Warning: Russia's Invasion Started WW3 | David Murrin on @GeopoliticsEmpire
Summary
Market Outlook: The guest argues we are effectively in World War III since 2022, with escalating risks across Ukraine, the Middle East, and an impending Asian flashpoint driven by long-run geopolitical cycles.
Precious Metals: Strong case for gold and silver as long-term stores of value amid de-dollarization and inflation, with a potential path for gold toward significantly higher levels.
Oil Price Spike: Resource constraints and conflict-driven demand in the K-wave C-phase could push oil substantially higher toward decade-end, benefiting energy producers.
Defense Spending: A shift toward a war economy favors real manufacturing and Aerospace & Defense, with examples like the UK’s need for a missile shield and broader rearmament imperatives.
De-dollarization: Global bifurcation (autocracies vs. democracies) threatens the dollar’s reserve status as China accumulates gold, implying persistent inflation and potential debt restructurings.
Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin may act as a short-term hedge with upside but faces long-term vulnerability to quantum computing; gold remains the preferred durable hedge.
China Conflict: China’s asymmetric capabilities (missiles, hypersonics) and industrial mobilization pose a major strategic threat, potentially reshaping global power projection.
No Specific Tickers: The discussion focused on macro themes—commodities, defense, currency regimes—rather than recommending individual public companies.
Transcript
Welcome to another smashing edition of Geopolitics [music] and Empire. Quick reminder, uh I really do need you to support this Rebel Transmission. The best way to do that, become a paid subscriber on my Substack. Five bucks a month, 50 bucks uh a year. You can also buy me a coffee or send reinforcements through my donor box. Today, we're joined by David Murin, who's he's got a super long and amazing bio you can read at davidm.co.uk. That's david mur r i n.co.uk. He's a global forecaster, author, speaker, commentator, adviser on national security, military history, geopolitics, and financial markets. He's got an affordable subscription service as well with his analysis and commentary you might be interested in. Welcome to the podcast, David. >> Hey, thank you very much for having me on board in such learned company. [laughter] >> Yes. Well, I think you you you beat me, but you know, I love the I love the synergy. I wanted to mention this. you actually sent me a message recently about coming on the podcast. But the funniest thing is for the longest time I've had your name uh on my list of guests to get on. and I've been following your your work for a while and so it's great finally we get to speak and and maybe to start you know I like to bring smart people on who come from all over the place with unique uh views and and you know I want I and I want my listeners to learn learn from you and perhaps you could to start tell us about the gist sort of the focus the arc of your work and how you sort of big picture analyze uh the world and then we can get into what's what's happening on the planet. So to to give you a bit of background, I'm a physicist by training, which sort of explains why I tried to look at social human dynamics and boil them down to essential behavioral patterns. And I did that because I g joined the world of finance and I was an asset manager and sought to understand what would come next in the macro world until 911 came along when um there was a conjunction between my profession which was finance and my passion which was military history and I asked a simple question you know was that an accident or was it a far more significant event that would produce a historical outcome that people didn't expect i.e. not a hundred years of democracy, but actually the decline of the American empire. And in asking the question, I then had to work out how to answer it. And there wasn't enough price data to apply my models. So I reverse engineered what I think is a fractal of human behavior in price into what I call the five stages of empire. Five distinct organizational stages, which I called regionalization, expansion to empire, maturity, overextension, and decline. And by the middle of O2, I'd managed to go and prove that I could use the clocks of war to describe that pattern in every empire civilization I could come across. And it was profound. It talked about the way that society operated. For example, it expanded in what I call with lateral ad adaptive behavior. And it can declined with linear like rigid behavior. And there's a whole thing we can talk about about where we are in the world now which is uberlinearia and what that really means for lack of adaptation. But from that simple model I had to ask other questions is why was the duration for example of western Christian empires shortened compared to the older systems I looked at. And then I realized that the national systems of Portugal, Spain, France, Britain, Germany trying twice and America were essentially a bigger system, a super empire which was a Christian mimic empire starting with the the Catholic faith with the Spanish and the the Portuguese, the Spanish and the French and then really expanding to the world as a global maritime system which was based on Protestant free belief and also the lateralism that was conveyed by high ratio of coastlines to internal volume of Britain and Holland as seafaring nations. And that's really changed the world because the democracy that started all those years ago in Athens or attempted to start or not a version we'd recognize followed through to the democracies of Protestant countries like Britain and Holland and they spread to the world and we've got this ongoing conflict between autocracy and democracy in today's age. Then the other part of this the sort of concept was if there was a super empire in the west there's probably one somewhere else and I defined a super Asian empire starting with the Japanese followed by the Chinese and followed by India. Now that's all very obvious now but back in O2 people laughed when I said the west is going to decline create a vacuum and China is going to rush into it faster than we can imagine. It's going to out innovate us and it's going to lead to a conflict that starts somewhere in 2022 and to the into the peak of 2030 which is World War II. Now that was 20 years ago. Now the idea that you could understand cycles in this particular way I've only a few people I've seen have attempted to do it and this is much more profound in its construct because it entered another idea and that was a work of Kratif and Kandratif was a Russian economist. He believed in 56 year cycles which is three kind of lunar peak cycles in effect. That's probably where it comes from. And every time it peaked or the world peaked, he noted there was conflict. And that really got my interest as someone interested in military history because suddenly military history and finance coincided. And I worked out that the beginning of the last contractive cycle started in O2, the one we're in. And I made a lot of money by being long of resources into the 210 peak. But I also realized rather soberingly that meant there would be a war at the end of it. And that war would be the drum beat in effect of the shift of power between America and China. Now all of this was worked out in O2 a long time ago and since then I've written books. I've talked about it and every part of this Germany has tracked it. I don't believe in predeterminism but I do believe in unconscious cycles and collective unconscious cycles. And so the theory of empires, the theory of this contratia surge which I now would define in the context of something much bigger and probably we need to talk about that in a second and it's called entropy and how humans develop anti-entropy to survive but we can talk about that when you get a you get a question in. >> Yeah. And you know what what you just discussed is fascinating because that's sort of been the the core of of uh geopolitics and empire the podcast I've had people on uh you know like the late Johan Gung who just passed at age of 93 you know he was known for in 1980 uh he supposedly said that the Soviet Union would collapse in 1990 which you know which it did he he uh said that the US empire will collapse first he said 2020 he revised it to 2025 and so it's kind of like we're we're along that path and just on these cycles. You know, I've got a lot of of the books behind me, but you talk about um you know, the contrav there's I've looked at all all these different other theorists, the Elliot wave, uh Fourth Turning, I can't even remember them uh all of them at right now, but just any any thoughts on some of the similarities or differences that that you take from these different authors? >> So, I've been using Elliot Wave to analyze markets on a fractal basis since I started that's almost 40 years ago. It's a very profound system that as a physicist emulates the fractal nature of the universe. It's hard for people to operate because it's visual and it's about pattern recognition. So it's very much for lateral thinking people who are sort of visually creative to work with. But it really is the best system I've come up with that shows just how per options and permutations work in the quantum mechanical universe which we now understand us to live in. So Elliot wave is one thing but with it and with a wave structure becomes a certain emotional cycle. Now in fact when you look at a contractive cycle which is a the biggest cycle that I can observe or find actually the bigger cycle is two contractive cycles. We'll come on to that in a minute. But within a contractive cycle there is an Awave and a Bwave and a C-wave which conforms to to wave counting. And so that process basically is consistent that the fractalss of behavior between one and the other are the same. So we see them in Kwaves, we see them in Elliot waves and we see them all the way across our human system in my opinion. And the basis of my five stages of empire is linked to Elliot waves work which is the principal surges of wave 1, two and five. Well sorry wave 1, three and five and the corrections of wave A and C. So it takes the corrections out and that was the premise that I translated market wave counting structures into empire models and and and the basis of it which has performed incredibly well in terms of predicting our behavior and the internal social construct that we would live through in those transitions. >> And so again you're the expert here and one of my points as well as for my interviews is sort of to get across my guess to get across what's most pertinent on their mind. So you mentioned entropy if you want to talk about that. Uh >> well so so one of the things you know as a physicist that looks at primary constructs is I had identified how we organized but I didn't understand really why I mean there was a relinkage to expanding populations for self-organization but fundamentally we self-organize into these structures if you take away the destructive elements of maybe 1 or 2% of human populations we are collectively anti-entropic we work towards creating productive outcomes that push back the entropy of the universe. Because put quite simply, anything that lives in an entropic universe has to do that to survive and create a bubble around it. Because if you just stood still, you'd rot where you stood just like a building covered with ivy and and microbes 100 years later. We would be the same. So living is an act of will and energetic process. And that creates anti-entropy. And humans came up with this idea that we do it socially, collectively. So that the entropy of one is less than the entropy of two and the entropy of 10 is more than two by a factor of more than just the numbers. I would call it social coherence and empires are really on the upward-f facing slope. The expansive dynamics of collective human antioent entropy that's coherent and of course it reaches a peak and then entropy starts to take hold of the system and gradually unbeknowing to the system it starts to decline. So this entropic process is the fundamental reason why we do what we do, why we socially organize to create empires and those empires basically anti-entropic. That's our survival mechanism. But coming with it is a really hard realization is imagine an empire that's gone up and it's curved and it could just occupy this space in like a old person that doesn't live and doesn't die and that doesn't really suit the collective organism called humanity. And so what happens is another system rises into the vacuum as I described the Asian system. But the drum beat that dictates the time at which the challenge turns to conflict. Now that is all about the contr cycle. So there is like a drum beat and a rhythm to war. And that rhythm's biggest cycle is 112 years which is between great hegemonic conflicts like the Spanish being challenged by the French like the French being challenged by the British like the British being challenged by the Germans in 1914 and sometimes once the trigger point is reached the cycle may peak but it still carries on for another 30 years. So although the the and and the best way to think of a contractive cycle is a surge of entropy unconsciously. It's like a pulse which goes through the human collective and triggers and jiggles connections which means that we move to challenge at that moment. So the biggest cycle I've I can identify is 112 years. Every 56 years you get the smaller conflicts like the cold war, Vietnam or the American civil war or the seven years war. But the big ones which decide how the larger collective is governed they come every 112 years. And at the basis of that challenge is something quite fascinating is originally humanity was a hierarchical system but essentially thanks to maritime adapted processes and and and going to sea makes you adaptive and it makes you lateral or it self- selects to be lateral. So the ratio of coastline to internal volume will dictate how many lateral and linear people there are in a population. And it's no coincidence that Athens was a sea power and it attempted the early forms of democracy and Britain and Holland were both sea powers or they were maritime powers before they were sea powers and because they were full of lateralized people that lived by the sea who were self-responsible because they'd gone out in their boats separate from everyone else and that self-responsibility was something that was actually you know biased towards democracy and give me control over my life rather than being told what to do. whereas land powers remained hierarchical and that is a fascinating distinction and so the big struggles in in hierarchical power are all about democracy versus hierarchy. You can go back and look at Napoleon has been more dictatorial than the kings around. I know it sounds funny to us today but they he was seen to be that dictator and you can see how the Kaiser was more dictatorial than than the other European powers. I mean certainly the second form of Hitler was more than and this great struggle we're in now is