Call Me Back - with Dan Senor

Air travel this summer seems broken. On some days, major airlines have been canceling 10 percent of their flights. In normal times, it’s something like one in a hundred that are canceled. How did this happen? Is there an explanation beyond just the obvious – which is the turbocharged rebound from the past two years of pandemic-induced turmoil in the airline industry? Today’s guest thinks there’s something else going on that the post-covid travel summer has simply revealed. It’s a structural problem that predated the pandemic, and he also sees similar forces at work in other industries, including the baby formula crisis. It’s the structural roots of crises of scarcity that we get at today, with Scott Lincicome. Scott is at the CATO Institute, a Washington think tank, where’s he’s the director of General Economics & Trade Policy Studies. He’s also a visiting lecturer at Duke University Law School, and spent two decades as a trade law negotiator, advising some of the largest multinationals. He also writes a Substack called “Capitolism”. And he’s with The Dispatch news & analysis site.

This next week will be among the most consequential in contemporary British politics. Ballots are sent out to Tory party members on August 1st, and they can begin voting right away. Whoever wins becomes Prime Minister in September, without first going through a General Election. So this next week is crucial for the two leading candidates to form final impressions before voting begins. To help us understand the process, the candidates, and what this all means for the UK at home, the UK’s economy, and the UK in the world, we are joined by James Forsyth, the political editor of The Spectator magazine. He is also a weekly columnist for The Times of London. He previously was a journalist for UK publications The Sun and The Mail.

Inflation hit a staggering 9.1% over the last 12 months, rising 1.3% for the month of June. The increases were “broad-based,” as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) put it, touching just about every aspect of our lives…especially food prices and energy prices. In anticipation of these new numbers, we invited Dr Mohamed El-Erian back to the podcast. He is President of Queens' College at Cambridge University. Mohamed serves as part-time Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz and Chair of Gramercy Fund Management. He’s a Professor at The Wharton School, he is a Financial Times contributing editor, Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and the author of two New York Times best sellers. He serves on several non-profit boards, including the NBER, and those of Barclays and Under Armour. From 2007-2014, Mohammed served as CEO/co-CIO of PIMCO, which has over two trillion under management. He worked at PIMCO for a total of fourteen years, and was chair of President Obama's Global Development Council. He also served two years as president and CEO of Harvard Management Company, the entity that manages Harvard’s endowment. He has been chair of the Microsoft Investment Advisory Board since 2007 Mohammed is expert in many domains when it comes to the financial markets and the macro economy, but especially - inflation.

Are there comparable periods in our history that can guide us through the current ‘“woke” debates? Is there precedent for this kind of thing burning out? Will it? How did we get to this point? And how long will it take? That’s what we discuss today with Noah Rothman, whose new book, just released this week, is called “The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives War on Fun.” Noah is an incisive writer and analyst. He writes about policy and politics and foreign affairs. He is an associate editor of Commentary Magazine, his previous book was called “Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America.” He’s also an MSNBC/NBC News contributor. You can order Noah's book here: https://tinyurl.com/2p88cc2k

Dan recently joined the Commentary Magazine podcast to share analysis on the current state of Israeli politics. We are posting that conversation here.

What have we learned so far about this election cycle, and what does it tell us about what’s likely to happen in the midterm elections of 2022, and the Democratic and GOP primaries for president in 2024? Historically, California has often served as a movie trailer on our national political future -- 'coming to a theater near you.' Richard Nixon started there, turning the Cold War threat into an election theme in his early political campaigns; Ronald Reagan transformed what we now think of as movement conservatism during his two terms as governor; and Proposition 187 was a California state ballot issue in 1994, before immigration became a national political issue (it helped get then-Governor Pete Wilson re-elected on the issue of immigration). Celebrity candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger got elected governor there a year before the first season of The Apprentice. The state’s size and diversity make it a political country within a country: a population of 40 million people, the fifth largest economy in the world, and a whopping 22 million registered voters. Long-time GOP campaign strategist Mike Murphy has been on the front lines – and often the mastermind – of some of these California campaigns, as well as plenty of national campaigns too. He's been thinking about what, if anything, President Biden and the Democrats can do to turn around their near-term electoral headwinds. Mike’s view on the political crack-up is sparked by the breakdown in quality of life for his fellow Californians, and Americans almost everywhere. He also has some analytical insights on everything from the impact of inflation to the future of 'Roe vs Wade'. Mike has worked on 26 gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races across the country, including 12 GOP wins in Blue States – something that’s getting harder and harder to do. He was a top strategist for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Murphy is a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. He’s co-host of the Hacks on Tap Podcast, and he also pens a political newsletter (The Hacks On Tap Newsletter). Murphy is co-director of the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future.

The Biden administration has announced that the President will take his first trip to the Middle East as president. His first stop will be in Israel to meet with Israeli leaders and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, before heading to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he will meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The U.S.-Saudi relationship began nearly eight decades ago between FDR and King Ibn Saud. With varying degrees of tumult, the relationship has survived – and sometimes thrived – through 14 U.S. presidencies. Has all that now changed? Has there been a sense in Riyadh – and across the Middle East – that the U.S. (through recent Democratic and Republican administrations) is downgrading its focus in the Middle East. Is there a risk that China gradually replaces the U.S. as the most important geopolitical partner of Saudi Arabia? And will Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords? And, could President Biden engineer it and win the Nobel Peace Prize? Former Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer served as Israel’s chief envoy to the U.S. from 2013 to 2021 – working with three U.S. administrations. He was one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest advisers and played a key role in what led to the U.S. relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem, U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, implementation of the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, and the historic breakthrough that led to the Abraham Accords. He’s a graduate of the Wharton School and completed a degree at Oxford. Ambassador Dermer and I had this conversation a few days ago at the Jewish Leadership Conference (https://www.jewishleadershipconference.org/), which is sponsored by The Tikvah Fund (https://tikvahfund.org/).

