In Episode 334 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with famed historian of American Foreign policy Walter Russell Mead about the evolving war in the Middle East and why we are living through the most dangerous period in international affairs since the 1930s. Professor Mead is a Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at the Hudson Institute, the Global View Columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Affairs and Humanities at Bard College in New York.
How have we found ourselves on the cusp of another war in the Middle East when the Biden administration’s explicit goal coming into office in 2020 was to get the United States out of this region so it could focus on China? This is the question that Mead and Kofinas look to answer in the first hour of their conversation. They also discuss the historical parallels and differences between the present moment and previous periods of immense danger in the international system, the apocalyptic strain in American politics and foreign policy, and how political ideology and the culture war inform people’s opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the escalating war in Gaza.
In the second hour, Walter Russell Mead speculates about how international events may evolve, the possibility of outright collusion among America’s adversaries, as well as further avenues of escalation that could lead to direct U.S. involvement in Israel’s war against Hamas. The two also discuss how the war in Ukraine, as well as Chinese military provocations in the Pacific factor into American policy in the Middle East, why U.S. adversaries no longer seem deterred by American power, and what can be done to change that before it’s too late.
You can subscribe to our premium content and access our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to email info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone from our team will get back to you.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 10/26/2023
In Episode 333 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Michael Brenes, the Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University who recently authored an article for Foreign Affairs about the U.S. defense industrial base titled “How America Broke Its War Machine.”
Michael and Demetri discuss the state of the U.S. defense industrial base, American military readiness, and the effect that great-power competition and the expansion and scope of U.S. military involvement in active conflicts overseas could have on the nation’s political stability.
You can subscribe to our premium content and gain access to our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to email info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone from our team will get back to you.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 10/17/2023
In Episode 332 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with geopolitical analyst and forecaster Kamran Bokhari. Kamran is the Senior Director of the Eurasian Security & Prosperity Portfolio at the New Lines Institute for Strategy & Policy and has served at the U.S. State Department and as a Senior Consultant with the World Bank.
The subjects of today’s conversation concern the escalating violence ignited by last weekend’s brutal attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas, as well as the Israeli Defense Forces’ ongoing counteroffensive and bombing of the Gaza Strip.
Kamran and Demetri spend the first hour of their conversation discussing the attacks, what we know about their original scope and intention, what role Iran may have played in helping plan the attacks, and whether or not we can expect Hezbollah to open a second front of attack in the north of Israel, as well as other potential pathways of escalation that could rope in the United States and turn this into a larger, regional conflict.
In the second hour, Bokhari and Kofinas look at how the events transpiring in the Middle East fit into the story that Demetri has been telling on this podcast for years about the fragmentation of the liberal rules-based international order and the emergence of a new multipolarity where nation states will seek to resolve long-standing border or ethnic disputes by force as everyone jostles to reposition themselves favorably ahead of the emergence of a new status quo. What this means for the future of Israel, Iran, Turkey, China, Russia, and the United States, is all part of that discussion.
You can subscribe to our premium content and gain access to our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to email info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone from our team will get back to you.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 10/15/2023
In Episode 331 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Andy Constan and Mike Green after a week of turmoil in the bond market that saw a dramatic repricing of long-term government debt, raising debt servicing costs for the US government and sending yields on 10-year Treasury bonds to nearly 5%.
Demetri, Andy, and Mike spend the first hour of their conversation trying to make sense of the recent sell-off, as well as what the implications of these higher long-term interest rates will be for the economy and asset markets.
The second hour is dedicated to discussing the risk-reward calculus for investors who are trying to decide whether or not they want to use this opportunity to add bonds to their portfolios, in what amount, over what duration, and what the risks and opportunities are of doing so given the continued uncertainty about the direction of interest rates and inflation.
