Hidden Forces

Latest Episodes:

The Information War & Things Worth Fighting For | Demetri Kofinas Apr 04, 2022

Show notes

In Episode 242 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas shares an appearance he made on "The Realignment" podcast a week before the invasion of Ukraine. Demetri spoke to the seriousness with which he views the information problem and the information war that we're all combatants in today, the move from unipolarity to a world of disorder, as well as the spiritual deadening that he feels we've all been living through. He also discusses the need for both a national purpose and a sense of self that is inclusive, communal, and forgiving of our individual shortcomings—a sense of self that makes space for the imperfections of a human life.

The world that we are living in today is not the world that most of us grew up in and the next few years are going to be crucial in determining how we want to face the challenges of this new world and more importantly who we want to be coming out the other side of it. What matters to us? Who are we, beyond the carefully curated exteriors that we present on our social media feeds? What do we deem worth fighting for? That's a question we have yet to answer and haven't had to answer for a very long time. This is a luxury we can no longer afford.

You can access the full episode and transcript to this week's conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 02/16/2022

Preparing the U.S. & Europe for Russian Cyber Attacks | Chris Painter Mar 28, 2022

Show notes

In Episode 241 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Chris Painter, a globally recognized leader and expert on cyber security who has been at the vanguard of U.S. and international cyber issues for over thirty years—first as a prosecutor of some of the most high-profile cybercrime cases in the country and then as a senior official at the Department of Justice, FBI, the National Security Council, and the State Department. He's responsible for having established the Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues and served as Senior Director for Cyber Policy in the National Security Council. With the Biden administration reiterating prior warnings that the Russian Government is exploring options for conducting cyberattacks against the United States in response to sanctions levied against the Russian economy, we wanted to help bring all of you up to speed on exactly what those warnings are, what steps are being taken to minimize the damage they may cause, and what the range of possible responses by the U.S. government will be depending on the nature and targets of those attacks. This conversation is meant to give you the information that you need in order to best prepare yourselves and your businesses for what might be coming next, so that you remain ahead of the curve as events evolve and as the collateral damage of the war in Ukraine potentially widens.

You can access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week's conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 03/24/2022

Risks of Nuclear War & the Escalation Ladder | Jon Wolfsthal Mar 24, 2022

Show notes

In Episode 240 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jon Wolfsthal, a veteran of the national security establishment who has served as both special assistant to the President of the United States for National Security Affairs and senior director at the National Security Council for arms control and nonproliferation. He's been involved in almost every aspect of U.S. nuclear weapons, arms control, nonproliferation and security policy during his 30-years of working on issues of national security.

This episode is an exploration of US and Russian nuclear doctrine and decision-making protocols. It's a conversation about how people and institutions in both the United States and Russia think about nuclear war and escalation management, acknowledging that nuclear war would be an unimaginable horror that no rational person would actually want.

Today's conversation is meant to give you the information you need to wrap your arms around what may instinctively feel like a hopelessly scary and irrational situation, so that you can develop the composure you need in order to deal with it.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 03/21/2022

The Battle for Ukraine & Prospects for World War III | Peter Zeihan Mar 21, 2022

Show notes

In Episode 239 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Peter Zeihan geopolitical strategist and author of the soon-to-be-released book "The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization." Demetri asked Zeihan back on the podcast in order to get his perspective on the very serious situation that is unfolding in Ukraine and Eastern Europe at the moment. We discuss the European security theatre, US-Russia relations, the risks of military confrontation with NATO, nuclear escalation, and knock-on effects to global energy markets and food systems. We also speculate on China's involvement in the diplomatic efforts over Ukraine, the implications for Taiwan, the US Dollar system, and so much more. Our objective in bringing you this conversation is to situate the war in Ukraine within this larger geopolitical framework, so that when you see things like Saudi Arabia engaging in talks with China to price some of its oil sales in Renminbi or Egyptian bonds selling off over concerns about wheat shortages and rising prices you are able to put it all in context.

The full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week's conversation can be accessed by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 03/17/2022

Hidden Forces Event in New York City | Thursday, March 31st Mar 20, 2022

Show notes

I'm hosting an event at Ideal Glass Studios in New York City's Greenwich Village on Thursday, March 31st. The event includes a panel featuring the founders of Nillion, a decentralized public network based on an exciting new cryptographic primitive called Nil Message Compute (NMC) that I recently covered in Episode 234 with Miguel De Vega.

Attendees will have a chance to learn more about the project, ask questions of the panelists, and socialize with fellow Hidden Forces listeners and past guests of the podcast who will also be in attendance.

Doors open at 6 PM EDT and the panel will begin promptly at 7 PM.

Make sure to RSVP here while there are still seats available.

Quantifying Structural Risk in 'Zombified' Markets | Hari Krishnan & Ash Bennington Mar 17, 2022

Show notes

In Episode 238 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Hari Krishnan (Head of Volatility Strategies at SCT Capital) and Ash Bennington (Senior & Crypto Editor at Real Vision) about their book "Market Tremors: Quantifying Structural Risks in Modern Financial Markets."

Since the Global Financial Crisis, market structure has undergone a dramatic shift. A combination of Central Bank policy, disintermediation of commercial banks through regulation, and the growth of passive products such as ETFs have 'zombified' markets. Risk has increasingly built up beneath the surface through a combination of excessive leverage and crowded exposure to specific asset classes and strategies. In many cases, historical volatility understates prospective risk.