After the 100-day mark of the 2022 Russian war against Ukraine. we assess some grim facts of this war, and try to understand how they should inform what to expect in the next hundred days. Richard Fontaine, CEO of the Centar for a New American Security (CNAS), returns to the conversation. Richard is a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board. CNAS is a bi-partisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC. Prior to CNAS, he was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department, the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

When it comes to the future of sports and entertainment, Jon Patricof is always trying to innovate and disrupt. He’s had the added challenge of launching a business from scratch on the eve of the pandemic. Jon is the CEO and Co-Founder of Athletes Unlimited, a network of professional sports leagues. Launched in March 2020, Athletes Unlimited now operates leagues in pro women's softball, volleyball, lacrosse, and basketball. By the end of this year, if current estimates hold, Athletes Unlimited will have conducted over 120 games that will be broadcast in over 150 countries. Before launching Athletes Unlimited, Jon was president of Major League Soccer’s New York City Football Club, where he currently serves on the board of directors. And before that, he spent over a decade as a member of the board, President and COO of Tribeca Enterprises, the owner and operator of the Tribeca Film Festival and other media platforms. He created the Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival. Prior to Tribeca, he worked in media private equity, and in Corporate Strategic Planning at Disney.

What are his objectives at this point in his war against Ukraine? And what are Ukraine’s objectives? What are US objectives? After all, the goals of different leaders in wartime often evolve based on battlefield developments. Are objectives shifting right now before our eyes…for Putin, Zelensky, and the US and NATO? And has the likelihood that Putin would use a limited nuclear strike changed as his objectives have evolved? To help us think all this through, military analyst and historian Fred Kagan returns to the podcast. Fred is the director of the American Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute and a former professor of military history at West Point, where he taught for ten years. His books include Lessons for a Long War and End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801-1805. He also regularly briefs and advises senior US military commanders. Fred earned his PhD in Russian and Soviet military history at Yale University. He is fluent in Russian. To follow Fred Kagan’s work, the easiest way to do that is to go to AEI.org And the report we discuss on this episode – “Russian General Officer Guide” can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/3e8bzrex

In Israel we sit down with an entrepreneur and former Naval officer, who has built a company that has had to navigate the twin crises of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the maritime implications of cracks in global supply chains. Ami Daniel comes to these crises as the co-founder and CEO of Windward, a maritime data, analytics and artificial intelligence company bringing transparency to what is among the largest but most opaque part of the global economy. Ami also brings his perspective as a former Naval officer serving in the Middle East. He talks to us about what he’s learning and seeing through his unique lens into these twin crises: Russia-Ukraine and broken supply chains from Covid.

Should we be surprised that there seems to be a renewed by bi-partisan consensus in response to Putin’s war? Are we back in a Cold War posture, both in policy terms and in our politics? Speaking of today’s politics, what can the past few decades of Republican politics and conservative ideas tell us about 2022 and 2024? According to Matthew Continetti, quite a lot. Matt Continentti is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, founding editor of The Washington Free Beacon, and a columnist for Commentary Magazine. He’s also the author of several books. He has a new book just out called “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism”. Order the book here: https://tinyurl.com/4wp6kdfw

Is Putin crossing almost every line the West did not anticipate he would cross? What does this tell us about where he might might ultimately escalate to? Richard Fontaine returns to the podcast to answer these questions and others. Richard is CEO of the Center for New American Security. He was recently appointed to the Defense Policy Board by the Biden Administration’s Pentagon leadership. Prior to working at CNAS, Richard was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked on the Senate Armed Services Committee, at the State Department, at the National Security Council, and on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has also been an adjunct professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. One of the pieces we discuss in this episode: “Why Russia’s Cyber Warriors Haven’t Crippled Ukraine” - https://tinyurl.com/yx86yv46

The 1970s were a tragedy – inflation, rising crime and crumbling cities, American humiliation abroad from the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to Moscow’s geopolitical advances right in our backyard in Latin America. But here we are again, in the 2020s – with inflation surging to a four-decade high, a new crime wave and new decay in our cities, American humiliation in Afghanistan, ongoing Iran deal negotiations, and a new war launched by Russia. Are we living through another version of the 1970s right now? What can we learn from that era? John Podhoretz returns guest to the podcast. John is a writer, public intellectual and culture critic, He is editor in chief of Commentary Magazine and host of Commentary’s critically acclaimed daily podcast, he’s a columnist for the New York Post, and author of several books. He is also a film critic – formerly for The Weekly Standard and now for The Washington Free Beacon.

The security situation continues to deteriorate in Israel -- tragic developments, including right in the heart of Tel Aviv. We continue to monitor developments and stay in close touch with Israeli family and friends. While Israel is a major focus of today’s conversation, the security crisis is not. We focus on the political impasse in Israel, which may be connected to the security crisis. Today we sit down with Ambassador Ron Dermer, who served as Israel’s chief envoy to the United States from 2013 to 2021 – working closely with the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations. During that time, he was widely regarded as one of the most consequential ambassadors from any country. Ambassador Dermer was one of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s closest advisers and played a key role in what led to the US relocation of our embassy to Jerusalem, U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, implementation of the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, and the historic breakthrough that led to the Abraham Accords. He is a graduate of the Wharton School and completed a degree at Oxford. In this episode, we focus on three topics: What to make of the current Israeli political crisis? (Will the Government fall? Will Netanyahu return to power?) What are the real prospects for a new Iran nuclear deal? And what to make of America's role in the Russia-Ukraine crisis?