is the human race going to be hierarchical under the vision of the CCP or is it going to maintain its individual democracy and the struggle is coming at the time when democracy is weaker than it's probably ever been in its history since it started. So this isn't really a good test. It's a more vibrant hierarchical system in China versus an older and decrepit version of democracy in the superwestern Christian Empire in the terminal phases of this last cycle. And I think what we're looking at is the need to reinvent ourselves to reaffirm what our new form of de democracy is. And we're not going to do that voluntarily. We're going to be forced to do it in the in the fire of conflict. >> It's it's interesting you mentioned 112 years. I've been instinctively calling the situation that we're in uh the 100red-year uh storm. You know, for the past 10 plus years, uh you know, when I was teaching previously, I would be telling students, you know, we're in sort of like a 1920s, 1930s moment. And then things just seem to be lining up uh again. And then if you want to tell us sort of where we are and where we might be going, I've been focusing a lot uh for the past 20 years. You know, I I I decided to permanently expatriate from the US. um empire and I've been fascinated by the decline because in in in my view again looking at history you see as we decline the economy deteriorates the culture degenerates and politically tyranny rises and you know I I'm you know I'm proof of that a US citizen being targeted by uh our intelligence agencies taking me off from financial platforms as I mentioned to you DHS taking me off of PayPal and then so you've got you know Washington, London, EU, NATO uh and then You've got this apparent rise of the global south, bricks, China, Russia, Eurasia, multiplarity. So, uh what's uh where are we at? >> All right. So, let's let's just look at America. America entered the fifth stage of decline in 911. And the stage that recognized it was basically the the loss of moral imperative by torture and rendition by the evil duo Rumsfelt and Cheney. That's the beginning of the loss. All empires have a moral belief that they have the right to rule by a form of superiority. And you can see that the Chinese are trying to establish their legacy to rule the world going back to the HanchChinese in 200 BC because it's consistent and it runs through the threads and they are in effect the the the children of these people that this is almost you know 2,200 years ago. Now, I would dispute violently that Chinese consistent empire streams are in fact older than the West. And the reason why I would do so is because if you look at that circle around the Yellow River that their civilization centered upon and if you compare it to our circle, so the Yellow River is compared to the Nile and the Egyptians are our river culture and rivers concentrated populations and allowed sophisticated agrarianism. So the Egyptian culture is the first of the western cultures and the Greeks are the second of those cultures and the Romans are the third. Now once you think about that and the advantage we had is we had once the river concentrated Egyptian population we now had seafaring across the east and Mediterranean which was like a massive superhighway to develop these civilizations. Something the Chinese didn't have. So it's no surprise that when you take that continuum of our western empires, Rome was 800 years in advance of any Chinese civilization at the time it became a million strong population in the city. It was 200 BC in the case of Rome and it was 800 years later in the case of China. It was the same point when Rome could facilitate 2% of its population in a professional army which was the same thing that happened in China at the same size of city populations of a million. I say that because for the Chinese listening, they don't have moral superiority. The continuum of ours is is more diverse and richer and it goes back almost a thousand years beyond the beginnings of their civilization that we can trace. So [snorts] that's an important point. But what we're facing right now is we're at the end of an organizational process that took the West to control the world predominantly through the British Empire and its maritime power. And much as we've thought America is powerful, it is but a fraction of the power that Britain really had. Britain had no challenges from Waterloo all the way through to the First World War. No one could face it. A fleet that could take on any two nations. And yes, we might have had local wars in in Crimea, but truly our position as a global dominant hedgeman was way beyond anything America experienced through the Cold War where it was struggling to push back the Soviet Union. I say that for the Americans listening. It's a hard pill. America is an empire and I know most Americans don't like that. It's a very sophisticated form of empire because it allows the vassal states to think they're free within the western construct. So it gives freedom to Japan or Germany or you know even Britain within certain boundaries and it pro provides defense alliances that maintain their freedom their values and the way it works is it extracts dollar value through a dollar empire and that dollar is the hidden transmission of wealth. What people don't realize when you're American saying that's not our war we shouldn't be going there. The very fact that America is wealthy and the people domestically have enjoyed a very high standard of living is because of the existence of this empire of dollarization which is defended by the military and peace is maintained within it and since Obama came along the shrinkage of that dynamic is is very significant and significant because all empires that are mature live on very narrow margins and the margin that made it profitable has disappeared. Hence the massive debt surge which we've been seeing which is another part of this the declining stage. So 911 was all about the loss of moral imperative. And then of course America happened upon this wonderful idea that they could actually if their growth decreased for strategic reasons they could just pop a little leverage print some money and if growth real growth h haveved just double it up with some leverage and it would look the same. Politicians got reelected. People thought it was really cool. rates were suppressed because America had this great idea to export all its manufacturing to that very cheap place called China. And the result was suppressed inflation, suppressed interest rates, and mad money printing, which finally came to an end 20 years later. And if it started in ' 03 with three times leverage, we're probably at 40 times leverage now. Like a superleveraged bomb. That's basically where America is thanks to his leadership. Now one of the problems of money printing which is just not discussed is all about understanding that humans are not all the same. We accept that some of us can run 100 meters in under 10 seconds. Well, one or two. We accept that some of us could in 12 seconds or 13 seconds. Those physical attributes we understand or someone's taller and can dunk a basketball. But what we really don't understand is how different and the diversity of human thought processes. And I would argue there are two subsets of humanity. It's genetic. The first subset is the oldest. It's the huntergatherer roots which were highly adaptable for daily survival. And those huntergatherers became the warrior leadership clan predominantly. And then the next clan came along which was through agrarianism 10,000 years ago which is all about predictability and repeatability. So we have this all cultures have a duality between being lateral and linear. And what happens is that lateral people are adaptive and they tend to build things. So most empires are built by lateral people having gone through the first stage of regionalization, having gone through a civil war, which we'll come on to in a minute. Lateral people move out and build the empire. Now war is and has a massive social purpose for humanity. So until we can substitute the social purpose, we have to assume we're going to keep having wars with the periodicity of the cycles we've talked about and smaller ones below that. And that is essentially wars mean that rising systems are adaptive and lateral. And old systems tend to be linear, especially if they printed money, because it allows you to pretend it's all going to be the same. To remove maverick thought or maverick questioning and linear people work together to hold it all together on the railway tracks and refuse to see the tidal wave coming at it because it wasn't part of the plan. And that makes them prey to this adaptable rising system in the conflict. And if there's one thing that happens in conflict is systems lateralize. Linear leadership gets its men killed very quickly because it's predictable and lateral leaders rise to the four and the longer the war the more adapted the lateral system becomes even though many of those people are dying in the process and the net effect is adaptability creativity look at Ukraine look even the Russians are adapting in the way they fight and Ukrainians are more innately adaptable because democracy imposes greater levels of self- responsibility and thought than the Soviet system but all systems will adapt is a question of how fast. So conflicts like a civil war supercharge a country because both sides everyone's involved in it and it purges the system of linear thinkers and it surges forward because the lateral people are fully in charge afterwards. They're militarized and they run down all the resource chains. That's where China is interestingly enough. And the West is very much in a a super linear state because of the sophistication of our money printing has made it go on for longer and longer. And the maverick lateral people have been spat out and they're in fields somewhere looking down rabbit holes with not enough linear skills to work out which rebbit hole is real or not. And they're completely bamboozled as a result. So I would argue in this dynamic it isn't I'm better than you and you're better than me. The mindsets have symbiotic relationships. Strategic thinking is a lateral process, but execution and repetition is a linear process. Well, obviously I might build a factory, but I'm not going to run it very well. Then a linear person will run it better than a lateral person. So, we need to understand our differences and work together, especially at a time like this where we're really under stress. But that's not how our leadership's working. Our leadership is blind right now. In fact, it's got his foot on the accelerator in the case of of Biden and certainly Sunnak in the UK. And they are driving the the world into war by their in effect extreme appeasement strategies which are basically even worse than Chamberlain because Chamberlain assumed the worst and was preparing with with a defensive package whereas Biden actually hasn't and he's weakened American defenses and Synergy's actually given the keys to the doorway. So there's some parallels which are quite frightening. Both of which are super linear leaders and both of the people around them are super linear too. I got so many questions, but let's get to the war thing. Um, so many people have had on and and just me reading the the tea leaves, the signals, it just seems like this momentum has has been built on this train and it's almost like it can't be stopped. You know, my so many things we can discuss. You know, many countries now, Croatia, my own country, Serbia, Baltic, European countries are they want to bring back conscription. Uh, you're seeing um, you know, the US empire say South Korea needs to have nukes. they're they're putting together an Asian NATO. I saw you just on your Twitter share news of of um um stuff like that. So this march towards war um you you just I feel like it's inevitable cuz as you say war is the default in human history. Peace is the anomaly. And so your further thoughts on this conflict that's coming uh can it be stopped? What what might it uh look like? Will tactical nukes be used? You know um your further thoughts? >> We're we're over the brink. I'm afraid. Um, and what's important to understand is what's driving this process. I can talk about, you know, a 112 year cycle and the entropy that surges, but there's some also hard things to realize. The Chinese created a brilliant strategy after the thirdwide Taiwan Straits crisis. They realized they weren't going to get through American military power. So they decided to create a process where they induced America to invest in its manufacturing base to transfer its IP and what it wouldn't transfer with steel in a systematic process of 100,000 plus high IQ Chinese ripping us ripping cyerspace apart and that was happening even as we were trying to transfer manufacturing IP to China which is just stupid but you've got to understand the imperative for America was keep inflation low because we need to print money and that's a weakness that they prayed upon and there was a blindness across Wall Street of just make money, not understanding. We were funding a a 30-year plan which meant that they would take our manufacturing, demanufacture the world, industrialize it, and then they would have the biggest manufacturing capability in the world as America did in the Second World War, which is how it won the Second World War. So, we gave them the keys to our doors. And right now we've also suffered from really poor leadership which is typical in American decline. I think Bush was probably if we could get Bush Junior back we'd all yup for joy you know and he was relatively st he was honest straightforward but he seemed a bit but he was actually I think far better than people realize. Obama was the worst president at the time we'd seen. He gave away American power on the most epic scale. And without being racist about it, there is a dynamic in empires where when underclasses proliferate sufficiently to have voting power, their main agenda is social integration and they fail to understand that maintenance of the borders is critical as well to allow social integration to happen within peace. He neglected all of that and he gave all the territory away that emboldened the Chinese to start becoming from a covert plan to a more overt plan which coincided with shei who is the most frightening leader we've seen because he doesn't have a chip on one shoulder or the other. He's perfectly balanced. He just has been brought up to believe power is security and he is a strategic mind that would make most of our leaders if they can get his side terrified and they're running rings around us. So you've got this massive rise of China, this weaponization of China and the critical to the moment was all challenging hedgemans are faced with a hedgemony that's had decades to build weapon systems like carriers and naval power. So they don't have the same time and certainly China doesn't because it's been held under a glass ceiling for almost 40 years by America. So it's getting the demographic tip over. So it's a real now or never moment for it. And essentially what they do is they