---
title: "How to Predict the Future-The Pokepreet Podcast ft. Professor Jiang Xueqin transcript"
description: "Source-synced transcript archive for How to Predict the Future-The Pokepreet Podcast ft. Professor Jiang Xueqin."
source_title: "How to Predict the Future-The Pokepreet Podcast ft. Professor Jiang Xueqin"
published_at: "2025-10-18"
source_class: "interview"
public_url: "https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/transcript/"
markdown_url: "https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/transcript.md"
text_url: "https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/transcript.txt"
source_url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkaGDdve8SM"
data_url: "https://jianglens.com/data/lens/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm.json"
---

# How to Predict the Future-The Pokepreet Podcast ft. Professor Jiang Xueqin transcript

- Source: [How to Predict the Future-The Pokepreet Podcast ft. Professor Jiang Xueqin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkaGDdve8SM)
- Published: 2025-10-18, day precision
- Human transcript page: [/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/transcript/](https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/transcript/)
- Interview page: [/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/](https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/)
- Transcript Markdown: [/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/transcript.md](https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/transcript.md)
- Transcript text: [/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/transcript.txt](https://jianglens.com/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm/transcript.txt)
- Interview JSON: [/data/lens/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm.json](https://jianglens.com/data/lens/interviews/interview-dkagddve8sm.json)

## Transcript

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hello guys what's up we got professor Jian here today uh he does absolutely great work on youtube you probably know him best from his video where he predicted the america iran war

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do you want to introduce yourself yeah hi um thanks so much for inviting me so yeah my name is professor Jian i'm an educator based in beijing where i am uh right now um i've been working all my life in chinese education in different capacities um i used to work as an administrator a high school principal a curriculum director a teacher trainer now i've gone back to teaching in the classroom and to get my students excited about learning to inspire them to learn their entire lives we do a lot of geopolitical analysis in my teaching to make the teaching relevant and um i also upload my lectures to youtube so my students can review my lectures and i made certain predictions last year about the state of the world including that donald trump would win the 2024 election um that he would then go attack iran my last big big prediction is that the united

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states would launch a ground nation against iran and would lose the war designated the second american civil war um so the first two have turned out to be accurate and that's why it went viral on the internet and that's why we're here today

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and and your prediction about um the civil war almost sort of seems to be coming true as um especially with the situation in dc um you teach high schoolers right or is it college students

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uh i actually teach high school students but they are in the final year of high school so they're transitioning from high school to college and um so i so um i feel there's opportunity there's space to teach them new ideas that can help them better prepare for college that's so cool that's so cool

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um you have you have been able to use the framework of psychohistory to predict these things uh could you just sort of explain what psychohistory is and how it informs your

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geopolitical analyses well i mean um if you're an asthma fan i'm sure there are many who are i think asthma fans psychohistory is the idea that you can mathematically model the past and then you have this mathematical framework which allows you to predict the future and um that's the idea here the idea is that by studying the past deeply we can develop analytical frameworks that become predictive models and we can test these models by making assumptions and predictions about the future if they if they're accurate then it means our model is accurate but if they're not accurate it means we have to go back and we find the model and it's this constant process of um creating models making predictions making refinements that will allow us to better understand our past present and future

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how do you set about um analyzing these models you just read history and then you look for trends um is there is there some kind of intention going into it or is it just uh observation yeah

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so the idea is that whenever a historian explains the past they're working within a analytical model they make sure assumptions about the world so the most basic assumption historians make which is inaccurate is that it is theological meaning that um history is linear and it's progressing towards a utopia um and and so um what i what i say is well if that's true then things ought to be improving but i believe that's not true i believe that history is not theological i believe that history is a cycle um and as a result we're prone to make the same mistakes and as a result if you study um things such as the bronze age collapse such if you start things like a peloponnesian war between athens and sparta that's going to give you insight as to how things might progress and when you do that what you recognize is that there are striking similarities between the

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peloponnesian war and what's happening today um and you can almost map out what happened in the united states based on what happened to athens and and and so that's

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that's that's the idea um let's say there's like a critic and he says um your framework falls into determinism right like um It falls into the idea that this will happen rather than these trends lead towards the similar outcomes. What would you say to that?

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Yeah, I think that's a great point. What I will say is that society is driven by structural forces. And in the beginning, we have control of these structural forces because in the beginning, society is dynamic. But then once you reach a point, you know, you reach mass society, the best of interests are determined. Then once you reach this point, then the structural forces have a life of their own. Right. So during the American Revolution, when America was an open, dynamic and very young society, then, yeah, I mean, you could come together and develop your own theory of government that would then develop a new society. But once you have this theory of government and once you have this political system in place, then these structural forces will come into being inevitably. And then these structural forces will then stagnate and then it will lead to a certain outcome.

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You know, that almost reminds me of Mao Zedong in On Contradiction. He says during the beginning of a system, it's very hard to see the contradictions. But as a system develops, they become more apparent. Would you say it's sort of similar to that or a little bit different?

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It's very similar. It's extremely similar. Another way to understand this is you could use Peter Turchin's theory of elite overproduction. So what's really important for society is to maintain openness. Openness, you can define openness in many different ways. You can say that openness, it's really about being innovative, accepting criticism, constantly engaging in a process of self -reflection and self -improvement. But you can also define openness as. As one of social mobility, as a meritocracy, as allowing those with the best work ethic, with the most talent to rise in society. What Peter Turchin teaches us is that society always reaches a point when you have too many elites, you have too many Yale graduates, you have too many Harvard graduates competing for limited positions of power. And that will inevitably lead to, as Mao Zedong says, contradictions.

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Yeah. And I guess with respect to. Historical materialism in general, one of the things that I found really interesting about your commentary is that you draw from a lot of different perspectives and understandings and interpretations of history. And it really resonates with people with all sorts of different viewpoints, politically speaking. But what would you say your perspective is in relationship to historical materialism is? Of course, you could argue whether or not it's teleological. Maybe you'd have that criticism of it. But would you have any other thoughts on it?

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Yeah. So I think Marx gets a lot of things right. His critique of capitalism, his understanding of capitalism is prophetic. I mean, he, I mean, it's we are in our society, we are really in late -stage capitalism and everything that Marx said would happen has, has happened and it's still happening today. But I think in terms of materialism, I would disagree. For me, it's not materialism that drives history. It's really religion. It's really ideas. It's, it's our needs. It's our need for meaning and for purpose that drives history. And I, and I think one of the great tragedies is that our desire for meaning, our desire for purpose has been corrupted and perverted by the powerful into a form of materialism. So you, you can't say that materialism doesn't influence history. That that's ridiculous. I mean, I mean, people want to be better off materially. But at the same time, I think the main driving force is actually our need for spiritual fulfillment and purpose.

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And over time, because of mass society, because of technological improvement, because of the rise of capitalism has been perverted into, into materialism. And we sort of like see materialism, but we, we forget the spiritual aspect.

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Professor, would you say that in that way? You sort of backtrack? go back to the hegelian dialectic um as opposed to marxist uh where ideas drive history rather

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than uh the material world like non -teleological yeah yeah no um i think hegel um has it far more um correct than uh marx i myself am struggling with hegel and his theory of the guys um i i i i mean i i'm playing with this idea right now and over the course of a semester as i teach world history to my students i'm going to continually introduce and reinforce the idea of the guys um and you know call young would call this the collective unconscious and and i think it's a very compelling theory um i i i i do believe that young's theory of the collective unconscious hegel's theory of the guys resolves a lot of issues that um plague modern science today one of the major issues with modern science is that it doesn't really engage in the problem of consciousness it doesn't really help us understand why we think uh where ideas

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come from and where do ideas go that and and and quite honestly that's most of human existence right and this is this is something that in a material framework we're not allowed to discuss we're not we're not allowed to discuss the hard problem of consciousness and so this is something that i've been working on uh recently and i'll be going through very deeply throughout the course of the semester i think this is very

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interesting and it's a very unique perspective as well too i i would say both of us would regard ourselves as pretty you know as a scientific socialist and as um historical materialists but i guess what would you say to the idea that rather than coming from the top down and addressing the ideas to begin with the ideas can tell you something about the underlying structure and forces but you have to still take an approach where you might get some hints or clues you know based on the ideas that are being talked about like in the russian ukraine war you have eurasianism and rhetoric in russia and you have rhetoric from the west about what this represents and it is sort of useless on the face of it because obviously the war is happening for other reasons but can sort of give you a hint at the material and structural basis of it um i i

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can understand that but what would you say the limitations of just looking at the the economic structure and the material base and then trying to understand where the ideas arise out of that where consciousness arises out of that rather than vice versa in some cases yeah i think um you know when i do analysis

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analysis um i'm trying to look at the problem from like many different angles the material angle is certainly an important factor i'm also trying to figure out the spiritual and so let me give you an example of this right because i'm trying to make certain geopolitical predictions what's going to happen in the war in ukraine what's going to happen in the middle east and what i'm finding is that my religious aligns perfectly with my geopolitical analysis right so let me give you an example of this um what i've discovered is that eschatology um the sort of like theory of how the world ends among different religions it converges with the geopolitical interest that's that's really interesting um so uh for so for example you look at what's happening in iran right well um these nations they're geopolitical interests sort of converge in iran so if you're russia you need the north -south corridor to facilitate