This conversation is meant to expose you to some of the ideas behind Market Tremors, which provides a practical and wide-ranging framework for dealing with the credit, positioning, and liquidity risk that investors face in modern markets. Ash and Hari draw on the fields of statistical physics and game theory to simplify and quantify the impact of very large agents on the distribution of forward returns, and offer techniques for dealing with situations where markets are structurally risky yet realized volatility is low.

You can access the transcript and intelligence report to this week's conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 03/14/2022

A History of Venture Capital & How to Make the Future | Sebastian Mallaby Mar 14, 2022

Show notes

In Episode 237 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with journalist, historian, and author Sebastian Mallaby about his latest book, "The Power Law," which delves into the history of the venture capital industry and early-stage investing.

This conversation is meant to provide you with a framework for thinking about how to invest in businesses, initiatives, and projects, which not only lack cash flows, but whose values are often fundamentally intangible, difficult to measure, and often impossible to quantify. As more and more of our economic life happens in the digital realm, the ability to assess value and invest accordingly will become an increasingly invaluable skill-set for investors.

In Part Two of their conversation, which is available to premium subscribers only, Sebastian and I delve into the geopolitics of venture capital, some of the approaches to investing in this space, and how national governments can participate in order to support their domestic defense sectors without creating the malincentives that we often associate with 9-figure fighter jets and four-hundred-dollar hammers. Demetri and Sebastian also discuss Web3 in the context of initial coin offerings and how these types of crowdsourced investments have transformed the early stage landscaped and brought public capital into areas of the market that would have never been able to source it only 10 years ago. Lastly, Sebastian offers his views on the uniquely challenging situation facing the Fed Reserve at the moment and what he thinks is most important to focus on when trying to project the likely path for interest rates, economic growth, and asset prices.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 02/15/2022

Economic Warfare & the Weaponization of the Dollar | Julia Friedlander Mar 10, 2022

Show notes

In Episode 236 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Julia Friedlander, the C. Boyden Gray senior fellow & director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center. Ms. Friedlander served as senior policy advisor for Europe in the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, where she collaborated with EU partners on global sanctions policy and combatting illicit finance and as director for the European Union, Southern Europe and Economic Affairs at the National Security Council, charged with coordinating U.S. interagency policy on transatlantic relations and the European Union for White House.

Julia's extensive experience in economic statecraft make her the perfect person to speak to about the the sanctions that have been and continue to be levied against the Russian economy and its political class. We discuss what these sanctions mean in practice and what it is that makes them so unprecedented, as well as the intended and unintended consequences for the prosecution of Russia's war against Ukraine. Aditional topics include the effect of sanctions on the geopolitical stability of Europe, the future of Russia, and the position of the dollar at the center of the international, financial system.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 03/07/2022

Russia-Ukraine War & Risks of NATO-Russia Escalation | Dmitri Alperovitch Mar 07, 2022

Show notes

In Episode 235 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with the fmr. CTO and co-founder of CrowdStrike Dmitri Alperovitch about the latest developments in the war between Russia and Ukraine, including the risks of escalation between Russia & NATO, implications for US-Sino relations, cyberattacks against Western countries, political warfare, and much more.

Dmitri Alperovitch was on this podcast late last year for an episode titled "Why Putin Plans to Invade Ukraine," in which he explained why he was convinced that Vladimir Putin was going to invade Ukraine in January or February of 2022. It was a controversial view at the time that proved to be absolutely correct in retrospect. Kofinas asked him back on the podcast to help explain (1) why so many people struggled to see this war coming, (2) the ramifications of Putin's actions, including his strategic and perhaps, even messianic motivations, (3) risks of escalation, (4) pathways for de-escalation, (5) the implications of this war for US-Sino relations in negotiations over Taiwan, (6) the remilitarization of Germany and the strategic security of Europe, (7) and much more. Dmitri's background in cybersecurity and forensic analysis also proved useful during a discussion about cyber warfare and the dangers of cyber escalation on the part of Russia in responding to Western economic sanctions.

The primary objective of today's episode is to bring you up-to-speed on the latest developments in this geopolitical drama, with the larger, more long-term goal of helping you wrap your arms around some of the more nuanced aspects of the diplomatic crisis so that you know what to focus on, who listen to, and how to think about the types of risks that all of us face going forward.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 03/04/2022

Nillion NMC: A Secure Processing Layer for Web3 | Miguel de Vega Feb 28, 2022

Show notes

In Episode 234 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Dr. Miguel de Vega, the creator of Nillion's new cryptographic primitive, Nil Message Compute (NMC). Nillion allows a decentralized network of nodes to work together using a non-blockchain technology known as Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) to store and process information at essentially centralized server speed, all while remaining information-theoretic secure (ITS). This unique feature represents a significant breakthrough in decentralized systems, allowing Nillion to operate the first decentralized and permissionless public SMPC network at scale. Its security and performance characteristics enable Nillion to not only serve as a secure processing layer for Web3, but also as a source of off-chain computation, as a decentralized private enclave, and as an enabler of interoperability between ledgers.

Today's conversation is meant to give you an early introduction to this potentially transformative technology. Demetri will also be hosting a Hidden Forces panel event with Chief Scientist and inventor of Nillion, Dr. Miguel de Vega and other members of the team at Ideal Glass Studios in New York City's Greenwich Village on Thursday, March 31st, where you can learn more about the project, meet key members of the founding team, and socialize with other listeners and guests of the podcast. Doors open at 6 PM EDT and the panel will begin promptly at 7 PM.

You can RSVP for the event HERE and access a special advanced copy of the Nillion whitepaper HERE.

You can get early access to the episode, as well as the episode transcript and intelligence report to this week's conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 02/18/2022