Dec 28, 2021

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This week we are re-posting some of our episodes from 2021 that are most relevant right now. We’ll start with Matt Pottinger on recent developments in China. China’s borders have been sealed for almost two years. And those borders will be closed for the foreseeable future. That, obviously, is a result of the pandemic; but, is there a larger grand strategy at play? For decades now, China’s coupling with western economies has been the dominant theme of the global economic landscape - beginning with China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization. But that’s been changing. Fast forward to a speech by President Xi Jinping to mark the hundred year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. He spoke before a massive crowd in Tiananmen Square: "The Chinese people", Xi said “will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or enslave us. Anyone who tries to do so shall be battered and bloodied colliding with a great wall of steel forged by more than 1.4 billion Chinese people using flesh and blood.” Last summer, Chinese regulators announced an investigation into DiDi Global, a ride-hailing company, right after its IPO. DiDi had raised $4.4 billion in the biggest Chinese IPO in the U.S. since Alibaba’s in 2014. There have been similar moves against other Chinese companies listed in the US. Where will this go? Consider this: There are approximately 244 U.S. listed Chinese firms with a total market capitalization of around $1.8 trillion. Are we witnessing the decoupling of the US and China economies? Is this the one issue on which there seems to be a bipartisan consensus in the US? Is the Biden administration cementing the Trump policies towards China or reversing them? How is China dealing with the pandemic and how will it factor into the Chinese Communist Party’s next moves? There’s no better guest to help us understand what’s going on than Matt Pottinger. Matt covered China and lived in China as a journalist for Reuters and then The Wall Street Journal. He covered the first outbreak of SARS in China. He then, in his early 30s, made quite a career change. He enlisted in the US Marine Corps, and served in multiple combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Later on, Matt played an instrumental role in the geopolitical story of our time: reshaping the West’s relationship with China, when he served as the deputy National Security Advisor in the Trump administration, and he was the architect of the administration’s strategy towards China. Today, he is regularly called upon from policymakers on both sides of the aisle, to consult on US policy towards China. As we enter a new phase of pandemic, what is going on with the US-China relationship and how will it play out?

How Omicron Stunned The Scientific Community - With Scott Gottlieb Dec 17, 2021

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What about Omicron has most surprised the scientific community? What does it tell us about vaccines and where we’re heading? These are among the big questions we have for Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former Commissioner of the FDA and author of The New York Times Bestseller: “Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic”. Scott currently serves on the boards of Pfizer, Illumina, Aetion, and Tempus. He is a special partner with the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. You can order Scott Gottlieb’s book here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/uncontrolled-spread-scott-gottlieb/1139568341 And you can follow him on twitter here: @ScottGottliebMD

Russia: In decline or on the march? with Richard Fontaine Dec 11, 2021

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Russia poses a threat to Ukraine, again. But what about Russian President Putin’s threat to the unity of Europe, and what do recent developments tell us about global perceptions of America's geopolitical strength? Is Russia a declining power or is Russia on the march? Could it be both? Our guest, Richard Fontaine, is CEO of the Center for American Security. He was formerly the top foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain, deputy staff director on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and an official of the US State Department and National Security Council.

The American College Crack-Up - with Niall Ferguson Dec 04, 2021

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In this decade we may finally experience a true crack-up in higher education. There have been comparable periods on American college campuses in the past (in the 1960s and 1980s, for example). But our guest today, historian Niall Ferguson, believes what’s happening now is on a whole other level. Niall is doing something about it -- he’s starting a new university. Niall argues that parents -- who had enriching and intellectually diverse experiences when they went to college -- don’t fully appreciate that their own children will experience something completely different when they go off to university. Niall Ferguson has taught at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and New York University. He’s authored 17 books. He’s currently at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University where he is the MIllbank Family Senior Fellow, and Managing Director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Order Niall’s most recent book, “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe” here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/doom-niall-ferguson/1137713414 Learn more about the University of Austin here: https://www.uaustin.org/ Learn more about Greenmantle here: https://www.gmantle.com/ Email me with questions, comments and ideas at Dan@unlocked.fm.

Lessons for the 2020s - With Historian Niall Ferguson Nov 26, 2021

Show notes

The first of our two-part conversation with Naill Ferguson is on applied history’s lessons of the 1920s and the 1970s...for the 2020s. Niall is a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and he previously taught at Harvard, NYU and Oxford. He’s the managing director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Niall is also the author of 17 books including “The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook” and “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe”.

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