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global trade right and the north and the sort of nexus of the north -south corridor uh the pivot point is iran so if you're russia you have to protect iran now what's really interesting is that if you look at orthodox eschatology the the theory of the third rome well um it also argues that there'll be a grand alliance between the orthodox world and the islamic world so to me that's that's really interesting and how this dynamic actually happens um i don't really know but but if you actually do analysis what you will find is that um the eschatology does align with the geopolitics the material does in fact align with with the spiritual um and so and so and so i i i think it's much more difficult than i i think it's much it's just simple to say that one influences the other um i i think the dynamic process it's a dialectic um

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and and sometimes it's very hard to differentiate the the the the the two um when you're talking about uh religion and

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things like that especially as we enter into a more secular world do you find that sad analyses become harder like there's a new sort of framework that uh humanity works up because especially uh capitalism i think religion and community a lot of these aspects are kind of gone to some extent

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yeah so um i i think that's a misunderstanding that that there's that there's a the economy between secular and religion um i i don't think we live in a secular age i i just think i i just think that religion has been perverted or been reinterpreted um so i think science is also religion um i i think that capitalism is also a religion and i talk i talk about about this a lot where money it's an it's a thing about the imagination it doesn't exist in real life an example is that the central banking system can print as much money as it wants um but as long as we believe it then the money is real but um if we don't believe it's real then the money is not real so um i see central bankers almost as a new high priest class so um yeah so but but but i mean like we say

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that it's now secular in order to give it more authority um we're we're trying to fool people into thinking that we're deriving this new religion from first principles that can be scientific validated when we actually try to do this when you actually try to scientific validate certain assumptions about the world uh that's one of my science it actually is not scientific validated um i'm not sure if you guys know physics but it's complete nonsense like um super string theory um you actually go and like look at what they're saying it's it's it's like complete another nonsense and in many ways it's it's not even nonsense because the point of religion is to promote the divine and a sacred and mysterious and if science work was completely knowable as it purports to be then it loses its power right um you don't need a priest class wouldn't you? class anymore, if science is complete accessible to, um, anyone who's capable of clear, rational thought.

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Um, so, so, so, so, so I, I, I, I do think that science is a religion and, um, it is, I mean, a lot of it just can be nonsense.

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Yeah. I, I guess if I could push back a little bit on the, on the example of money though, because of course we can say the way money exists in our heads, you know, as something that has intrinsic value, that's not real, but, um, you know, it's just paper and, you know, like bits stored in, in, in, um, you know, computer is floating around, um, but what is real and what does make money materially real is the, um, context that we live in. You know, if you can't provide it, you can't have a place to live. If you can't, um, provide it, you can't, um, uh, buy food. And it. If you try to do it without money, then you'll be accosted and thrown in prison. And you will actually ex you like physical forces will be applied to you. Um, and so in that sense, it is very real, uh, in a material sense too, um, if you kind of contextualize it fully.

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So I, I guess, uh, I mean, what would your response be to that?

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Yeah. I mean, like, I don't, I don't disagree with that. I, I mean, like the fact that we constantly use it gives it value. Right. Um, but, but, but I'm saying from first principles. Um, and, and, and you agree with it, it does not have intrinsic value by itself. Yeah. As an idealism. Yeah. Yeah. But, but, but if you look at economics, um, if you talk to economists and then they do believe that that's intrinsic value in itself. Um, yeah.

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So, so what would you say is sort of the new religion, uh, under capitalism? Is it like science or is it like the commodity or is it like, um, consumerism? Like what exactly would that, um, be like? Like what is exactly the priest classes, so to say, like, what's their religion that they're promoting, uh, onto society?

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Yeah. So it's a very complicated question because, um, before you only had one priest class. Right. Um, but nowadays you have different, uh, factions of the priest class. You have, uh, academia, you have the scientific establishment, you have Silicon Valley, you have wall street. I mean, like, like these are all different priest class, but I would say the main religion that they're working with. Um, is neoliberalism. Right. Um, neoliberalism. And from that you can derive other religions such as the individual, the call of the self. Um, I think psychiatry, psychology is another absurd religion. Um, economics is another religion. Uh, yeah, but, but I mean like the overall framework, uh, the, the, the main rubric you can say is just neoliberalism.

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Hmm. Hmm. And, um, what are some core tenants of the, this neoliberal religion that you especially find?

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Um, I mean, like, um, the idea that, uh, society is centered around the maximization of individual happiness, which is completely absurd. Right. I mean, I mean, um, and what I would argue is that it's a contradiction in terms. You cannot be happy as an individual. You can only be happy as a society. You can only be happy as a community. Um, so I think that's the, one of the major tenants, um, a second major tenant is that everything can be measured. Like happiness can be measured through the accumulation of money, more money you have, the happier you have. Um, another major tenant is that, um, this idea of neoliberalism must be expanded throughout the world. It must encompass all other, uh, systems. It is, it must be imperialistic in order to create a utopia. Um, so, so, so I, I would say these are the three major tenants. And um, again, if you look at the assumptions behind all these tenants, they're just, they're just nonsense.

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So, so really, but just to clarify what you mean by religion, it's, it's more of a general heuristic for things that are taken for granted in society, uh, or a set of notions.

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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, but that to me is, is religion. I mean, it's something that you have faith in and something that you're willing to fight and die for and something that sort of coheres society together. Um, yeah.

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Um, what are some major, um, especially as the world just sort of breaks out into war after war, um, what are some major like ideas that are being fought right now? Because to some extent it does feel like neoliberalism is very globalized, uh, in many ways. Um, is it sort of like an East versus West? Yeah. Is it sort of idea or, um, what, what exactly is the fight, uh, on an ideological, uh, ground?

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Yeah. So different players, different nations, um, are driven by different ideologies, right? So if you're America, it's really reactive, um, it's really defensive. You want to maintain your empire, you want to maintain your hegemony, um, you want to maintain your standard of living. And that's why we're seeing, uh, this, um, these military actions. Yeah. You know, in the United States, in Mexico, in Venezuela, um, Trump has talked about absorbing Canada. Um, he's talking about absorbing Greenland and this really ties back to the idea of Manifest Destiny where the entire Western, Western hemisphere is America's divine, right? You know, God gave the Western hemisphere to, uh, America and that's just manifest. That is completely obvious. So that's, that's what's driving America. And again, what's really important to understand is that. Yeah. As they start on this path, it, it, it, they're not going to stop. Okay. So all these military actions that's happening in Western hemisphere

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will continue and continue because the American empire is, is just grasping, it's just trying to cling, cling on, um, it's dying and it's, it's, it's desperate. It is trying to maintain its, its sense of hegemony. Okay. So that, that's the American empire, but then you have different nations being driven by different ideologies. Yeah. So for example, Israel and that, yeah, has come out recently and said this, um, they have something called the greater Israel project, which, and they believe that it is Yahweh their God's, um, covenant with them, like God promised them the promised land, um, which extends from the Nile to the Euphrates. So if you just Google greater Israel project, you'll see a map of basically the entire middle East that Israel claims is, uh, the biblical right. So that's, um, um, Israel, then you get to Russia and Ukraine, and I understand that most people will believe that Putin is fighting this war to defend, uh, Russian sovereignty.

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Um, he fears NATO expansion. He fears that Ukraine will be, it will eventually be absorbed into NATO and thus threatening the, um, safety and security of Russia. Um, if you look at his assets. If you look at how the war is progressing, I don't think that's true. Um, I, I, I, I think that Russia is being driven by Orthodox eschatology, which believes that Russia is a third Rome and there'll be no fourth Rome. Okay. So Russia is the end of history. And what they mean by that is they want to restore the Byzantine empire, the restore the Byzantine empire. They need to reclaim Constantinople, which is current day Istanbul. So the end goal is to really direct. Yeah. Turkey into a war that Turkey cannot possibly win. And that will lead to, um, political implosion in Turkey, and this will allow Russia to return the Greeks to Istanbul and thus unify the Orthodox world and claim the titles of a third Rome.

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And, and yeah, so, so again, there's, there, there are these wars happening, but I think these wars are happening because different players are different, are driven by different mindsets and frameworks of the world.

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Hmm. So what, what would you say, uh, China is, uh, driven by and, um, uh, no, no, no, that's it. Uh, what would you say China's driven by?

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Yeah. Um, um, so I disagree with almost every triple commentator out there. I do not think China is interested in world domination. It's interesting global trade. It's always been interesting global trade, but how, but, but, you know, the framework for this global trade, China is very flexible on. I mean, the fact of the matter is that China is one of those great nations that doesn't have a religion. It does not have an eschatology and therefore it doesn't aspire to expand itself. It's probably happy to, um, live within its own territory and throughout most of its history, it has lived within its own territory. It does not engage with the world. That's why it built the Great Wall. Um, China for four or five, four or five thousand years have been blessed. It's been blessed with natural boundaries, right? So to, to the west, it has the Himalayan mountains, uh, to the south, it has the jungles of Southeast Asia, uh, to the north, the deserts to the east are the seas.

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So, um, the mentality of the Chinese leadership has always been regime stability. If we're able to maintain regime stability, then we can bring peace and prosperity to our people. So I think, I think in this time of geopolitical. Conflict, um, the Chinese reaction is to turtle up, okay, totally to just to retreat back into its borders and maintain the stability of the regime.

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Um, we've especially seen recently, uh, a revival of within America, evangelicalism, uh, sort of that religious manifest destiny that you're talking about, especially with, uh, posts about ice, things like that. Do you think that this is necessarily it's victory that is, is necessarily set in stone, um, because there. As much as, um, there seems to be like a reactionary push, there also seems to be a resistance to that reactionary push by people that represent other forces within society. Um, I know you said that this battle of ideas might end up playing out as some sort of civil war scenario. So I'm just wondering on your thoughts about, uh, this general trend overall.