Regardless of how or when the Russia-Ukraine war ends, is it possible to see the very early signs of a new geopolitical order taking shape? There are certainly some surprises, especially as it relates to Germany’s response to the crisis and – more broadly – the unity of Europe, and the overall scale of the economic response. Are there other new trends or global power centers we should be keeping an eye on? It’s a question we will be asking a number of our guests going forward. This week we sit down with Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize winning foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times, and a bestselling author of many books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem”, “The World is Flat”, and “Thank You For Being Late”. One piece to flag, on our exchange about what seems to me to be a schizophrenic approach to energy policy in the midst of Russia’s war, we highly recommend an editorial from The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-u-s-oil-embargo-russia-energy-natural-gas-vladimir-putin-ukraine-11646780609

While we are all following the minute to minute developments in Russia-Ukraine, a new international deal with Iran on its nuclear program may be on the cusp of finalization. While there are still key details to be worked out, the broad contours are out there, and the implications are massive. So we wanted to have a conversation with an expert and policy practitioner that could walk us through the history of how we got here, and where it’s going. Ambassador Eric Edelman is Counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He’s also on board of the Vandenberg Coalition. He has served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House. As undersecretary of defense for policy he oversaw the Pentagon’s bilateral defense relations, war plans, special operations forces, homeland defense, missile defense, nuclear weapons and arms control policies, counterproliferation, counterterrorism, arms sales, and defense trade controls. He served as U.S. ambassador to Finland in the Clinton administration and Turkey in the Bush administration and was Vice President Cheney's national security advisor. As a diplomat, he has been stationed in Prague and Moscow.

How could Russia-Ukraine escalate? How could it deescalate? Does Zelensky survive? Does Putin survive? Does China try to bail out Russia? On this episode, we explore five scenarios with Richard Fontaine, who returns to the podcast. Richard Richard Fontaine is the CEO of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a bi-partisan foriegn policy think tank in Washington, DC. Prior to joining CNAS, Richard was foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain and worked at the State Department, the National Security Council, and on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Richard Fontaine's essay in The Wall Street Journal: "The World That Putin Made" https://tinyurl.com/5n8fyaze

As Russia has become isolated globally, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official was asked if Moscow has anyone left in its corner, anywhere in the world. Her response: “Of course, we have them. Look at the reaction of world giants. Those who do not pretend to be giants, but are real giants. For example, it is China. You can see this reaction, can’t you?” So what exactly is going on between Xi Xingping and Vladamir Putin as tensions escalate between Russia and the West over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? How does this inform our thinking about whether we are, indeed, in a new Cold War -- and how we need to re-think our entire national security strategy, defense posture, and approach to global affairs? Russia’s experience in Ukraine – and the West’s response – is a laboratory for the Chinese Communist Party leadership to study as Beijing contemplates its next moves in this Cold War. To help us understand how China is interpreting events, Matt Pottinger returns to the podcast. Matt lived in and covered China as a journalist for Reuters and then The Wall Street Journal. Then, in his early 30s, he joined the US Marine Corps, and had multiple combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Later on Matt played an instrumental role in the geopolitical story of our time: reshaping the West’s relationship with China, when he served as the deputy National Security Advisor in the Trump administration, and was the architect of the administration’s strategy towards China. Today, he is regularly called upon by policymakers on both sides of the aisle, to consult on US policy towards China. Matt has been closely watching the evolving Moscow-Beijing relationship. He’s also just returned from Israel, where he gained fresh insights on what role the final negotiations over a new Iran nuclear deal factor into all of this. We discuss a lot in this episode – from Moscow and Beijing, to Tehran and Jerusalem, and even Caracas and Pyongyang, and how they are all tied together in Cold War II.

Is Putin winning or losing? It looks like his war effort is not going according to plan, and that he underestimated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the resistance of the Ukrainian military, and the unity of the international response. But could Putin quickly turn things around? What would that look like? Congressman Mike Gallagher brings his perspective. Gallagher served for seven years on active duty in the United States Marine Corps, including two deployments to Iraq. He was a national security aide on Capitol HIll – having served as a top staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Back in Wisconsin, he worked for an energy and supply chain company. He’s also a warrior scholar, having earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, a master’s degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University, a second in Strategic Intelligence from National Intelligence University, and a PhD in International Relations from Georgetown. Congressman Gallagher, who is from Green Bay and represents Wiconsin's 8th Congressional District -- which covers northeastern Wisconsin -- currently serves on the House Armed Services Committee, where he is the Ranking Member on the Subcommittee on Military Personnel. He also serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. From his perch as a senior Member of the Military Personnel Subcommittee, Congressman Gallagher has been sounding the alarm about the woke agenda he believes is infecting the US military, and why it’s dangerous to our security.

Vladimir Putin may be unpredictable, but his direction seems to be clear. That’s the view of our guest today, Fred Kagan, who is a return guest. As of what we know now, February 25th, there are at least 1,100 Russian casualties in Ukraine, and Russian forces are entering Kiev. President Biden has announced new sanctions, but oil and natural gas are still exempt from sanctions, and Russia is still part of the SWIFT BANKING SYSTEM. So it’s not clear how tight the economic noose is tightening around Moscow. Fred is the Director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also working closely with the Russia team at the Institute for the Study of War. Fred is a former professor of military history at the US Military Academy at West Point. He completed his PhD in Soviet and Russian military history at Yale University. We want to talk to Fred less about minute to minute developments and more about where this is going with a longer sweep of history as our backdrop. The Critical Threats Project – https://www.criticalthreats.org/ Institute for the Study of War – https://understandingwar.org/ Fred’s recent oped ,“Putin has changed the world — and the US must adapt or lose” – https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/595304-putin-has-changed-the-world-and-the-us-must-adapt-or-lose?rl=1

