In Episode 208 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Adam Tooze, professor of history and the director of the European Institute at Columbia University. He’s also a prolific public commentator and author of several prize-winning books including his latest, “Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World Economy.” In the first part of their conversation, Demetri and Adam work their way through the chain of events that occurred between the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in January 2020 and the inauguration of Joe Biden in January 2021. Effectively the period that we now consider to be the first full year of the pandemic. In Adam’s own words we “wrestle with power and knowledge in time,” in an effort to understand the nature of the forces that this pandemic has unleashed, their constancy, and their implications for shaping not only our children’s futures but more immediately, ours as well. In the second part of our conversation, Demetri and Adam begin to dissect specific aspects and features of the modern world whether those be the fragility of our debt-financed economy and the neoliberal order, the threat, perceived or imagined to the United States, its citizenry, and its power structure posed by the rise of a potential peer-competitor in the form China, as well as the future of warfare and how to think about the proper relationship between the state and the private sector in the context of the types of polycrises of the Anthropocene that Adam and Demetri discuss during this conversation. It’s a phenomenal episode that you will not want to miss. You can access the second part of this episode, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s conversation through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 09/09/2021

In Episode 207 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Daniel Markey, Senior Expert on South Asia at the United States Institute of Peace who recently served as senior research professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and as the academic director of the school’s Global Policy Program. He is also the author of “China’s Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia,” which provides the roadmap for this conversation. In the first part of their discussion, Demetri and Daniel examine how the communist party in China views the lands, countries, and regions to its west, both historically and in terms of its contemporary security concerns and economic ambitions. How do its Eurasian neighbors view China? What motivates the CCP’s influence campaigns, investments, and diplomatic overtures in its Western region? We also discuss China’s Belt & Road initiative, and how it fits into a larger economic and political vision for a stronger, wealthier, and more assertive China on the international stage. In the Overtime, the conversation shifts to how the recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan is beginning to alter the geopolitical dynamics of the Greater Middle East by putting pressure on existing relationships, while opening the door to new partnerships and strategic alliances. Daniel explains what this means for the durability of China’s strategic partnership with Russia, how the internal politics of Pakistan and its relations with India are affected by China’s increased involvement there, and the economic and security implications of these developments for other regional players such as Kazakhstan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and what this means for US policy in the region. You can access the episode Overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 08/30/2021

In Episode 206 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jonathan Schroden, Director of the Countering Threats & Challenges Program at CNA. Schroden has served as a strategic advisor on Afghanistan to the US military since 2008, ranging from commands in-country to operational commands outside of Afghanistan, as well as strategic elements in the Pentagon, including the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In the first part of today’s conversation, Jonathan and Demetri examine the lens through which the public has become informed about the events unfolding in Kabul over the last two weeks and the public narrative that has quickly formed around what is truly a humanitarian and political disaster.   The question however that has been lost in all of this is why the United States is leaving Afghanistan in the first place, the cost-calculation behind the decision to withdraw, and how this decision fits into a broader strategic shift in the focus of American Foreign policy. In the second half the two focus on the specific elements that contributed to America’s defeat in Afghanistan, from the adroit battlefield tactics of the Taliban and their use of commercial technologies to fight an information war to massive corruption on the part of America’s partners in the Afghan government. We also look at the ecosystem of terrorist organizations operating in-country and the international threat they pose to Americans, as well as the geopolitical implications of America’s withdrawal for countries like China and Russia, as well as the supporting role played by Pakistan to aid the Taliban in its 20-year resistance against the US occupation. The goal of this episode, as well as our recent episode with Laurel Miller, is to help you fill in the gaps and put together some of the important pieces that have gone missing in what has largely been a unanimous condemnation of the President’s actions. By the end of this episode, you should be able to understand clearly (1) what went wrong, (2) why it went wrong, (3) and the larger, longer-term implications for the tragic events that are currently unfolding. You can access the episode Overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 08/24/2021