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Yeah. So, um, I made certain predictions, um, in 2020. Um, and I'm, I'm gonna stick, stick to these predictions. Okay. So, so, so let me tell you my thinking in 2020. Okay. And, and this is, this, this is before Trump lost election. Uh, sorry. So this is after Trump lost election. Uh, my first prediction, um, is that Trump would return. What happened is. Um, over the four years that he's in, in his basement in Marillago, he's gonna see he's going to put up resentment against the deep state, because from his perspective, the only reason why he lost the election in 2020 against Biden was the deep state intervened the deep state cheated okay and um for for from his perspective he was wrong and that really will become the basis of all his future behavior and actions moving forward okay how does he get back at the deep state okay um what I also predicted

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was that there will be certain institutional forces that's an opportunity in Trump because remember we go back to Peter Turchin's theory of elite of production the deep state is not one unified force I mean it's it's sloughed into different factions with different ideologies um but certain factions of the deep state would see a champion in Trump um and they and they believe that for Trump they could create an America more to liking and that and that's where we have project 2025 okay project 2025 comes from the fact that certain factions of the deep state see Trump as someone who could destabilize the Washington DC and allow the the certain factions to recreate the federal administration in a way that aligns more with the ideology ideology and we're seeing this happen in real time right now okay so that's my um second prediction my third prediction is that Trump um will betray everyone and what I

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mean by that is in the first couple years in his administration he's he seems like a puppet of the deep state he seems like he's doing exactly what the deep state wants him to do which is you know to create more conflict overseas um to militarize America but ultimately what Trump's gonna do is he's going to play both sides he still has maga um and he still has and and he seems as though he'd loyal to the deep state um one thing that's winding -point understand is in this first term the deep state was completely in control I mean Trump just seemed hapless right remember remember mark mealy the um the head of the military the the the head of the military the the the Joint Chiefs of Staff he actually called the Chinese government and said hey guys I know Trump is seems sort of dysfunctional and chaotic incompetent we've got this well whatever

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he tells us to do we'll just ignore okay this is I don't know I mean this sounds like treason to me right but you don't see that in the second term you don't have this sort of nonsense in the second term but what you do have is a clear divide in the White House that the media through leaks is playing up right remember the bombing of the Yemenis right there's that there was that signal chat where you have two distinct factions you had on one side like like saying you know let's let's not do this guys JD Vance Pete Hexieff, Kelsey Gabbard right saying and this is like the anti -war faction and then you had the National Security Advisor who has been replaced but you have that other faction saying no let's go go ahead with this okay and that's the and so remember Trump is a reality TV star this is something that

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he's gonna play up throughout his entire term that you know that there's this two major factions within the White House and it seems as though because of blackmail like the deep state has its tentacles into Trump but eventually as things get worse and worse as conflict arises then Trump's going to say no I need to protect American people I need to step up against the deep state and so he's gonna turn back to mega and this would create a civil war yeah I

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think that's very interesting I actually wrote an essay earlier this year about those two factions actually before he even came into office because I through a Marxist perspective connected it to two different factions of capital you know the tech capital and and the global economy and the global economy and the finance capital within the United States. Um, but that drama has taken on a very interesting dimension, especially with the fallout, um, between him and Elon Musk. Um, and you sort of see that come up again and again, but isn't it also a general tendency of fascist political movements to kind of have all this infighting and this kind of idea that we're just all going to fight it out of the strongest, you know, we'll kind of rise to the top and all these people are sort of appointed, uh, really out of their loyalty to Trump, not really because of their competence or anything like that.

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Um, and so you see him get more frustrated, um, you know, when they kind of mess up and, um, you know, don't talk to the press properly and just can't really do their job. And then he'll rehire them and he'll try to hire people who are more loyal. Uh, and then they'll have more issues, you know, over who's kind of more sycophantic. I mean, do you think that that's another, uh, aspect of it too, that's driving a lot of this conflict in addition to the factions? Um, because a lot of these people are sort of just, uh, yeah, I mean, a lot of them came out of like the online MAGA, um, you know, influencer space even. Yeah. Okay. Um, I think that makes logical sense, but I, I, I have certain questions.

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Okay. The first question is why didn't, why wasn't this happening in the first term? My second question then is why were certain individuals picked? Okay. What was JD Vance picked? Why was Tulsi Gabbard picked? Because I mean, like, I mean, there were thousands of, of, of other options, right. And JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard are not part of the MAGA movement. Tulsi Gabbard, um, used to be a Democrat. Um, um, and my third question is why do we know all this, right? Because we assume that in every regime, in every government, there's tons and tons of bureaucratic warfare. There's tons of factionalism going on, but this is being mediated. This is out in the open. I mean, uh, the signal chat was leaked to Jeffrey Goldberg. Um, at the Atlantic, right? I mean, like, like this is the US government. They've got like 1000 of the handlers, right.

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And they brought in this like. Antagonistic journalist who hates Trump into the chat. I mean, like it sounds very much mediated to me. Remember Trump is a reality TV star. He knows he's the expert at creating a false reality for everyone. I mean, like his background is in the world wrestling and federalism. I mean, go back and watch his clips of, you know, his feud with Vince McNair. You know what? Just go to Alaska and watch his facial expressions with Vladimir Putin. He looks distraught. He looks defeated. Do you really think that he would go in a meeting and not know exactly what happened? And I mean, he went to a meeting for his own personal political gain, right? And he obviously got it because if Vladimir Putin is smiling, then you have to imagine that Trump himself would be very happy with it. They obviously had a rapport with each other. But if you look at the visuals, then Trump looks defeated.

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And you don't—and like, Trump's an actor. You don't think this is all intentional? I mean, like, we're so stuck into thinking that the media is reality. And that's what gives Trump his power, the fact that he's able to control perception and control how people perceive him. Don't think about—like, stop focusing on the facial expressions, stop focusing on emotions, and think about the structure of the situation, right? And I go back to that signal chat leak. Thousands and thousands of federal employees making sure that this crap doesn't happen, right? And it does happen. So I would think it was intentional. And again, I think they're trying to create a drama that the White House is torn between these two different war camps. And Trump is sort of stuck in between. And that's what makes him incapable of achieving the MAGA agenda. But he is the messiah. He is the champion of MAGA.

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And eventually, he will reach a point when he feels he must fight against the deep state. And at that point, the American people must stand with him. And he's got these interlocutors within the media, right? People like Tucker Carlson. Nick Fuentes. Kenneth Owens. That's what, like, planted the seeds for this.

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So in that sense, really, to some extent, it is all political theater. And also, trying to look at Trump logically on his face is sort of hard because oftentimes he's putting on a show, or at least how it's presented openly. Would you say he sort of positions himself as sort of like a savior of MAGA, a religious figure? That's sort of trying to create a controlled opposition? Is that what you're saying? He's trying to create a controlled opposition with the deep state, and he's going to swoop in last minute and fluctuate to the side of his MAGA base?

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Listen, I think Trump believes he is the messiah. I think he has a messianic calling, okay? And like, you just go in and like, analyze what's happened in the past five years. They raided Mar -a -Lago, right? For... And the reason why was he had classified documents. Guess what? Every single politician has classified documents because everything is classified in Washington, D.C. They found classified documents in Joe Biden's car garage. Did they raid that? No, they didn't, right? So they raided Mar -a -Lago clearly as a political stunt. They tried to bankrupt him through all these legal cases in different jurisdictions. I mean, the lawfare committed against Trump was... Yeah. It's just absurd and unreasonable and completely unfair and unjust. And that just sort of fed into his persecution complex, right? If I'm a prophet and I'm the messiah, how do I know? Because I'm being persecuted by the powerful. Then you go to the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting, right?

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He should have been killed, but God intervened. God saved him at the last minute because God wanted him to know, you're here for a secret mission. You're here for a divine mission. I will always protect you. So I mean, yeah, Trump does theater. But guess what? The only way you can do theater is if you actually believe in the role yourself, okay? So given what's happened to him these past four or five years, given the sort of like incredible onslaught by the deep state, by his enemies, and the fact that he's able to survive it all. And in fact, quiet against the law. It means nothing. It means that he has God's favor. And it means that he has a mission to fulfill. So in his mind, okay? And in the mind of his followers, he is the messiah.

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And he brings that sort of Judeo -Christian worldview, this Western Manifest Destiny worldview to the world stage. And that's sort of an explanation for his like invasion of Venezuela. I'm going to take Canada, invade Mexico. I really like that perspective. That's a new perspective I haven't heard before. Shifting a little bit, on your Iran war, on your take on the Iran war, wherein you said Iran would beat America, and America sort of going towards a ground invasion. In fact, the IRGC is sort of hoping for a ground invasion. I've seen some pushback on that, firstly being that Iran is very outmatched by like America's military might. You know, America invests very heavily into its military. That America has taken government. It's like Iraq before very easily. And also, you also mentioned your population sizes, and how America would have to deploy this many troops. But many people said that the population size simply doesn't matter.

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What would you say to these three pushbacks?