While the world is watching every development on the Russia-Ukraine border, the United States and Iran may be close to a deal on Iran’s nuclear program. To help us understand what could happen next, Yaakov Katz – Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post and a former advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – joins the podcast. How does the increasing likelihood of an agreement between the U.S. and Iran change Israeli calculations? Does it increase the possibility of an Israeli military strike? What would that mean for Israel, or the Arab world and the broader Middle East, and for energy markets? And with Russia escalating tensions with Ukraine, how does it impact the emerging crisis with Iran? Can we learn anything about Israeli intentions from Israel’s strike against Iraq’s nuclear program in 1981 and Syria’s nuclear program in 2007? Before becoming Editor-in-Chief at The Jerusalem Post, Yaakov Katz served as the paper's military reporter and defense analyst. He is the author of "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power" and co-author of two books: "Weapon Wizards - How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower" and "Israel vs. Iran - The Shadow War" "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power": https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadow-strike-yaakov-katz/1129520355 "Weapon Wizards - How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower": https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-weapon-wizards-yaakov-katz/1123749307

You can order Micah's books here: Catch-67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/catch-67-micah-goodman/1128089735 The Wondering Jew: Israel and the Search for Jewish Identity: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wondering-jew-micah-goodman/1136574622

On this podcast, we spend a lot of time discussing the rising threat from China and Cold War 2. We’ve hosted Matt Pottinger (episode #28), Josh Rogin (episode #17), and Admiral Stravidis (episode #44). We’ve also done an episode on the future of the movie industry, with John Podhoretz (episode #16). But what do China – and specifically Cold War II – and Hollywood have to do with one another? You may not have realized it, but when you watch movies like Skyfall, Mission Impossible III and World War Z, to name a few, you are watching a strange relationship at work between the Chinese Communist Party and one of America’s most influential exporters. It’s the fascinating and richly reported story told by Erich Schwartzel in his new book, Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy. Erich has reported on the film industry for the past decade for The Wall Street Journal. He’s based in the Journal’s LA bureau. Previously, he reported for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette where he wrote extensively on the environment and the burgeoning energy industry there. To order Erich’s book: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/red-carpet-erich-schwartzel/1139401471

Is it too late to deter Russia from invading Ukraine? It certainly seems that way. And while it should be obvious that it does matter, at least as far as US interests are concerned, we are struck by how many pundits and political actors are questioning the stakes. We have received these questions in response to our recent episodes on the Russia-Ukraine crisis – the conversations with Walter Russell Mead and Richard Fontaine. On this episode, we attempt to answer them by calling on two experts, who come at global affairs from somewhat different perspectives. Dr. Evelyn Farkas had a direct role in the US response to the Russia-Ukraine crisis of 2014. She was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, Balkans, Caucasus and conventional arms control. Prior to that, she was Senior Advisor to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense for the NATO Summit. Earlier, Dr. Farkas was Executive Director of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. She was also a professor of international relations at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College and is now president of Farkas Global Strategies. After Dr. Farkas, we’ll be joined by Bret Stephens of The New York Times. This is part II of our conversation with Stephens. In this episode, we talk to Stephens about the Biden administration’s handling of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, pivoting off President Biden’s troubling press conference.

Anti-semitism was tragically back in the news in recent days with the hostage-taking at the Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. But was this event covered the way it should have been? Barely. And this tells us a lot about anti-Semitism during these times. Is this period different? Have we entered a ‘new normal’ for anti-Semitism? Is it just the extremes or are there now more enablers? Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, joins us. Bret came to The Times after a long career with The Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently deputy editorial page editor and, for 11 years, a foreign affairs columnist. Before that, he was editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post. Bret has reported from around the world and interviewed scores of world leaders. He is also the author of "America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.” Bret was raised in Mexico City, earned his BA at the University of Chicago and his Masters at the London School of Economics.

In these conversations, we’ve talked a lot about tensions on the Russia-Ukraine border. But what we haven’t talked about is whether Putin is actually trying to re-assemble the former Soviet Union, whether the US and NATO are prepared to arrest his march, and whether Putin has successfully driven a wedge between the US and Europe. What are the stakes for us? Walter Russell Mead joins us. He is the Global View columnist for The Wall Street Journal. His column appears weekly. Walter is also at the Hudson Institute, Bard College, and at the Council of Foreign Relationship he was the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy. He has authored numerous books, including “Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World”, which you can purchase here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/special-providence-walter-russell-mead/1126488390

On this podcast series, and in many other discussions and debates in think tanks and in the media, we often speculate about the likelihood of a kinetic conflict with China – is it inevitable? Or is it highly unlikely? But today we want to consider how a war would actually start, however grim this topic may be. It’s often hard to visualize what the trip wires would be. Admiral James Stavridis co-authored an entire book with Elliot Ackerman on the subject. It’s called “2034: A Novel of the Next World War”. Admiral James Stavridis is a retired four-star U.S. naval officer. He is currently Vice Chair, Global Affairs and Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, a global investment firm. He is also 12th Chair of Rockefeller Foundation board. Previously he served for five years as the 12th Dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He led the NATO Alliance in global operations from 2009 to 2013 as 16th Supreme Allied Commander with responsibility for Afghanistan, Libya, the Balkans, Syria, counter piracy, and cyber security. He also served as Commander of U.S. Southern Command, with responsibility for all military operations in Latin America from 2006-2009. He earned more than 50 medals, including 28 from foreign nations in his 37-year military career. Earlier in his military career he commanded the top ship in the Atlantic Fleet, winning the Battenberg Cup, as well as a squadron of destroyers and a carrier strike group – all in combat. Admiral Stavridis earned a PhD in international relations and has published eleven books and thousands of articles in leading journals around the world. His 2012 TED talk on global security has over one million views. Admiral Stavridis is a contributing editor for TIME Magazine and Chief International Security Analyst for NBC News. You can order his most recent book here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/2034-elliot-ackerman/1137207434