seek asymmetric weapons of hegemonic challenge as I call them. So the Germans use hubot. They you know tried to use an air force. And essentially what the Chinese created and when they first appeared I was screaming now this is real was anti-hship ballistic weapons that were conventional warheads to kill carriers. The basis of American power. They appeared in n in in 2017 and I was screaming guys this is now really serious. They've created something that's almost impossible to defend against when used in saturation. It destroys American carrier power and it destroys the basis of hegemonic power projection. Now you can talk about the US Air Force, but basically carrier power has been it for America. Um, now people just didn't respond. I wrote a book about it called Red Lightning, all about how the Chinese are building a system to create Pearl Harbor on steroids. thousands of missiles that saturate Japanese and American defenses in the first hour of a war with no warning and no buildup like we saw in the invasion of Ukraine. And my thesis is that's what they've created. They've basically gone into a four-year plan since the origins of COVID, which is like a Nazi four-year plan. They've stockpiling resources. They've got a consumer gap because they've stopped exporting to the same level and they've militarized their economy. Some of which is now directing its output towards Russia at at a rate that none of us really could have imagined if you were, you know, rather flighty liberal and didn't understand what we were facing. Um, entirely predictable. And I mention all of this because the main issue here is China is in a position to truly challenge America. And it has a number of allies. It has Russia um which is you know not insignificant but I do not believe Putin would have gone into Ukraine if he was on his own and China didn't exist. He couldn't have done it. So China was a facilitator and I'm sure the conversation between she and Putin she egged him on to do it knowing full well he was going to watch what happened but he egged him to do it and said of course we'll support you. Similarly, Iran is another oil producing commodity relationship and what China seeks there is as a commodity consumer is autocratic powers that will funnel resources in. So, one of the fundamental errors in the White House was the belief that economic sanctions were going to hold Putin back. Well, in an upward-f facing commodity cycle, the commodity countries like Russia become incredibly wealthy because everyone needs their resource. In fact, you can model the whole cold war from 1950 to the peak of 75 as one contractive cycle which enormously benefited Russia and then of course the loss of Russian power when the reverse happened. And in America they faced 15% inflation, 15% 10-year rates, 22% Fed funds and America was a vibrant empire I would say at the height of its power and it nearly buckled under that pressure. So right now you've got a rejuvenation and you can track Putin's history on this particular contract of cycle. He arrived at the beginning and you can see as a cycle research he didn't need the EU more anymore from 2008 onwards and he's used the coffers that were filled by oil exports and gas exports and he used it to militarize his economy and although he has poor demographics as a dictator he marshal his whole country into this war it's one man's war not a country's war whereas China is an expansive system that if you remove shei they'd still be there whereas if you had a different navani for example Russia wouldn't have been aggressive. It wasn't innately aggressive. It was aggressive because it was led by it is led by an aggressive leader and it had the resources through commodities. And then the last piece is North Korea, which is not an independent state, but a puppet of China. Every time it throws a rock at America, it's because it was told to by Beijing. We should be treating it as the same country, not as some independent nation that happens to share China's views on the country. And the technology they're developing in their missiles. Where does that come from? Well, they didn't develop it. It comes via train from the north. So, we've got to see this architecture of what is now a very coherent and integrated autocracy. It's an access of autocracy that seeks nothing less than the global destruction of democracy. And we are we are mobilizing so slowly and just do not realize the magnitude of what we face because we're hubistic. So yeah, I think I think I think that's definitely on on point. And I guess beyond the pale, I mean, we can't really predict what would happen, but I guess just one more thought on that. It would be I mean, tens of millions of people could be >> So So, so you asked about where we are in this process. Make no mistake about it. I we can definitely say World War II started with the invasion of Ukraine and now the Middle East is on fire. That is not a battle between Hamas and Israel. That is a battle between Iran and Israel using Hamas as its proxy. I mean on the day it happened I warned it would escalate and it was the beginning. Why did Iran started at that stage? It started because it didn't have social coherence at high inflation which funny enough and and high debt levels which are now being paid off by selling oil to China as the price goes up. But basically they were like Russia was to hold his ban weather together. He had to go to war and he was supported by an alliance of people that believed they could do that. And China is exactly the same. The last piece of this puzzle is when China chooses to go to war and takes the whole of the Asian basin like Japan did in the expansion of the Empire of the Sun, except for there will be no warning because the weapon systems they built defy our ability to assess when they're going to be used. The Chinese understand that all of the wars that the West has won have been intelligence-led. That's why they're into quantum cryptologology so they can send safe signals that we won't break. and why we're into quantum computing because we want to break things. But the Chinese have thought about that and one of the problems is that hedgeimmonies are highly predictable in their last stages in their mature stages. Take for example Hamas. The Iranians taught Hamas not to use electronic signals that would be seen heard by Mossad or the CIA. They taught them to use hard telephone lines and pieces of paper. So you can assume that the nuclear program inside Iran has very similar operational levels. So I am really concerned that they are at or close to a breakout. And the reason why they are doing what they're doing is to create the space for them to make the breakout over 2 3 4 weeks. And I think it was a huge mistake not to strike their nuclear facilities after their their battering of you know missiles that were defended. But we're missing the point. And I think the reason why so many people came together to defend Israel was because they couldn't assess whether there's a nuclear weapon in one of those warheads. So they had to make as close as possible 100%, you know, shield work because one could be the one with a warhead. So I think we're in much more tenuous ground and Biden's every step actually encourages aggression through showing consistent weakness. It's appalling watching him. >> Yeah. Yeah, and as you mentioned uh the third world world war having begun in 2022. I've had a number of European intellectuals on the podcast say exactly uh the same thing confirming your analysis and just to go back to the US uh for a moment the west um just any thoughts on what this collapse might look like you know thoughts on this increasing this decline of democracy this increase of of tyranny in the west you know we've seen in Canada Trudeau like people protesting uh many of the measures of of the pandemic having ban bank accounts frozen. Uh it's happening in Europe to to to journalists to their parents who have nothing to do with anything. They're just being accounts being shut off and now free speech is under attack um in in the West. So you're seeing these these signs and there's talk of second civil war in the United States. We've got these crazy elections coming up. It's almost a banana republic sort of stuff. And any thoughts on uh this? So you a lot of things you touched on, they're all part of one process. So decline means less to go around and naturally systems fracture to try and compete as to how to split those resources or optimize them. [snorts] So the decline of American politics and Trump's intervention into it. Now what was interesting, his slogan was perfect. Make me great again because Obama's made me less than. But the trouble with a bar with with Trump is although he's lateral and some of the things he points out are appropriate, he is a compromised by Russia in some way in a frightening way. Look at his behavior. He's insulted every politician but one man and that's Putin. There is some definite hold but that Russia has over his behavior. Look at the way he got the Magda Republicans to stop the arms package which is so significant to the Ukrainians. I'm afraid he is not an agent for the well-being of America. He's certainly an agent for his well-being because he's a narcissist and the and in prior times a narcissist like Trump would be unacceptable in politics. But one of the processes of systems at rise is individuals are ambitious but they sublimate part of themselves to a collective that's successful and they're proud of that collective. On the way down the collective actually becomes less important than self and so basically it becomes and society becomes very selfish and narcissists start to thrive. So there are more narcissists in control or in power than ever would have been in the rising process, which is why Trump doesn't look like he stands out because there are many people around. He happens to be a personification of it. But nonetheless, many of the people that might vote him have narcissistic tendencies themselves and don't see it. Now the trouble is with narcissists is the one thing you know any contact with them will leave you worse off. Period. Whatever you think of their advantages, however you think in business you can harness them or gate them or create boundaries around them, they will blow out of them. You turn your back and you'll turn round to see ashes. So Trump will destroy even if there isn't a war, Trump would destroy democracy. And he tried to he's a he's a dictator. He's he's jealous of Putin's power. So we need to understand he is that man. Biden on the other hand is equally as bad. Although he's not as narcissistic, he is weak. He is a completely failed hubristic old man that just everything he touches from Afghanistan's route that then led to Russia that then led to weak behavior in support of Israel. Every single part of this story is bad news. And although they try and control China's exports to Russia, they really don't look in the mirror to think what are the signals we're sending she we've been sending weak signals. So why is he ever going to listen to us when we ask? So there's a lack of awareness, lack of strategic planning. Now, interesting enough, the condition of America and its fracture has a precedent and that is Britain. In 1911 to 1912, Britain was literally going through a process where it's becoming poorer. There was a rise of liberalism and the need to spread the wealth around from the few wealthy people, which is really where Biden is. He's a wealthist politician. And there were two governments. And Winston Churchill wrote about the period and he said it was quite amazing that we got through it because I thought the army would have to intervene in the civil war. Now that political construct emboldened the Kaiser and the Kaiser became more aggressive looking to go and drive through the fracture. But all it did was then combine the two sides that turned face the Kaiser and happily went to war in 1914. So for those that think America is going to break into civil war, I would argue not before China makes his move and not before China unites both halves of the house to face a common enemy. So that's really important. We must remember that. Um I think the process that you talked about of sort of um tyranny as you called it, there is something that happens less in decline but in decline it can happen. You know, you can think about Nero and characters in in Roman history that are are destructive, but I think it's something else. I think as this pulse with this K-wave, entropic pulse comes along, intrinsically we know that times are no longer peaceful and full of plenty that hard times are coming and the migration of leadership is always towards dictatorship. In in democracy, it's benevolent dictatorship like Roosevelt and Chamberlain. And obviously in other places it's more extreme versions of Hitler and Stalin's behavior or she's to be. So this trend we're seeing is actually a trend where as things become more entropic and difficult naturally we accept and these people rise and we sort of intrinsically know that being governed by 12 people deciding do we go or do we go left in a war doesn't work. So I think we're seeing the hallmarks of that and the shadows of it. It's less about decline and more about this pulse and surge. it and yeah it makes perfect sense. there's a logic to it and maybe your thoughts on the economy you know the dollar its status as world reserve there's talk of ddollarization there's talk of hyperinflation of the dollar financial crash um what's important for you when it comes to >> so all of the above really I mean ddollarization has happened you've looked the world has bifurcated into the auto autocratic powers of China Russia and and its affiliates gone and you know China's buying gold for a reason because it knows what it's planning and it's not nice. So deolarization is a reality. The world is bifrocated and the current American empire was based on the whole world being dollarized. So you have it or you knock a third of it off and it's just not going to work. So the dollar is really under threat. Um but then if you look at the yen that's under threat because it sits next to China and it's number one target. If you look at Europe, you know, and and I think at the moment, we'll come on to the NATO view of Russia because it's a little bit alarming again. This they're so hubistic, they never predict anything that comes ahead. And one of the things they're saying is, you know, Ukraine is obviously sapping the strength out of Russia. What they don't realize is the Chinese and the North Koreans when they finish their job in Asia are going to send their soldiers to the Eastern Front quicker than we actually can rearm. And so we need to be aware this is a world war. It isn't just a regional set of isolated events anymore and we need to be prepared for the massive manpower that China and the Asian countries can bring to bear and resources through industrialization. So this idea that don't worry the Russians won't be up for it for 10 years is another hubistic idea that's madness. Um so ddollarization yes inflation absolutely inflation is going to come because resources