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Yeah, no, um, if you talk to 1000 geopolitical analysts, they will tell you, every one of them will tell you, there's no way America will launch a ground invasion because it is the most retarded thing you can do. Um. And there's, there's no point in, in, in doing it. Um, but let's just assume, okay, I can answer your question, let's assume that America does launch a ground invasion, why it would, it would fail. Okay. What, what's the difference between Iran and Iraq? And there are some stark differences. Okay. The first stark difference is that remember, um, by the year 2003, um, Iraq's military economy had been decimated by American sanctions. Okay. And. And by America, American aerial campaign. So when, um, America invaded in 2003, Iraq didn't have any air defenses. America had complete air superiority. Okay. That's the first thing. The second thing is that Iraq was a desert. And if you're a desert, then guess what, uh, air superiority is going to destroy you.

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Um, that's the second thing. Um. And the third thing is that, um, the Iraqi people didn't know what's going to happen. They, they thought, oh, America would come and we, and, and implant regime change, but that's good for us because it means the lifting of American sanctions. It means the coming of freedom of democracy. Um, they couldn't possibly expect, and no one could possibly expect that the first thing, and I think this was actually, um, order number two, right? That the second thing that the American administration did. And, um, Iraq was deep, deep application application, right? Just saying that if you are a member of the Baptist party, you are not allowed in the military and in the government. Okay. They basically wiped out the elite and anyone could have told you if you did that, then that would create complete and other chaos, right?

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So these are the three things that we have to keep in mind when we think about, um, Iran. Okay. The first thing is, um, Iran does have air defenses. In fact, that's really capable air defenses. And in fact, it's been invested in the past 20 years, primarily in ballistic missiles, right? Because, because it's assuming that America will eventually invade, um, and it needs to project force throughout the region. So, so where, um, uh, Iran is really capable is in drone warfare and in ballistic missile warfare. Okay. That's number one. Number one. Number two is that Iran is not a desert. It's a mountain. It's a mountain fortress and, um, America's military doctrine of shock and awe doesn't really work, uh, when, when you're up against a mountainous terrain, right? I mean, like, like the idea is to have air superiority, special forces, and then rapid, um, decapitation strikes. Well, you can't do that with mountains because you can't bomb mountains into submission.

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Okay. That's number two. Number three is the Iranian people know exactly what could happen if the Americans invade. The entire point is to do, is to do to the Iran, what America has done to Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Right. To make the society dysfunctional. You go to Libya, Syria, Iraq. Guess what? If you went there in the sixties, seventies, eighties, these were vibrant middle -class societies that were prosperous, open, forward looking. Now you go to them and you see what happened and see what happened. The Iranians are proud to be Persian. They're proud of this 5,000 civilization. And they know that the American base. This will mean the end of this civilization. So, um, for these three reasons, I think that Iranians will fight to the death. Yeah. And also, um, you go back to the 1980s when, uh, Iraq invaded Iran and listen, Iraq was

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being supported by both the Soviet union in the United States, Iran had problems finding rifles and ammunition, didn't stop them from defeating Iraq. Um, what they did was they basically. Um, uh, I'm sorry. I mean, I mean, I mean the amount of, I won't go into it because it's very disturbing, but the amount of human sacrifice that the Iranians did to defeat Iraq was just unimaginable for us.

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Yeah. I mean, the, the, I, I heard of, like I mentioned, he interviewed somebody who was in the Iranian military during the war and, you know, he asked him like, what was it like, you know, uh, on the battlefield basically generally, and the guy just laughed and said they were terrified of us. Yeah. Because they were just willing to, you know, and, and, you know, they were such a, like after the revolution, the kind of nationalist fervor, um, the idea that you really can change history and you don't have to just kind of be left to the whims of, you know, Britain, the United States, like this was such a powerful motivator. Um, and in addition to the religious motivations, uh, but yeah, and, and, and then you go back to the last successful invasion of Iran in world war II, and it took the combined military forces. Of the British empire and the Soviet union invading from the north and the south and Iran had no military, uh, basically.

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So, um, yeah. And all you have to do is just fucking go on Google earth and look at the country and I, you know, you mean that that's, that's, that's compelling argument, you know, regardless,

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you have argued that, uh, a war between Iran and America is still, you know, inevitable to some extent. Um, even after, uh, the 12 day war has concluded. Oh. So why do you think it is Iran and not, let's say China, especially over, let's say, uh, a hot topic issue like, uh, Taiwan, uh, w why would America be dead set on Iran is sort of like a domino game where they're trying to get through Iraq to China through Iran, or is it like, um, a part of like a religious ideological, uh, base for America and manifest as soon?

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Yeah. So the first thing is, um, uh, Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, right? Why isn't America talking about North Korea? Uh, you know, I mean like throughout the nineties, America was talking about, uh, North Korea as part of the, um, axis of, um, evil, right? It doesn't talk about North Korea anymore. Why not? Well, because North Korea got nuclear weapons, right? So nuclear weapons is a huge factor. Um, so that's point number one, point number two is that Iran, it really is the center of the world. If you control Iran, you can quote, you control global trade, right? So, um, Russia's north south corridor, economic access runs through that. Trying to control Iran. Iran's belt and road initiative runs, runs through that. Um, and even if you don't, um, and even if Iran is a part of any corridor, Iran is in a really strong position because it controls the strip who moves to disrupt global trade.

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Um, so, um, Iran has oil, it has, um, uh, the, the best geographic location and we can ask for to, to facilitate global trade. Uh, so there are geopolitical factors. Um, then you have the greater Israel project. Um. If the goal of Israel is to achieve the greater Israel project, which it believes it to be its political destiny, then Iran must be knocked out of the picture. Then you have, I just think momentum inertia, right? Because remember Wesley Clark, um, way back in 2001, right after the, um, uh, 9 11, um, attacks. He, um, and, and like, yeah, you guys can go and go on YouTube and find this clip. He said that America planet plan to attack seven countries. Um. Um, and they've, they've, they've destroyed six of these countries and there's one more country on the list, which is Iran. So I, I think this idea has been planted in the American elite for decades and decades.

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And now it's just coming to fruition and, and really it's, I think I'm running a marathon, right? You you're, you're like so close to the finish line. You're not going to stop now. Um, uh, um, then you have like these, um, Christian Zionists who, who want, who want to instigate a third world war to get Jesus to return. I mean, you have like lots and lots of reasons why, um, there will be eventually a conflict between United States and Iran. But, but, but, but I mean, I, I just think like another reason is the American empire is just so clueless. It's it's desperate. You see this war in Ukraine and, and it's just like the dumbest thing ever. I mean, the amount of casualties inflicted upon Ukraine is just ridiculous. After I don't care how this war, what happens after this war, I'm sorry, I don't know how this

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war ends, but I'm pretty sure like after the war ends, Ukraine is no longer a functional society. They've lost too many, um, men in, in this war. I, I don't know how you survive as a society, um, after this. Um, so like, like this, the amount of stupidity in the Ukraine war, um, so you can't, we cannot expect the people in the American empire to think rationally. And strategically and long -term, uh, when it comes to Iran, given, given like, like how the war in Ukraine has turned out.

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Yeah. Like the end of the war is up, uh, or the end of the marathon, excuse me, is up a mountain with Ukrainian 20 year olds, piloting drones at you. And that's the, it's still the end, man. It's still the finish line. Yeah. It's still almost lab.

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Okay.

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I still from the promise lab.

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Yeah, exactly.

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Um, um, I, a lot of what you said about Iran. I find. I find sort of similar ish, not, not exactly a one -to -one, but very similar parallels between America's relationship with, uh, Venezuela, which is also oil rich and important part of the region. Do you, do you have any predictions for how this conflict will play out? Because America has been trying to get rid of, uh, Maduro, uh, Chavez, uh, and the Bolivarian revolution since, uh, it was first put into, uh, office in the nineties. Um, uh, yeah, go ahead.

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Yeah. Um, I mean, this is the American empire. And eventually they will control the entire Western hemisphere eventually, uh, which includes Canada, which includes Venezuela. Um, um, I don't know the timeline, but eventually this will happen. Uh, especially if America loses this conflict in the middle East and, um, in Ukraine, um, then America will just double down on, on the Western hemisphere. And at the end of the day, I mean, I just say this. Yeah. But in the Western hemisphere, there is no competitor to United States. Um, Brazil looks big, it looks strong, but for centuries, their elite has been shifting their assets, their loyalties, and their children to United States. Right. I mean, if there's one thing that the American empire is really good at doing, it's co -opting local elites, um, within the Western hemisphere. And I mean, like you, you go, you go, you work, go back to the Banda Republic. You go back to these, um, foot monopolies.

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Right.

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Hmm. Um, and so in that sense, do you see America winning its hegemony over Latin America, or do you see it sort of like spurting, attempting or, um, and ultimately losing because certainly it has been losing to, on an economic level, uh, Latin America to, uh, China in trade China's just been killing it over America, but, um, it still does exert a great, um, soft power. It still does exert great, uh, uh. It still has a pretty good, robust military force and also the CIA is still working over time to like, let's say overthrow, uh, countries like Maduro's. Yeah.

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Well, I mean, the reality is you have a very powerful faction within Venezuela that would welcome American invention. You you've got a sizable, uh, Venezuela diaspora in the United States. Um, so I think America could very easily pick over Venezuela. I, I don't think it'd be that it, it, it'd be that much of a fight.

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Hmm. Hmm. Um, if, if they do go to war or yeah, I don't think, I don't think they, they, they wanna go to war.