You can subscribe to our premium content and gain access to our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to email info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone from our team will get back to you.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 10/06/2023
In Episode 330 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Henry Olsen, author of “Working Class Republican” and “The Four Faces of the Republican Party,” about where the United States and other western democratic countries find themselves politically today, the sources of populism’s broad, international appeal, and why he believes that we are living through the kind of political realignment that hasn’t happened for almost a century. Henry is also a columnist for the Washington post and the host of the weekly podcast “Beyond the Polls” where he speaks with leading political journalists and analysts about American politics and its presidential and congressional races.
Demetri and Henry spend the first hour of their conversation discussing the history of democratic politics and how we got to where are today where so many Americans and others Westerners no longer feel at home in their own parties and increasingly feel like their countries and the people who govern them are unresponsive to their needs, incompetent or corrupt in their exercise of power, and do not seem to share their most fundamental values when comes to the protection of personal freedoms, the exercise of civic responsibility, and the role of government in society.
The second hour is devoted to American electoral politics, specifically the 2024 elections, whether or not we are going to see a rematch of Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden, whether Trump will be able to campaign while also fighting several ongoing lawsuits, what it would take for someone in the Republican Primary—a Ron DeSantis or Vivek Ramaswamy—to take the nomination from him, what impact a third party candidate like RFK Jr. could have on the race, and what happens if Trump actually wins. What does the country look like in that scenario? Is the “Deep State” even going to let him take office? Will he be able to exercise power and if he does, is he going to go after his political enemies with same commitment and vitriol that they have gone after him, and what does that mean for the viability of American democracy?
You can subscribe to our premium content and gain access to our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to email info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone from our team will get back to you.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 10/03/2023
In Episode 329 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Dylan Patel, a semiconductor and A.I. analyst and the founder of boutique Semiconductor research and consulting firm SemiAnalysis, about how U.S. semiconductor export controls are failing and what the U.S. can do about it.
Dylan and Demetri spend the first hour of their conversation going over Huawei’s groundbreaking new Kirin 9000s chipset produced by Chinese semiconductor foundry SMIC and what it tells us about the progress that China’s domestic chip industry has made in the year since the U.S. Commerce Department implemented a series of targeted updates to its semiconductor industry export controls. This also includes a discussion about the military and commercial implications of China’s progress for America’s strategic competition with the People’s Republic.
In the second hour, Kofinas and Patel focus their attention on how exactly China’s domestic chip industry has managed to make so much progress despite the stated goals of the U.S. Commerce Department, what can be done to strengthen the existing export controls that are already in place, and what additional measures can be taken to complement those efforts that strengthen America’s own semiconductor industry and that incentivize a rebuild of American industry and society for the 21st century.
You can subscribe to our premium content and gain access to our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to email info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone from our team will get back to you.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 09/28/2023
In Episode 328 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Brad Setser, the Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations where he specializes in global trade and capital flows, financial vulnerability analysis, and sovereign debt restructuring. Brad has also served in multiple Democrat administrations as a senior advisor to the U.S. Trade Representative, as deputy assistant secretary for international economic analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department, and as a director for international economics on the staff of the National Economic and the National Security Councils.
Brad and Demetri spend the first hour of their conversation discussing what Brad has described as “the new geopolitics of global finance,” how the political and national security assumptions and priorities that were taken for granted during the unipolar period are undergoing a series of transformations, and how these transformations are increasingly informing economic policymaking and driving changes in the global economy and financial markets.
In the second hour, they focus our attention on China’s economy, what a viable macroeconomic equilibrium could look like for China given its extraordinarily high savings rate and export-driven growth model, and whether the country can continue to grow without making significant reforms that would increase domestic consumption and reduce the country’s structurally high current account surpluses. They also discuss the state of the German economy, the growth of China’s export market for electric vehicles, the progress that’s been made to de-risk supply chains, industrial policy in the United States and Europe, and much more.
You can subscribe to our premium content and gain access to our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to email info@hiddenforces.io, and Demetri or someone from our team will get back to you.
If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas
Episode Recorded on 09/26/2023