are going to go up. This is the phase in the contractive cycle, the C-wave, where resource constriction comes through conflict and you know things like gold go up to 10,000 and all reaches 350 by the the peak of 2030. It's nasty stuff. So inflation for a money printing western world is a nightmare and we we are going to have to face it and I think there's going to be a massive round of debt forgiveness somewhere. all of the western debt is going to turn into hundredyear debt with a bullet payment somewhere in the future and all you've got is a piece of paper because without it we're not going to make it. We just can't create a war economy. And I think that's really what's going to happen is interesting enough we've sort of had this non-real, highly fatized economy and war will bring us back to reality. Real production rates, real manufacturing capabilities. You know, it isn't about handbags anymore. I'm sorry. If it doesn't help us win a war, it's not there. And so, yes, they'll print money in a different way, but no, it's not going to go to the Magnificent Seven's share price. It's going to go to different places. So, we need to get our head around that transition, which is happening as we speak. >> And any quick thought on you, I'm not very keen on on on cryptocurrency, but you know, Bitcoin and stuff like that. Look, the blockchain um construct is an analog construct and someone will get a quantum computer and rip them apart. So, this is only a short-term solution. Yes, you can argue that someone might have a quantum blockchain one day, but I haven't seen any evidence of one turning up. So, let's assume it's a short-term hedge against the dollar that's independent of things and it's behaving like a safe haven, a bit like gold. And yes, I think Bitcoin probably will reach 96 and it possibly could surge to 120, but after that, you're out. I'm out. Gone. This is a momentary sort of something that works in an environment for a limited period of time, not a long-term solution. The long-term solution to holding value is gold and silver. It always has been. >> This is I've been coming to the same conclusion. I I just see too much tulip mania um cultlike behavior with with Bitcoin and the cryptos and then the energy aspect as well. I just don't I what you just laid out I I I've had that same feeling. Um now quick thought on if if you looked into globalism or this idea of world government because that's something I I I look into as well and there's people trying to they're trying to cobble together like a global currency. Do do you have any thought on you know people talk about Klaus Schwab and and the great reset and and any thoughts on this idea of globalism and and forcing >> I mentioned I mentioned earlier the phenomena where society becomes highly linear and the lateral thinking people are literally like pushed out into the fields and they're exiled metaphorically and human beings don't do well on their own and they go a little bit sort of down the wrong rabbit holes but lateral thinkers that have been exiled that don't have very disciplined linear thought can go down some very bad rabbit holes and this particular one is one of my top like rabbit hole because have you ever met Davos man have you ever really seen him in the flesh and I have and believe me he's not able to come up with a construct of world domination and if he was that smart his primary goal would be the Chinese are coming we better do something about it but he hasn't seen that either so [snorts] rest assured the idea that these suited people are going to like consciously take over the world with the construct doesn't exist exist. They do things in an unconscious way and linear systems are about mass. So they just keep expanding like an ink blot. It isn't a conscious expansion. It's just an inklot expansion. What you see for some of the the rationale behind you know the justification is happening is the ink block transmission very different from the Chinese that have an incredible strategic plan have executed it in multif facets very successfully and are moving to where they want to be by purpose collectively led by individuals with vision that doesn't exist in the west in any covert form whatsoever because we wouldn't be in this mess if it did >> what what are some things principles I know people can subscribe to your uh affordable subscription service, but what are what can the average person sort of do to hedge against uh uh the hard road that's coming? >> So the reason I started global forecaster was because I had a view that just you know going off and managing money again in another wasn't going to help anyone because our society was at risk. So I really felt impelled as I did when I overcame my dyslexia to write breaking the code of history to share my findings which have just really proven so frighteningly powerfully accurate. I can't it scares me how successfully accurate they are and it's no use holding that stuff we had to share it. So it's a great privilege to be on the site talking to you today and basically I would encourage people to understand this better to that's what marinations are about. They're not just I get out of bed on the right and talk about it. They are the application of social laws and constructs which are observable and provable by observation which I outline for free on the site and then it's the application of those principles to the to what's going on in the world right now. So it leaves you to be informed. It's a an author precision where all the things are fact. The reason why we fact check badly is because most people don't have an accurate mosaic to compare a fact to. So they just don't understand what's happening and you don't know whether it's true or not. But you'll find once you adopt this mindset, it's pretty easy to work out which and when and where essentially it's true or not true. And all of Marinations is about reconstructing the way each of our readers follows the dots. Now from that position, what do you do? Well, first of all, you understand it better. And the biggest problem we've got is mass collective denial. And the denial that we're going through is consistent with Pax Bratannia ending in 1914. No one could quite believe the world could go from 100 years of peace to a war because we hadn't seen a world war. So let's tick that one off as historically relevant. But the next thing that's happened is that through money printing we haven't gone to a little bit of linear with you know some lateral people left. The l the linear people have wiped all the lateral thinkers out in government and leadership. So it's so extreme they can't see what's coming and how quickly it's coming. And then there's another massive own goal is that when you print money and you push your stock market up, the collective dopamine levels in society are so high as measured by the bellweather stock markets that essentially the cortisol response of looking for threats isn't there. So for those three reasons, we face massive denial. And the first thing to do is to realize where we are in the curve and what we and and that's quite scary. But I encourage everyone to look at it because we all if we're older have children and we care about the future. So the process is we've got to realize where we are and then we can start to do something about it. And believe me, we can. You know, you can always do something about a problem, but you got to recognize where it is. So I really encourage people to take the red pill just as they did in the matrix. And there's a piece on our site about what that journey looks like. And then from that position of reality and understanding as an individual, we are in a society that's democratic where I can speak to you, you can speak to your friends, they can speak to their friends. And what I'm fascinated by is how the cascade of knowledge and change works. So we need to believe in that and be a part of it. And then we're playing our part. And if for those who are listening, you're in power, then you can come and like discuss in more detail what that means for your various problems and solutions. But for everyday people, you still have a role which was be responsible, use our knowledge to learn and disseminate our knowledge in conversations. That's so important. Just just one more um question. You mentioned earlier that we're in this battle between different systems, different ways of of um seeing the world um you know, autocracy, more open systems. One more fear that I have relates to what some people call the Chinese style system of this technocracy. You know, this these sort of like digital ID cashless systems that they're trying to be implemented which would make it much easier, you know, for any uh one who commits a thought crime like myself or dissident. They can shut off your bank account, your ability to travel and and and work. Um and these systems will require a lot of energy going forward. And we we sort of see in the west our leaders trying starting to try and implement these types of systems. Do you have any you know like the social credit type system any thoughts on that? >> Yes, it's a really important question actually because you know often people say to me so you know what do you think the Chinese are going to do and I answer and say quite simply the CCP perceives democracy as a virus. It perceives one person who believes they can be free as a source of a whole virus. Look what they did with their viruses to stamp them out. And that's how they see the rest of the world. And their plan is literally to take control of the world. They're already 17% of the world, which is about the same ratio as Germany was of Europe when its goal was to take over Europe. So it isn't, you know, but what's really interesting is they've controlled and dominated their own population. They created a social credit system, which is literally the control of thought and action. They've applied that same system to the Oggers who were hostile and now they've all been subjugated. They took that same system into Hong Kong where you had six generations of free capitalist Chinese, the most energetic population in the world and productive and it subjugated them in 3 months flat. Now that is scary because they genuinely have the tools and I think that we didn't really talk about the course of this war as I see it. The the Chinese can't win a war outright unless we fold and I doubt whether we will. What they can do is they can push America out of the second island chain and maybe if they're lucky get to the third island chain which includes Australia at which stage they'll do what Japan did but they'll do it better. They'll consolidate all of the gains in Japan and South Korea into this massive industrialized conglomerate that elomerate that essentially resources out of Russia. It won't control the blue oceans at that stage. It will send its men to the borders of NATO and it will consolidate for five years is my guess and it will come out of that region with thousands of warships to our hundreds and then it's going to emulate what we did. It's going to use the oceans to surround continents and bring them to their knees and one by one will go down and the world will be CCP controlled. That's their plan. Now the couple of things that we need to we are going to get hit very hard when this goes wrong and so we need to be prepared and our fragility that to know that they can only go so far and then it's up to us to mobilize ourselves to use the oceans that we do control and our industrial base and rebuild it to somehow come up with innovation that you know that counters Chinese threats but at the moment they could produce 50% more patents than we do which is exactly what I predicted in a rising system as they become come more creative and they create revolutions in military affairs that overwhelm the opposition. That's our danger. They have the advantage. They've learned everything from us and now they're innovating beyond us. And hypersonic weapons are perfect example or rail guns that we failed to follow through in the US Navy in 2021 and the Chinese have now made it work. The warning signs are all there whether it's, you know, cavitating submarines and super cavitation we've just heard about. Like these guys are on the cutting edge and we're behind. So, you know, we're in trouble. Big trouble. And personally, you know, if there's one thing I do believe, I think the future of the human race is about individual potential, is about who we are, our minds, our souls. We are essentially way more than our physical nature as you know the quantum mechanical understanding of the universe talks about. And in fact, the implication is our brains are quantum mechanical computers and therefore can influence the world around us. So there is a sort of point at which I've often thought that individual awareness and capability becomes a lot more sort of productive and a force multiplier and we need to also bear that in mind as we go through the troubles ahead which are going to be Titanic. We've covered so much uh mind-blowing analysis and information. The future is not uh written. Um that was a great sort of final thought there. tell us then uh you know the best places we can find you your your projects, services, books and so forth. >> So um come to the site davidmarin.co.uk. Uh you sign up for free and you can access alerts. So any podcasts will come your way. But what really you need to do is access the marinations. They're not more than $50 a month, £50 a month. And we're talking about investment grade information of geopolitical understanding that isn't like a newspaper that tells you what's happened. It basically will tell you what will happen before it happens. And then we even track the newspapers catching up with us just to show you how often we're ahead of the curve. For example, we ran a big campaign which is essentially Britain needs a missile shield 5 months ago warning that we were totally exposed as a number one NATO that's basically supported Ukraine like poked everyone around them. We're on the number one hit list of Putin when it goes wrong and Britain has no missile defense shield and five months later it's now finally coming to the public. People are finally talking about it and that's very common where things we talk about are before others or before people see it. So become informed, understand what's really going on, overcome your fear and and that's it. If you're a financial investor, if you're basically in that in that space, we have a whole area designed for the senior levels of of asset management. And if you're a government agency, we also work with agencies provide our knowledge to solve problems whether they're in the military or other areas of government because all aspects of this model are applicable whether it's the NHS not working and why it doesn't work. It basically every aspect of society is touched upon by the the the broad theories we've talked about which can be refined into much closer detail and the principles that are really important to grain growthful expansive societies that have respectful dynamics. All right. Uh the links are in the description so people can go check that out. They can also follow you on Twitter global forecaster. That's without the last e. Thank you uh David for being on Geopolitics and Empire. >> Been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for your time to interview me. >> I hope you enjoyed this Geopolitics and Empire podcast. The website is geopoliticsandempire.com and I encourage you to sign up for the free email list that goes out with each podcast and every weekend with a collection of news headlines. The newsletter and website are our last lines of defense. We're being censored and deplatformed. It's nearly impossible to find geopolitics and empire on the Google search engine. We've been blacklisted. 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Warning: Russia's Invasion Started WW3 | David Murrin on @GeopoliticsEmpire