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I, I, I think this is just, I, I think they're trying to create re regime implosion. I, I, I think they're trying to put maximum pressure on, uh, Maduro and Venezuela. And honestly, like just the way that Maduro's been behaving, like calling up 4.5 million militiamen. Um, when America sent three warships. That's, that's kind of over overreaction and it just shows you how unstable the regime is. And, um, and, uh, and honestly that's, that's, that's strategy to keep on provoking Maduro force overreactions, force them to expand resources they don't have and eventually cause regime change.

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Mm -hmm really? Um, cause the way I predicted it and I'm not an expert or anything, but the way I predict it was like the Maduro regime actually comes out stronger from this conflict because he's able to consolidate a base. People are able to see that America's in it for oil money, but, uh, I, I think one thing I would be ignoring in that is that there is a large section of Venezuelan society that is unhappy with the current government. Yep.

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Middle class. Yeah. Middle class. That's correct.

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Um, moving on, uh, with the, with the decline of the U S dollar, um, which has predominated politics since that one accord, uh, I forget the name of that accord, the Brenton woods.

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Yeah. Benton woods. Yep. Yep. Yep.

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Um, with the decline of the U S dollar, do you, do you think that BRICS will be able to offer an alternative or is it, um, is it unable to do so because it's not ideologically unified, uh, because there's a lot of infighting within BRICS, especially India, China, things like that, or can they actually ferment an, an alternative to the Brenton woods, uh, hegemony?

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Yeah. So we go back to the earlier point, uh, that you guys made, which is, I, I already mentioned, ah, you know, you guys argue that money is just like made a concept, but the, but you're like, well, if people keep, if you keep on using it a lot, then it has real value. And that that's the situation we're in right now. The habit of, of the world is to use, is to use, is to use the U S dollar and habits are very hard to break. Um, so I think we're stuck with the U S dollar for a long, long time. I don't think breaks is a viable alternative because ultimately these countries are not going to agree. We are a reserve currency outside the US dollar, right? I mean, why would India subjugate its economy to the Chinese? And why would the Chinese need to subjugate their economy to the Russians?

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Everyone subjugated their economies to the Americans, but that's just a habit. That's been around for decades. And so people are kind of used to that. And to get them to break that habit and say like, let's use a new BRICS currency, or let's use the Chinese renminbi, it's not gonna work.

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And so in order for like another currency to supersede America, to some extent, there need to be like sort of like a new world power on the level of America. None exist.

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Possibly Russia. Possibly Russia. The way that things are trending is that Russia will win this war in Ukraine, and it will slowly expand itself geopolitically across Europe. I'm not saying this in terms of like military, in terms of like soft power. Oh, I mean, like Putin is a soft power genius, right? Because like he goes in the Alaska meeting and he's a superstar now, right? You're like, this man has balls. Cause the guy flies into America and he's surrounded by the entire American military. And he stares down the American military and he leaves the complete winner. And in his arrangement, you see the war in Ukraine, this Povonos breakthrough, the Ukrainian military is about to collapse at any time. So the entire world is seeing Putin as this Ubermans, as this savior, as this, you know, as this great hero. So I think that in Europe, especially because right now there's so much civil conflict

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in Europe, you're going to have this new generation of young people who are like Putin fans, you know, they're, yeah.

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I would push back on that a little in that, don't you think that there is a lot of formant within Western, especially Western ideology against Putin, Russia, they're sort of very much the boogeyman, especially amongst European youths who see him, he see him almost as like, oh, a lot of this is framed as like World War II. He's kind of Hitler, things like that. Or are you saying it's sort of going to be like an under undercurrent of youth, like not like the typical, but it's going to be like an undercurrent within youth politic.

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Yeah. So what we're seeing in the Western world is a crisis of faith and authority, right? The sort of rejection of expertise and authority, especially post COVID, right? Because it was the experts who told us, hey, if you take this vaccine, you won't get COVID. And then you got COVID. Right? And then you got COVID. vaccines and the experts were like hey you got COVID but I assure you that it'll be if you got the vaccine the COVID effects will be less serious than otherwise and like well you you know you you still got sick and it was still pretty terrible like oh yeah but long term it'll be better for you so so the experts kept on lying and deceiving the people and so you have this rejection of authority um right now young people just don't want to go to school and it's silly because if you go to these universities these thousands

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are empty because young people don't want to go to school but universities uh want the tuition so they're perfectly willing to let the kids not go to school as long as they pay the tuition so you have this crisis of faith in authority and expertise and as a result young people are looking for alternatives um and Putin provides a very compelling alternative for these people

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yeah I feel like extreme extreme politics in general uh I mean the two of us are certainly uh I think exemplify that I mean there's Marxist Leninists um you certainly have a large contingent of people our age who are uh fascists or attracted to Nazi ideology um and other extreme views like that or religion like Catholicism traditional Catholicism and so on yeah I don't know a lot

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of Putin supporters

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I mean personally yeah and and so I think a lot of it is not like they're they're personally drawn to fascism or Nazism or communism it's it's just like they're experimenting they they know that authority is no longer legitimate you can no longer trust authority so they're experimenting

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and they're being drawn to powerful ideologies um you know when America lost in Vietnam that didn't necessarily translate to the Soviet Union becoming a world power uh what exactly is different in the Ukraine -Russo war uh that allows Russia to uh sort of usurp America on a world stage or at least greatly strengthen its

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position that's a great point um a lot of it's just Putin's personal charisma um a lot of it is just that he spent decades refining um an image of himself as this uberman you know like like you go back to the 90s when he was writing a lot of his books and he was writing a lot of his books like like you know bare chested on a horse and he was like fighting leopards and hunting and all that so so so that image has been implanted in people's mind and that's very powerful um so I think the world is drawn to the personal charisma of of Putin um and also you have these eschatologies in place so so if you look at orthodox eschatology it's really interesting because the prophecy is that Moscow is the third world it will unify the entire orthodox world the orthodox world is huge by the way right because you

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you that encompasses eastern Europe um and um and and Russia but but also the prophecy states that the orthodox world will align with the Islamic world um in the fight against the great Satan which which which is the western civilization um also uh the prophecy states that there will be a reconciliation between the Islamic sorry between the orthodox world and the catholic world because really they were they were at first just one church right one one religion and then you got this great schism which happened about um one thousand um um common era um so so so but when you reconcile these three four three religions right the orthodox the catholic and the islamic that's the entire world man and and and so so and they see the great enemy as western civilization as represented by the Anglo -American empire um the the potions basically.

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Going back, I know earlier in this conversation you said that Turkey would be key to that. How exactly is Turkey key to this Russian Orthodox movement?

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Yeah, that's a great question. So the prophecy states that the Third Rome will restore the Byzantine Empire, and that will basically herald in the Mezzanine Age, and there'll be no Fourth Rome. This is just the end of history, because this is a period of peace and prosperity. But you want to restore the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire was based in Krasnodar Pole, and not only that, but this is called the Hagia Sophia, which was the main church in Krasnodar Pole and really the center of the Orthodox religion. That's how they converted into a mosque. So for the Byzantine Empire to be restored, you have to call for Krasnodar Pole. You have to return the Hagia Sophia back into a church, and you have to return the Greeks to Krasnodar Pole. So that's a mission that the Orthodox eschatology understands it to be. So basically you need to create a political revolution in Turkey. Now what the prophecy says is this.

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The prophecy says that Erdogan will lose power, and a new political faction will rise, which is loyal to NATO. And because they're loyal to NATO, they will try to prove this loyalty by supporting NATO in the war against Ukraine. This will force Russia to go to war against Turkey. This war will last three seconds, and then Turkey will, Anatolia will rejoin the Orthodox world, and the Byzantine Empire will be restored, and the Greeks will return to Krasnodar Pole. If you don't agree, you talk to any taxi driver, they will throw you this prophecy. It's pretty prevalent and pretty popular. Now we live in an age of nuclear war, so obviously it'd be stupid for Russia to invade Turkey because that would aggravate Article 5 of NATO, and you would have a nuclear Armageddon. So I think the most likely scenario is this. This is how I see things playing out.

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If Putin were to threaten Odessa, NATO would be forced to send ground troops to defend Odessa. At this point, Putin has encircled Odessa with his forces, NATO is defending Odessa. It's a stalemate, but you have to resupply these troops and you do it through the Black Sea. Who controls the Black Sea? Well, Turkey controls the Black Sea because of the Strait of Bosporus. This took Turkey into the war, and at this point, you have now have major political turmoil within Turkey because the idea siding with NATO against Russia will not be popular. It's a drain on the Turkish economy. It's geopolitical suicide and this will create a political revolution in Turkey and the regime will be overthrown. The new like a new political faction will come into into power that's pro -Putin. It will welcome the Russians into Turkey and as a price as a sign of devotion to Putin they will return Istanbul back to the Greeks.

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That's what I think Putin envisions things playing out and that's what I think will most likely play out. Do you actually see Turks inviting Russians over?

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Is that more of like the ideological framework in which Putin is imagining it? No, I think Putin only wants Constantinople right because Turkey is a huge place.

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So Turkey is politically absolutely ethically still intact but Constantinople is returned to the Greeks and Hagia Sophia is returned as a Christian church and not an Islamic mosque. That's a deal they will make. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Dugin, Alexander Dugin.

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Yeah I am. How does he fit in his philosophy which really does seem to drive a lot of the Russian state. How does he fit into all of this? Yeah it's really interesting because what Dugin has done...

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he is thinking of his ditology. Of his ditology and that's been around for centuries and it's been around ever since the fall of Constantinople against the Ottoman Empire. What he's done is to think of his ditology and convert it into a geopolitical framework a theory that Russia can use to actually achieve this ditology. So in that way Dugin is probably the most influential thinker today we have.

