Hidden Forces

In this week’s episode of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Politics at Princeton University and of Russian Studies and History at NYU. Dr. Cohen has received several scholarly honors over his lengthy career, including two Guggenheim fellowships and a National Book Award nomination, and was, for many years, a consultant and on-air commentator on Russian affairs for CBS News. Former CBS evening news anchor Dan Rather has referred to Stephen Cohen as “one of, if not the premier expert on the old Soviet Union, Russia, and Russian history in al of what we call Western civilization.” We live in dangerous times, not only in international relations but also in domestic affairs. Russian fear-mongering and gratuitous insults leveled at Russian President, Vladimir Putin serve as powerful political litmus tests in contemporary America. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a presidential candidate for the Democratic party, was recently accused by former Secretary of State and two-time presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of being a “Russian Asset.” Meanwhile, Donald Trump is consistently chided for what his critics assert is “the conspicuous absence of any criticism of Vladimir Putin.”  In the years since Russia’s occupation and annexation of Crimea, Stephen Cohen has become, in the words of one writer, “the most controversial Russia expert in America.” He’s been openly critical of NATO expansion since the idea was first proposed in the early-to-mid 90’s, and though this criticism puts him in good company, his views on Ukraine and what he sees as America’s role in inciting Russian aggression have left him marginalized and often times disparaged as a “Russian apologist.”  Nonetheless, it is Stephen Cohen’s contention that American is now dangerously close to “War with Russia,” the title that he has chosen for his most recent book, which consists of a series of commentaries on current affairs originally published at The Nation Magazine. He views American foreign policy towards the post-Soviet Union as not only needlessly antagonistic but recklessly endangering of American national security, putting us at the greatest risk of nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis. You can access this week’s overtime segment (an early release of Demetri’s conversation with physicist Sean Carroll), transcript, and rundown through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime RSS feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application.  Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 110 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Chief Investment Officer of Hayman Capital Management and founding member of the “Committee on the Present Danger: China,” about the gathering threat posed to Western, liberal democracies and open societies by the Chinese Communist Party. Kyle explains how the CCP and its state champions have been using US capital markets to fund the development of China’s armed forces, the threats posed by a Chinese operated 5G network, as well as concerns about the acquisition and use of Americans’ genomic data by the Chinese government. Kyle also goes into detail about his thesis on Hong Kong, its peg to the USD, as well as the fragility of its banking system. Additional topics include the “reeducation camps” and reports of organ harvesting in Xinjiang, the Chinese social credit system, the Federal Reserve Repo market, and Kyle’s outlook for the macroeconomy.  The second part of this discussion is available to Hidden Forces Patreon subscribers. You can access that part of the conversation, as well as the rundown and transcript to this week’s episode by subscribing to one of our three content tiers. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. Hidden Forces is listener funded. We rely on your support to keep the program free of corporate sponsors. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 109 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Financial Times Global Business Columnist, Rana Faroohar about her latest book dealing with the worlds of Big Tech and finance.  We are living in a dramatic period of societal change and uncertainty that most generations rarely get to experience. The changes we are experiencing are being driven primarily by a particular set of Internet-enabled technologies and businesses that are undergoing a rapid phase of consolidation.  The last time Americans saw anything similar was during the late 19th century. This was a period where people’s relationships to nature and to the land were being radically reshaped by the railroads, industrial capitalism, and urbanization. Their sense of time and space, their relationships to their communities, and to each other were being profoundly reordered and this produced an unprecedented amount of anxiety. Like today, this period coincided with a rise in populism and calls for heavy-handed regulation of what had become industrial monopolies. These monopolies were able to set prices and use anti-competitive tactics to bankrupt their competitors. Independent oil refiners, for instance, had to sell out to John D. Rockefeller, because he not only got preferential rates on his oil shipments, but Standard Oil was also getting rebates from the railroads on every barrel shipped by his competitors. And these types of anti-competitive practices were going on across the board in steel, tobacco, etc.   