🌐 Are we really in a second Cold War?
My conversation with historian Niall Ferguson
On this year’s anniversary of the 9/11 attack, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall issued a stark warning about China, calling it a ‘pacing challenge’ for U.S. security. “We must be ready for a kind of war we have no modern experience with,” were Kendall’s words.
The latest guest on my TV series Exponentially, historian Niall Ferguson, explains this moment we find ourselves in as
…the first inning, the early phase of Cold War II. The Cuban missile crisis in this Cold War will be a Taiwan semiconductor crisis. […] One of the most interesting things about our time is that we went very quickly from what I call Chimerica in 2007 to Cold War II by about 2018.
I travelled to Stanford University, where Niall is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, to speak with him about the assumption that the big turning points in history were driven by technology, and that today’s technology industry is doing the same: changing how we organise our society, politics, economy — and conflict.
Niall and I speak about…
The great power competition between the US and China — and the consequences of it intensifying,
Demographics and migration as a threat to innovation and economic growth — and whether AI can alleviate the burden of aging,
The role of new institutions in preventing the next World War.
🙏 As always, I invite you to spread the word about the series and help us keep the momentum going in three simple steps:
Watch the episode and share it with your network,
Hit LIKE on YouTube,
Leave a comment below the video.
Dig deeper:
Op-Ed: The U.S. and China are Waging a Cold War that is Truly MAD, Niall Ferguson, 2023
Working paper: Black Swans, Dragon Kings And Gray Rhinos: The World War Of 1914-1918 And The Pandemic of 2020-? Niall Ferguson, 2020
📈Chartpack: China’s Economic Destiny — What are the Implications of China’s Demographic Transition? Nathan Warren, Exponential View, 2023