China is poised to pass one of the great demographic inflection points” – that’s according to the Financial Times. The inflection point the FT is referring to is that of diapers for the elderly growing into a larger market than diapers for infants. China won’t be the first. As far back as a decade ago in Japan, adult diapers started outselling infant diapers. What does that tell us about demographics, not just in China, but about the developing world as a whole? We are in the midst of a larger global trend that has not received enough attention: crashing fertility rates and shrinking populations. According to forecasts by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, the world population will peak at 9.2 billion around 2065, and then drop to 8.8 billion by the end of the century. That’s a stunning difference -- if you take into account that in the 20th century world population grew 600%, from one billion to six billion. The Lancet study also found what the lead scientist for the project called a “jaw dropping” result: the population of twenty-three countries -- including Japan, Italy, Spain, and Thailand -- would drop by at least half by the end of the century. The U.S. and the rest of Europe are also headed for a worrisome situation. This is a trend that will have far-reaching implications for the 2020s. It will impact economics, geopolitics, culture…it could radically change the very nature of how our societies are organized. To get a crash course on the issue, we invited someone who has been screaming from the hilltops about this trend for a long time. Nicholas Eberstadt holds the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he researches and writes extensively on demographics and economic development generally. His many books and monographs include “Poverty in China”, “The Tyranny of Numbers”, “The End of North Korea”, “The Poverty of the Poverty Rate” and “Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis”. His latest book is “Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis”. Nick earned his PhD and masters degree in political economy from Harvard, and a Master of Science from the London School of Economics.

The Covid-19 recession technically ended in April 2020. At two months, it was one of the shortest economic recessions in history. Since then, we have experienced record inflation. Last summer, we sat down with Mohamed El-Erian, who was an early voice warning about the coming inflation, how to understand it, and what its implications could be. But were the inflationary trends already in place prior to the pandemic? Did the covid response policies of governments here and abroad accelerate those trends? And how do we unwind an inflationary cycle? Today we are reposting that conversation with. Dr Mohamed El-Erian is President of Queens' College, Cambridge University. He serves as part-time Chief Economic Advisor at Allianz and Chair of Gramercy Fund Management. He’s a Professor at The Wharton School, he is a Financial Times contributing editor, Bloomberg Opinion columnist, and the author of two New York Times best sellers. He serves on several non-profit boards, including the NBER, and those of Barclays and Under Armour. From 2007-2014, Mohammed served as CEO/co-CIO of PIMCO, which has over two trillion dollars under management. He worked at PIMCO for a total of fourteen years, and was chair of President Obama's Global Development Council. He also served two years as president and CEO of Harvard Management Company, the entity that manages Harvard’s endowment. He has been chair of the Microsoft Investment Advisory Board since 2007. He holds a master's degree and doctorate (economics) from Oxford and received his bachelor and master degrees from Cambridge University. Mohammed is expert in a lot of things when it comes to the financial markets and the macro economy, especially inflation. So he’s going to help us make sense of the madness. Is this inflation transitory or is it here to stay for a while, and if so, what should we do about it?

This week we are re-posting some of our episodes from 2021 that are most relevant right now. We’ll start with Matt Pottinger on recent developments in China. China’s borders have been sealed for almost two years. And those borders will be closed for the foreseeable future. That, obviously, is a result of the pandemic; but, is there a larger grand strategy at play? For decades now, China’s coupling with western economies has been the dominant theme of the global economic landscape - beginning with China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization. But that’s been changing. Fast forward to a speech by President Xi Jinping to mark the hundred year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. He spoke before a massive crowd in Tiananmen Square: "The Chinese people", Xi said “will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or enslave us. Anyone who tries to do so shall be battered and bloodied colliding with a great wall of steel forged by more than 1.4 billion Chinese people using flesh and blood.” Last summer, Chinese regulators announced an investigation into DiDi Global, a ride-hailing company, right after its IPO. DiDi had raised $4.4 billion in the biggest Chinese IPO in the U.S. since Alibaba’s in 2014. There have been similar moves against other Chinese companies listed in the US. Where will this go? Consider this: There are approximately 244 U.S. listed Chinese firms with a total market capitalization of around $1.8 trillion. Are we witnessing the decoupling of the US and China economies? Is this the one issue on which there seems to be a bipartisan consensus in the US? Is the Biden administration cementing the Trump policies towards China or reversing them? How is China dealing with the pandemic and how will it factor into the Chinese Communist Party’s next moves? There’s no better guest to help us understand what’s going on than Matt Pottinger. Matt covered China and lived in China as a journalist for Reuters and then The Wall Street Journal. He covered the first outbreak of SARS in China. He then, in his early 30s, made quite a career change. He enlisted in the US Marine Corps, and served in multiple combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Later on, Matt played an instrumental role in the geopolitical story of our time: reshaping the West’s relationship with China, when he served as the deputy National Security Advisor in the Trump administration, and he was the architect of the administration’s strategy towards China. Today, he is regularly called upon from policymakers on both sides of the aisle, to consult on US policy towards China. As we enter a new phase of pandemic, what is going on with the US-China relationship and how will it play out?