Summary
Transcript
Welcome to another smashing edition of Geopolitics [music] and Empire. Quick reminder, uh I really do need you to support this Rebel Transmission. The best way to do that, become a paid subscriber on my Substack. Five bucks a month, 50 bucks uh a year. You can also buy me a coffee or send reinforcements through my donor box. Today, we're joined by David Murin, who's he's got a super long and amazing bio you can read at davidm.co.uk. That's david mur r i n.co.uk. He's a global forecaster, author, speaker, commentator, adviser on national security, military history, geopolitics, and financial markets. He's got an affordable subscription service as well with his analysis and commentary you might be interested in. Welcome to the podcast, David. >> Hey, thank you very much for having me on board in such learned company. [laughter] >> Yes. Well, I think you you you beat me, but you know, I love the I love the synergy. I wanted to mention this. you actually sent me a message recently about coming on the podcast. But the funniest thing is for the longest time I've had your name uh on my list of guests to get on. and I've been following your your work for a while and so it's great finally we get to speak and and maybe to start you know I like to bring smart people on who come from all over the place with unique uh views and and you know I want I and I want my listeners to learn learn from you and perhaps you could to start tell us about the gist sort of the focus the arc of your work and how you sort of big picture analyze uh the world and then we can get into what's what's happening on the planet. So to to give you a bit of background, I'm a physicist by training, which sort of explains why I tried to look at social human dynamics and boil them down to essential behavioral patterns. And I did that because I g joined the world of finance and I was an asset manager and sought to understand what would come next in the macro world until 911 came along when um there was a conjunction between my profession which was finance and my passion which was military history and I asked a simple question you know was that an accident or was it a far more significant event that would produce a historical outcome that people didn't expect i.e. not a hundred years of democracy, but actually the decline of the American empire. And in asking the question, I then had to work out how to answer it. And there wasn't enough price data to apply my models. So I reverse engineered what I think is a fractal of human behavior in price into what I call the five stages of empire. Five distinct organizational stages, which I called regionalization, expansion to empire, maturity, overextension, and decline. And by the middle of O2, I'd managed to go and prove that I could use the clocks of war to describe that pattern in every empire civilization I could come across. And it was profound. It talked about the way that society operated. For example, it expanded in what I call with lateral ad adaptive behavior. And it can declined with linear like rigid behavior. And there's a whole thing we can talk about about where we are in the world now which is uberlinearia and what that really means for lack of adaptation. But from that simple model I had to ask other questions is why was the duration for example of western Christian empires shortened compared to the older systems I looked at. And then I realized that the national systems of Portugal, Spain, France, Britain, Germany trying twice and America were essentially a bigger system, a super empire which was a Christian mimic empire starting with the the Catholic faith with the Spanish and the the Portuguese, the Spanish and the French and then really expanding to the world as a global maritime system which was based on Protestant free belief and also the lateralism that was conveyed by high ratio of coastlines to internal volume of Britain and Holland as seafaring nations. And that's really changed the world because the democracy that started all those years ago in Athens or attempted to start or not a version we'd recognize followed through to the democracies of Protestant countries like Britain and Holland and they spread to the world and we've got this ongoing conflict between autocracy and democracy in today's age. Then the other part of this the sort of concept was if there was a super empire in the west there's probably one somewhere else and I defined a super Asian empire starting with the Japanese followed by the Chinese and followed by India. Now that's all very obvious now but back in O2 people laughed when I said the west is going to decline create a vacuum and China is going to rush into it faster than we can imagine. It's going to out innovate us and it's going to lead to a conflict that starts somewhere in 2022 and to the into the peak of 2030 which is World War II. Now that was 20 years ago. Now the idea that you could understand cycles in this particular way I've only a few people I've seen have attempted to do it and this is much more profound in its construct because it entered another idea and that was a work of Kratif and Kandratif was a Russian economist. He believed in 56 year cycles which is three kind of lunar peak cycles in effect. That's probably where it comes from. And every time it peaked or the world peaked, he noted there was conflict. And that really got my interest as someone interested in military history because suddenly military history and finance coincided. And I worked out that the beginning of the last contractive cycle started in O2, the one we're in. And I made a lot of money by being long of resources into the 210 peak. But I also realized rather soberingly that meant there would be a war at the end of it. And that war would be the drum beat in effect of the shift of power between America and China. Now all of this was worked out in O2 a long time ago and since then I've written books. I've talked about it and every part of this Germany has tracked it. I don't believe in predeterminism but I do believe in unconscious cycles and collective unconscious cycles. And so the theory of empires, the theory of this contratia surge which I now would define in the context of something much bigger and probably we need to talk about that in a second and it's called entropy and how humans develop anti-entropy to survive but we can talk about that when you get a you get a question in. >> Yeah. And you know what what you just discussed is fascinating because that's sort of been the the core of of uh geopolitics and empire the podcast I've had people on uh you know like the late Johan Gung who just passed at age of 93 you know he was known for in 1980 uh he supposedly said that the Soviet Union would collapse in 1990 which you know which it did he he uh said that the US empire will collapse first he said 2020 he revised it to 2025 and so it's kind of like we're we're along that path and just on these cycles. You know, I've got a lot of of the books behind me, but you talk about um you know, the contrav there's I've looked at all all these different other theorists, the Elliot wave, uh Fourth Turning, I can't even remember them uh all of them at right now, but just any any thoughts on some of the similarities or differences that that you take from these different authors? >> So, I've been using Elliot Wave to analyze markets on a fractal basis since I started that's almost 40 years ago. It's a very profound system that as a physicist emulates the fractal nature of the universe. It's hard for people to operate because it's visual and it's about pattern recognition. So it's very much for lateral thinking people who are sort of visually creative to work with. But it really is the best system I've come up with that shows just how per options and permutations work in the quantum mechanical universe which we now understand us to live in. So Elliot wave is one thing but with it and with a wave structure becomes a certain emotional cycle. Now in fact when you look at a contractive cycle which is a the biggest cycle that I can observe or find actually the bigger cycle is two contractive cycles. We'll come on to that in a minute. But within a contractive cycle there is an Awave and a Bwave and a C-wave which conforms to to wave counting. And so that process basically is consistent that the fractalss of behavior between one and the other are the same. So we see them in Kwaves, we see them in Elliot waves and we see them all the way across our human system in my opinion. And the basis of my five stages of empire is linked to Elliot waves work which is the principal surges of wave 1, two and five. Well sorry wave 1, three and five and the corrections of wave A and C. So it takes the corrections out and that was the premise that I translated market wave counting structures into empire models and and and the basis of it which has performed incredibly well in terms of predicting our behavior and the internal social construct that we would live through in those transitions. >> And so again you're the expert here and one of my points as well as for my interviews is sort of to get across my guess to get across what's most pertinent on their mind. So you mentioned entropy if you want to talk about that. Uh >> well so so one of the things you know as a physicist that looks at primary constructs is I had identified how we organized but I didn't understand really why I mean there was a relinkage to expanding populations for self-organization but fundamentally we self-organize into these structures if you take away the destructive elements of maybe 1 or 2% of human populations we are collectively anti-entropic we work towards creating productive outcomes that push back the entropy of the universe. Because put quite simply, anything that lives in an entropic universe has to do that to survive and create a bubble around it. Because if you just stood still, you'd rot where you stood just like a building covered with ivy and and microbes 100 years later. We would be the same. So living is an act of will and energetic process. And that creates anti-entropy. And humans came up with this idea that we do it socially, collectively. So that the entropy of one is less than the entropy of two and the entropy of 10 is more than two by a factor of more than just the numbers. I would call it social coherence and empires are really on the upward-f facing slope. The expansive dynamics of collective human antioent entropy that's coherent and of course it reaches a peak and then entropy starts to take hold of the system and gradually unbeknowing to the system it starts to decline. So this entropic process is the fundamental reason why we do what we do, why we socially organize to create empires and those empires basically anti-entropic. That's our survival mechanism. But coming with it is a really hard realization is imagine an empire that's gone up and it's curved and it could just occupy this space in like a old person that doesn't live and doesn't die and that doesn't really suit the collective organism called humanity. And so what happens is another system rises into the vacuum as I described the Asian system. But the drum beat that dictates the time at which the challenge turns to conflict. Now that is all about the contr cycle. So there is like a drum beat and a rhythm to war. And that rhythm's biggest cycle is 112 years which is between great hegemonic conflicts like the Spanish being challenged by the French like the French being challenged by the British like the British being challenged by the Germans in 1914 and sometimes once the trigger point is reached the cycle may peak but it still carries on for another 30 years. So although the the and and the best way to think of a contractive cycle is a surge of entropy unconsciously. It's like a pulse which goes through the human collective and triggers and jiggles connections which means that we move to challenge at that moment. So the biggest cycle I've I can identify is 112 years. Every 56 years you get the smaller conflicts like the cold war, Vietnam or the American civil war or the seven years war. But the big ones which decide how the larger collective is governed they come every 112 years. And at the basis of that challenge is something quite fascinating is originally humanity was a hierarchical system but essentially thanks to maritime adapted processes and and and going to sea makes you adaptive and it makes you lateral or it self- selects to be lateral. So the ratio of coastline to internal volume will dictate how many lateral and linear people there are in a population. And it's no coincidence that Athens was a sea power and it attempted the early forms of democracy and Britain and Holland were both sea powers or they were maritime powers before they were sea powers and because they were full of lateralized people that lived by the sea who were self-responsible because they'd gone out in their boats separate from everyone else and that self-responsibility was something that was actually you know biased towards democracy and give me control over my life rather than being told what to do. whereas land powers remained hierarchical and that is a fascinating distinction and so the big struggles in in hierarchical power are all about democracy versus hierarchy. You can go back and look at Napoleon has been more dictatorial than the kings around. I know it sounds funny to us today but they he was seen to be that dictator and you can see how the Kaiser was more dictatorial than than the other European powers. I mean certainly the second form of Hitler was more than and this great struggle we're in now is is the human race going to be hierarchical under the vision of the CCP or is it going to maintain its individual democracy and the struggle is coming at the time when democracy is weaker than it's probably ever been in its history since it started. So this isn't really a good test. It's a more vibrant hierarchical system in China versus an older and decrepit version of democracy in the superwestern Christian Empire in the terminal phases of this last cycle. And I think what we're looking at is the need to reinvent ourselves to reaffirm what our new form of de democracy is. And we're not going to do that voluntarily. We're going to be forced to do it in the in the fire of conflict. >> It's it's interesting you mentioned 112 