It took a long time for the public to catch up, and for journalists like Ida Tarbell to emerge, who could begin to bring a necessary level of clarity to what was happening. Something similar is happening today with journalists and authors like Rana Foroohar and Shoshana Zuboff. The battlelines of 21st-century capitalism and liberalism are being radically redrawn. If we want to have a say in what this world looks like, we will need to educate ourselves and others about what’s gone wrong and how we can start to fix it. This episode is a step in that direction. You can access this week’s overtime segment, transcript, and rundown through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 108 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Pauline Brown, the former Chairman of North America for LVMH, the world’s leading luxury goods company. Pauline has over thirty years’ experience acquiring, building, and leading some of the world’s most influential, luxury brands. In this conversation, she shares insights about how anyone can strengthen and grow his or her own aesthetic intelligence and apply that intelligence towards enhancing the quality and prosperity of one’s life and business. Pauline’s case for aesthetic intelligence rests on four basic points. The first is simply that aesthetics matter, not only in life but also in business. The second is that aesthetic intelligence can be cultivated. In fact, each of us possesses far more capacity than we use; aesthetic vision and leadership also have the power to transform companies and even entire sectors, as has been proven time and again by companies like Apple, Dyson, and others. Lastly, in the absence of aesthetics, most businesses are susceptible to potentially fatal challenges. In other words, when a company’s aesthetics fail, so does the company.   Her overall message is that aesthetics matter and that they can be cultivated. As Pauline says: “Although I believe that each of us has the potential to boost our aesthetic intelligence, it takes time and effort. It is just like developing other muscles.”  In this episode, we learn approaches and concrete exercises for building one’s “aesthetic muscles” and using them to win over customers, starting with exercises for enhancing what Pauline Brown calls (1) attunement, which she defines as “developing a higher consciousness of one’s environment and the effect of its stimuli;” (2) interpretation, which means “translating one’s emotional reactions (both positive and negative) to sensorial stimuli into thoughts that form the basis of an aesthetic position, preference, or expression;” (3) articulation, or expressing the “aesthetic ideals for one’s brand, product, or service such that team members not only grasp the vision but can execute on it with precision;” and (4) curation, or “organizing, integrating, and editing a wide variety of inputs and ideals to achieve maximum impact.”  According to Pauline Brown: “When it comes to aesthetics, editorial command is all-important; as Coco Chanel said, “Elegance is refusal.”   You can access the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers are granted access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 107 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz, about his new book “Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. In the book, Andrew reveals how the boundaries between technology, media, and politics have been erased, resulting in the deeply broken informational landscape in which we all now live. This conversation is meant to help us understand what went wrong and how we might go about trying to fix it. For several years, New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz has been embedded in two worlds. The first is the world of social-media entrepreneurs—the new gatekeepers of Silicon Valley—who upended all traditional means of receiving and transmitting information. The second is the world of the people he calls the gate-crashers—the conspiracists, white supremacists, and nihilist trolls who have become experts at using social media to advance their agenda, influence elections, or just make money. Marantz weaves these two worlds together to create an unsettling portrait of today’s America, both online and in real life. He reveals how the boundaries between technology, media, and politics have been erased, resulting in the deeply broken informational landscape in which we all now live. In candid conversations with Silicon Valley executives and social media entrepreneurs, Andrew Marantz discovers a selective community of techno-utopians who took Mark Zuckerberg’s motto, “Move Fast and Break Things,” to heart. Viewing their role as disruptors to be free of any responsibility to actually monitor the tools they have built, they either choose not to police their users’ actions or, in many cases, don’t know where to begin. In fact, in Andrew’s portrayal, such policing is often seen by these techno-utopians as being antithetical to the nature of democracy, which they synonymize with the Internet writ large.  