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Because he really drives the eschatology of Russia? Yeah I mean I mean he's using this eschatology and turn it into a geopolitical plan right?

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This plan requires Moscow to form three alliances. The first alliance is the the western axis Moscow and Berlin okay and that I think will happen over time. Then you have the eastern axis which is Moscow Tokyo and the third axis is Moscow terrain so it's all happening according to his plan and you could argue the invasion of Ukraine was about promoting this plan and that's what Alexander Dukin believes. If you actually listen to his interviews he's explicit about this. He says that guys this invasion of Ukraine it's not about geopolitics. It's not about territory. It's a civilizational struggle between the Orthodox worldview and the Anglo -American Empire.

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How do they see the Anglo -American Empire in all of this, within this Orthodox view? Is it like an oppositional Christianity? Obviously it's not a Catholic, it's a Protestant. Is it still sort of like the enemy to be conquered or how do they view it?

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So in the Orthodox anthropology, the Anglo -American Empire, Western Orthodox civilization, it is the Antichrist. It's all that's wrong with the world because it promotes an individualistic, materialistic, expansionist worldview that corrupts the soul. And so what Putin is, what Moscow is, it's the, I may be mispronouncing this word, but it's a catacomb. The catacomb is the force that imprisons the Antichrist. So Putin has a divine mission to overflow the Antichrist and restore the Mesozoic Age.

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You work within China and Canada, right?

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Well, I'm a Canadian citizen, but I've been working in China for the past 30 years. That's correct, yes.

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How are your theories and frameworks accepted within China? Is society overall accepting? Does it go against the ruling Marxist -Leninist philosophy? Or are they rather fans of it? Yeah. I am like a pariah in China, really.

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I mean, I've written two books promoting education reform. And I mean, I'm a pretty deep thinker and I'm pretty well read. And Chinese read it and they just thought that it was complete nonsense. And I was just making stuff up. And I didn't know what I was talking about. The comments on the internet were basically, I don't understand what he was saying, so he must be an idiot. That was the most prevalent comment on the internet, the reaction towards my book. As you know, like in June, in late June of this year, my geopolitical videos went viral on the internet, especially predicting the war in Iran. There's been no reaction in China. The videos have not gotten viral in China, even though the videos have been posted, not by me, but by other people in China. And I think a lot of it is because I'll be very frank with you guys. I think that China has been co -opted by neoliberalism.

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I think the Anglo -American empire, the most successful thing they ever did was bring China into the world. You go back to 1980s, China was very much aligned with the sort of orthodox etymology worldview. The world is divided into civilizations. We are a distinct civilization. We are a unique civilization. Our priority is to protect it. And now after 20, 30 years of economic reform, where the American, sorry, where the Chinese economy has basically been Americanized, the Chinese middle class has completely absorbed and internalized American values. And this was a very, I mean, it was just blatantly done because if you go back in the 80s and 90s, how were Chinese getting access to American culture? Well, they were getting through pirated DVDs. I'm not sure if you guys know what DVDs are, but this is pre -internet. So you had these DVDs, these videocassettes of American movies.

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It was brilliant because Chinese had to secretly go buy these pirated DVDs. They were illegal, but they gave these DVDs a sense of, like a mystique, a deep sense of sacredness. And then the Chinese would go home and secretly watch these movies that were basically promoting American values of individualism, materialism, neoliberalism. And for them, it was a revelation. It was like reading the Bible. It was like, oh my God, this is American culture. And this is why America is the greatest society in the world, because it promotes individualism because it promotes individual materialistic pursuit. And that subconsciously has been embedded in the mind of Chinese people. So if you look at the most American society in the world, it's not America, it's China. And, and, and, and, and, and that's why I think there'll be a rapprochement between China and America in the next couple of years.

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Yeah. It's interesting. So if you look at like car consumer choices too, is a very stark example of the similarity, like very large, bulky cars, kind of American style cars are so popular in China. But at the same time, couldn't that also be attributed to just the diversification of the economy, the, you know, the expansion of the consumer economy in general, which caters to individualism and kind of curating your personality you know, and all sorts of things, because the Chinese economy has also become more like America's just, you know, because of the reform, and opening up and so on.

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KorView句 Yeah. So I'll, give a car car career example. Okay. I work in the Chinese education system, so so I see this all the time, but right now you have about 300 000 Chinese undergraduate students studying in American colleges. And what I tell my students is guys, I mean, when you are in America, you pay more money. It it's, it's the most expensive culture, education you will ever get, and it wouldn't have been a big blow. And when you get to America, world you're better off going to new zealand or canada or france or italy or or britain because it's cheaper you probably get a higher quality of education um they're probably more welcoming than than america um you'll be more competitive if you speak like french or spanish because like there's more need um you'll be a cultural bridge to france spain italy to europe i'll go to russia because ties between russia and

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china are improving and then chinese government has been trying very hard for the past 10 years to steer chinese students away from america and to other countries anywhere it doesn't really matter just not america because as you know for these past 10 years there's been tremendous geopolitical tensions between america and china and guess what chinese students are now more desperate than ever to go to america i tell you look if you go to america there's a chance that um the customs people will be rude to you and possibly revoke your visa at the border for no particular reason there's a chance that you go to america you'll you'll encounter overt racism um and also like guys you're not getting a quality education in america for that price they don't care they don't care they're like no i'm good america because that's the promised land that's where i want to go and and that's a short

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short blue shorts like demonstrates you the level of indoctrination in this country and these are like the elite of china right the wealthiest the most powerful the most well -connected families in china their children all want to go to america that's really strange but it isn't like because i went to

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a a top american university used for like 20 chinese students and my interactions with them i noticed that a lot of them were overwhelmingly from uh the elite families or elite like class and i noticed that a lot of them were overwhelmingly from uh the elite families or elite like class and is in china and what they generally mentioned was just that uh it was less competitive uh because their family could afford it um like if you're trying to get into like tsinghua university or like one of the top chinese universities the competition is just so fierce um and the prestige will be comparable if you just go to an american university if your family can pay for it but isn't i mean most people who go to college who are chinese they still end up going to like chinese universities right and isn't it shifting where employers view them more favorably now uh within

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the country yeah so i so what people do is they rationalize um and you know i've been working in this industry for the past 20 30 years and again it's like like confuses me it i mean like it's mind -boggling that even today so many chinese students still want to go to america and i can't rationally explain this because you're right i mean like right now chinese employers don't look so fair really on graduates of american colleges because like they know when these kids go to america um they're playing video games they're not really learning anything um and their english isn't that great um so if you just look at things from an economic material perspective it doesn't really work um it doesn't make sense for chinese students go over to america but if you look at it as a religion right um as a faith that america is a promised land and to be

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associated with a promised land makes you feel better about yourself um and gives you a like divine status then that makes more sense

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but doesn't it also make sense just because a lot of these people come from you know they might just be like wealthier kids who aren't like the smartest in the world and they they feel like they want to be they want to go to a prestigious university and it's just harder to do in china because the competition is harder well i mean it's very hard to get a prestigious university

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in america as well right i mean like most of them are going to state colleges they go in ohio state they go They're going to the University of Wisconsin. They're going, I mean, like that's where they end up. And if you look at it from that perspective, it doesn't make any sense because you could pay a third as much and go to the University of Toronto and you'll probably get a better education. So I'm sure there are rationalizations. And I've talked to many Chinese students about this and they provide like thousands and thousands of reasons why, yeah, I want to go to America, but we just analyze it, like just, from first principles, it doesn't really make sense. And again, my only explanation is they've been brainwashed into thinking that America is a promised land and anything America is, is better than anything else.

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That certainly is a global trend all across the world. And not just China. Do you think it's stronger in China?

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I think it's very strong in China, just because China doesn't really have its own religion, doesn't really have its own distinct narrative about itself. So people here are desperate for a narrative, a sort of sacred narrative. And America does provide that with the American dream, right? Like you come here, you work hard, you get rich.

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Do you think that that partially explains the kind of stunning, explosive growth of the Falun Gong in the 80s and 90s? Yes, it does.

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And that's why there's such a sensitive topic in China. The Communist Party knows the biggest threat is China. Internally, they would rather have people be materialistic Americans than, you know.

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Yeah. Do you think China's soft power is growing as well? I mean, I'm actually traveling there later this year and I would say I was certainly just interested for all sorts of reasons, but I think there also is a general interest across social media in America at a time when the US administration is on the surface level demonstrating such a massive power. Massive incompetence, getting involved in this trade war and all this, and with the genocide in Gaza as well, really delegitimizing liberal values that were so core to American soft power projection. I mean, do you think that there is a story you can tell about China gaining more soft power or sort of finding a kind of narrative in this sort of circumstance and the US losing it?

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Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, this is definitely what's happening where young people around the world are becoming more disgusted with America. So they naturally gravitate towards China because they see China as the next rising power and China has these 5,000 years of civilizational history. But you know, when you actually live in China, when you actually know China, what you realize is that there's a hollow core to the civilization. If you go to Russia and you spend like five, 10 years in Russia learning the language, learning literature, you fall in love with Russia and you fall in love with Russia for the rest of your life. It becomes part of who you are. Russia enters your soul because the Russian soul is so deep and so fascinating and so mystical. You go to Brazil, you go to Italy, you go to Iran, you go to Egypt, this all happens. When you come to China, it doesn't happen.