years. I've been instinctively calling the situation that we're in uh the 100red-year uh storm. You know, for the past 10 plus years, uh you know, when I was teaching previously, I would be telling students, you know, we're in sort of like a 1920s, 1930s moment. And then things just seem to be lining up uh again. And then if you want to tell us sort of where we are and where we might be going, I've been focusing a lot uh for the past 20 years. You know, I I I decided to permanently expatriate from the US. um empire and I've been fascinated by the decline because in in in my view again looking at history you see as we decline the economy deteriorates the culture degenerates and politically tyranny rises and you know I I'm you know I'm proof of that a US citizen being targeted by uh our intelligence agencies taking me off from financial platforms as I mentioned to you DHS taking me off of PayPal and then so you've got you know Washington, London, EU, NATO uh and then You've got this apparent rise of the global south, bricks, China, Russia, Eurasia, multiplarity. So, uh what's uh where are we at? >> All right. So, let's let's just look at America. America entered the fifth stage of decline in 911. And the stage that recognized it was basically the the loss of moral imperative by torture and rendition by the evil duo Rumsfelt and Cheney. That's the beginning of the loss. All empires have a moral belief that they have the right to rule by a form of superiority. And you can see that the Chinese are trying to establish their legacy to rule the world going back to the HanchChinese in 200 BC because it's consistent and it runs through the threads and they are in effect the the the children of these people that this is almost you know 2,200 years ago. Now, I would dispute violently that Chinese consistent empire streams are in fact older than the West. And the reason why I would do so is because if you look at that circle around the Yellow River that their civilization centered upon and if you compare it to our circle, so the Yellow River is compared to the Nile and the Egyptians are our river culture and rivers concentrated populations and allowed sophisticated agrarianism. So the Egyptian culture is the first of the western cultures and the Greeks are the second of those cultures and the Romans are the third. Now once you think about that and the advantage we had is we had once the river concentrated Egyptian population we now had seafaring across the east and Mediterranean which was like a massive superhighway to develop these civilizations. Something the Chinese didn't have. So it's no surprise that when you take that continuum of our western empires, Rome was 800 years in advance of any Chinese civilization at the time it became a million strong population in the city. It was 200 BC in the case of Rome and it was 800 years later in the case of China. It was the same point when Rome could facilitate 2% of its population in a professional army which was the same thing that happened in China at the same size of city populations of a million. I say that because for the Chinese listening, they don't have moral superiority. The continuum of ours is is more diverse and richer and it goes back almost a thousand years beyond the beginnings of their civilization that we can trace. So [snorts] that's an important point. But what we're facing right now is we're at the end of an organizational process that took the West to control the world predominantly through the British Empire and its maritime power. And much as we've thought America is powerful, it is but a fraction of the power that Britain really had. Britain had no challenges from Waterloo all the way through to the First World War. No one could face it. A fleet that could take on any two nations. And yes, we might have had local wars in in Crimea, but truly our position as a global dominant hedgeman was way beyond anything America experienced through the Cold War where it was struggling to push back the Soviet Union. I say that for the Americans listening. It's a hard pill. America is an empire and I know most Americans don't like that. It's a very sophisticated form of empire because it allows the vassal states to think they're free within the western construct. So it gives freedom to Japan or Germany or you know even Britain within certain boundaries and it pro provides defense alliances that maintain their freedom their values and the way it works is it extracts dollar value through a dollar empire and that dollar is the hidden transmission of wealth. What people don't realize when you're American saying that's not our war we shouldn't be going there. The very fact that America is wealthy and the people domestically have enjoyed a very high standard of living is because of the existence of this empire of dollarization which is defended by the military and peace is maintained within it and since Obama came along the shrinkage of that dynamic is is very significant and significant because all empires that are mature live on very narrow margins and the margin that made it profitable has disappeared. Hence the massive debt surge which we've been seeing which is another part of this the declining stage. So 911 was all about the loss of moral imperative. And then of course America happened upon this wonderful idea that they could actually if their growth decreased for strategic reasons they could just pop a little leverage print some money and if growth real growth h haveved just double it up with some leverage and it would look the same. Politicians got reelected. People thought it was really cool. rates were suppressed because America had this great idea to export all its manufacturing to that very cheap place called China. And the result was suppressed inflation, suppressed interest rates, and mad money printing, which finally came to an end 20 years later. And if it started in ' 03 with three times leverage, we're probably at 40 times leverage now. Like a superleveraged bomb. That's basically where America is thanks to his leadership. Now one of the problems of money printing which is just not discussed is all about understanding that humans are not all the same. We accept that some of us can run 100 meters in under 10 seconds. Well, one or two. We accept that some of us could in 12 seconds or 13 seconds. Those physical attributes we understand or someone's taller and can dunk a basketball. But what we really don't understand is how different and the diversity of human thought processes. And I would argue there are two subsets of humanity. It's genetic. The first subset is the oldest. It's the huntergatherer roots which were highly adaptable for daily survival. And those huntergatherers became the warrior leadership clan predominantly. And then the next clan came along which was through agrarianism 10,000 years ago which is all about predictability and repeatability. So we have this all cultures have a duality between being lateral and linear. And what happens is that lateral people are adaptive and they tend to build things. So most empires are built by lateral people having gone through the first stage of regionalization, having gone through a civil war, which we'll come on to in a minute. Lateral people move out and build the empire. Now war is and has a massive social purpose for humanity. So until we can substitute the social purpose, we have to assume we're going to keep having wars with the periodicity of the cycles we've talked about and smaller ones below that. And that is essentially wars mean that rising systems are adaptive and lateral. And old systems tend to be linear, especially if they printed money, because it allows you to pretend it's all going to be the same. To remove maverick thought or maverick questioning and linear people work together to hold it all together on the railway tracks and refuse to see the tidal wave coming at it because it wasn't part of the plan. And that makes them prey to this adaptable rising system in the conflict. And if there's one thing that happens in conflict is systems lateralize. Linear leadership gets its men killed very quickly because it's predictable and lateral leaders rise to the four and the longer the war the more adapted the lateral system becomes even though many of those people are dying in the process and the net effect is adaptability creativity look at Ukraine look even the Russians are adapting in the way they fight and Ukrainians are more innately adaptable because democracy imposes greater levels of self- responsibility and thought than the Soviet system but all systems will adapt is a question of how fast. So conflicts like a civil war supercharge a country because both sides everyone's involved in it and it purges the system of linear thinkers and it surges forward because the lateral people are fully in charge afterwards. They're militarized and they run down all the resource chains. That's where China is interestingly enough. And the West is very much in a a super linear state because of the sophistication of our money printing has made it go on for longer and longer. And the maverick lateral people have been spat out and they're in fields somewhere looking down rabbit holes with not enough linear skills to work out which rebbit hole is real or not. And they're completely bamboozled as a result. So I would argue in this dynamic it isn't I'm better than you and you're better than me. The mindsets have symbiotic relationships. Strategic thinking is a lateral process, but execution and repetition is a linear process. Well, obviously I might build a factory, but I'm not going to run it very well. Then a linear person will run it better than a lateral person. So, we need to understand our differences and work together, especially at a time like this where we're really under stress. But that's not how our leadership's working. Our leadership is blind right now. In fact, it's got his foot on the accelerator in the case of of Biden and certainly Sunnak in the UK. And they are driving the the world into war by their in effect extreme appeasement strategies which are basically even worse than Chamberlain because Chamberlain assumed the worst and was preparing with with a defensive package whereas Biden actually hasn't and he's weakened American defenses and Synergy's actually given the keys to the doorway. So there's some parallels which are quite frightening. Both of which are super linear leaders and both of the people around them are super linear too. I got so many questions, but let's get to the war thing. Um, so many people have had on and and just me reading the the tea leaves, the signals, it just seems like this momentum has has been built on this train and it's almost like it can't be stopped. You know, my so many things we can discuss. You know, many countries now, Croatia, my own country, Serbia, Baltic, European countries are they want to bring back conscription. Uh, you're seeing um, you know, the US empire say South Korea needs to have nukes. they're they're putting together an Asian NATO. I saw you just on your Twitter share news of of um um stuff like that. So this march towards war um you you just I feel like it's inevitable cuz as you say war is the default in human history. Peace is the anomaly. And so your further thoughts on this conflict that's coming uh can it be stopped? What what might it uh look like? Will tactical nukes be used? You know um your further thoughts? >> We're we're over the brink. I'm afraid. Um, and what's important to understand is what's driving this process. I can talk about, you know, a 112 year cycle and the entropy that surges, but there's some also hard things to realize. The Chinese created a brilliant strategy after the thirdwide Taiwan Straits crisis. They realized they weren't going to get through American military power. So they decided to create a process where they induced America to invest in its manufacturing base to transfer its IP and what it wouldn't transfer with steel in a systematic process of 100,000 plus high IQ Chinese ripping us ripping cyerspace apart and that was happening even as we were trying to transfer manufacturing IP to China which is just stupid but you've got to understand the imperative for America was keep inflation low because we need to print money and that's a weakness that they prayed upon and there was a blindness across Wall Street of just make money, not understanding. We were funding a a 30-year plan which meant that they would take our manufacturing, demanufacture the world, industrialize it, and then they would have the biggest manufacturing capability in the world as America did in the Second World War, which is how it won the Second World War. So, we gave them the keys to our doors. And right now we've also suffered from really poor leadership which is typical in American decline. I think Bush was probably if we could get Bush Junior back we'd all yup for joy you know and he was relatively st he was honest straightforward but he seemed a bit but he was actually I think far better than people realize. Obama was the worst president at the time we'd seen. He gave away American power on the most epic scale. And without being racist about it, there is a dynamic in empires where when underclasses proliferate sufficiently to have voting power, their main agenda is social integration and they fail to understand that maintenance of the borders is critical as well to allow social integration to happen within peace. He neglected all of that and he gave all the territory away that emboldened the Chinese to start becoming from a covert plan to a more overt plan which coincided with shei who is the most frightening leader we've seen because he doesn't have a chip on one shoulder or the other. He's perfectly balanced. He just has been brought up to believe power is security and he is a strategic mind that would make most of our leaders if they can get his side terrified and they're running rings around us. So you've got this massive rise of China, this weaponization of China and the critical to the moment was all challenging hedgemans are faced with a hedgemony that's had decades to build weapon systems like carriers and naval power. So they don't have the same time and certainly China doesn't because it's been held under a glass ceiling for almost 40 years by America. So it's getting the demographic tip over. So it's a real now or never moment for it. And essentially what they do is they seek asymmetric weapons of hegemonic challenge as I call them. So the Germans use hubot. They you know tried to use an air force. And essentially what the Chinese created and when they first appeared I was screaming now this is real was anti-hship ballistic weapons that were conventional warheads to kill carriers. The basis of American power. They appeared in n in in 2017 and I was screaming guys this is now really serious. They've created something that's almost impossible to defend against when used in saturation. It destroys American carrier power and it destroys the basis of hegemonic power projection. Now you can talk about the US Air Force, but basically carrier power has been it for America. Um, now people just didn't