In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, it became apparent to Andrew that something was happening online. On Facebook for instance, while many of the traditional gatekeepers to information—like Reason, Foreign Affairs, the Nation, and more—were seeing less engagement with readers, other, darker corners of the platform were thriving. Most people view social media as a reflection of popular will and interest, but the virality industry is built on a large number of small human choices. At every step, there are people behind the curtain, and ahead of the election, someone was attempting to drag the notion of a Trump presidency from the fringes into the realm of the imaginable. But who were these new virologists? Enter the gate-crashers. Marantz spent years analyzing how alienated young people are led down the rabbit hole of online radicalization, and how fringe ideas spread—from anonymous corners of social media to cable TV to the President's Twitter feed. Along the way, he met with the men and women responsible for it all. He ate breakfast at the Trump SoHo with self-proclaimed “internet supervillain” Milo Yiannopoulos; toured a rural Illinois junkyard with freelance Twitter propagandist Mike Cernovich; drank in a beer hall with white nationalist Mike Enoch; and shadowed histrionic far-right troll Lucian Wintrich during his first week as a White House press correspondent. Marantz also spent hundreds of hours talking to people who were ensnared in the cult of web-savvy white supremacy—and to a few who managed to get out.  In the overtime to this week’s episode, Demetri shares stories from his time working at RT, including intimate details from his relationships and encounters with some of the characters discussed in Andrew’s book. The two also continue a conversation about gender and race, as well as the role of power in society.  You can listen to the overtime, as well as gain access to the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to their very own overtime feed, which you can easily add to your favorite podcast applications like Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Overcast, Pandora, etc. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 106 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Joshua Landis, a Middle East scholar and Syria expert about the disorderly withdrawal of American forces from Syria and the larger shift in the balance of power that we are seeing as nations scramble to remake alliances in the wake of America’s absence. It seems that what we've seen transpire in the Middle East during the past week is a symptom of a much larger trend: the deterioration of the rules-based international order, the fulcrum around which the world has turned for three generations—the entirety of living memory. It is the break-down of national borders, in many cases borders that have been artificially constructed and maintained by the credible threat of American military power. As America begins its long-anticipated withdrawal from the world stage, others will rise to take her place. It was probably naive to imagine that this could happen in a managed way. Perhaps it was always destined to be messy. As much as Trump's detractors wish to blame him for the mess in Syria, the truth is, he is only an accelerant. He isn't responsible for assembling the reactants.  The forces currently being unleashed in what was once Northern Syria remain contained within the Greater Middle East, but Turkey’s involvement creates the potential for spillover into the Balkans and southern Europe at some indeterminate date in the future. Turkey has been flexing its geopolitical muscles with Greece for years. It is no longer inconceivable to imagine that its membership in NATO will prove to be an insufficient deterrent for curbing Turkish military aggression or the expansionary ambitions of Erdoğan in the Aegean. Erdoğan seems to be staking his political career on the vision of a more assertive and expansionary Turkish foreign policy. Turkey remains strategically indispensable to the US & NATO. If he expands Turkey's current activities in Cypriot waters, it isn't clear who will stop him. It's a cliché, but all bets do seem to be off. If the nations of the world decide that America can no longer guarantee their security or maintain the integrity of their borders, we may start to see a rapid reorganization of the international order along radically different lines. It's hard to believe, but Russia has played its cards better than any one of the major powers. It has capitalized on (and in some cases stoked) the chaos of political dysfunction both within and across the transatlantic relationship. It seems to have positioned itself as the new dance partner for any country suddenly in need of an escort. Its economy may be half the size of California's, but this has not stopped Putin from rebranding the Russian Federation as "the new neighborhood muscle," that will have your back when the US doesn't. America's leaders have exhibited remarkable incompetence in the area of foreign policy, displaying only flickering instances of humility and foresight since being thrust upon the world stage as the new global hegemon and the only standing survivor of the Cold War. For years, we've been asking ourselves what this new world is going to look like, a world without America guaranteeing security for the liberal, democratic order. The events currently transpiring in Syria may be giving us our first real glimpse of what that world will look like. It's chaotic. It's authoritarian. And it's more violent. This is the new backdrop for which the circus that is American politics will play out in 2020. Democratic candidates who have staked their candidacies on demonizing Donald Trump, while avoiding addressing the forces that brought him to office in the first place risk being totally blindsided by even lower voter turnout and a re-election of Donald Trump in 2020. If that happens, American foreign policy will likely go into crisis. It's really unclear