Hidden Forces

In Episode 237 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with journalist, historian, and author Sebastian Mallaby about his latest book, “The Power Law,” which delves into the history of the venture capital industry and early-stage investing. This conversation is meant to provide you with a framework for thinking about how to invest in businesses, initiatives, and projects, which not only lack cash flows, but whose values are often fundamentally intangible, difficult to measure, and often impossible to quantify. As more and more of our economic life happens in the digital realm, the ability to assess value and invest accordingly will become an increasingly invaluable skill-set for investors. In Part Two of their conversation, which is available to premium subscribers only, Sebastian and I delve into the geopolitics of venture capital, some of the approaches to investing in this space, and how national governments can participate in order to support their domestic defense sectors without creating the malincentives that we often associate with 9-figure fighter jets and four-hundred-dollar hammers. Demetri and Sebastian also discuss Web3 in the context of initial coin offerings and how these types of crowdsourced investments have transformed the early stage landscaped and brought public capital into areas of the market that would have never been able to source it only 10 years ago. Lastly, Sebastian offers his views on the uniquely challenging situation facing the Fed Reserve at the moment and what he thinks is most important to focus on when trying to project the likely path for interest rates, economic growth, and asset prices. You can access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 02/15/2022

In Episode 236 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Julia Friedlander, the C. Boyden Gray senior fellow & director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. Ms. Friedlander served as senior policy advisor for Europe in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, where she collaborated with EU partners on global sanctions policy and combatting illicit finance and as director for the European Union, Southern Europe and Economic Affairs at the National Security Council, charged with coordinating U.S. interagency policy on transatlantic relations and the European Union for White House. Julia’s extensive experience in economic statecraft make her the perfect person to speak to about the the sanctions that have been and continue to be levied against the Russian economy and its political class. We discuss what these sanctions mean in practice and what it is that makes them so unprecedented, as well as the intended and unintended consequences for the prosecution of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Aditional topics include the effect of sanctions on the geopolitical stability of Europe, the future of Russia, and the position of the dollar at the center of the international, financial system. You can access the transcript and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 03/07/2022

Dmitri Alperovitch, former CTO of CrowdStrike and chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, delves into pressing issues surrounding the Russia-Ukraine war. He analyzes why many failed to foresee the conflict's onset and discusses Putin's complex motivations, revealing aspects of his leadership struggles. Alperovitch highlights risks of NATO escalation and the potential consequences for U.S.-Sino relations over Taiwan. The conversation also touches on the implications of cyber warfare, emphasizing the growing threat of Russian cyberattacks in response to Western sanctions.

Miguel de Vega, the mastermind behind Nillion's Nil Message Compute (NMC) and an expert in Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC), discusses groundbreaking advancements in decentralized data processing. He explains how Nillion’s system leverages non-blockchain technology for secure, speedy computation. The conversation includes the evolution of zero-knowledge proofs, enhancing private data security, and the potential of decentralized password management. Miguel also delves into Nillion’s role in blockchain interoperability and innovative data security solutions.

The war in Ukraine has broken out while I've been away on vacation. This is an update for listeners so that you know what to expect from the show in the next couple of weeks. In the meanwhile, you can follow me on Twitter at @kofinas, where I have been sharing my thoughts on the geopolitical situation, as well as retweeting those of the people I follow in order to stay abreast of events as they evolve. This is a dangerous time for the world, but especially for the people of Ukraine who have shown incredible courage in the face of an aggressive adversary whose motivations and final objectives remain unclear at this point in time.

In Episode 233 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with award-winning author and recurring Hidden Forces guest Jimmy Soni about his newst book on the PayPal Mafia and the founders who shaped Silicon Valley and transformed the Fintech and online payments industry. The history of the so-called “PayPal Mafia” does not simply constitute the individual histories of star-studded founders like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Reed Hoffman, and others. The history of PayPal is in many ways the history of the future. It's about a company that was in so many ways ahead of its time. PayPal was fintech before anyone even knew what that word meant. It was one of the earliest pioneers of what former team member and later LinkedIn founder Reed Hoffman would dub “blitzscalling,” which is what you do when you need to grow really, really fast. And that’s what PayPal's founders did, and they did it while under constant threat of extinction, from not only criminals trying to defraud their customers or competitors trying to take their business, but also from each other. And that's because the story of the PayPal mafia is also the story of an unlikely, but nonetheless successful merger of two very different but equally competitive cultures, that of Elon Musk’s X.com and Peter Thiel’s Confinity. The objective of this episode is to give you a historical context for many of the business practices that have since become standard operating procedures across both Silicon Valley and Wallstreet. Things like CAPTCHA, blitzscalling, and micro-deposits, just to name a few. All of these innovations came out of a company under siege for almost the entire course of its pre-IPO existence, and it was in many ways this daily battle for survival that was central to shaping not only PayPal’s culture, but its success: the type of success that every entrepreneur and every founder dreams of. Most of the conversation about fraud, using financial incentives to effectively buy customers and scale quickly, as well as a discussion about the intersection of fintech and cryptocurrency is featured in the second part of our episode available on our premium subscriber feed. Anyone signed up to our Super Nerd tier can also access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 02/14/2022