respond. I wrote a book about it called Red Lightning, all about how the Chinese are building a system to create Pearl Harbor on steroids. thousands of missiles that saturate Japanese and American defenses in the first hour of a war with no warning and no buildup like we saw in the invasion of Ukraine. And my thesis is that's what they've created. They've basically gone into a four-year plan since the origins of COVID, which is like a Nazi four-year plan. They've stockpiling resources. They've got a consumer gap because they've stopped exporting to the same level and they've militarized their economy. Some of which is now directing its output towards Russia at at a rate that none of us really could have imagined if you were, you know, rather flighty liberal and didn't understand what we were facing. Um, entirely predictable. And I mention all of this because the main issue here is China is in a position to truly challenge America. And it has a number of allies. It has Russia um which is you know not insignificant but I do not believe Putin would have gone into Ukraine if he was on his own and China didn't exist. He couldn't have done it. So China was a facilitator and I'm sure the conversation between she and Putin she egged him on to do it knowing full well he was going to watch what happened but he egged him to do it and said of course we'll support you. Similarly, Iran is another oil producing commodity relationship and what China seeks there is as a commodity consumer is autocratic powers that will funnel resources in. So, one of the fundamental errors in the White House was the belief that economic sanctions were going to hold Putin back. Well, in an upward-f facing commodity cycle, the commodity countries like Russia become incredibly wealthy because everyone needs their resource. In fact, you can model the whole cold war from 1950 to the peak of 75 as one contractive cycle which enormously benefited Russia and then of course the loss of Russian power when the reverse happened. And in America they faced 15% inflation, 15% 10-year rates, 22% Fed funds and America was a vibrant empire I would say at the height of its power and it nearly buckled under that pressure. So right now you've got a rejuvenation and you can track Putin's history on this particular contract of cycle. He arrived at the beginning and you can see as a cycle research he didn't need the EU more anymore from 2008 onwards and he's used the coffers that were filled by oil exports and gas exports and he used it to militarize his economy and although he has poor demographics as a dictator he marshal his whole country into this war it's one man's war not a country's war whereas China is an expansive system that if you remove shei they'd still be there whereas if you had a different navani for example Russia wouldn't have been aggressive. It wasn't innately aggressive. It was aggressive because it was led by it is led by an aggressive leader and it had the resources through commodities. And then the last piece is North Korea, which is not an independent state, but a puppet of China. Every time it throws a rock at America, it's because it was told to by Beijing. We should be treating it as the same country, not as some independent nation that happens to share China's views on the country. And the technology they're developing in their missiles. Where does that come from? Well, they didn't develop it. It comes via train from the north. So, we've got to see this architecture of what is now a very coherent and integrated autocracy. It's an access of autocracy that seeks nothing less than the global destruction of democracy. And we are we are mobilizing so slowly and just do not realize the magnitude of what we face because we're hubistic. So yeah, I think I think I think that's definitely on on point. And I guess beyond the pale, I mean, we can't really predict what would happen, but I guess just one more thought on that. It would be I mean, tens of millions of people could be >> So So, so you asked about where we are in this process. Make no mistake about it. I we can definitely say World War II started with the invasion of Ukraine and now the Middle East is on fire. That is not a battle between Hamas and Israel. That is a battle between Iran and Israel using Hamas as its proxy. I mean on the day it happened I warned it would escalate and it was the beginning. Why did Iran started at that stage? It started because it didn't have social coherence at high inflation which funny enough and and high debt levels which are now being paid off by selling oil to China as the price goes up. But basically they were like Russia was to hold his ban weather together. He had to go to war and he was supported by an alliance of people that believed they could do that. And China is exactly the same. The last piece of this puzzle is when China chooses to go to war and takes the whole of the Asian basin like Japan did in the expansion of the Empire of the Sun, except for there will be no warning because the weapon systems they built defy our ability to assess when they're going to be used. The Chinese understand that all of the wars that the West has won have been intelligence-led. That's why they're into quantum cryptologology so they can send safe signals that we won't break. and why we're into quantum computing because we want to break things. But the Chinese have thought about that and one of the problems is that hedgeimmonies are highly predictable in their last stages in their mature stages. Take for example Hamas. The Iranians taught Hamas not to use electronic signals that would be seen heard by Mossad or the CIA. They taught them to use hard telephone lines and pieces of paper. So you can assume that the nuclear program inside Iran has very similar operational levels. So I am really concerned that they are at or close to a breakout. And the reason why they are doing what they're doing is to create the space for them to make the breakout over 2 3 4 weeks. And I think it was a huge mistake not to strike their nuclear facilities after their their battering of you know missiles that were defended. But we're missing the point. And I think the reason why so many people came together to defend Israel was because they couldn't assess whether there's a nuclear weapon in one of those warheads. So they had to make as close as possible 100%, you know, shield work because one could be the one with a warhead. So I think we're in much more tenuous ground and Biden's every step actually encourages aggression through showing consistent weakness. It's appalling watching him. >> Yeah. Yeah, and as you mentioned uh the third world world war having begun in 2022. I've had a number of European intellectuals on the podcast say exactly uh the same thing confirming your analysis and just to go back to the US uh for a moment the west um just any thoughts on what this collapse might look like you know thoughts on this increasing this decline of democracy this increase of of tyranny in the west you know we've seen in Canada Trudeau like people protesting uh many of the measures of of the pandemic having ban bank accounts frozen. Uh it's happening in Europe to to to journalists to their parents who have nothing to do with anything. They're just being accounts being shut off and now free speech is under attack um in in the West. So you're seeing these these signs and there's talk of second civil war in the United States. We've got these crazy elections coming up. It's almost a banana republic sort of stuff. And any thoughts on uh this? So you a lot of things you touched on, they're all part of one process. So decline means less to go around and naturally systems fracture to try and compete as to how to split those resources or optimize them. [snorts] So the decline of American politics and Trump's intervention into it. Now what was interesting, his slogan was perfect. Make me great again because Obama's made me less than. But the trouble with a bar with with Trump is although he's lateral and some of the things he points out are appropriate, he is a compromised by Russia in some way in a frightening way. Look at his behavior. He's insulted every politician but one man and that's Putin. There is some definite hold but that Russia has over his behavior. Look at the way he got the Magda Republicans to stop the arms package which is so significant to the Ukrainians. I'm afraid he is not an agent for the well-being of America. He's certainly an agent for his well-being because he's a narcissist and the and in prior times a narcissist like Trump would be unacceptable in politics. But one of the processes of systems at rise is individuals are ambitious but they sublimate part of themselves to a collective that's successful and they're proud of that collective. On the way down the collective actually becomes less important than self and so basically it becomes and society becomes very selfish and narcissists start to thrive. So there are more narcissists in control or in power than ever would have been in the rising process, which is why Trump doesn't look like he stands out because there are many people around. He happens to be a personification of it. But nonetheless, many of the people that might vote him have narcissistic tendencies themselves and don't see it. Now the trouble is with narcissists is the one thing you know any contact with them will leave you worse off. Period. Whatever you think of their advantages, however you think in business you can harness them or gate them or create boundaries around them, they will blow out of them. You turn your back and you'll turn round to see ashes. So Trump will destroy even if there isn't a war, Trump would destroy democracy. And he tried to he's a he's a dictator. He's he's jealous of Putin's power. So we need to understand he is that man. Biden on the other hand is equally as bad. Although he's not as narcissistic, he is weak. He is a completely failed hubristic old man that just everything he touches from Afghanistan's route that then led to Russia that then led to weak behavior in support of Israel. Every single part of this story is bad news. And although they try and control China's exports to Russia, they really don't look in the mirror to think what are the signals we're sending she we've been sending weak signals. So why is he ever going to listen to us when we ask? So there's a lack of awareness, lack of strategic planning. Now, interesting enough, the condition of America and its fracture has a precedent and that is Britain. In 1911 to 1912, Britain was literally going through a process where it's becoming poorer. There was a rise of liberalism and the need to spread the wealth around from the few wealthy people, which is really where Biden is. He's a wealthist politician. And there were two governments. And Winston Churchill wrote about the period and he said it was quite amazing that we got through it because I thought the army would have to intervene in the civil war. Now that political construct emboldened the Kaiser and the Kaiser became more aggressive looking to go and drive through the fracture. But all it did was then combine the two sides that turned face the Kaiser and happily went to war in 1914. So for those that think America is going to break into civil war, I would argue not before China makes his move and not before China unites both halves of the house to face a common enemy. So that's really important. We must remember that. Um I think the process that you talked about of sort of um tyranny as you called it, there is something that happens less in decline but in decline it can happen. You know, you can think about Nero and characters in in Roman history that are are destructive, but I think it's something else. I think as this pulse with this K-wave, entropic pulse comes along, intrinsically we know that times are no longer peaceful and full of plenty that hard times are coming and the migration of leadership is always towards dictatorship. In in democracy, it's benevolent dictatorship like Roosevelt and Chamberlain. And obviously in other places it's more extreme versions of Hitler and Stalin's behavior or she's to be. So this trend we're seeing is actually a trend where as things become more entropic and difficult naturally we accept and these people rise and we sort of intrinsically know that being governed by 12 people deciding do we go or do we go left in a war doesn't work. So I think we're seeing the hallmarks of that and the shadows of it. It's less about decline and more about this pulse and surge. it and yeah it makes perfect sense. there's a logic to it and maybe your thoughts on the economy you know the dollar its status as world reserve there's talk of ddollarization there's talk of hyperinflation of the dollar financial crash um what's important for you when it comes to >> so all of the above really I mean ddollarization has happened you've looked the world has bifurcated into the auto autocratic powers of China Russia and and its affiliates gone and you know China's buying gold for a reason because it knows what it's planning and it's not nice. So deolarization is a reality. The world is bifrocated and the current American empire was based on the whole world being dollarized. So you have it or you knock a third of it off and it's just not going to work. So the dollar is really under threat. Um but then if you look at the yen that's under threat because it sits next to China and it's number one target. If you look at Europe, you know, and and I think at the moment, we'll come on to the NATO view of Russia because it's a little bit alarming again. This they're so hubistic, they never predict anything that comes ahead. And one of the things they're saying is, you know, Ukraine is obviously sapping the strength out of Russia. What they don't realize is the Chinese and the North Koreans when they finish their job in Asia are going to send their soldiers to the Eastern Front quicker than we actually can rearm. And so we need to be aware this is a world war. It isn't just a regional set of isolated events anymore and we need to be prepared for the massive manpower that China and the Asian countries can bring to bear and resources through industrialization. So this idea that don't worry the Russians won't be up for it for 10 years is another hubistic idea that's madness. Um so ddollarization yes inflation absolutely inflation is going to come because resources are going to go up. This is the phase in the contractive cycle, the C-wave, where resource constriction comes through conflict and you know things like gold go up to 10,000 and all reaches 350 by the the peak of 2030. It's nasty stuff. So inflation for a money printing western world is a nightmare and we we are going to have to face it and I think there's going to be a massive round of debt forgiveness somewhere. all of the western debt is going to turn into hundredyear debt with a bullet payment somewhere in the future and all you've got is a piece of paper because without it we're not going to make it. We just can't create a war economy. And I think that's really what's going to happen is interesting enough we've sort of had