Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Zeihan on Geopolitics" channel.

  1. ​ @Leftatalbuquerque I think kids are more likely to understand labially scalpable with college these days, than lineraly scalable.
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  2. ​ @karunama3771 Independents don't think alike and you don't speak for them.
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  3.  @theredscourge  Soviets had 200 double agents already in the CIA when it was formed in 1947. They also had Reinhardt Gehlen in West German BND, and his staff. When Frank Wisner was tasked with Mockingbird, the Soviets co-opted it out of the gate, and turned it on us. It was meant to counter their IOJ, which was run out of Prague.
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  4.  @Thichaou  The US set a new standard for naval combat that no other nation has been able to even reach for during WWII, while the US then inherited the patrolling of the trade routes around the world and has maintained them since 1945. US also set a new standard in warfare on how to overwhelmingly annihilate a huge military force in Desert Storm in 1991 in a period of 2 weeks. Funny how people overlook the most important military campaign of the 20th Century and how it shaped the early 21st Century. You might want to spend about a decade styling military history before commenting on it if you have overlooked these facts.
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  5. There is plenty of crude from other countries to throw into the blend at US refineries, which have always been in high demand around the clock. Priority scheduling is highly sought after because of time value of money.
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  6.  @DeirdreSM  Herman Cain is one of the best leaders we could have had for the Presidency, due to his defense and business experience, measured temperament, and high intellectual faculties. Obama was not a good student, not particularly smart, got Cs at Occidental University in LA, then got admitted to Columbia based on foreign student admissions, not academics for a US peer base. I would never describe any of the men I mentioned as “throwing their own under the bus”. That’s literally what Obama did when black inner city community leaders tried to meet with him to get his support for their successful programs at dealing with fatherlessness, drugs, and crime. Trump ran multiple, lengthy sessions with them within his first few months in office, and gave them his full support-more than the combined engagement of all White Houses before him.
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  7. That's been going on for years. Finland has been a NATO Partner for Peace participant for many years.
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  8.  @gerardmonsen1267  I literally had/have a close contact to the Russian Foreign Ministry. The particular Deputy Foreign Minister was bragging about Russian expansion into Ukraina, Yugoslavia, Poland, Baltics, and Finland since the early 2000s right after Putin was handed the Presidency. Foreign Minister told him to shut his hole about it because it contradicted Putin's open statements about peace and non-intervention. There was a palpable policy shift once Putin took over, which was to re-assert Russian dominance over all the regions Peter Zeihan talks about. George Friedman and Peter Zeihan have been talking about this since the 2000s. Germany's Chancellor just announced their defense budget would jump from 50 Billion to 100 Billion. So Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, Moldova, Greece, and Turkey all have a familiar sense of uneasiness right now similar to the 1871-1914 and 1919-1938 time periods in Europe. This is why so many Eastern Europeans rushed to join NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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  9. Carter was as if a European socialist was born in Georgia.
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  10.  @CaptainMartinWalker  I’ve lived and traveled all over Europe. It’s nothing like the US when it comes to infrastructure, mainly because they have over 2000 years of history for paths and small streets that weren’t envisioned to ever have automobiles on them, and the economies are managed by bureaucrats who don’t show up to work much, specialize in saying no. US DOTs within each State contract out to the private sector a lot to get things done fast. States vary in quality of DOTs for sure, but the grass isn’t greener anywhere else, that I can tell you.
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  11.  @protorhinocerator142  The vast majority of Russians support Putin though, and able-bodied males in significant numbers are willing to fight, no matter how incapable they are at fighting effectively. Putin can't afford to be seen as weak, so he doubled down on calling Ukraine "nazis" and blaming the West for helping Ukraine. He rallies Russians by portraying them as the victims of NATO aggression, even though he invaded a sovereign nation and initiated a brutal murder campaign against civilians. People in the West think Russians consume news and information in the same way, able to think independently if they just would try. Russians see people in the West as victims of mass propaganda from capitalist enterprises. Neither side has good insight into the other due to geographic and political isolation of Russia.
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  12. ​ @Rob_F8F His math is way off, and millionaires means net worth, not million annual income. Broke people in LA, San Diego, and San Francisco with $1.7 - $3m bungalos tied-up in equity and personal assets are technically millionaires. You have a lot of small business owners who are millionaires, but live a middle class lifestyle due to business expenses and can't take time away from the business.
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  13.  @w1ngnuts  If you had followed Peter Zeihan since the 2000s, he has done analyses and forecasts using very detailed maps that show the Russian pipelines going through Ukraine, their sea ports, and critical export hubs in that region. He used to be a senior analyst at STRATFOR, and they've been talking about the impending war in Europe for decades.
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  14. Russia sees itself as a more legitimate political entity than all other nations because of their history. They have to create the illusion of superiority for their people to maintain that image. A modern power like that without nukes won't be taken seriously by other nations, and therefore wouldn't be taken seriously by its own people. That's why Stalin's espionage and penetration efforts into the Manhattan Project were so extensive and aggressive. If you don't have nukes, you're not a serious player in world affairs. It's about clout.
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  15. ​ @WolfSpiritMan And they should call it former Hopewell, and the Hopewell call it former Adena, etc.
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  16.  @AliceinWonderlandzz  The US Government at a National and most State levels was taken over by organized crime from the late 1800s through 1920s, becoming fully-entrenched during Prohibition. Because the biggest organized crime rackets had legitimized by then, they had just as much interest in maintaining strong economic growth and security, provided their labor unions and contractors were fed a continual diet of tax money. They just upscaled the racket and wrapped an American flag around it, even though they were mostly Irish, Russian Jews, Italians, and Sicilians displacing WASP control of New England, while pimping their illicit trade to the Southern Bible Belt. Precious few PoliSci professors are well-versed in this history because they buy into worthless political ideology arguments that ignore ground truth.
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  17. Waterloo isn’t a good analogy because Nathan Rothschild had hijacked Napoleon’s finance minister, and was using Napoleon’s own resources against him diverted to the Duke of Wellington. It’s an interesting story for those interested in finance and time-critical intelligence relative to warfare, where the banker knew the outcome of Waterloo before the British General staff did due to his intel network. Nathan then rushed to the London exchange and began selling off his assets to create a panic. Everyone started following his cue, and created a selling frenzy at devalued price points, then Nathan bought up everything in the last 15 minutes. Then the news arrived that England had won, and dudes realized they had been had. Nathan bought up most of England’s debt in a matter of minutes, rising to become the most powerful financier in London.
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  18. He did get emotional about Matt Gaetz’s hair and called him incompetent, which was out of line.
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  19. Like with every source, you need to filter it. He has great insight on demographics, history, geography, trade routes, sea ports, raw vs value-added goods and where exactly they come from, supply chains, precursor materials, weather patterns, and topography relative to business and military activities. He stays away from or criticizes any questions about conspiratorial actors in the intelligence and business communities, condescends to genuine concerns from Europeans and Americans about their sovereignty and ethnic struggles, but also recognizes the role organized crime played in forming the US political class. You really need a lot of study before you can filter Peter well, but it’s worth it I think to be in that place of discernment.
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  20. He’s discussing actual seafaring people, not Russia. Russia has always struggled to project into the seas, but they are basically land-locked and in such a high latitude with extreme cold, that they never were a seafaring people. Peter the Great tried to change that by starting the Russian Navy, but it’s just not in the cards for them. They have 4 major seaport areas for a nation with more land mass than any other in the world. Almost every US coastal State has that or more. Russia has Archangelsk, Primorsk, Novorossiysk, and Vladivostok. California alone has 40 sea ports, 5 very large deep sea ports that take heavy displacement vessels, 1 large port, 7 medium, and 19 small ports. You can look at each sea port in the world and see how deep they are, how much tonnage they process each year, and quickly see Russia just isn’t anywhere in the top 10 nations for sea trade. 95% of their exports go through Novorossiysk, which means they are extremely vulnerable in the Black Sea.
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  21. SARS was patented in 2002 by Fauci associates working out of UNC Chapel Hill. Dr. Baric's name is literally on the patent application for a zoonitic gain of threat bat coronavirus, using engineered spike proteins to bind to human endothelia. Shi Zhengli was literally working with Dr. Baric at UNC Chapel Hill until the ethically-challenged SARS weaponization was banned in the US in 2014. Shi Zhengli picked up shop and transported it to the Wuhan Biolab with Fauci money that year. This is all 1999-2019 information, not including any reports from 2020-present.
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  22.  @GeekfromYorkshire  As opposed to appeals to ignorance and accepting Pfizer's narratives?
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  23. Keep in mind the USMC (the US’s smallest military service that deploys abroad) has a bigger Air Force than the combined UK RAF and Royal Navy.
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  24.  @robdyck1187  Russia doesn't even have a functioning navy. They're not a seafaring people culturally, never have been. They've made very weak attempts at it, most of which was built in 13 naval yards in Ukraine during the Soviet times. They especially suck at shipyard mx and overhauls. They dropped their only large ship crane through the deck of Admiral Kuznyetsov, then caught it on fire trying to repair the gaping hole. I just don't see them being remotely successful in Arctic sea traffic. Geography is an unforgiving master.
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  25.  @obcane3072  The waves of North African Arabs, Sub-Saharan Africans, and Middle Eastern immigrants to Europe have already been rioting, engaging in terrorism, raping, incest, and behaviors not acceptable to post-WWII Europeans. I foresee multiple flash points as the economic conditions deteriorate, leading to multiple Civil wars and uprisings in France, Germany, UK, Sweden, and Netherlands. Europe will ask the US to send peace-keepers, but the US might not want to commit.
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  26.  @thomasherrin6798  This is simply incorrect. Moore's theory only applied to transistor density in microelectronics, never power generation.
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  27.  @sadjaxx  That would have been around 1980 or 1982-1984. Median home price was $62,000 in 1982 ($202,000 CPI adjusted for inflation today). Median home price for Q1 2024 is $420,800. That's 207% more than in the early 1980s. Base price is killing new potential buyers and forcing them into perma-renter status.
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  28. ​ @daniele4568  US: 334 million people, temperate zone with tropics in the South, colder regions in the North Midwest and New England cover 3.1 million square miles, not including Alaska. Norway: 5.4 million population 148,729 square miles Arctic and sub-arctic region. The Western Coast of Alaska is the closest comparison you could make geographically, with a bit smaller population than Minnesota. There are no real logical comparisons between Norway and the US. Norway also relies heavily on the US for its defense as a people, and has done so for about 70 years.
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  29. ​ @RyanNovaktheFirst Charge stops make you more vulnerable to opportunistic thieves and murderers who predate on people at known locations.
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  30.  @daniele4568  What if the whole premise for EVs is fundamentally flawed? (It is.)
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  31. He has given it before. It's a laughable proposition due to USD dominance, especially during times of crisis. Look at DFI over the past 20 months.
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  32. Armies and Navies were how you measured combat power up until 1943 at the latest. Since then, Air Forces, Navies, Space, and C4ISR capabilities determine the power of a nation when it comes to conflict, followed by asymmetric actions. The US had the combat power to erase Hanoi within 2 weeks in the 1960s, but LBJ WH wanted to prolong the war for some reason.
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  33. Peter has been a geopolitical analyst as part of a team of other analysts with multiple high-level access networks since 2000. At STRATFOR, they regularly serviced DoD, government agencies, foreign governments, global corporations, manufacturing, energy, tech, and various clients in the multi-billion to trillion dollar annual revenue world. He's been forecasting the war in Ukraine since the 2000s, even down to the year. Might want to study up on him a bit.
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  34. I've been studying and participating in Foreign Military Sales programs since the 1970s. The US has been top dog in that space that whole time, and the FMS packages have only gotten bigger. As the US has strategically withdrawn from Europe and the Pacific, orders for US FMS have increased dramatically.
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  35.  @andersgrassman6583  In the Soviet centrally-planned economy, spare parts were what you stripped off other complete systems. Even new factory items were often made from incorrect or substitute materials. My friend Jukka who took me into Russia had these Titanium snow shovels at his summer cabin in Finland. The state snow shovel plant couldn't get aluminum sheet, but still had to crank out their quotas of shovels, so a plant manager did some bartering with a Titanium plant supervisor to get supplies of Titanium sheet, and ran it through the blade forming dies. Best snow shovels on earth! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
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  36.  @andersgrassman6583  That's just a microcosm of how things worked in USSR. Russia functions on layers of back-deal bartering, favors, state quota tickets, vodka, wine, and alliances. Nothing is really formal or by any book. It's one of the strangest places I've ever lived.
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  37. The most overlooked thing about Tesla is how Elon has conquered or affected so many different industries that resonate off each other. EVs Affordable private sector Space missions His own satellite network Tunneling services Huge social media If he were to introduce a CyberPhone, for example, that doesn't require any legacy cell tower provider service, but instead uses the satellites and EVs linked together, that would be the biggest market disruption in history because of the ability to use his own network, which removes people's buy-in from the other huge telecom, automotive, and information services providers. It's akin to merging Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford, and Howard Hughes into one entrepreneurial entity. We've never seen anyone like him in the historic record of entrepreneurs. You can see the legacy corporations and their government pons fearing whatever it is he has planned.
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  38. Biggest fundamental problem with thinking the CIA is there to inform the President with the PDB is that the Soviets hijacked that almost out of the gate. It's why JFK and RFK created DIA, especially after a trend in the CIA to do the opposite of what the President directed, and even assassinate foreign heads of state without direction. That included President Diem of South Vietnam.
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  39.  @jimluebke3869  As to the Rostovs in War and Peace, there's a fundamental disconnect between that type of nobility family and mid-late Soviet families, as well as post-Soviet families due to urbanization. Russian agricultural and nobility families used to have a lot of kids. Since Khrushchev, they have gone down to 1 child per family since apartments are so small and income is extremely low. You wouldn't be able to find a Rostov family in Russia today.
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  40. ​ @TrendyStone  Have you heard of Berry Amendment compliance and US SC companies that have DoD security of supply contracts? They don't even allow Chinese raw metals into the supply stream for those programs. There have been 2 instances in the F-35 program where it was discovered that downstream raw materials suppliers acquired Chinese alloy and magnets for some very simple components, and there were harsh penalties. The semiconductors are US-made.
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  41.  @TrendyStone  The US manufactures high-end and DoD contract chips in Silicon Valley, Silicon Slopes, and other SC plants in the US. Taiwan does not have a monopoly on SC manufacturing. A big problem people have is thinking that the commercial sector is the same as DoD. They are parallel sectors, with entirely different supply chains and sources subject to Berry Amendment compliance. This applies to boots, uniforms, gloves, vehicles, tires, lubricants, pallets, small arms, aircraft, missiles, and all the subcomponents. Every single subcomponent in a DoD contract has to have a Technical Data Package with security of supply and strategic materials compliance certification process. It's nothing like the commercial sector. So when you hear someone talk about chips from Taiwan in M-1 Abrams tanks and F-35s, you realize that source isn't remotely aware of how DoD supply side works.
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  42. China bought up GE appliances division through questionable deals, in order to weasel-in on GE jet engines. They could give to rips about airlines, as the priority is for their fighters and military aircraft. Airlines are down the priority list for them. They’re important for domestic and regional clout, but it all comes down to being able to back up your clout with air power. Making jet engines is an exclusive club China has been trying to join since the 1980s, and failing miserably at it. The US is the global leader in fighter jet and turbofan engine design and manufacturing, surpassing the British in the 1960s-1970s at the latest. UK is 2nd in terms of quality. Russia is 2nd in terms of quantity and knocking off US designs, but still falling behind in performance, systems integration, and HPHT stage longevity. France is 3rd in quality, right up there with UK. Germany is up there with UK and France. Japan is up-and-coming in this space. China is way behind all of the above, and they’ve been throwing billions at trying to copy the GE CFM56 since the 1980s. China crashes Flankers and J-20s quite frequently, one of the main causes being engines exploding in flight. They have relied on Russia for the better part of the last 70 years, and Russian engines have sucked all along that time. China had no interest in the Su-35 itself, but had to order them just to get the engines. Russians put dead-man’s switches in them of course so the engines couldn’t be used in other Chinese Flankers like the J-16. Engines are a big deal though.
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  43.  @ahndeux  I'm not confusing them, since I've been in aerospace and defense since the 1970s, with specific proximity to fighter engine development. For anyone who knows how China thinks and steals though, it was a political-economic lever to weasel closer to GE engines.
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  44.  @Sobriety4Reality  Gotcha. Those would make a lot of sense for the current nature of the conflict. Could also stir up division inside Egypt. Egypt relies heavily on grain from Ukraine for their government subsidized bread industry, a staple in the ME diet.
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  45.  @nicholassmith7984  Vikings and the Eastern Seaboard and Woodland tribes would have fought until Vikings were killed-off, which is probably what actually happened. We only have remnants of a few Viking settlements in the Northeast, but there is growing evidence that they traveled down the coast more and maybe even inland. It’s a numbers game at that point. A few hundred Norsemen against millions of natives. It would steer the Vikings more into a trade relationship once they would have seen the vast numbers of peoples in the Eastern North American forest and small cities they had.
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  46. He forecasted: Deglobalization Russian expansion Ukraine War Rise of Turkey Breakdown in trade due to Demographics Chinese slowdown and eventual collapse Widespread famine for North Africa and Asia due to grain shortages He said Russia couldn't wait past 2022 to launch the Ukraine War, then it happened. He and everyone else thought it would go much faster with a quick sacking of Kiev.
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  47.  @Uzishan  Watch the 3hr sit-down Trump did with Joe Rogan. He's fine, very lucid, comedic, insightful, and personable.
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  48. @buddermonger2000  I agree with that and have had very similar takeaways. Union members being berated by their Mafia bosses to continue to support NAFTA Democrats lasted decades longer than it should have, though those same Mafia thugs stuff ballots and rig local precincts as a rule and have done so since the 1800s. You touched on a point that I've been looking at from Allen Lichtman's 13 Keys, namely the 3rd Party. In this election, the 3rd party candidate joined the challenger, as did a former Democrat candidate, Tulsi Gabbard. To make matters worse Biden's White House denied secret service protection to Bobby Kennedy Jr., which was one of the most brazen acts of political self-sabotage I've ever seen. Older democrats who remember watching his father assassinated on TV in 1968 were astonished at that level of cruelty. As if that wasn't bad enough, senior Democrat elites executed a coup against a sitting US President, then Installed the most unpopular democrat presidential candidate in generations as their nominee without a democratic process at convention.
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  49. I’ve been following Peter since he was with STRATFOR in the 2000s, and this is not a good commentary from him. He got many basic facts wrong about JDAM, when it was introduced, and improperly emphasized the Mk.82 variant over the actual primary JDAM, the 2000lb Mk.84 variants.
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  50.  @ZeihanonGeopolitics  Been following you since STRATFOR. After travel and deployments to 30 Countries, having lived all over the US, I thought I was well-informed until I started reading your forecasts and analyses. I've been studying Soviet Order of Battle since the 1970s, spent a lot of time in Europe and Asia. Your content has been extremely enlightening, since many of these places are familiar to me from having been there.
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