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And the reason why is that... China never really produced a great thinker or a great book that captures the imagination. You know, when you go to Russia, you have all these great thinkers, Dostoevsky, Toy Story are just two of the exemplar ones. But in China, you don't really have a deep, sophisticated culture. I know this sounds strange to Westerners who have been in China for 5,000 years, but it's hard to think of a deep thinker in Chinese history.

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Well, yeah, it's interesting because I mean, I trust your perspective and experience because obviously I've never lived in China and my knowledge of Chinese literature is limited, but definitely reading Lao Tzu, I mean, definitely had a big impact on me. I think Taoism in general was always very interesting to me and Confucianism as well. I mean, I guess... Yeah. I think it's to your point that it seems like Xi Jinping over the past 10 years has sort of tried to turn Confucianism into what you're talking about, which is this kind of framework or understanding of the society. But I don't know. I guess I'd be interested in if you could illustrate more by what you mean at that, because it does sound strange to me having connected with... Yeah.

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So if you look at great Western literature, Homer, Dante. They were created in a time of tremendous political upheaval when great thinkers have the space and the opportunity to express themselves freely. And that's the first thing. Second thing is that because their ideas were so powerful, they became embedded in the consciousness of many individuals that transmit their ideas across time and across culture. The third thing is that Europe was never unified. To a point where one authority could control all the ideas and territory within continental Europe. None of these three things are true in China. So China experienced too much political stability where the center was able to dominate the culture. And that led to a bureaucratic culture as opposed to an effectual culture. Maybe Laozi and Confucius. Maybe they were... Amazing thinkers. But over time, what happens is that the center will edit their ideas and basically hollow out their ideas. So it becomes a much more acceptable bureaucratic form.

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And this is something that every regime has done. So even though regimes change, their policy of censorship has maintained. And that's why when you read Laozi. When you read the Analects. When you read anything from Chinese literature, it seems a hollow form of itself.

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Going back a little bit, you said that there would be a rapprochement with China because China has this very Americanized culture. What I've always heard is that America is in fact trying to get a rapprochement with Russia to cut off China because it sees China as this great sort of adversary. But what you're arguing basically is that there actually is an ideological base within Chinese citizens where they're very pro -America and Americanized. Do you see any semblance of truth in the rapprochement with Russia? Or do you think it has to be with China or it will be with China? Right.

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So, I mean, I've just in the past hour and a half explained to you why there will never be a rapprochement between Russia and America because Russia sees America as the antichrist. Right. And it's embedded in like Russian identity. I mean, like Russians really do see America as the greatest evil in the world. It is the root of this corrupting individualistic material civilization that threatens the very soul of humanity. I mean, like just talk to Alexander Dugin. I mean, like there can be no space for negotiation. So what I think is happening is. It's really theater. So Trump has to go to Russia and to go straight to China and says, like, let's be friends makes absolutely no sense. So what makes more sense is you first go to Russia and say, hey, let's be friends. And Russia says, no, we're not going to be friends because I hate your guts. And then America is

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like, well, you see, we try our best to be friends with Russia and try to align Russia against China. But Russia doesn't want any of this. So geopolitically, it doesn't make more sense. Now to go to China and try to strike a deal. That I think it makes more sense.

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No, no. I think there's a very realistic scenario where they try to go where negotiations with Russia bail and then they negotiate with China. Do you think like something very similar happened during the Sino -Soviet split when like Nixon and China? Yeah. But during that time, there wasn't really that much of an American base within China, was there? Or.

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Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, I mean, and this is hard for Americans to understand, but like China never really had resentment against America like China has been trying to create this repulsion with America for a long, long time because it makes economic sense to China. Right. China has an axis of cheap labor that that that that is its commodity. Well, then which nation would want this commodity of cheap labor? Well, America. America wants cheap energy, wants cheap labor. Right. Russia doesn't need the cheap labor. It has cheap energy. Right. And so so so this so America and China has. I mean, like from a Chinese perspective, it's always been it's it's always a win win, right? It's symbiotic. And you have extremely poor China business elite in America. You have extremely poor America business elite in in China.

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You also have like Chinese products which are just I mean, if they if they lifted all the tariffs on Chinese cars like today, the American auto industry would collapse. You know. I mean, in 10 years, it'd be gone. For example, just the cost, just technological innovation. In terms of mobile phones, it's a similar thing. If you want to get into advanced semiconductors, of course, that still is in Taiwan and Belgium and Netherlands and South Korea, but probably 10, 20 years, the technology in China will surpass that too. So you also do seem to have this very protectionist urge amongst some of the elites in America who are basically saying, we want to crush and kind of strangle these Chinese commodities that are just completely destroy our business and completely undercut us. And then China, on the other hand, has this massive industrial base, very cheap raw materials, and is sort of positioned to make very competitive high technology.

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So do you think that will also really limit the amount of cooperation potentially?

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Yeah, that's a great point. But what we need to remember is, ever since the 80s, America made a conscious decision to offshore its manufacturing base to China and focus on financialization. So it's a financial elite that has all the power in American politics, not the manufacturing elite. So what America wants ultimately is basically to have more control over the Chinese financial system, because they have more control over the Chinese financial system. That pops up the US dollar. That's the real goal here. And you can argue that's really the source of all the conflict in the past 10, 15 years. Because according to WTO, China was supposed to liberalize its financial system. But in the past 10, 15 years, you've seen greater financial repression in China, right? Because obviously, if you subordinate your financial system to the Americans, well, bad things could happen. As we can see from Japan, right? Look what happened to Japan, because Japanese chose to subordinate its economy, its currency to the US dollar.

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So that I think is the source of friction right now. The negotiation is, America wants China to liberalize its financial system. It basically wants Wall Street to come in and buy out more financial assets, have greater control over the financial system. And the US has more control over the financial system. And then, the Chinese are not willing to do so. But I think the reproachment is that the compromise will be reached where China continues to export its products to America. America is perfectly willing to give China all the technology it wants, but China has to liberalize its financial system. The form it takes, the compromise it reaches, I have no idea because I'm not a financial expert. I'm not privy to these negotiations, but I'm sure these negotiations are happening behind closed doors.

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While China and America's economy certainly are very, very tied together, and as you mentioned before, there is like a social basis for Chinese citizens certainly to have a love for America. A lot of them also love Elon Musk from what I've heard. To some extent, couldn't it be argued that China is to some extent like America's competitor on the world stage in terms of trade, in terms of a counter hegemon, or are their economies just too simply tied together? And does China just simply lack its own identity being subsumed by America to be a competitor?

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If you want to be oversimplistic, you can say that for the past 30 years, China has been a colony of the United States. Why? Well, because first of all, Chinese are willing to absorb labor costs and pollution costs for products that Americans want to be manufactured. That's number one. Number two is it is America that provides all the technology, the expertise in order for China to produce these products. Because all the IP is in America, and America was perfectly willing to give this IP to China for free in the 80s and the 90s. When Americans talk about how Chinese steal things from us, Chinese doesn't have to steal technology from America because American companies are happy to give this technology to China for free to build up the Chinese manufacturing sector. The third thing that's really important is when these Chinese ships sail around the world to deliver these goods to Europe, to America, which military protects these ships from pirates?

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It's not the Chinese military, guys. It's not the Chinese Navy. It's the American Navy. So ask yourself why America would do this. Provide a market to China, provide technology for free to China, and protect Chinese shipping lanes.

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As the world seems to be sort of in a period of restructuring, and one of the main actors that you pointed out that seems to be coming out on top is Russia. China seems to be on a poor approach for a re -approachment with America. Are there any other big powerful players that can come out on top in America's general decline?

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So I don't think Russia will actually come out on top. I'm saying like it's trending that way. But the problem is Russia's power is dependent on Putin's personal charisma. So what happens if Putin dies? What happens if something happens to Putin? Well then Russia basically splinters into a civil war. So I don't think Russia comes up in top, on top. I don't think anyone comes up that. escape us under way. out on top if America were to decline. I think we're headed towards multi -polarity. I think we're headed towards complete chaos and wars over religion and resources. For me it's really a question of which regions of the world are most resilient, which regions, which countries will weather storm most well. And I think there are three particular areas or nations that might be the most resilient. I think Israel is extremely resilient because of the tenacity of its people. It has a deep eschatology.

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When it faces crisis, the Jewish people are amazing. When their very existence are at stake, the Jewish people come together and they're extremely creative. So I think Israel will become the dominant power within the Middle East. I think Japan in Southeast Asia will emerge the top dog. And if you look at Japanese history, it's amazing how, again, whenever Japanese face a perfect storm of crisis, they come together as a people and make the sacrifices necessary in order to survive. So I'll be very blunt. I'll give you a very concrete example. Every nation right now is facing an aging crisis. You have too many old people, not enough young people. Well, I think of all the nations in the world, only in Japan would the elderly say, we are going to disappear in order to ensure that our nation survives. Only in Japan. You would never see this in China where old people volunteer for euthanasia or something.