this non-real, highly fatized economy and war will bring us back to reality. Real production rates, real manufacturing capabilities. You know, it isn't about handbags anymore. I'm sorry. If it doesn't help us win a war, it's not there. And so, yes, they'll print money in a different way, but no, it's not going to go to the Magnificent Seven's share price. It's going to go to different places. So, we need to get our head around that transition, which is happening as we speak. >> And any quick thought on you, I'm not very keen on on on cryptocurrency, but you know, Bitcoin and stuff like that. Look, the blockchain um construct is an analog construct and someone will get a quantum computer and rip them apart. So, this is only a short-term solution. Yes, you can argue that someone might have a quantum blockchain one day, but I haven't seen any evidence of one turning up. So, let's assume it's a short-term hedge against the dollar that's independent of things and it's behaving like a safe haven, a bit like gold. And yes, I think Bitcoin probably will reach 96 and it possibly could surge to 120, but after that, you're out. I'm out. Gone. This is a momentary sort of something that works in an environment for a limited period of time, not a long-term solution. The long-term solution to holding value is gold and silver. It always has been. >> This is I've been coming to the same conclusion. I I just see too much tulip mania um cultlike behavior with with Bitcoin and the cryptos and then the energy aspect as well. I just don't I what you just laid out I I I've had that same feeling. Um now quick thought on if if you looked into globalism or this idea of world government because that's something I I I look into as well and there's people trying to they're trying to cobble together like a global currency. Do do you have any thought on you know people talk about Klaus Schwab and and the great reset and and any thoughts on this idea of globalism and and forcing >> I mentioned I mentioned earlier the phenomena where society becomes highly linear and the lateral thinking people are literally like pushed out into the fields and they're exiled metaphorically and human beings don't do well on their own and they go a little bit sort of down the wrong rabbit holes but lateral thinkers that have been exiled that don't have very disciplined linear thought can go down some very bad rabbit holes and this particular one is one of my top like rabbit hole because have you ever met Davos man have you ever really seen him in the flesh and I have and believe me he's not able to come up with a construct of world domination and if he was that smart his primary goal would be the Chinese are coming we better do something about it but he hasn't seen that either so [snorts] rest assured the idea that these suited people are going to like consciously take over the world with the construct doesn't exist exist. They do things in an unconscious way and linear systems are about mass. So they just keep expanding like an ink blot. It isn't a conscious expansion. It's just an inklot expansion. What you see for some of the the rationale behind you know the justification is happening is the ink block transmission very different from the Chinese that have an incredible strategic plan have executed it in multif facets very successfully and are moving to where they want to be by purpose collectively led by individuals with vision that doesn't exist in the west in any covert form whatsoever because we wouldn't be in this mess if it did >> what what are some things principles I know people can subscribe to your uh affordable subscription service, but what are what can the average person sort of do to hedge against uh uh the hard road that's coming? >> So the reason I started global forecaster was because I had a view that just you know going off and managing money again in another wasn't going to help anyone because our society was at risk. So I really felt impelled as I did when I overcame my dyslexia to write breaking the code of history to share my findings which have just really proven so frighteningly powerfully accurate. I can't it scares me how successfully accurate they are and it's no use holding that stuff we had to share it. So it's a great privilege to be on the site talking to you today and basically I would encourage people to understand this better to that's what marinations are about. They're not just I get out of bed on the right and talk about it. They are the application of social laws and constructs which are observable and provable by observation which I outline for free on the site and then it's the application of those principles to the to what's going on in the world right now. So it leaves you to be informed. It's a an author precision where all the things are fact. The reason why we fact check badly is because most people don't have an accurate mosaic to compare a fact to. So they just don't understand what's happening and you don't know whether it's true or not. But you'll find once you adopt this mindset, it's pretty easy to work out which and when and where essentially it's true or not true. And all of Marinations is about reconstructing the way each of our readers follows the dots. Now from that position, what do you do? Well, first of all, you understand it better. And the biggest problem we've got is mass collective denial. And the denial that we're going through is consistent with Pax Bratannia ending in 1914. No one could quite believe the world could go from 100 years of peace to a war because we hadn't seen a world war. So let's tick that one off as historically relevant. But the next thing that's happened is that through money printing we haven't gone to a little bit of linear with you know some lateral people left. The l the linear people have wiped all the lateral thinkers out in government and leadership. So it's so extreme they can't see what's coming and how quickly it's coming. And then there's another massive own goal is that when you print money and you push your stock market up, the collective dopamine levels in society are so high as measured by the bellweather stock markets that essentially the cortisol response of looking for threats isn't there. So for those three reasons, we face massive denial. And the first thing to do is to realize where we are in the curve and what we and and that's quite scary. But I encourage everyone to look at it because we all if we're older have children and we care about the future. So the process is we've got to realize where we are and then we can start to do something about it. And believe me, we can. You know, you can always do something about a problem, but you got to recognize where it is. So I really encourage people to take the red pill just as they did in the matrix. And there's a piece on our site about what that journey looks like. And then from that position of reality and understanding as an individual, we are in a society that's democratic where I can speak to you, you can speak to your friends, they can speak to their friends. And what I'm fascinated by is how the cascade of knowledge and change works. So we need to believe in that and be a part of it. And then we're playing our part. And if for those who are listening, you're in power, then you can come and like discuss in more detail what that means for your various problems and solutions. But for everyday people, you still have a role which was be responsible, use our knowledge to learn and disseminate our knowledge in conversations. That's so important. Just just one more um question. You mentioned earlier that we're in this battle between different systems, different ways of of um seeing the world um you know, autocracy, more open systems. One more fear that I have relates to what some people call the Chinese style system of this technocracy. You know, this these sort of like digital ID cashless systems that they're trying to be implemented which would make it much easier, you know, for any uh one who commits a thought crime like myself or dissident. They can shut off your bank account, your ability to travel and and and work. Um and these systems will require a lot of energy going forward. And we we sort of see in the west our leaders trying starting to try and implement these types of systems. Do you have any you know like the social credit type system any thoughts on that? >> Yes, it's a really important question actually because you know often people say to me so you know what do you think the Chinese are going to do and I answer and say quite simply the CCP perceives democracy as a virus. It perceives one person who believes they can be free as a source of a whole virus. Look what they did with their viruses to stamp them out. And that's how they see the rest of the world. And their plan is literally to take control of the world. They're already 17% of the world, which is about the same ratio as Germany was of Europe when its goal was to take over Europe. So it isn't, you know, but what's really interesting is they've controlled and dominated their own population. They created a social credit system, which is literally the control of thought and action. They've applied that same system to the Oggers who were hostile and now they've all been subjugated. They took that same system into Hong Kong where you had six generations of free capitalist Chinese, the most energetic population in the world and productive and it subjugated them in 3 months flat. Now that is scary because they genuinely have the tools and I think that we didn't really talk about the course of this war as I see it. The the Chinese can't win a war outright unless we fold and I doubt whether we will. What they can do is they can push America out of the second island chain and maybe if they're lucky get to the third island chain which includes Australia at which stage they'll do what Japan did but they'll do it better. They'll consolidate all of the gains in Japan and South Korea into this massive industrialized conglomerate that elomerate that essentially resources out of Russia. It won't control the blue oceans at that stage. It will send its men to the borders of NATO and it will consolidate for five years is my guess and it will come out of that region with thousands of warships to our hundreds and then it's going to emulate what we did. It's going to use the oceans to surround continents and bring them to their knees and one by one will go down and the world will be CCP controlled. That's their plan. Now the couple of things that we need to we are going to get hit very hard when this goes wrong and so we need to be prepared and our fragility that to know that they can only go so far and then it's up to us to mobilize ourselves to use the oceans that we do control and our industrial base and rebuild it to somehow come up with innovation that you know that counters Chinese threats but at the moment they could produce 50% more patents than we do which is exactly what I predicted in a rising system as they become come more creative and they create revolutions in military affairs that overwhelm the opposition. That's our danger. They have the advantage. They've learned everything from us and now they're innovating beyond us. And hypersonic weapons are perfect example or rail guns that we failed to follow through in the US Navy in 2021 and the Chinese have now made it work. The warning signs are all there whether it's, you know, cavitating submarines and super cavitation we've just heard about. Like these guys are on the cutting edge and we're behind. So, you know, we're in trouble. Big trouble. And personally, you know, if there's one thing I do believe, I think the future of the human race is about individual potential, is about who we are, our minds, our souls. We are essentially way more than our physical nature as you know the quantum mechanical understanding of the universe talks about. And in fact, the implication is our brains are quantum mechanical computers and therefore can influence the world around us. So there is a sort of point at which I've often thought that individual awareness and capability becomes a lot more sort of productive and a force multiplier and we need to also bear that in mind as we go through the troubles ahead which are going to be Titanic. We've covered so much uh mind-blowing analysis and information. The future is not uh written. Um that was a great sort of final thought there. tell us then uh you know the best places we can find you your your projects, services, books and so forth. >> So um come to the site davidmarin.co.uk. Uh you sign up for free and you can access alerts. So any podcasts will come your way. But what really you need to do is access the marinations. They're not more than $50 a month, £50 a month. And we're talking about investment grade information of geopolitical understanding that isn't like a newspaper that tells you what's happened. It basically will tell you what will happen before it happens. And then we even track the newspapers catching up with us just to show you how often we're ahead of the curve. For example, we ran a big campaign which is essentially Britain needs a missile shield 5 months ago warning that we were totally exposed as a number one NATO that's basically supported Ukraine like poked everyone around them. We're on the number one hit list of Putin when it goes wrong and Britain has no missile defense shield and five months later it's now finally coming to the public. People are finally talking about it and that's very common where things we talk about are before others or before people see it. So become informed, understand what's really going on, overcome your fear and and that's it. If you're a financial investor, if you're basically in that in that space, we have a whole area designed for the senior levels of of asset management. And if you're a government agency, we also work with agencies provide our knowledge to solve problems whether they're in the military or other areas of government because all aspects of this model are applicable whether it's the NHS not working and why it doesn't work. It basically every aspect of society is touched upon by the the the broad theories we've talked about which can be refined into much closer detail and the principles that are really important to grain growthful expansive societies that have respectful dynamics. All right. Uh the links are in the description so people can go check that out. They can also follow you on Twitter global forecaster. That's without the last e. Thank you uh David for being on Geopolitics and Empire. >> Been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for your time to interview me. >> I hope you enjoyed this Geopolitics and Empire podcast. The website is geopoliticsandempire.com and I encourage you to sign up for the free email list that goes out with each podcast and every weekend with a collection of news headlines. The newsletter and website are our last lines of defense. We're being censored and deplatformed. It's nearly impossible to find geopolitics and empire on the Google search engine. We've been blacklisted. 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