at that point what would happen. The proverbial "Deep State" has resisted his candidacy from the beginning but has not gone so far as to overthrow his popular mandate. Should he be re-elected, what will Washington's elite, its intelligence agencies and wealthy benefactors do? Will they sit by and watch while Trump dismantles what is left of their dysfunctional experiment in American empire? Or, will they impeach him? He certainly hasn't made it difficult with his actions, but they no longer have the credibility to do it without further sacrificing their own legitimacy. This is truly uncharted waters. We should all pray that a new consensus can emerge in the next twelve months that will bring enough of the country together to stop the bleeding, but it is not clear from what source this unanimity will spring. This week’s rundown is a 16-page compilation of all the information (including pictures and links material referenced during the episode) compiled by Demetri ahead of his recording with Joshua Landis. You can access this document, along with a transcript to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 105 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Jake Hanrahan about the crisis unfolding in the border region between Syria and Turkey following the US withdrawal of forces from northern Syria. This withdrawal precipitated the subsequent assault by Turkish Armed Forces on the Kurdish YPG-controlled region of Rojava. Jake Hanrahan is an independent journalist and documentary filmmaker based in the UK. He has reported from Syria, Iraq, southeast Turkey, and other conflict zones for HBO, Vice News, PBS Newshour, and BBC News, to name a few.  Turkish President Erdogan, after obtaining the consent of President Trump, began his invasion into the Kurdish YPG controlled region of Syria known as Rojava this past Wednesday. During Sunday’s “Face the Nation,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper confirmed to Margaret Brennan that roughly 1,000 U.S. troops would be evacuated from northern Syria following Trump’s troop withdrawal announcement. There are also multiple reports of ISIS families and fighters previously captured and held by Kurdish forces starting to escape after Tukey’s bombardments. Also, Lebanese broadcaster al-Mayadeen reported Sunday that the Syrian army would enter Manbij and Kobani in the next 48 hours, based on an agreement with the Syrian Democratic Forces (the latter, according to Mohammed Shaheen, the deputy chairman of Euphrates region told North-Press).  It seems that what we are seeing transpire in the Middle East is the disintegration of artificially constructed national borders around sectarian lines. The forces being unleashed have thus far remain contained within the Greater Middle East, but Turkey’s involvement creates the further potential for spillover into the Balkans and southern Europe at some indeterminate future date. Additionally, Turkey has been flexing its geopolitical muscles where Greece is concerned in recent years, and it is no longer inconceivable to imagine that its troubled relationship to the EU and its membership in NATO will prove insufficient as deterrents for curbing Turkish military aggression or the expansionary ideas of Erdoğan in the Aegean.  This conversation is meant to help Hidden Forces listeners develop some context for what has transpired over the past week, the significance of Trump’s decision, and the implications moving forward.  Hidden Forces is listener funded. We rely on you to help us keep the program free of corporate advertising. You can help us do that by subscribing to one of our three content tiers through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. Your support is deeply appreciated. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 104 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Michael Maloney, perennial entrepreneur and host of the documentary series Hidden Secrets of Money about monetary history, libertarianism, and Austrian economics.  Before starting GoldSilver.com, Mike overcame his childhood dyslexia to found a series of companies, including a high-end stereo manufacturer, winning several design awards in the process. Few people know this, but one of Mike Maloney’s own designs is on permanent display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Mike also grew up dyslexic, leaving school after the 9th grade. Mike’s first job was as a traveling salesman, driving all over the Southwest and as far North as Oregon with a van full of samples and catalogs of automotive parts and accessories that he sold to customers. Eventually, Mike started his own high-end stereo equipment manufacturer, as well as an annual show called the Home Entertainment Show that took place during the same day as the Consumer Electronics Show. It was not until the very early 2000’s that Mike Maloney got the idea for GoldSilver.com, which began as a gold and silver brokerage, and which eventually developed into a reputable source for educational media content on Austrian economics, precious metals, and libertarian thought. For more than a decade now, Mike Maloney has traveled the world, sharing his relentless passion for economics and monetary history with audiences from Silicon Valley to Wall Street and from Hong Kong to Rome. He joins us today on Hidden Forces to share that experience with us. The overtime to this week's episode includes a lengthy conversation about Tesla, as Mike Maloney is a Tesla Bull, and has taken some issue with our bearish coverage of the electric car manufacturer and its founder, Elon Musk. This segment, as well as the transcript and rundown to the full episode, are available to audiophile, autodidact, and super nerd subscribers through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 103 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand, who argues that the world’s cultures can be classified into two categories by virtue of their norms. She offers a lucid explanation of how and why cultures become tight or loose, outlining their different societal attitudes. This episode is full of eye-opening insights for development professionals, policymakers and those working in international business.  