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But old people in Japan would say, you know what? I'm 80 years old. I've had a good life. It's my children, my grandchildren that really matter. So I will go to bed now. So Japan, I think, will be resilient. And you have Germany, not Keithes, I think Germany has a deep civilization. It is an extremely well organized, extremely unified culture. And I think Germany will emerge the dominant power in Europe. So I think these three will be the most resilient societies in the next 50 years. Which is like fascist societies basically. Well, we can use different terminologies for them, but from my perspective, these are societies with a deep sense of its own culture and civilization it is

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interesting though like that you brought up that example because I do know like the the policy that the Communist Party in China recently announced was like 3790 where 90 % of old people have to be taken care of by their family and the state's basically doing the thing and 3 % is life support and 7 % is you know intermittent care and they're basically saying if more people need help you know we don't care that's the limit to our resources so I guess that's obviously a more technocratic approach to the same problem but I guess it leads me into a bigger question which is just that I mean goes back a little bit more to what you were saying about just pessimism of a general country and the way that we think about it and the way that we think about the kind of focus I guess in in Chinese society you know in the

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current circumstances and then but after the 200 years you know of civil war and so on and kind of imperialism and then of course Sun Yat -Sun who's this kind of like sort of tech tried to borrow a little bit from here a little bit from there and sort of figure everything out kind of like Jawaharlal Nehru in India almost but then Mao really seems to emerge as this sort of savior figure you know and obviously if you read about the you know and look at the events of the Cultural Revolution you can see that this you know there was this kind of immense enthusiasm and view that this was kind of saving and raising up the whole civilization I mean do you think there's any potential for a figure to emerge after Xi Jinping or obviously this is might be you know sensitive topic or whatever but after Xi Jinping or at some point

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they kind of tapped into that because I do think that does seem like an example of that kind of purpose and you know organization around a really kind of singular mission Yeah that's a great question

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and and you're right about Mao Zedong he was a savior figure he really was a messiah for China and even today most Chinese loved Mao Zedong because they knew Mao Zedong really loved China and everything that he did was ultimately for the good of Chinese civilization. That's what I believe. And that's what most Chinese Chinese believe. The problem is if you, if you look at the past 50, 60 years, who was the greatest threat to the communist party? It was Mao Zedong, right? Because Mao Zedong believed in continuous revolution. He believed that the elite had a responsibility to serve the people, uh, and not, you know, uh, be parasites on the people. Uh, what, what do, what do the elite believe? They believe, well, we're perfectly happy to be parasites. Um, so the system is set up now to ensure that no charismatic figure will ever emerge to unite the Chinese people, because that's the greatest threat to the system.

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So do you see more like, um, uh, figures sort of like Xi that sort of just told the line, uh, of the current path that the Chinese party is on, which is sort of like a moderate path. Um, nothing really that revolutionary, uh, sort of like boring ish, neoliberal ish kind of figures.

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Yeah, I think we can call this. Managed decline it's managed decline. Yeah. Oh, don't work with vote.

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What, what would you, um, mean, what do you mean by decline there? Exactly.

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Um, what I mean is that China peaked in about 2008. Um, and when I mean pick in me, I meant that expanded too quickly. Um, it has all this debt that it needs to, um, now figure out how to deal with. I think people are not as enthusiastic, optimistic. Mm -hmm. About the future as they were before the property market has collapsed. Um, the Chinese economy is in pretty rapid decline. People no longer have any money to spend on any goods. Um, so right now, and, and I mean, CDB has already said this, we are entering a period of hardship and decline and we need to, uh, circle eat bitterness. We need to, um, withstand the pain and suffering and misery. We, that, that will come. So it's really managed decline.

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Hmm.

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Uh, professor, thank you so much for, uh, coming onto our podcast. I do have to go pretty soon. Um, can you tell people, oh, wait, Henry, do you have any last questions?

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Um, no, I didn't have any last question. It's just funny because, um, we, we had on a Pakistani, um, Marxist professor, uh, just a couple of weeks ago. And he said, going to China, you know, he said, um, you know, it was, you can tell that China is entering into a golden age. Of civilization, basically the polar opposite of what you're saying, um, but it's really, yeah, but very, very interesting. And, uh, yeah, I really appreciate all your videos, uh, you put on YouTube and, uh, this whole conversation, uh, you're very unique, uh, and interesting insightful approach to things. Yeah.

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So, I mean, w what I will say is I'm different in that I'm willing to be wrong. I make these predictions and honestly, I could come across, I could look like a complete idiot because, because of these predictions, right? I do. I believe my prediction is that there will be a major us, China rapprochement with the next two years, possibly even at the end of this year. Okay. I make this prediction. And if China goes and makes Taiwan and obviously I'm an idiot. Right.

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Well, could I just, um, could I just tie it up? Uh, cause I was curious the whole time. When did you become interested in making predictions? Was it something developed early on or cause I get it. It is so fun and I'm kind of a fan of it as well. You get to come back and tell people, I told you, you know, five years ago, all this was going to happen, you know, when did you really kind of get into that?

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Yeah. Um, so, so I'm not sure if I should do this. Okay. But, but, but, but what happened was this, I'm very good friends with my professor from Yale, his name is David Bromwich. He's starting professor of English at, at Yale. One of the, um, you know, most imminent American intellectuals today. Um, so we, we've, you know, I was a student at Yale. He was my mentor and we've, um, stayed in touch. Um, the. You know, um, few decades and the past five years, um, he and I have have become pretty close and we start talking a lot about geopolitics and American politics, uh, we're both very concerned about DEI, we're both concerned about how American universities have become much more doctor near, um, have become much more focused on identity politics rather than just focus on economic scholarship, um, and we started to talk about, um, because, you know, he, he, he's really one of the best geopolitical analysts.

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Um, and we started to talk about what's happening, um, in Russia, in the United States, would Trump get a second term would Putin invade Russia and we were having these email conversations and like, um, it was weird because I was making these predictions and it turned out to be correct. I, I, I mean, um, um, I did predict that Putin would invade Russia. Oh, sorry. Sorry. I put that Putin would invade Ukraine. I did predict that, um, Trump would. Win his second term. And I, and I realized, you know what, if I, if I'm making these predictions correctly, then maybe I should make this public, maybe I should put myself out there publicly, um, and see what happens and, and I got very lucky. Okay. I mean, like, like, like, like I, I got very lucky because a lot of these predictions I made were long term predictions that should

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have happened in the next five, 10 years, but they happened really much more quickly than I assumed. And then it started to draw, you know, following because people are interested, like, like, you know, how is this guy able to, uh, make these predictions? And, and now, um, I see myself as an internet professor. I, I see myself as trying to educate as many people as possible through the internet on how to do analysis on how to make accurate predictions and on how, on how to better reflect on, um, society, social change in general.

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Oh yeah. One last thing I wanted to ask you though, is, um, if somebody wants to do a review, wants to start making predictions like you, uh, like you do, uh, what are some general steps you recommend? Like, you know, if somebody's listening to this and they want to try to do a usual, where, where would they start?

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Um, I mean, I think you should just make predictions, right? Because anyone can make predictions. I mean, like you talk to a taxi driver in China, they have all these predictions. Right. Um, so my best advice is to read as much as possible. Okay. That's really key because reading will develop your analytical critical thinking skills. That's, that's key. That, that that's like, you don't even need to go to college for that. You just read a lot. And the process of reading will, um, will help, help you develop, um, um, thinking skills. You should definitely read, um, geopolitical analysts like Alexander Dugan, Robert Kaplan, or Robert D Kaplan is, is a great geopolitical thinker. He was a real inspiration for me when, when, when I was younger. Um, you should travel a lot. It's really key to travel a lot because the process of traveling challenges your assumptions about the world. Um, the most, the hardest thing to do is to break out of mental habits, right?

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You have certain assumptions and you, you apply the assumptions, assumptions to everything when you travel, when you meet new people, you're forced to challenge these assumptions. So, um, the good thing is, um, I was educated, uh, at Yale. I grew up in Canada, but I, I've, I've lived my adult life in China and like what, what, what, what, and so like, what happens is all these assumptions that you grew up with are constantly being challenged and questioned every day in China because Chinese behavior. It's very different from, from Westerners. So, um, if you really want to grow intellectually, then you need to move out of comfort zone, you need to live in a strange land and become a stranger in a strange land that develops your objectivity, that develops, develops your capacity for self, um, reflection. Um, and the third thing that I would recommend, and, and this is kind of strange, okay, but make it a habit of saying.

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I am wrong about this, okay. Like every day, just say I'm wrong about my assumptions about this. I'm wrong about my assumptions about that. Um, because then that really refines your capacity to think analytically. Once you do these three things, then I was just making predictions. Okay. Why? Because what, because then the predictions have value because like, if you did, if you did these three things, now you have this analytical model in your brain to work with when you make these predictions, these predictions are a way to validate and test your analytical model so that, so that you can refine it over time. So, so that, so that's what I would recommend. Like, but again, like anyone can make predictions. It's not that hard.

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Absolutely. Uh, thank you so much for coming on. Uh, could you tell people, uh, where best to find you? And then, um, uh, if you have any less words.

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Yeah, well, I mean, thanks so much guys. I really enjoyed this conversation. Um, I mean, like I love going on platforms that have given views from, from mine because it really sharpens my vision. My own thinking. So I really appreciate the opportunity, um, um, to talk to you guys. And also like, thank you so much for spending like two hours with me, um, and letting me rabble for, for two hours. Um, so I enjoyed it. I, I, I hope you guys enjoyed it, um, as well. Um, if you want to, um, see more, what I do, the best place is my YouTube channel, predictive history, um, just, just on YouTube, just put in predictive history and my channel will, will, will pop up and, and, and that's really the best place to understand more of, of what I do.

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Okay. Thank you so much, professor. You have a good one. Yeah. Thank you.

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Yep. Thanks guys. Okay. Okay. Bye -bye.

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