What about Omicron has most surprised the scientific community? What does it tell us about vaccines and where we’re heading? These are among the big questions we have for Dr. Scott Gottlieb, former Commissioner of the FDA and author of The New York Times Bestseller: “Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic”. Scott currently serves on the boards of Pfizer, Illumina, Aetion, and Tempus. He is a special partner with the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. You can order Scott Gottlieb’s book here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/uncontrolled-spread-scott-gottlieb/1139568341 And you can follow him on twitter here: @ScottGottliebMD

Russia poses a threat to Ukraine, again. But what about Russian President Putin’s threat to the unity of Europe, and what do recent developments tell us about global perceptions of America's geopolitical strength? Is Russia a declining power or is Russia on the march? Could it be both? Our guest, Richard Fontaine, is CEO of the Center for American Security. He was formerly the top foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain, deputy staff director on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and an official of the US State Department and National Security Council.

In this decade we may finally experience a true crack-up in higher education. There have been comparable periods on American college campuses in the past (in the 1960s and 1980s, for example). But our guest today, historian Niall Ferguson, believes what’s happening now is on a whole other level. Niall is doing something about it -- he’s starting a new university. Niall argues that parents -- who had enriching and intellectually diverse experiences when they went to college -- don’t fully appreciate that their own children will experience something completely different when they go off to university. Niall Ferguson has taught at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and New York University. He’s authored 17 books. He’s currently at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University where he is the MIllbank Family Senior Fellow, and Managing Director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Order Niall’s most recent book, “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe” here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/doom-niall-ferguson/1137713414 Learn more about the University of Austin here: https://www.uaustin.org/ Learn more about Greenmantle here: https://www.gmantle.com/ Email me with questions, comments and ideas at [email protected].

The first of our two-part conversation with Naill Ferguson is on applied history’s lessons of the 1920s and the 1970s...for the 2020s. Niall is a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and he previously taught at Harvard, NYU and Oxford. He’s the managing director of Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Niall is also the author of 17 books including “The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook” and “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe”.

Welcome to our new podcast, “Call Me Back”, where we try to zoom out from minute-to-minute news and look back to how we got here, what we can learn from earlier decades and where we might be going in these roaring and raging 2020s. In each episode, I’ll call a friend who is deeply immersed in some of the most transformative issues of our time. Broadly speaking, I want to focus this podcast on this decade we're in, the 2020s, because it strikes me that we’ll look back at the 2020s as one of the most consequential decades in modern history - from inflation and unprecedented fiscal and monetary policies, the technological transformation driven by AI, blockchain, and life sciences, to the rise of China and Cold War II, to declining American engagement in the Middle East and parts of Central Asia - all against the backdrop of culture wars, public safety breakdowns, and, of course, a public health crack-up as we come out of the pandemic. This podcast is a natural transition from our Post-Corona podcast, where we tried to understand larger trends being shaped and accelerated by the pandemic. No doubt, we’ll continue to delve into those topics on this new podcast, as we haven’t fully processed how profound and long-lasting some of these changes will be. We’ll also try to feature guests that can help us provide some historical context, to call us back to a previous period, where we can learn a thing or two from the past about what we’re dealing with now. Our first episode will be this week, with historian, author and daring public intellectual Niall Ferguson. Look out for it. And feel free to drop me a line with ideas for the new podcast at [email protected]

The recent electoral outcomes in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, Buffalo, Minneapolis and other areas across the country were as much to do with the pandemic -- and the economic and cultural shocks from the pandemic -- as anything. Was it a political blip or some kind of realignment? Where does the Democratic Party go from here? And what about the Republican Party? What does it mean for Joe Biden and Donald Trump? Is the Glenn Youngkin campaign a model for our future politics? Matthew Continetti is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, founding editor of The Washington Free Beacon, and a columnist for Commentary Magazine. He’s also the author of several books. He has a new book being released in April 2022, called “The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism”.

Have we revolutionized vaccine development? What does this mean for our lives and our health well beyond the vaccine for Covid-19? Could this kind of life sciences revolution only happen in America? And what about Operation Warp Speed? Is it a model for future public-private partnerships to solve big problems? Greg Zuckerman of The Wall Street Journal joins the podcast to discuss his new and fascinating book, “A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine.” Greg’s previous books include: “The Man Who Solved The Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution”, and then there was “The Greatest Trade Ever”, “The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters”, and “Rising Above: How 11 Athletes Overcame Challenges in Their Youth to Become Stars”. Greg is s a Special Writer and investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal, ​a 20-year veteran of the paper and a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb award — the highest honor in business journalism.

In the middle of the pandemic, Dr. Nicholas Christakis released a sweeping book, called “Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live”. In it, he drew on scientific, medical, and sociological research, and assessed the transmission of the virus, responses worldwide, and prognosis for the pandemic’s end, including some bold predictions. The paperback edition is just out with some new material.

During the pandemic, standardized tests were suspended in an entire range of educational institutions. Will these changes be temporary or permanent? More than 600 of these institutions switched from a mandatory to optional test for the 2020-21 application season, and many just flat out refused to accept a test at all in their application process. According to the editor in chief of the Princeton Review, “That is a tectonic change for many schools.” According to Smithsonian Magazine, “The pandemic sped up changes that were already afoot; even before Covid, more than 1,000 colleges had made the tests optional. Many had been turned off by the way the tests perpetuated socioeconomic disparities, limiting their ability to recruit a diverse freshman class.” Concerns about disparities in outcomes, at the core of this massive shift, have been behind Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s agenda in New York City, including his past efforts to eliminate the entrance exam for the City’s seven specialized high schools. While that effort has experienced a setback in the State Legislature, the fight will likely carry on by other political leaders. And more recently, the Mayor announced a plan to make sweeping changes to the gifted program in the City’s elementary schools. There are similar efforts in other cities across the country. Joining today’s conversation is Adrian Wooldridge, a longtime journalist at The Economist, where he is political editor and writes a column on British life and politics, and before that he penned the Schumpeter column on business, finance and management. He was previously the Washington bureau chief for The Economist, where he also wrote the Lexington column. Prior to his role in Washington, he was The Economist‘s West Coast correspondent, management correspondent and Britain correspondent. Adrian has written a number of books. His most recent books include “Capitalism in America: A History”, which he co-authored with Alan Greenspan, “The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It”, which he co-wrote with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News, and just out this year: “The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World”. Adrian’s most recent book has been shortlisted for The Financial Times and McKinsey Book of the Year Award. Feel free to drop us a line with questions, feedback and ideas for the new podcast at [email protected]