In Episode 205 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Laurel Miller, Director of International Crisis Group’s Asia Program who previously served as deputy and then acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the U.S. State Department. Laurel also held the position of senior foreign policy expert at the RAND Corporation and served as a Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Senior Advisor to the U.S. special envoy for the Balkans, and Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues during her previous time in government. Today’s episode is meant to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the situation currently unfolding in Afghanistan, the unique circumstances leading up to the collapse of the Afghan government, and the political and geopolitical implications of the reconstitution of a Taliban-led Afghanistan for the United States, its allies, as well as its competitors in the region. The first hour of Demetri’s conversation with Laurel is about the specific events that transpired in Afghanistan over the last several weeks, specifically looking at the contributing factors that led to the seemingly sudden collapse of the Afghan army and the evacuation of the capital by President Ghani and other members of the Afghan government. What were the facts on the ground leading up to the collapse? Who was aware of those facts? And why did the Biden Whitehouse and the US State and Defense departments fail so astonishingly in planning for this contingency? The two also discuss the history of America’s involvement in Afghanistan, if things could have turned out differently, and what could have been done differently in the context of what we knew then and the priorities and risks facing previous administrations going back to George W. Bush in 2001. The second half of this conversation is spent looking forward at not only the various scenarios for how Afghanistan’s political and economic future is likely to play out under a Taliban regime, but also how the US’s military withdrawal from Afghanistan changes the geopolitical chessboard for other regional players like Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and Iran, who have a complex set of competing security and commercial interests in Central Asia, along with an equally complex set of bilateral strategic relationships with Afghanistan’s neighbors, as well as with each other. Kofinas and Miller also discuss the political and diplomatic fallout stemming from how the Biden administration is perceived to have handled this withdrawal and its implications for the upcoming midterm and presidential elections in 2022 and 2024. Finally, the talk about how all of this impacts America’s strategic relationships with its allies, in particular its European partners like Germany and the UK, who played such an integral role in the mission to rebuild Afghanistan over the last two decades.  You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 08/23/2021

In Episode 204 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with investor and macro-financial strategist James Aitken. This is an over 2-hour-long conversation that ranges from a discussion about the oil industry and the impact of ESG mandates on prices, to the short-and-medium-term impacts of monetary & fiscal policy on inflation, to the post-Covid economy and opportunities for value investing. In the Overtime, James and Demetri pivot their discussion to Asia and the ongoing crackdown in Chinese capital markets, as well as the disruptive implications of China’s deployment of its digital currency electronic payments (DCEP) system and what it means for companies and investors doing business in China. They also discuss the impact that these drastic regulatory changes and disruptive technological innovations will have on American foreign policy and the future of the dollar. You can access the episode Overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 08/18/2021

In Episode 203 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas answers dozens of audience questions about his process for guest selection, outreach, and preparation, thoughts about certain conspiracies, the business side of podcasting, his experience creating a TV show on RT, and much, much more. All questions were submitted through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. Premium subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 08/10/2021

In Episode 202 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with veteran BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones about the biggest developments and news stories in tech from the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s to the rise of Google and Facebook. These stories and more are included in Rory’s new book “Always On,” which chronicles the rise of the smartphone era and how technology has altered our customs, expectations, and lives in ways that are easy to forget only fifteen years since the launch of the first iPhone. This is a conversation unlike most any other that you will have heard on this podcast, because there isn’t any one particular lesson that you are meant to take away from it. Instead, we want you to use it as an opportunity to reflect on just how much change we’ve seen in our lives over the last fifteen years and think about not only the causes of that change, but how different the world will be over the next fifteen if current trends continue and what that’s going to mean for our lives, for our businesses, and for our political systems. In the overtime, Rory shares his impressions of Silicon Valley culture and what he’s learned from interviewing some of the most powerful people in tech. Demetri and Rory also discuss the transformation of media, cultural differences between British and American journalists and the press, and the future of independent publishing and podcasting and what it means for the viability of traditional news outlets, especially those that depend evermore on sensationalism and controversy in order eke out a profit in this hyper-competitive media landscape. You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 07/20/2021