In Episode 232 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Mohamed El-Erian, President of Queens' College Cambridge and chief economic adviser at Allianz, the corporate parent of PIMCO where Mohamed was CEO and co-chief investment officer from 2007 to 2014. El-Erian is one of the most gifted communicators in finance who is intimately connected with the global policymaking community. He has a unique perspective on one of the most important forces driving financial markets and his insights into government policy are invaluable to investors the world over. In this conversation, Mohamed shares his views on the direction of Fed policy, his projection for rate hikes in early 2022, and what it will take for the Fed to regain control of the inflation narrative. The growing geopolitical instability between the US, Europe, China, and Russia is another subject that El-Erian and Demetri discuss in the context of market psychology, with an eye on its potentially destabilizing effects on global liquidity. The two also discuss crypto, how it has benefited from a narrative of monetary dysfunction, and whether or not it can survive the ire of regulators in 2022 and 2023. You can access this week’s intelligence report along with the episode transcript to this conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 02/01/2022

In Episode 231 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with renowned philosopher and author of “Reality+” David Chalmers about the metaverse, the nature of reality, and the problems of philosophy in a virtual world. David’s central thesis is that the metaverse and virtual reality are genuine realities and that we may be living in such virtual worlds already. Along the way, Demetri and David conduct a grand tour of big ideas in philosophy and science, using virtual reality technology to explore new perspectives on long-established philosophical questions. How do we know that there’s an external world? Is there a god? What is the nature of reality? What’s the relation between mind and body? How can we lead a good life? All of these questions are illuminated or transformed in this mind-bending episode. In the second part of their conversation, David and Demetri imagine not only what it would be like to live in a simulated world, but whether or not it would be possible to do so without becoming a slave to someone else’s reality. David also shares his views on Web3 and whether or not such protocols could play a role in helping people live freer and better lives in the metaverse. You can access the full episode, transcript, and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 02/01/2022

In Episode 230 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Spencer Jakab, an award-winning financial journalist who edits the Wall Street Journal’s “Heard on the Street” column and who is out with a new book chronicling one of the craziest news stories of the last few years. The story centers on a motley crew of retail traders on Reddit’s r/WallStreetBets forum who almost broke the Internet by using social media, the Robinhood trading app, and a sophisticated understanding of options contracts to wreak havoc on Wall Street while making a fortune doing it. This is a retrospective on the now infamous GameStop/$GME: the video game retailer who attracted crazy amounts of media attention this time last year. Spencer and I discuss the facts of the story in detail, how the meme stock squeeze unfolded, who the winners were, and what the deeper significance of this story really is. One year later, what does it reveal to us about how our financial system works, the corrosive influence of years and years of easy money, and the dereliction of regulators to regulate? And what do we make of the metanarrative that’s taken hold in society today, which says that “it’s all just a narrative?” If that’s true, what does that say about not only where the markets are going, but our economy and society as well? These are all questions that Demetri and Spencer explore in this phenomenal and thought provoking episode. You can access the transcript and intelligence report to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 01/24/2022

In Episode 229 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Peter Pomerantsev, a Soviet-born British journalist, former TV producer, and author about the break-down in belief systems and shared mythologies that we are experiencing in the West and why this has left so many people feeling increasingly cynical about the world and indifferent towards the future. Peter was early in his diagnosis, having first experienced this phenomenon during his time living and working in Russia. It was not long after that experience and the publication of his first book “Nothing is True, But Everything Is Possible” that he began to notice some of the things that he wrote about in that book—the cynicism, the sense of surreality, the nostalgia, and what he described as an “aggressive apathy”—showing up in Western countries. And he began to ask himself the question, “Why did the future arrive first in Russia?” This is the question that we seek to answer in today’s episode, because some of the same forces that were operational in the late-Soviet Union and in early post-Soviet Russia are at work in Western societies today. If we want to understand what the future might look like when trust in institutions has completely deteriorated, when grounding notions of identity and meaning have all but disappeared, when any independent standard of truth has become so elusive that people are willing to believe in anything and the only thing left to unify us is raw and unbridled power, then we would be wise to not only understand the path that Russia has followed in the last several decades but to do everything in our power to avoid following it any further. It leads to only one place and that is a postmodern, repressive society that uses the language and institutions of democratic capitalism for authoritarian ends. You can access the full episode, transcript, and rundown to this week’s conversation by going directly to the episode page at HiddenForces.io and clicking on "premium extras." All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | CastBox | RSS Feed Write us a review on Apple Podcasts & Spotify Subscribe to our mailing list at https://hiddenforces.io/newsletter/ Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://hiddenforces.io Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas Episode Recorded on 01/14/2022