AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
4min snip
136 - WWIII vs the Machines | Demetri Kofinas
Bankless
Hidden Forces - What's the Name of Your Podcast Hidden Force?
The name of your podcast is hidden forces. Why do you think everyone feels this feeling of unsettlement, this feeling in the air like conflict could be in the future? Ah, it's a great question. I think a big part of all this is that the world feels increasingly out of control. And i can't separate whether this is just sort of a internal gut feeling i have, or it's like the books i've been reading, or the head space that i'm in. What's going to happen next? We're not too sure. Think we want to talk about that a little bit to day.
00:00
Transcript
Episode notes
Speaker 2
Dimitri, the name of your podcast is
Speaker 3
Hidden Forces. Can you talk about that name and kind of the subject matter of your podcast and why you decided to call your podcast Hidden Forces? That's
Speaker 1
a good question. I think it really began with a philosophy around the knowability of truth, the knowability of reality, and that what we experience as reality is really perception, and that there are these, quote, hidden forces that are at the bottom of the ontological world that define what we view as reality, but we can never actually know those things with absolute certainty. And so we're always trying to get deeper down, closer to the bottom of the vector to understand as well as we can what truth is so that we can develop models that are more predictive of reality, more predictive of the future. So it combines both the practical elements that are important to investors and also just kind of the philosophical ideas that have always interested me as a kid. I
Speaker 2
think one of those hidden forces we've been kind of unpacking lately on Bankless have been the hidden forces around macro, which drives macro markets. And as we've been digging into kind of some of the macro experts, it has surfaced that one of the biggest hidden forces, I guess, behind macro as a hidden force in and of itself is geopolitics. I think we want to talk about that a little bit today. And I got to tell you, as we like, I guess we're two years into this crazy decade already, and it feels a lot different than the previous decade. And, you know, I think it feels a lot more uncertain, a lot more chaotic. And the potential for conflict seems to have escalated. the books that I've been reading or the headspace that I'm in. But I think it's kind of shared with a lot of people, like this deep feeling of unsettlement. What's going to happen next? We're not too sure. I want to ask you about the stage and kind of get this question top of mind, because it feels like maybe we are headed closer towards some sort of a global conflict. Maybe we'll start there. Why do you think everyone feels this feeling of unsettlement, this feeling in the air like conflict could be in the future?
Speaker 1
It's a great question. I think a big part of all of this is that the world feels increasingly out of control. You know, I don't know how old you guys are, but the world I grew up in, I'm born in 1981. The world I grew up in, which was really the 1990s, all of that seemed settled. It was the unipolar moment and everyone was pretty much on board. There were very few countries that weren't and they weren't really deemed as significant or we seemed to have inexhaustible resources to deal with those one-off cases of Iran or North Korea or whatever, or Iraq to begin. That's really how we started the post-Cold War period. It was Iraq went rogue. We mustered an entire international coalition and we dealt with it. And so there was a sense of unity, a sense of unity of purpose. Everyone was more or less on board with the international institutions and it was blue skies all the way. And I think that we've come to a place now, which I think was pretty much made absolutely clear politically. Geopolitically, I think the moment was the invasion of Georgia by Russia in 2008. But politically, I think it was really with the election of Donald Trump. And that really changed the tenor and also US.-China relations. And of course, these are the two biggest, most powerful economies and military powers in the world. So I think that the recognition of all the uncertainty and the sense of instability, particularly in the U.S., because the Chinese political system is at least externally so stable and things here are so unstable that I think that is what is making us all feel the sense of what's going to be the next shoe to drop because it's just been one shoe after the other after the other. And American politics in particular sort of feeds off of that instability because both parties are able to use it in order to further their own political agendas, which is really sad.
Get the Snipd
podcast app
Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
AI-powered
AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Save any
moment
Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways
Save any
moment
Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways
Share
& Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
Share
& Export
Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more
AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
AI-powered
podcast player
Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode
Discover
highlights
Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode