 here. So I played a lot of Peter Zion on this show. He's a geopolitical strategist. He comes from Stratford, which is like a private version of the CIA. And it's interesting kind of deconstructing, decoding how Peter Zion works, like what makes him so successful within within a couple of hours of uploading a typical video that probably takes him about 10 minutes on average to make. He has like 40,000 views. So he's the most popular YouTube political analyst. And I think the major reason is because of how he makes people feel, right? To the extent that Dennis Prager is a successful public figure. It's because he makes people feel amazing. They feel like they're getting these profound life changing universe shattering insights so too with Peter Zion. You feel like you're getting the real deal. You're understanding how the world really works. You feel like you're part of a special group and in crowd who understands, you know, geopolitical strategy. So Peter Zion and other successful commentators, gurus, YouTubers, pundits, talk radio hosts that they're successful because of how they make people feel. All right, Sean Hennedy, Tucker Carlson. All right, these people are successful because of how they make people feel. And there's a lot to be learned from Peter Zion's approach in that there's zero neediness that he's transmitting. All right, so you don't get any sense with Peter Zion that he needs you to feel any particular way about him. He gives off the aura that he's completely independent of your perspective on him. And that's such a relief because when you encounter needy people, it drags you down. It reduces your energy. It may very, very well give you a headache. All right, so compared to Dennis Prager even or Ben Shapiro or Sean Hennedy, there's far less neediness in what Peter Zion puts out there. He kind of gives a, I don't care what you think. I'm just going to tell you what I think. And your opinions and your criticisms and how you feel about me just don't matter. And that's a pretty winning strategy if you want to be an online personality. So this is the Tim Stodds channel. Here they are. This whole process and even a style. Definitely. Yeah, that's one of the things that stood out to me too, which I think we'll get into in a bit, but you hit the nail on the head style. His delivery is different than most people who would typically cover this topic, which is definitely one of the things that's making him successful. And I think there's a lesson there, no matter what you talk about as your topic for like a creator or writer. So as we dig into this, I want to create like a framework for what the shape of the episode is going to be as well, because I think there are a few key lessons that you can really learn from breaking down any creator. We're going to apply them to Peter in this show. But really, if you're listening to this, one of the big takeaways is like, Hey, here's a great way to just deconstruct what somebody else is doing in order to learn from them. So before we dive any deeper, I'm going to just give a little bit more background on who he is. I'm going to actually provide a counterbalance too. So people who are listening to this will already know him and they're like, dude, this guy's full of shit. I can't stand Peter. These guys are morons for believing him. Oh, look, I will acknowledge that that stance is out there and I'm going to present the counter argument as well. And what we're going to do, I'll get into that in a second. So we'll present a little counterbalance just so that, you know, this isn't just a Peter Zion fan club show. I'll give a little bit of background as to why I still think it's a good idea not to write him off, because as you've mentioned, he has some pretty interesting in you. So yeah, Peter Zion comes from Stratford, which is like a private version of the CIA surprisingly. Yeah, I had never heard of them, but I think it might have just been like our generation was one step behind the news. So Stratford was basically like the shadowy branch of the CIA. And for a long time, they were kind of unknown. And then they came into the public spotlight after a few like very public controversies. But this is basically a consulting group. And they had an information network that was global and region they used to consult with groups like the US Homeland Security, US Marine Corps, Department of Defense, and then other groups like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, major companies like Coca-Cola. What these groups do is they basically are in charge of developing information systems so that that allow them to tap into things that are going on the ground all over the world and analyze risk across a few different domains. So they'll look at things like personal safety risks, right? Like an example of that would be where are wars about to break out? Where is the physical security of people not very high? You could imagine why that would be interesting or important for governments to know, but it would also be important for like multinational companies to know because they have employees in these countries or their supply chains rely on these countries. That's another area of risk as well, supply chain risk that they look at. And they'll also look at things like legal risk. So where are laws changing that may affect how a company does business or something like that? And so I did this for more than a decade. He was there and eventually left in 2012 to start his own company and ever since then he's been working solo publishing books and then he basically makes money through his consulting work. So he'll do speaking for these major companies or he'll do like executive briefs for these companies. We'll get into the business model in a little bit more depth later, but I wanted to just give that as a little bit of background because I think it would be easy to look at this person on YouTube who's just out there saying things and kind of, and this is where I feel the criticism, specifically the podcast that I'm going to share in the show notes, maybe underestimated some of his qualifications, right? Because we as creators, we're so used to seeing people who are out here just kind of winging it, right? They're Google and stuff, or they're looking at the news and they're just giving an opinion or something like that, but there is such a thing in this industry as people who are not playing with the same cards as everybody else. And when you look into the history of Stratford, it's a perfect example. I mean, this was a private spy company. In fact, I dug into them a little bit deeper. You're going to love this. So the reason they came into the national kind of spotlight was that WikiLeaks leaked like 5 million emails from this company that showed everything about how it worked and like how they paid people off, how they got information. I might even have a quote here real quick so I can find it. And we'll link to this in the show notes too, so you can still find all the files that are public. Right. So what makes someone successful as a commentator? It's not being right. It's not being wise. It's not being pro-social. It's not being good for people that they can be. But what makes you successful doing what I'm doing right now, what Peter Zion does is being interesting. So you have to say unpredictable, usually anti-establishment things. You're not going to get a large following saying that UFOs are bunk. You're not going to get a large following saying take the vaccine. You're not going to get a large following saying that our elites and our governments and our leading politicians basically did a pretty good job with COVID. All right. You need to be interesting. You need to say something that people don't get on mainstream TV and in mainstream news sources. So the money is not in being right. The audience is not in being right or in being good or in being helpful or wise or pro-social. The audience and the attention and the money comes from being interesting, all right, which usually means being anti-establishment, which usually leads to people embracing conspiracy theories. Now, you don't have to fall in for this kind of audience capture, but that's the way these spaces work. It's available. But it basically says Wikileaks is publishing a global intelligence file. It's more than five million emails from the Texas headquartered global intelligence company, Stratfor. The emails date from 2004 to 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations and government agencies. They show Stratfor's web of informers, payoff structure, payment laundering techniques, and psychological methods. For example, this is a quote, quote, you have to take control of them. Control means financial, sexual, or psychological control. This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase. That's a quote from the CEO, George Friedman, to Stratfor analyst, Riva Bala, on December 6th of 2011 on how to... Okay, he has built up a credibility, which, like I said, I think makes it easy for him to be... So he's published at least three books. Now, I haven't noticed Peter Zion being more accurate in his predictions about world events than anyone else, right? In 2010, he published an essay saying that China would be kaput in 10 years. Obviously, we're 13 years on and that hasn't happened. You're taken seriously. And we want to... I know that for those listening, it might have been a little arduous to go through all of that, but we wanted to really, really drive home the point that when you're making stuff, it actually does matter that A, you know what you're talking about, and that B, you're skilled. You're a skilled craftsman. You're a skilled artist in any definition of the word is because there really is such a thing as being good at what you do. It's not so easy as, hey, just start making things and somebody will like it and somebody will share it and you'll just get rich. He's been involved for a long time in the world that he reports on. And so with that, I want to breathe some fresh air into this a bit and talk about how he is actually succeeding online. And this is something about him that I find absolutely insane. So I'm going to share my screen. Anybody who's watching the video, you'll be able to see it, obviously. So I want to do some math here. So this is his YouTube channel. All he does, and I'm not saying this to diminish the work because it doesn't seem like work, but we just spent half the episode talking about how inundated in this world he is and how much he's built up all of this credibility. But so check this out. He publishes basically five videos a week, Monday through Friday, and he sends it out to his newsletter. And I don't even know how we can do this, but this video is five minutes and 52 seconds. He grabs his cell phone every morning, basically goes into his backyard or wherever the hell he is in the world because he's always traveling to random countries records at most a 15 minute video. And that's very rare. I say the average time is probably six minutes. They're hardly edited. I get the impression that he records the video on his phone, uploads it to Dropbox. Somebody does a once over edit and then puts a featured image on it and uploads it onto his YouTube channel. So I'm going to say all in all, it's about on average 15 minutes a day of his work. And now look at this 127,000 views, 425,000 views, 328,000 views, 515, 617, 401. It's just, it bonkers the amount of right. And unlike Prager University, which spends most of its budget on marketing, all right. Peter Zion's views do not appear to be bored. These are, as far as I can tell, fair, dinkum, authentic, organic YouTube views like he might be the most successful YouTuber in the world right now. If you, if you take that definition of hours recorded in comparison to views gotten right, like this video is 12 minutes long. He recorded it on his cell phone in front of his school because he was visiting his, his family and I think Iowa or whatever. He just grabs his cell phone, records his take and uploads it onto YouTube every day. And so he's averaging, I don't know, three times five, 1.5 million views a week. Right? Like how much money is that in ad revenue? I bet he's making more money on YouTube revenue than he is on his consulting firm at this point. It's just, it's absolutely insane how he figured out the reason why he inspires me is just because he doesn't take it too seriously. And I really, really mean that I struggle with publishing stuff and feeling like it's not published, polished enough or like it doesn't live up to, you know, these other expectations that I've set and compared to what other people that I might be competing against have done. He plays by his own rules totally. He just says, yeah, I'm going to record a video on my phone every day and I'm going to send it out to my email list and I'm going to be, might arguably the most successful YouTuber in the world right now that nobody knows about. I just think that is so cool and it makes me want to not take myself so seriously as well. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely something about this that I find inspiring. It's like similar, which is like, it feels like, you know, there's this kind of fantasy among creators that like you're going to build an audience and then I'll finally just have my days to think and write, you know, or like, I'm going to think and I'm going to read and I'm going to share ideas. It really feels like that's what he does. I keep trying to dig deeper into his operations because I know it's got to be more complex than that. But if you look at the timestamp on that video screen, you should look at it. It was shared nine hours ago. We're recording this at about 4pm Eastern. And so that means, you know, let's just call it, what would that be? Five hours before noon. What is five hours before noon? 7am. So by 7am, the video is live, but it's live and he's talking about today's news. One of the things that's so compelling about him is not just that he has a counter narrative, but he's like hilarious in the way that he shares it. I would say he's kind of like a coyote trickster, you know? And this may be the one redeeming quality for non-U.S. listeners, right? Because Zion is like able to poke fun at the U.S. just as much as he is anybody else. He's extremely critical of like both government fashions. He's like a man with no country, you know? And I think there's something to that, which is like, I think it ties into what you said. Don't take it so seriously. You know, you have to be able to make fun of your own expertise and your own opinions as a creator. Totally. So there's almost a juxtaposition between him and, I'd say like a Ben Shapiro, right? Somebody that sort of plays in the same exact space and has the whole YouTube studio set up. All of the edits are probably checked over and then checked over again and checked over again just so their point is so articulately laid out. And how do I say it? I don't watch a whole lot of Ben Shapiro. I don't watch a whole lot of people on the other side either because I get the feeling that when they make those videos there's so much work is being put into the framing of the opinion. You know, there's like the creation of it and then there's, it's almost like all the time it takes the story boarded out. You know, you have to say in exactly this order so that the crescendo of the message like delivers our point home and everybody else is stupid and we're better. And that makes me uncomfortable. It makes a lot of people uncomfortable. And then you have this guy who goes out for hikes in the morning. Sometimes he's wearing this like purple jester hat that is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds is winded because he's like, he's breathing heavy and talking about these ridiculous data points about how, you know, particular pipelines need to navigate through certain geographical intersections and why that's having an impact on the food prices in France. Right. And then you think about it. It's like, oh, yeah, like clearly that's going to have the second, secondary effects that are going to make people think and feel that the way that they are. And so there's not all of this work in, in like, it's not just making it perfect. It's making it unarguable ish. Right. Like this is my point. I'm on this side. I'm driving this point home. And there's this dude that's getting more views than all of them in a daily YouTube video on his phone with a jester hat on. And there's, there's something about that that I, it's charming. Yeah. But it also, it just reminds me that if you know what you're talking about, you can do whatever you want. You know, there really just is a thing to being better than other people. And I think that's cool. There's a part of that too. That's like, no, that's dealing in the truth. Yeah. And it's not necessarily clear that Peter Zayn knows what he's talking about. He's presenting very much a cartoon version of reality, but it just feels good to listen to him just like it feels good to listen to Barack Obama or Oprah Winfrey. Doesn't necessarily mean that you're getting valuable content. So if you're dealing in the truth, you're never always going to be right. And you're always never going to be a hundred percent right. And like, that's something that I think it's lost, especially on the political spectrum of entertainment. You were talking about it a second ago. It gets old, man. Like I, I enjoy people like, I mean, I still enjoy people like Ben Shapiro or who's the young woman, Brett, something. She runs the comment section, spread something, but they're great. I enjoy them. I enjoy anybody who will bring like there's a YouTube channel that I subscribe to that comes on sometime. It's called Charisma on Demand. And it's a great channel. Actually, I really love it. They take like movie characters and actors and stuff that and real people and characters, people that have been universally decided upon to have charisma, right? Whatever the hell that means. And they did one on Tom Hardy. And one of the things that they said about him was that he doesn't act in a way that makes it so like he wants you to like him. He's acting in a way where you're deciding if he likes you. And as soon as I saw that, it made me think of the, the, uh, today's podcast episode, because that's he, Peter, Zion kind of has that thing about him where he's not necessarily trying to make it so that you like him. You get this kind of impression that like he's deciding whether he likes you. And it's a weird flip on it. And it's, you know, I don't know the guy by any means. It's just this approach that he takes to it where everybody else, they're formulating these arguments and they're creating these like entertainment channels where it's like, I'm right and you need to like me. And if you don't like me, it doesn't matter because I'm still right. Like they're forcing their, the viewpoint. Yeah. Most, most people don't have a pleasing personality online here. Let's get a taste of Peter Zion. Start with the good news. Uh, the United States is the world's largest energy and agricultural producer and the world's largest energy and agricultural exporter. That's a good start. Uh, also our baby boomers did something that no one else has did and they had kids. So say what you will about the millennials. They're here and that provides the United States with a ballast in its consumption, its production now and will provide ballast with its advanced production, its tech system, and its capital generation in 10 years. That's great. I can't screw that up. We'll try, but I don't think we're going to make it. Uh, the biggest, right? This is not the voice of someone who deeply cares about what you think. This is not the voice of someone who's needy for your love and attention. All right. This is just someone making pronouncements from a place of supreme confidence. Challenge the United States is going to have for the next five years is rebuilding that industrial plant, hopefully before the Chinese system completely uploads. I doubt we're going and back in 2010, he published an essay predicting the end of China within 10 years. Obviously that didn't happen. All right, more analysis point that they want their audience to have about them out there. You know, like they're projecting their most desired appearance where he's kind of the opposite way. Like he's actually not trying to make you like him. He's, you get the feeling that in his head, he's always contemplating as to whether somebody else is full of shit or not. And I, so what's his, what's his business model here? Cause his videos are free. His newsletter is free. How does he make money? Virtually all media companies are built on. You have free products, front-end products, and back-end products. Your free products are monetized by ads. They're always your biggest audience because they're free. It's the lowest barrier to entry and they are used as distribution to sell your front and back-end products. The difference between front and back-end products is front-end products are usually a little bit more broad and they're priced a little bit lower. Back-end products are much more specific and they're priced much, much higher. So for media, typically front-end would be like 50 to 100 bucks a year. Back-end is like 500 up and it can go way up into the thousands and thousands of dollars per year. Okay. So that's the model. As you would expect, Zion's business fits perfectly inside of it. So here's basically what he's got. He's got free newsletter, right? That's his main distribution. And then he's got Twitter and YouTube channels and both of those promote the newsletter directly. So he's out there on social media growing his newsletter audience via Twitter, via YouTube. And then also he does like a lot of interviews. So you can find my other podcasts as well. The newsletter, as far as I can tell, doesn't monetize with ads. It's always free. And he actually makes a very big point of saying it's free. It's always going to be free, which is great. We talked about this in our two episodes ago as well. If you have even more expensive, you'll have consulting and speaking or speaking consulting is probably the price is probably up in that order. So Peter Zion may not be an expert on geopolitics, but he really does seem to know something about energy markets. Now, here's where the really smart thing is that I think all creators can learn from. And I realized this yesterday while I was listening to an interview with him. What he has done a really good interesting job of is taking something that he's obsessed with and finding a way to make it relevant to clients that will pay a lot of money to figure out what you think about it. So the obsession started early. I just finished listening to his book, The Accidental Superpower, which I think was his first one. He talks about how as a kid, he was always obsessed with maps, like even as a baby, he was obsessed with maps. And that's where this interest in geopolitics first got its obsession with how the world is shaped and how that changes us and what's over the next horizon and all that stuff. Okay, great. Now, you could be obsessed with maps and you broke your entire life. So what Peter has done is found a way to take that information and package it up in such a way that electronics manufacturers, agricultural giants and energy giants and governments are willing to pay for it. So those are kind of like the three or four big groups that he talks to. And when I noticed that, the thing in my head was just, that's such a good takeaway. Take whatever you're interested in and figure out how do I show that this is relevant to a group that's got a really big interest in a group that's got a lot of money and would benefit from knowing more about this. So I'll give a very specific example. In that last book, he was written back in 2014 and he's talking about the shale revolution. Now, most of us as consumers, when I think shale, I think fracking, I think dirty oil, right? What's interesting about the book, and I've never, I've never fact-checked this, so somebody who's listening could fact-check it, but he basically says, actually there's never been a single EPA water violation against a fracking well. This is, again, back in 2014. So apparently, I'm going to get this slightly wrong, but like he was making the case, this is actually very clean technology, but for the oil executives who want to expand into this, they need to find a way to communicate that to a broader audience, right? So the takeaway there is like, oh, he was talking about this particular technology that he finds has a very interesting effect, but then he connected it to a super high-end audience, energy producers, and said, hey, by the way, if you're interested in making more money off this, you're going to need to know how to position it so that this audience will buy in, and I can show you how to do that, right? Oh, one benefit of embracing authenticity as a public figure is that your audience becomes a little bit more forgiving of those mistakes as well. Like if you want to be the person who's perfect, good luck maintaining that. Have you seen, oh, what's his name? Who's the comedian who went through like rehab recently and just came out with a new special? Oh, yeah, of course. He wears the suit and ties. I watched it. It was so funny. It was really good. This is the worst. He's super famous. Anyways, whatever his name is. That was a funny part about his bit, where he talked about, oh, I'm going to rehab and everybody's going to recognize him. Yeah. But that whole, I mean, his whole recent special was really about how that fall from grace has freed him to be more authentic and more himself. And I loved it. I mean, I always liked his comedy, but I thought this one was better than everything that's come before it. Okay, so there are a lot of really sharp critiques of Peter Zayn. I think the most important one is that Zayn presents a cartoon version of reality. But this is a guy who does a podcast called Waterfares by Chris Canthan. He self publishes a lot of books on geopolitics, waterfares, economics, health and social issues. He just did an episode. Peter Zayn is the Jim Kramer of geopolitics. He says that Peter Zayn is so wrong about everything. He's wrong about de-globalization, the coming collapse of China, reshoring or French shoring and manufacturing the future of the US dollar and definitely his rewriting of the American empire's past. So this is some analysis here by Chris Canthan. The name of the podcast is Waterfares by Canthan. And Facebook is repeating Zayn's talking points like a robot. He has single-handedly created a mass psychosis. No doubt that there's a huge cottage industry that profits from the China collapse narrative. But Peter Zayn is the unrivaled leader now. Peter's predictions can be summarized thus. Total gloom and doom scenario for China's future, while everything will be awesome for the US. He also believes that the world will undergo tremendous de-globalization. But here's the deal. Peter Zayn is the Jim Kramer of geopolitics. Kramer is of course the CNBC stock expert who gives terrible advice regarding stocks. For example, just before the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, Kramer was recommending that stock. The joke is that if Kramer tells you to buy a stock, sell it immediately. Similarly, Peter Zayn is horribly misguided in his geopolitical analysis and predictions. He's blatantly wrong about the past and the present, and his predictions about the future are purely sensational. Yes, geopolitics has a lot of subjectivity, but this guy is so factually wrong about everything that I had to debunk his claims. First, Peter exaggerates and lies a lot. He sprinkles his speeches with extreme superlatives. For example, China's demographics is allegedly not only the worst, but the worst in the entire world's history. Furthermore, Zayn blatantly lies about numerous statistics and facts. Let's take a look at two examples where Peter's predictions have been totally off the mark. First, in 2010, he predicted the collapse of China within a decade. He authored a paper for a think tank strat for in which he predicted the economic collapse of China before 2020. At that time, his focus was on the alleged bubbles and the unstable economic system in China. Well, since his prediction, China's GDP has quadrupled from 4.5 trillion to 18 trillion. Second example, when the Russia-Ukraine war started, Peter had some bold predictions, all of which have failed to materialize. He claimed that before July or August last year, Russia's exports of oil would fall by 50%, after which the pipelines in Russian oil wells would freeze and explode, and then it would take decades to fix them. Well, guess what? Russia is exporting the same amount of oil, or even a bit more, today than pre-war. The geopolitical wizard couldn't foresee India and China stepping up and buying more oil and gas from Russia. Now, let's go through some of Peter Zayn's extraordinary falsehoods. Number one, China won't be a functional nation by 2030. Really? He has said numerous times that China will collapse by 2030. So, how come foreign companies invested nearly 200 billion dollars in FDI in China last year? And why would the US government place sanctions on 500 plus Chinese tech companies? Why would the Pentagon form military alliances like Quad and AUKUS to contain China? I mean, if China is going to collapse within a decade, the West would just sit back and ignore China, right? Peter the fake should talk to the IMF and find out why they say that whopping 35% of world's growth this year will come from China. Meanwhile, the US and the EU combined will be only 10%. The IMF also predicts that over the next five years, for every $100 of global GDP growth, $22 will come from China, and only $11 from the US. Thus, China's contribution to the world's growth will be twice that of the US. Also, nations around the world are signing multi-year and sometimes multi-decade deals with China. In conclusion, China won't be collapsing by 2030 or any time this century. By the way, China Watchers and the US media have been predicting the collapse of China for the last two decades. It's a fetish and a delusion. Now the second crazy statement from Zayn, Chinese Yuan has no value. For a supposedly geopolitical expert, Peter Zayn has no clue about the internationalization of Yuan. So contrast this podcast's manner, the energy that he brings to what Zayn brings. Zayn just sounds a lot happier. He's a lot more fun to listen to. So we're going to have a simultaneous shock from product shortages. At the same time, we're trying to build that dirty word inventory to insulate us. At the same time, we're trying to build out everything about our manufacturing system. This is going to generate what will probably be the most inflationary period at least since World War II, and it will last for at least five years. Now, while we could theoretically screw this up, this is probably also going to be the fastest growth that America has experienced since before the Civil War, because we're looking at just a massive expenditure to build out that asset class that's necessary for us to have the things that we want to need. We're doing this with the baby boomers retiring. We're doing this with Gen Z, the young kids coming in, and boomers with the largest generation we've ever had. Gen Z is our smallest one ever. So we already have a shortage of 400,000 workers a year. So there's a saying in sobriety that you want to live about two notches above boring, and there could be a sobriety in hosting a radio talk show or being a YouTube personality or a pundit. You want to be about two notches below manic. You essentially want to be almost dancing when you're speaking. You want to be giving off that level of energy. So it's absolutely nothing like a real-life conversation. You have to come with about 10 times more energy than you'd come in real life, and Peter Zion does that, and his critic does not. So that's why Peter Zion is so much more pleasant to listen to than his critic. So here's some Zion. And it's time that we need to double the industrial plant. This is going to be rough, but on the backside of this, we'll have a more stable supply chain system that is largely within North America and is subject to North America things. That's not going to trigger a global trend. That's going to remove the United States from really carrying it all about how foreign supply chains work. Okay. And so let's go back to this other bloke, Chris Canthan. He repeats the logic of Reddit kids. Okay. So just so much less energy. All right. Just no skill with his delivery. It's just kind of downbeat and depressing to listen to him and to try to, he tries to add some zest to his podcast by playing music in the background. But I don't think it really is particularly effective. Always say that because the yuan is not freely traded in the global currency markets, it is useless. Let's start with the urge. All right. So just because he's a less effective broadcaster, right, just because he's less pleasing to listen to it doesn't mean he's wrong. He's making some strong points. Scattering statistics from March 2023. For the first time ever, Chinese yuan surpassed the US dollar in cross-border transactions in China. Wapping 3.7 trillion yuan were used in payments and receipts in just one month. And then there was a historic transaction between the UAE and China in March. For the first time ever, liquefied natural gas was sold for Chinese yuan. Within a couple of years, all the Arab countries will be selling oil and gas for yuan. That will be the true birth of petrol yuan. Goodbye, petrol dollar. Let's not forget. So a couple of guys have been calling out Peter Zion on this show for as long as they've been playing excerpts of Peter Zion. One is Leponius Maximus Meridius, and the other is Ultra Testosterone. And that's going to leave us to other countries to either pick up the pieces or shrivel. Overall, I think you're on point. We're going to have shortages in a number of products because of what the Russians are. Well, because the Russian stuff is being removed from the system. Former Soviet commodities being dumped on the global market since 1992 are one of the two biggest reasons why inflation has been so low for the last 30 years. And that's completely going away. So the oil situation. So yeah, Peter Zion exudes that kind of confidence that you need to succeed as a public figure. Chris Canthan needs voice lessons. That yuan is one of the five elite currencies that make up the IMF's SDR basket. This is why 70 plus countries already hold yuan in their foreign exchange reserves. Then there is the astonishing fact that yuan is now used more than the euro for global trade invoicing. That is countries around the world. So I want to look at Peter Zion. Is he a guru or apply the grometer developed by the academic podcasters behind decoding the guru's Chris Kavanaugh, cognitive anthropologist from Oxford University and Matt Brown at the prestigious University of Central Queensland in Australia. So characteristic number one of gurus is galaxy brainness, right? An ironic descriptor of 70% ideas that appear to be too profound for an average mind to comprehend but are in truth, trivial, if not nonsensical. Gurus present themselves as fonts of wisdom. There's an all encompassing kind of knowledge that tends to span in multiple disciplines and topics. Their arguments often link together disparate concepts such as quantum mechanics, logic and the nature of consciousness. Guru present themselves as a polymath. You can offer novel insights with a reference to many fields that will lead to their own accomplishments and exaggerate them to a shameless degree. They'll confidently offer hot takes on technical topics and with a wave of their hand dismiss the perspectives of genuine experts. I don't think he's high in galaxy brainness. Peter Zion speaks in a very plain way. He doesn't use unnecessary jargon. Okay, cultishness being a guru is a social role. A guru is only a guru if there are people who regard them as such. He doesn't be designed does not try to develop a court, does not try to develop a parasocial relationship. There's followers. He doesn't flatter his followers. He doesn't try to create an in group versus out group of his followers versus everyone else. So I'd say he's very low in cultishness anti-establishment. And he is again pretty low in anti-establishment. Terrainism grievance mongering very low in grievance mongering self aggrandizement and narcissism. So yeah, he seems to be fairly high in this one trait Cassandra complex saying the world's coming to an end. Now he's low in that revolutionary theories. I don't think he claims to any revolutionary theories. Pseudo profound BS. This is the core business, the stock in trade for the guru. And so this is the form of their discourse. It's language that is easy to process. Superficially appears to be something profound upon analysis turns out to be tried meaningless, contradictory or torture logical. I don't think this applies to the design conspiracy mongering. That's not Peter the Zion profiteering, you know, by a shilling supplement. So I think he's low in virtually all the categories of the garometer. So that doesn't mean he's particularly accurate. You know, pundit, but I don't think he's a guru. I don't think he's trying to develop a cult. Use you on more than the euro to buy goods and services. This should not be surprising since China is the world's largest exporter. And so how would I compare P design to in Brahma? In Brahma has genuine expertise. He has a PhD. But they both offer a lot of perspectives on, you know, world events. I haven't listened to enough of in in Brahma in Brahma is not nearly as fun to listen to or to read as P design. When you listen to P design, you really get the feel that you're getting the inside scoop about how the world really works with in Brahma. You feel like you're getting, you know, another academic perspective is the number one trade partner for 140 countries. Also, China's Belt and Road Initiative, the largest infrastructure project in human history is helping the Yuan go global. For example, Saudi Arabia is getting loans from a Chinese bank to fund NIO, the futuristic Saudi city. Recently, thanks to US sanctions, you on has become even more popular. Seventy I'd never feel like I've got anything particularly valuable from in Brahma. So I do think I get some valuable insights from Peter Zion percent of the trade between Russia and China is now conducted in rubles and you are more astonishingly Putin said that Russia will trade with Asian, African and Latin American countries in you on. This is a game changer. US allies, Brazil and Argentina have announced that they will use you on for trade with China and even Australian iron ore companies are accepting you on as payments. Here's the big picture. Chinese Yuan will become a global trade currency and it will happen without the Yuan becoming a reserve currency. So for example, Saudi Arabia can sell oil for you on and then use the Yuan to buy Chinese goods and services. If Saudi Arabia has excess you on, then you can either trade it for Saudi real euro or dollar. Now on to Zion's third thing, China's demographic crisis. This is perhaps Zion's greatest hit. His propaganda is a mix of facts, lies and gross exaggerations. Let's take a look. For starters, almost all developed nations have demographic problems, i.e. the aging population, shrinking workforce, low fertility rates, etc. Thus China's problems are overblown. In fact, China and the US have the same median age. Imagine that. Half of all Chinese and Americans are over the age of 39. And of course, which means half of all Chinese and Americans are below the age of 39. China is actually many years younger than most, if not all. So I don't think this guy has a clue how demographics work. It's not just a matter about what's the mean age of your population and getting back to the grometer. So compared to virtually every other pundit of which I'm aware, I think Peter Zion is less damaging. He has fewer of the characteristics of the meritricious and false guru that seems to characterize people from Dennis Prager to Sean Hannity to almost all the syndicated radio talk show hosts and the Fox News hosts. So Zion may be wrong, but he's not going to damage people to the extent that falling into the virtual hands of Dennis Prager or Sean Hannity or other typical right-wing talk show hosts will often damage people by damaging their ability to distinguish what's true from false. So people like Dennis Prager and Tucker Carlson, they push vaccine skepticism and hesitancy and often directly anti-vax, which I think is absolutely moronic and very damaging to anyone who takes it seriously. Right-wing talk show hosts, they try to discourage people from mainstream sources of information. Peter Zion doesn't do that. He tries to just take the best of mainstream information, whether it's the New York Times or the State Department. So compared to your typical right-wing talking head, I think Peter Zion is much less damaging. But Peter Zion is reckless with the truth. He's not forthright with how often he's been wrong. So he often speaks with an absurd level of self-confidence. Developed countries in Europe like Germany, France, Spain, Italy, UK, etc. Also in 2019, before COVID, China's fertility rates were much higher than these European countries, which have rates well below 2.1 or the replacement rate. For example, it's 1.2 in Italy and Spain. But nobody is talking about demographic crisis or economic collapse of these countries. Now, the excuse used by Peter Zion supporters is that these countries can depend on immigration to keep the countries young. However, immigration is not a panacea. If it were the case, all these countries would just open up their borders to immigrants from all over the world. The more the better, right? Obviously. So, Lupinius is making some great points here in the chat. Peter Zion is not a guru. He's a smart ass. Yes. And Lupinius notes, I know plenty of successful people who spew total BS with total confidence. Confidence is the key. Some people are easily impressed. Now, the BS confidence thing does not work in any technical field where results come quickly. Good point. This is a crazy idea that ignores the numerous challenges associated with immigration. Take, for example, Sweden. In big cities like Stockholm, two-thirds of children are immigrants and non-whites. Europe is destined for chaos and even civil wars within a couple of decades. Even in the US, the supposed melting pot, the demographic changes due to immigration of non-whites is causing a lot of upheaval. Think of Trump support. So, yeah, Chris Kanthan absolutely right here that immigration, massive amounts of immigration, come with considerable costs for social cohesion, social trust. You know, any sense of a coherent society will be damaged by large amounts of immigration, depending in part on where does the immigration come from. In general, many countries will have all sorts of societal problems in the future. As for China, it has more leeway to handle the financial problems associated with an aging society. This is because the current retirement age for men is 60 and 50 to 55 for women based on their jobs. Thus, China can slowly raise their and interlocutor says P. Design is a huckster. I think that's a reasonable description. And Neocon ideologue used to work with George Friedman at Stratford. Retirement age if need be. And other solutions for China include the use of AI and robots, offshoring low-end manufacturing and even some immigration from neighboring Asian countries. Back to Peter Zein, who spews three crazy but popular lies about China's demographics. One, that there will be more retired people than workers by 2030. Number two, that China's population will drop by 50%. So, question in the chat is Leponius Maximus related to Gluteus Maximus. Yes, Gluteus is Leponius's sister. 2050. Number three, that Chinese are having no children. Let's take a look at the first claim that China will have more retired people than workers by 2030. This is an absurd lie. In 2030, 26% of Chinese will be retired, while 63% will be of working-age population. If China increases the retirement age a bit, there will be two workers, two one retiree. This can be easily verified by looking at the current population pyramid. We know exactly how many people are going to retire next year, the following year, and so on. By the way, in 2030, China will be better off than the US in terms of the percentage of working-age population. Now, Zion's second claim, that China's population will shrink by half by 2050. So, yeah, which Chinese consumer products do you most associate with quality? None. So, Chinese universities are terrible. I think they only have two in the world's top 100. Your typical engineering student in China will have to spend about 40% of his university education studying the loaded works of Chairman Mao. Only about one out of seven Chinese graduates from engineering school. Only one in seven graduates of Chinese engineering programs have sufficient skills to maintain an engineering job overseas. Chinese workforce, it's about half the productivity of Turkey. Those awesome Turkey workers, China about half as productive as Turkey. So, I get most of my information about China, not from Peter Zion, but from Michael Beckley, right? So, he's written a couple of books on China, which I think are excellent and many award-winning articles. So, here are his books. Right, latest is The Danger Zone, The Coming Conflict with China, and then the one he came out with in 2017, Unrivaled, Why America Will Remain the World's Superpower. So, he's an academic. He's a much more serious scholar than Peter Zion. And Facebook is repeating Zion's talking points like a robot. He has single-handedly created a mass psychosis. No doubt that there's a huge cottage industry that profits from the China collapse narrative, but Peter Zion is the unrivaled leader now. Peter's predictions can be summarized thus. Total bloom and doom scenario for China's future, while everything will be awesome for the U.S. He also believes that the world will undergo tremendous de-globalization. But here's the deal. Peter Zion is the Jim Kramer of Geopolitics. Kramer is, of course, the CNBC stock expert, who gives terrible advice regarding stocks. For example, just before the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, Kramer was recommending that stock. The joke is that if Kramer tells you to buy a stock, sell it immediately. Similarly, Peter Zion is horribly misguided in his geopolitical analysis and predictions. He's blatantly wrong about the past and the present, and his predictions about the future are purely sensational. Yes, geopolitics has a lot of subjectivity, but this guy is so factually wrong about everything that I had to debunk his claims. First. So everyone I know who has bought from China just recognize that the Chinese were trying to cheat them in every single thing that they could. But it wasn't anyone else that they had to deal with in the world. It's not mathematically possible. All the forecasts say that China's population will be down 50% by the year 2100, not 2050. So shameless Peter Zion just fudged the statistics by staggering 50 years. There is a Chinese professor named Yi Fuxian who lives in the US. He is very anti-Chinese government and has written many articles about how the government lies about the population. He claims that China's population is 120 million less than the official numbers. But even according to that gloom and doom professor, China's population will be 1 billion by 2050 and not 650 million as Peter Zion claims. Let's discuss the last point about Chinese having no children. Once again, a typical Zion exaggeration. In 2019, before the pandemic, Chinese had 14 million children that year. The newborn number fell dramatically during the covid years to 10 million. It's bad, but it's not zero as Peter dramatically claims. What a doofus. Even if the number of new babies stays at 10 million a year on the average, there will be 100 million new Chinese within a decade. The Chinese government can also nudge the numbers up with good policies, like say tax cuts and subsidized housing for couples with kids. One final note on population. The AI experts, like Kaifu Li, predict that half of the jobs will be gone by 2040, thanks to robots, automation, and artificial intelligence. Given such radical transformations, China will be better off with fewer people. Now, Zion's fourth crazy analysis. China's dependency on food and how 500 million Chinese may die within a year. This is another sick, disaster porn spread by Peter Zion. According to this deranged narrative, if the US refuses to protect the trade routes in the oceans, then other nations will attack ships that carry food to China. And since China is so food insecure, 500 million Chinese will die within a year. My God, there are so many insanely wrong things about this narrative. It's hard to know where to begin. First, China is not food insecure. China is the world's largest producer of wheat, rice, vegetables, fruits, chicken, pork, etc. China is self-sufficient in food. Nobody will die. So China uses about 40% of its workforce in agriculture. The United States uses about 1% of its workforce in agriculture. So China is just incredibly, incredibly inefficient. They've also just polluted the heck out of their country. Almost nobody wants to go visit China for pleasure because it's such a filthy polluted country. And also all the pollution has probably taken a substantial toll on destroying the cognitive capacity of many of Chinese children who have an absurdly large number of children with IQs below 85. Most Chinese do not even get a high school. That's how uneducated they are. Most Chinese do not even get a high school because to get a high school in China, you have to pay for it. Most Chinese can't afford to pay to even get a high school. So they have in general about a seventh or eighth grade level of education. The only thing that China depends a lot on other countries for is soybeans. And what is it used for? Feeding pigs and cows. So in the worst case scenario, there will be disruption to soybean supply. Then the Chinese people will have to eat a little less pork. Or they can even get sunflower seeds from Russia and substitute it for soy. By the way, if you had followed the recent news on Brazilian President Lula's visit to China, you would know that China doesn't have to worry about soybeans since Brazil is the world's largest exporter. Next, the fifth crazy Zion claim. Many countries hate China. Peter also claims that numerous countries hate China and are just waiting to attack it, or would like to see China collapse. This is just an American wishful thinking, similar to how Biden and the media crowed that Russia would be isolated after the U.S.-EU sanctions. But that never happened, obviously. China is very smart at diplomacy. Just look at how leaders of countries all around the world line up to visit Beijing. Just in the last few months, leaders of Germany, France, EU, Brazil, Malaysia, Singapore, etc. have gone to China. Even though some countries like Vietnam and the Philippines have serious disputes in South China Sea, their largest trade partner is China. Their economies are deeply interlinked with China in a win-win relationship. In a recent study by the Australian Lowy Institute, China was a clear winner in Southeast Asia in terms of economic and diplomatic influences. And don't forget that 157 countries have signed up for China-led Belt and Road Initiative. China has spent $1 trillion on thousands of infrastructure projects around the world and has built a huge reservoir of goodwill. African leaders openly mock American and European leaders. Okay, that's absurd to argue that China has built up a huge reservoir of goodwill. Who are China's allies? Who wants to be standing side by side with China? Who wants to embrace China as an ally? China has almost no allies. The U.S. has dozens of key allies, including all the countries that surround China, such as India, Japan. We have alliances with Vietnam, with the Philippines, with Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany. I mean, the U.S. has all the allies. China has virtually none, because almost every other country loathes and hates China because of the dishonest selfish awful way that they operate, including inflicting the world with every major epidemic we've had for at least 100 years, right? The Spanish flu was primarily a Chinese flu, came from China. Then China gave us COVID. Every major epidemic that we've had has come from China. This idea that China has enormous reservoirs of goodwill among other countries is absurd. Wow, they have some goodwill from Africa. If the entire continent of Africa just disappeared tomorrow, allies would hardly be affected. Africa accounts for virtually nothing as far as power, economic or military, or importance in the world. I mean, is there any major power that is despised as widely hated, looked down upon, distrusted, loathed compared to China? Everybody loathes China. Who wants to be in bed with China? Like, yeah, in necessity, people will get some manufacturing done in China, but they loathe the Chinese government. That's real geopolitical power. Heck, even French President Macron started talking about multipolar world after visiting China. Then there is BRICS, a coalition of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. With two rivals of America, China and Russia, one might think that the group would be a pariah. Well, guess what? 19 countries have applied to join BRICS. And the new aspiring members include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, and even Mexico. Yeah, people would do deals with China. People would do deals with people they hate. People work for people they hate if they paid well enough. But China doesn't exactly have enormous reservoirs of goodwill out in the world. Incredible. Bottom line, Zion has a preposterous and misinformed understanding of the world. The sixth point, blockading China. Pyramid's fantasy of other countries blockading China ignores the reality of how the world works. First, nobody can just disrupt sea trade. If it were that easy, the US would have blocked all seaborn oil from Russia in the last year. But that never happened. Why? We live in a deeply interconnected world. China is the world's largest trading nation. No, no. The US, if the US had blockaded Russia, that would be an act of war, right? We're certainly much up to the edge of an act of war with our in-depth comprehensive, you know, multi-billion dollar support of Ukraine. But no, just because the US has not, you know, gone to war with Russia doesn't mean that China might not be vulnerable to some sort of naval blockade because, yeah, China's got the world's biggest navy, but it's crap. It's like Chinese goods. It's crap. It's really poor quality. It doesn't have much force projection power. Its technology is ancient. And now with high-tech bands against sharing high-level computer chips with China, China's going to fall even more dramatically behind. Imports three trillion dollars of goods and services and exports four trillion dollars of goods and services. The importers want Chinese money and exporters want goods. Neither one is going to blockade China. Also, China is in nuclear power with missiles that can reach any part of the world. Nobody will dare to hijack Chinese goods. Bottom line, no country will listen to the US and block Chinese ships. Moreover, consider medicines and antibiotics for which China is the single most important country in the global supply chain. 50% of world's antibiotics come directly from China or they are made from raw materials that come from China. Can the US survive without antibiotics? Take India, which is a significant exporter of generic medicines. However, 70% of Indian medicines are dependent on raw materials from China. Thus, blockading China means deaths not in China, but in the rest of the world, not an exaggeration. Similarly, what happens to the three American giants, Apple, Walmart and Amazon, which have a combined market cap of four trillion dollars? So, don't you think that America has learned something from the last few years and there is a significant reshoring movement of American manufacturing and even companies like Apple are looking to places like Vietnam and elsewhere to try to build their products? I mean, people are looking to get the hell out of China. It won't be easy and it won't, you know, likelihood happen quickly, but it is certainly a trend. If there is a blockade on China, of course, their stocks along with the entire US stock market will crash. And the US retail industry is six trillion dollars and accounts for nearly 25% of US GDP and directly employs 15 million people. Imagine the store closures, unemployment, and even riots in the US without Chinese goods. There are many more such examples, like rare earth metals, critical minerals, electronics. Okay, rare earth metals are not rare. It's just that it's such a low profit business that no one else wants to really do it. But if we needed to, we could do, you know, rare earth mining in Australia or elsewhere in the world. Computers, batteries, and so on. Yeah, batteries. How long can an economy function without batteries? China's global market share of rare earth refining is formidable 80%. And these rare earth metals are indispensable in all high tech products. And even in semiconductor manufacturing, China is way... Right, this is like the cheerleader who boasts that she guzzles, you know, 80% of the semen in her particular high school because, you know, all the other girls don't want to swallow loads. But because she is so eager to swallow loads that she can claim, hey, I've got, you know, 80% of the rare, rare earth, you know, semen going down my throat, you know, I'm such a star. Ahead of the US and Europe in mid-range chips. By 2025, China will be producing half of all 20 nanometers and larger chips. While these are not cutting edge, they run cars, robots, medical devices, household appliances, etc. Furthermore, China is already the world leader in printed circuit boards, as well as testing and assembly of semiconductor chips. Thus, China is an indispensable player in the global supply chain of semiconductors, without which no modern economy can function. Furthermore, China has another option besides the sea routes, thanks to the highways and railways of the revitalized ancient Silk Road. So I'm just glancing at Fox News while I'm doing this stream. I mean, how pathetic is Fox News at right-wing media that for what, a month now, the number one story is that, you know, Joe Biden doesn't have much contact with his seventh grandkid. And, you know, Hunter Biden is overwhelmingly the focus of right-wing news and Fox News that there might have been, you know, cocaine in the White House. I mean, the nonsense that the right-wing media, the right-wing punditry in places like Fox News focus on is ridiculous. For example, China gets a lot of oil and gas from Russia and Central Asia all through land. Plus, every month, more than 1,000 freight trains transport goods from China to numerous European cities. Finally, China has the option to retaliate. China now has the world's largest navy, and thus can easily block trades of Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. China can also seize all the U.S.-EU companies operating out of China. Think Tesla, BMW, Apple, Nike, GM, Boeing, Starbucks, Marriott Hotels, and on and on. So let's put it this way, there won't be any blockading of China. Pure rubbish narrative. Number seven, fantasies about de-globalization. Peter Zion wrote an entire book on de-globalization, a complete bogus notion. No, the world is too interconnected and interdependent for any sort of de-globalization. Well, we went through a substantial de-globalization in 2020 when global supply chains strained and into like 2022, all right, global supply chains were under a great deal of strain. So we've already undergone a mini de-globalization. And we certainly seem to be on some kind of trend where we'll have, you know, more reshoring of manufacturing and less reliance on places like China. At the most, there'll be fringe reshoring to de-risk supply chain for some essential products. The first problem with this narrative is this U.S.-centric views. Basically, what he says is that the U.S. will move manufacturing away from China, and therefore the world will de-globalize. What a narcissistic view. That's like saying, well, I'm getting a divorce, so the entire notion of marriage in the world is disappearing. But he's also wrong about the U.S.-China decoupling. Let me quote a recent speech by UK foreign minister. It would be clear, easy, and perhaps even satisfying for me to declare a new Cold War and say that our goal is to isolate China. However, it would also be wrong because it would be a betrayal of our national interest and a willful misunderstanding of the modern world. This logic applies to the U.S. as well. This is why a few days ago, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen said, we do not seek to decouple our economy from China's. A full separation of economies would be disastrous for both countries. Similarly, EU president, Wunder Lane, recently admitted, is neither viable nor in Europe's interest to decouple from China. So what is Peter Zion's solution? So the U.S. is less dependent on international trade, either for exports or imports than any other major power, right? The U.S. is the most self-sufficient or target that the least vulnerable to ripples in trade compared to every other major power, like every other top 20 world economy. The U.S. is more self-sufficient. So easy. Just move manufacturing from China to Mexico. Hello, two glaring problems with this silly idea. One, China's manufacturing is 20 times larger than Mexico's, which means just to reassure 5% of China's production, you would have to double Mexico's production. And guess how long it took for Mexico to double its manufacturing capacity last time? 20 years. Similarly, for India, it took 15 years to double its manufacturing. It's not easy, folks. Second, China's exports are not just t-shirts and shoes. China's manufacturing is not just assembling iPhones. China has changed a lot. 60% of China's exports are now medium and high-tech products. Well, not that high-tech, all right. China puts together bits that other people design and market, right? China does bottom of the barrel manufacturing, right? They don't do much innovation. They stick together bits that other people design and market and profit from. And Chinese workers, right, they're becoming increasingly expensive compared to workers elsewhere in the world. For example, the U.S. Navy depends on precision tools imported from China. Manufacturing such tools require highly skilled workers and cutting-edge factories. Then take a look at critical minerals and rare earth metals. The U.S. depends on China a lot for 25 such critical minerals. And the dependency on China varies from 50% to staggering 100%. The minerals include lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, magnesium, et cetera. Right. So as long as China absurdly subsidizes many of its industries and goes into industries like rare earth metals that are not particularly profitable, right? They can hive off an enormous share, a market share, because these are not profitable industries. They require a lot of subsidizing. So if China is forced to get out of the game or someone else gets into the game and they're able to do it more efficiently, the dependence on China is going to decrease. As for Europe, it gets 98% of rare earth minerals from China. China also has virtual monopoly in many products made from rare earth metals.