JASON RILEY’S BOOK: “Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell”https://m.barnesandnoble.com/w/maverick-jason-riley/1137602681?ean=9781541619685 THOMAS SOWELL’S BOOKS:https://m.barnesandnoble.com/s/Thomas%20sowell To write-in about the new podcast, please email: [email protected]

Books and essays discussed in this episode: Shall We Wake the President: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office by Tevi Troyhttps://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shall-we-wake-the-president-tevi-troy/1132107909 “Presidents and Public-Health Crises” in National Affairs by Tevi Troyhttps://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/presidents-and-public-health-crises “Operation Warp Speed: A Story Yet to be Told”by Alex Tabarrok in Marginal Revolutionhttps://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/09/operation-warp-speed-a-story-yet-to-be-told.html

On this podcast, we’ve talked to a lot of policy-makers, pundits, professionals and practitioners about big picture trends they are observing and experiencing as a result of the pandemic. Today, however, we are going more micro. We'll talk to a venture capitalist about his portfolio of start-ups, and how those companies have been impacted by changes in the way we work and live, and what they tell us. Michael Eisenberg is a General Partner at the Tel Aviv-based Aleph, which is an early stage venture capital fund with over $500M under management. Since its founding in 2013, Aleph has invested in more than 40 companies including Melio, Lemonade (NYSE: LMND), Bringg, JoyTunes, Healthy.io, Windward, Empathy and Nexar. Prior to Aleph, Michael was a General Partner at Benchmark Capital for 8 years, the legendary Silicon Valley-based VC firm, and he continues to work with Benchmark on their Israeli portfolio. Since around 1995, Michael has invested in and served on the boards of some of Israel’s leading companies and startups, such as Wix (Nasdaq: WIX), Gigya (acquired SAP), Shopping.com (Nasdaq: SHOP, acquired: EBAY), and Lemonade (NYSE: LMND). Michael is also the author of a fun and smart blog, called “Six Kids and a Full Time Job”, which covers topics ranging from politics to technology, Judaism and macroeconomics. The title of his blog is misleading because now Michael actually has 8 kids and 2 grandchildren - and he’s only at the tender age of 50! He is a frequent contributor to The Marker and Calcalist, Israel's Hebrew-language daily business newspapers. Michael has also published numerous books in Hebrew, including “The Vanishing Jew”, “Everyone can be Moses” and “Roaring Tribe”. Among other projects during the pandemic, Michael worked on translating his most recent book into English: "The Tree of Life and Prosperity: 21st Century Business Principles from the Book of Genesis”. Given his experience as a successful investor and business builder, and his deep literacy in Judaism, he’s the ideal person to tackle this subject and we’ll talk about his book in this conversation.

To find the published pieces discussed in this episode: “What the Coronavirus Crisis Reveals About American Medicine”, by Sid Mukherjee, The New Yorker (April 27, 2020) : https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/04/what-the-coronavirus-crisis-reveals-about-american-medicine For all of Sid’s pieces published in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/siddhartha-mukherjee “What We Have Gotten Right in the COVID FIGHT”, by Yuval Levin, Commentary Magazine (September 2021): https://www.commentary.org/articles/yuval-levin/americas-record-during-covid/

The Pandemic has either caused a crack-up in our politics or accelerated the crack-up that was well under way. And just when it looked like things were stabilizing, the politics of Covid have evolved along with the Delta variant. Ground zero for how this is playing out right now is California. California is home to approximately 40 million people and the 5th largest economy in the world. It’s about to have an election on whether to re-call its incumbent governor, Gavin Newsom. How California voters have experienced government regulations — from lockdowns, mask mandates, school closings, and not to mention double-standards — shapes the political environment there. Is this a harbinger of what’s to come to our national politics? To help us understand what’s going on in California is the strategist who masterminded the last successful recall election. Mike Murphy was the chief strategist for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election in 2003, which was a re-call of then-Governor Gray Davis. Mike’s campaign resumé goes well beyond California. His past clients include the successful gubernatorial campaigns of Mitt Romney in MA, Jeb Bush in FL, John Engler in Michigan and Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin. And that doesn’t include all the Senate races he’s worked on. Mike has also worked on campaigns in Europe and Canada. And he was the chief strategist on John McCain’s maverick presidential primary campaign in 2000 and remained a close advisor to the late-Senator McCain for years. Today, you can catch Mike on the top-rated podcast, “Hacks on Tap” with David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs. He’s a political analyst on MSNBC and NBC, and he co-authors a weekly newsletter with his latest political analysis: hacksontap.bulletin.com. At the University of Southern California, he is the Co-Director of the USC Center for the Political Future. This episode covers a lot of pandemic-related political trend analysis. But first, given the tragic news out of Afghanistan this past week, the episode begins with Mike’s thoughts on President Biden and this crisis. Regardless of what one thinks of President Biden’s policy in Afghanistan, a lot will depend on how our president performs in reassuring the American public and our allies abroad. This episode begins with a discussion on President Biden and Afghanistan and then the second half looks at political trends during the Delta phase of covid.

A few websites referenced in this episode:AEI's Critical Threats Project: https://www.aei.org/profile/frederick-w-kagan/Institute for the Study of War: https://www.understandingwar.org/Long War Journal: www.longwarjournal.orgA recent oped that Fred Kagan published in The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/opinion/biden-afghanistan-taliban.htmlAnd a recent column by Charles Lane in The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/17/bidens-presidency-us-foreign-policy-now-hinge-pulling-off-one-greatest-airlifts-history/

China’s borders have been sealed for well over a year now. And those borders will be closed for the foreseeable future. That, obviously, is a result of the pandemic; but, is there a larger grand strategy at play? For decades now, China’s coupling with western economies has been the dominant theme of the global economic landscape - beginning with China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization. But that’s been changing. Fast forward to a speech by President Xi Jinping to mark the hundred year anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. He spoke before a massive crowd in Tiananmen Square: "The Chinese people", Xi said “will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or enslave us. Anyone who tries to do so shall be battered and bloodied colliding with a great wall of steel forged by more than 1.4 billion Chinese people using flesh and blood.” On July 2, Chinese regulators announced an investigation into DiDi Global, a ride-hailing company, right after its IPO. DiDi had raised $4.4 billion in the biggest Chinese IPO in the U.S. since Alibaba’s in 2014. There have been similar moves against other Chinese companies listed in the US. Where will this go? Consider this: There are currently 244 U.S. listed Chinese firms with a total market capitalization of around $1.8 trillion, equivalent to some 4% of the U.S. stock market’s capitalization. Are we witnessing the decoupling of the US and China economies? Is this the one issue on which there seems to be a bipartisan consensus in the US? Is the Biden administration cementing the Trump policies towards China or reversing them? How is China dealing with the Delta variant and how will it factor into the Chinese Communist Party’s next moves? There’s no better guest to help us understand what’s going on than Matt Pottinger. Matt covered China and lived in China as a journalist for Reuters and then The Wall Street Journal. He covered the first outbreak of SARS in China. He then, in his early 30s, made quite a career change. He enlisted in the US Marine Corps, and served in multiple combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Later on, Matt played an instrumental role in the geopolitical story of our time: reshaping the West’s relationship with China, when he served as the deputy National Security Advisor in the Trump administration, and he was the architect of the administration’s strategy towards China. Today, he is regularly called upon from policymakers on both sides of the aisle, to consult on US policy towards China. As we enter a new phase of pandemic, what is going on with the US-China relationship and how will it play out?

https://www.ft.com/content/77ed35a0-cf91-4c7e-b779-a57ecc6b1045

This was supposed to be the summer that we returned to normal, here in New York City and in every major city around the world. Right? But now there’s increasing speculation that it might not happen, because of the Delta variant, and other variants that may hit us from the mutating virus. How should our government and public health leaders respond? How should we respond? We wanted to sit down with frequent Post-Corona guest John Podhoretz for a midsummer check-in on where we are with the City’s return. Specifically, we wanted to return to a topic John joined us to discuss last year - Broadway - when would Broadway really re-open, as that’s a proxy for New York’s return to its vibrant and striving pre-Corona past. John Podhoretz is the editor-in-chief of Commentary Magazine, a columnist for the New York Post, and a long-time writer about live theater, films and popular culture. He’s also a fellow New Yorker, with whom I banter with on an ongoing basis about the state of our City. Keep in mind, pre-Corona, Broadway attracted some 15 million theater-goers and close to $2 billion in revenues in a typical year. And that doesn’t even include all the other derivative jobs that are generated from millions of theater-goers attending shows each year. According to New York City’s tourism agency, in a typical year, there are 66 million visitors to NYC, generating $72B in economic activity and $7B in tax revenues. According to the organization Broadway League, close to $15 billion of that economic activity and 100,000 jobs here come from people going to shows, and visiting restaurants, hotels, transportation, and all the other local services tied to the theater experience. Lots of excitement around Springsteen having re-opened his show on Broadway, but who else? Is this pop culture economy of New York coming back? If not, is that because of structural obstacles with New York’s overall return? Or is the Delta variant the new game-changer? And what about Eric Adams - the favorite to be New York’s next mayor - what do we think of his plans to bring this City back to life? We’ll get into all these topics against the backdrop of Delta and New York.

Who do presidents, prime ministers and business leaders listen to in the midst of managing a crisis? It’s a question that’s always interested me, from my time in government and business and also as a moon-lighting student of history. I thought about that a lot during the covid pandemic. On this podcast series, we’ve talked about how the formal channels in our governments performed these past 18 months. But how about those unofficial channels from outside the government that wind up shaping our leaders' thinking and approach to world-changing events. Think about the number of informed practitioners that government leaders had access to during Covid, outside the regular bureaucracy of government. Practitioners in everything from the markets, to experience with supply chains, to the front lines of medicines. How many of these people had relationships with our leaders from a previous time in their lives, that could or should have made their mark during this moment? We are talking about a different category of presidential advisor. It’s what Gary Ginsberg calls “First Friends”, the title of his new book - the subtitle is “The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents” Gary has a fascinating background, having advised Governor Bill Clinton in his selection of Al Gore as vice-president, and served in the Clinton White House and Justice Department. He also worked for Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bewkes at Time Warner, Masa Son at Softbank and Mike Bloomberg. He informally advised Israel’s former prime minister during a tumultuous time in US-Israel relations. He’s worked with a lot of leaders up close and observed how they make decisions. Gary’s book is a compelling history of the way US presidents have relied on outside counsel in the midst of chaos. He gives us plenty to think about how our current and future leaders will navigate the next crisis, and who they should rely on.