In Episode 201 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Wall Street Journal automotive and technology reporter Tim Higgins, about his new book “Power Play,” which chronicles the incredible and chaotic rise of Tesla and its controversial CEO Elon Musk. In the first part of their conversation, Tim and Demetri discuss the origin story of Tesla all the way up until the successful launch of the Model S: a truly remarkable achievement that came during a time when Americans were desperate to find something in their economy to feel hopeful about. Unfortunately, the success that Tesla enjoyed during that period was not something the company would be able to replicate and this is what most of the second half of this conversation is spent discussing. The two examine the difficulties that Tesla faced after the deployment of the Model S, why it faced those challenges, how management and the board dealt with them, and the stunning disconnect between the public’s perception of Musk as a “Tony Starkian innovator” and planetary savior, and the reality of who he is, what he knows, and what he’s willing to do whenever he finds himself backed into a corner. At the end of the day, it’s going to be up to listeners to decide for themselves where they fall on this story. How many people believe the hype around the man and the company? Will he ultimately deliver on the promises that he’s made—despite a long track record of making promises that he consistently fails to deliver on but which have non-the-less substantially improved his personal financials and helped grow the equity value of his companies?  You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 07/27/2021

In Episode 200 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Maureen Farrell, author of “The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neuman, and the Great Startup Delusion.” Maureen, along with her colleague and co-author Eliot Brown, were some of the first reporters at the Wall Street Journal to cover what is arguably the biggest financial debacle in the history of early-stage investing. And yet, this description doesn’t even begin to capture the incredible story that is the rise and fall of WeWork: a story about a real estate company that was at one point the most valuable start-up in America, despite racking up over $10 billion dollars in losses over the course of just nine years and vaporizing nearly forty billion dollars in equity value practically overnight. The reality of WeWork—of what it is and what it was—stands in stark contrast to what its founder, Adam Neuman said it was to his investors, employees, and the media. It was going to be worth ten trillion dollars, more than any other company in the world. It wasn’t just an office space provider. It was a tech play. Its spin-offs like “WeGrow” and “WeLive” were going to revolutionize education and change the world. Adam Neuman was going to solve Middle East peace and WeWork would help colonize Mars. As crazy as all of this sounds, it is emblematic of a larger decay in the most basic principles of capitalism that prioritizes the raising of capital over the turning of profits. It rewards storytellers over businesspeople. Price overvalue. This episode is broken into two parts, the first half of which is focused mainly on the particulars of WeWork, the characters involved, and the disastrous decisions made by its management along with the dereliction of its board. The second half focuses on the larger macro forces that are responsible for encouraging the type of behavior that we’ve seen in the case of WeWork and applying that template to other companies and their executives. We also explore the intersection of politics and finance, including a rise in demagoguery that parallels the institutional and moral decay we are witnessing across many parts of Western society. You can access the second half of this conversation, as well as the transcript, and show notes to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 07/18/2021

In Episode 199 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with investor and financial historian Russell Napier. Napier’s latest book, “The Asian Financial Crisis: 1995-1998,” covers a period of time that many investors are either not familiar with or haven’t studied anywhere near as closely as they should given its relevance to the investment regime in which we are living today. Today’s investment regime—what Russell Napier called “The Age of Debt”—is characterized by excessive private and public debt levels, financial repression, market concentration, and all of the unintended consequences that arise from the perverse incentives that these dynamics create. We spend the first hour of our conversation discussing the crisis itself, its drivers, as well as the practices and policies that made it possible. The second hour is spent on the resolution of the crisis and applying the lessons learned from that period to today, with implications for the future path of interest rates, inflation, growth, political stability, and most practically, opportunities for investing in the new market regime that we are moving into. Since this episode deals with markets and investing, we want to make absolutely clear that nothing we say on this podcast can or should be viewed as financial advice. All opinions expressed by Demetri Kofinas and Russell Napier are solely their own opinions and should not be relied upon as the basis for financial decisions. You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 07/09/2021