According to Gelfand, tight cultures have a large number of social norms that enforce order and conformity and tend to evolve in nations that face many natural and human-made threats. Loose cultures, on the other hand, have more lenient norms and tolerate a wider array of behaviors. They generally face fewer chronic threats – but may tighten up temporarily in the event of an acute threat. Furthermore, says Michele, tight and loose cultures each have advantages and disadvantages and it’s possible to modify a nation’s norms in order to address protracted social problems. This is also true in the private sector. In a particularly relevant part of the conversation, Michele describes how businesses also develop tight or loose cultures and how a cultural mismatch can doom a merger or undermine cooperation among a corporation’s divisions. The example she provides is that of Chrysler and Mercedes Benz, but Demetri also raises the example of AOL-Time Warner, perhaps the most prominent failed marriage of the late 90’s stock market boom.  “Tight” cultures, like Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Germany, embrace rigid norms and mete out harsh punishments for those who deviate. “Loose” cultures, including New Zealand, the United States, and Brazil, are more tolerant of a wide assortment of behaviors. According to Dr. Gelfand, when countries, families, companies, and US states all act in accordance with their divergent conceptions of “normal,” misunderstandings and conflict often arise that help to explain many of the phenomena we encounter in daily life, business, and politics. The overtime to this week's episode includes a conversation about changing cultural norms in the workplace, as well as how the norms in some western countries began to change after terrorist attacks.  This overtime segment, as well as the transcript and rundown to the full episode, are available to audiophile, autodidact, and super nerd subscribers through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers also gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application.  Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

In Episode 102 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with economist and former Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, William White, about the state of our market economy and the prospects for an ‘international reset’ of the global financial system. William R. White was most recently chairman of the Economic and Development Review Committee at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 2009 to 2018. He is famous for having flagged the wild behavior in debt markets before the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. He began his career in 1969 as an economist working at the Bank of England. In 1972 he joined the Bank of Canada where he spent 22 years and was appointed Deputy Governor in September 1988. In 1994, he joined the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and served as its Economic Adviser and Head of the Monetary and Economic Department from May 1995 to June 2008.  In their conversation, Demetri and Dr. White discuss a wide range of topics focused primarily on the global financial system. Their conversation begins with a focus on the state of the current system, including a discussion about the consequences of regulatory reform (both intended and unintended), as well as endogenous transformation to the system brought about by independent changes in the behavior of banks and other financial participants. Most of the conversation dealing with possible changes to the International Monetary and Financial System happen during the Episode Overtime, including a discussion about central bank-issued cryptocurrencies, private sector digital money like Libra, and Bitcoin. The overtime also includes a lengthy discussion about government policy in the face of climate change, and how this relates to the politics of monetary policy. William White has spent five decades as a central banker and international financial policymaker, and we are fortunate beneficiaries of the wisdom that he has accrued during these many years.  Additional topics discussed during the episode include post-crisis reform, market architecture, currency wars, negative interest rates, the Chinese renminbi, causes for inflation, Japanification, the ‘Global Ring of Fire,’ and much more. You can access the rundown to this week’s episode, along with a transcript of Demetri and Dr. White’s conversation through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers are granted access to our overtime feed, which can be easily be added to your favorite podcast application. Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at http://patreon.com/hiddenforces Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod