November 27, 2025 • 49 mins
The US and China are in a "Thucydides Trap," whereby the risk of war is heightened when an established power is threatened by a rapidly rising power. This is the framework that's been popularized by Graham Allison, the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University. Professor Allison has been writing about China and the US-China relationship for decades. He's been focused on the growing odds of a violent conflict between the two powers. On this episode, he explains his work and the conditions that drive greater risk of armed conflict. He also tells us what both sides get wrong about each other, and what it will take to reduce the odds of military involvement.
More: Henry Wang on China's Role in the New Emerging World Order
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Wasn't thal Joe?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
In preparation for this conversation today, I sat down this morning.
We're recording on what is it? November twentieth, that's correct,
and I typed US China into Google news results. Here's
a selection of headlines. US Commission says China could invade
Taiwan with little advance warning, China leveraged India Pakistan conflict
(00:46):
to trial and tout its military strengths, Pacific Islands on
frontline of future US China war, and then finally the
US China Chip War. Are we ready?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I was just gonna say, I feel like the Chips
in particular, or every other day, there's a different headline
about what's allowed or what's not. But to your point,
this is the story. I mean, there's Ai, there's a
couple other things, and then the US China relationship.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Absolutely, and it seems almost inevitable at this point that
we talk about US and China in competitive terms, right
and also in militaristic terms. And this has been going
on for as long as I can remember.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
At this point, it's building up right, Like really in
the last decade. You know, when we were younger, thought oh,
we're just going to trade together and maybe they'll even
liberalize it become a liberal democracy.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
One day, it didn't happen. But in the last ten
years or nine years, it's really picked up. How much
people are framing this in military terms.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, I wrote that paper back in like two thousand
and two that China was going to invade Taiwan by
the two thousand and eight Olympics. So my view of
this might be different to yours. My view has also
been proven to be incredibly incorrect, So I'll leave it
at that. But you know, we recorded this episode with
Henry Wang a few months ago where we were talking
about US China relations and he mentioned one person, Yeah,
(02:03):
and he said, you got to get him on the show.
You got to get his perspective on this view of
US China competition and are we doomed destined to end
up in a military conflict. So here we are, We're
going to do it.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
We're in his office. Let's do it, all right.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
We have, in fact, the perfect guest. We have Professor
Graham Allison. He is the Douglas Dylan Professor of Government
at Harvard University, and he, of course is the one
who coined the term the Thucidities trap to describe the
potential outcome of US China competition. So really the perfect
person to speak to about this, Professor Allison, thank you
(02:40):
so much for coming on all thoughts.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
So I mentioned the thucidities trap, and I think a
lot of listeners will know what it is, and probably
a substantial portion of our listeners are really into ancient
Greek history and know all about it. But when you
first came up with that term, was there a light
bulb moment in your head where you thought like, this
is the way to characterize the future of US and
(03:05):
China relations.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
So thank you and answers. Yes, I think I had
actually speaker Kevin McCarthy here at the Forum event a
couple of nights ago, and he was reminding me that
when he was trying to figure out what was happening
with China, he called me up and he said, would
you give me a tutorial? I said, of course, I'd
(03:27):
be under too. We've started this conversation and his first
question when we began was what the hell is going
on here?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
That should have been my first question.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Good question.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
Basically here, every day and every way, somehow or another,
there's a story about China, threat, China, competition, China, China,
and China, I said in a word, if you're trying
to capture this from a phrase, this is a classic
lucidity and rivalry. So China is a meteoric rising power
(04:00):
never before in history as a nation risen so far,
so fast, on so many different dimensions. A country that
we couldn't even find in our review mirror at the
beginning of the century because it was so far behind us.
It's very hard to find in our rearview mirror today
because it's either beside us or ahead of us if
(04:20):
you think about arrival. So a meteoric rising power. The
US is a colossal ruling power. Never since Rome has
a country been so powerful in so many different dimensions
for such an amazing period of time. In fact, I
just have a peace. They'll be in foreign affairs next week.
On the longest piece, this is the longest period without
(04:45):
great power war since Rome eighty years. We celebrated in
September without great power war. Historically, every generation or two,
for the last few thousand years, there's been great power
or wars, so amazing, colossal ruling power who's not only
(05:05):
been good for itself, but actually good for an international piece.
So Thucydides, when he was trying to understand what the
hell was going on in ancient Greece, wrote about what
he called the rise of Athens and the fear that
this instilled in Sparta that made war virtually inevitable. So
(05:26):
think about a seesaw on a kid's playground, and one
heaviest on the one end and one lightest on the other.
And the heavy is kind of in control. I can
jiggle you if I want to, blah blah blah. Now,
all of a sudden, the light starts heavy weight, and
he gets a little bigger and a little bigger. Pretty
(05:46):
soon I'm feeling Wait a minute, I maybe I have
only one foot on the ground. Maybe maybe I'm feeling less.
So when you see this tilt of the sea saw
and the tectonics of power, this concretes a discombobulation for
both parties. The ruling party thinks, hey, wait a minute,
(06:08):
what's happening here? I used to look down on you.
Now you're looking me straight on. And maybe even so
my perspective. I used to be able to push a
button and things would happen, and now I push the
button and the things don't happen because my relative power
has changed. Psychologically, I'm accustomed to being at the top
(06:29):
of every backing order Americans. My wife says about me, wa,
wash the cosmetics off my chest, and it says, USA
is number one. Number one is who we as our identity.
If you do the television, they scan you know whatever
people hold up there, number one for their team, whatever, whatever.
So the idea that somehow somebody is challenging my position,
(06:53):
as I used to be the biggest economy. Now I've
an economy. I used to be the main trading part
of it. Yet now I used to be everything that
was made was made by us, that was made. So
as this happens, historically, we've seen over and over this
discombobulation that leads into lots of misperceptions, miscalculations, misjudgments, and unfortunately,
(07:19):
in about three quarters of the cases, this sends up
in war, often a catastrophic war. So sorry, that's a
long version.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Of that's perfect.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Sparta ended up attacking Athens, right because they were scared
of the rising power.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Well, basically what happened, I mean, it's a little more
complicated than that, but yes, basically, as the discombobulation was
occurring and Athens became more and more full of itself,
as the rising power always does, and the ruling power
become more and more fearful, then it turns out that
some third party activity in Corsera that wouldn't have mattered
(07:56):
to the two parties otherwise. So something that's otherwise incidental
or easily managed with throwing a layer of misperceptions and
miscalculations and you get there. Another wonderful example, I think
the one that's closest to what we're now seeing is
the period from nineteen hundred to nineteen fourteen that led
(08:17):
to World War One. So if you ask yourself, how
in the world could I assassinate an archsdooke in Sarajevo,
which was so inconsequential that it didn't even make the
front page of the newspapers in New York. Within five weeks,
all of Europe was caught up in a war. And
when you looked afterwards, people said how did you guys
let this happen? And as Beulau, the chancellor for Germany,
(08:42):
he said, ah, if we only knew.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
So, the rising distrust and the anxiety about status position,
it's not that it directly provides the impetus for war
per se, but that it creates the conditions such that
reserve as an incident or an and that oh, because
there's no trust, because there's all this concern. It can
be that random thing, an large duke, some people in
(09:07):
a third city.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Something happens in Taiwan, something happens here, something happens here.
And because as this seesaw is shifting as the rising
and ruling, the technonics or moving, the mis perceptions or magnified,
and miscalculations multiply, and the impact of third party incidents
(09:31):
or accents amplified, so things that would otherwise be manageable.
This is just nonsense. Let's deal with this problem. All
of a sudden, I see it as you doing something,
and then when I see that you see something, one
thing leads to the other. So if you look in
the case of Athens and Sparta Corran a city state,
(09:53):
that neither of them cared much for it. In particular
trusted at all gets involved with Era, which is now Corfu,
and there's a fear that they're going to have a
navy that will be able to challenge Athens, so that
the Athenians get more excited. So one thing leads to
the other. You get kind of a vicious cycle of
(10:14):
misperceptions and miscalculations that then all of a sudden, certain happens,
and once they something happens, oh my god, I have
to react that action and reaction, and there you get
to somewhere you don't want to go.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
We don't talk about ancient Greek history enough on this podcast,
in my opinion, but I do need to bring it
up to date. So you know, some people would argue
that China has been on the rise for decades now,
and I'm sure people have different starting points, but let's
say since the nineteen nineties, and you know, now thirty
or forty years later, we're at a point where there
(10:45):
is competitive rivalry both militarily and economically, but we haven't
had war so far. As you just noted, we've had
eighty years of peace between the great powers, which is
our good news story of the day. But why is
that and doesn't mean that you need to reconsider the
throcidian framework.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Well, again, Thucydites is very thoughtful about this. He didn't
say that there was a specific moment or point in
the story. And in the book that I wrote called
a Destined for work in the US and China, Escape
through Cynities Trap, I looked at the last five hundred
years and find sixteen incidents or sixteen cases in which
(11:28):
a rising power seriously threatens a ruling power, the World
War One being one interesting and dramatic example. So in these,
sometimes before the rising power has actually overtaken the ruling power,
something happens sometimes after. So it's that is not about
some specific moment in time. It's about a dynamic that
(11:53):
then when something happens, something happens. So if you look,
for example, at the Cold War, which is one of
the so in the sixteen cases, twelve in the war.
If you want to model for war, think World War One,
but four in the No War. So that's good news,
one of which is called Cold War. So it's called war,
(12:16):
but it's not war. It's war on every four bullets,
bombs and bullets. So in the Cold War we had
several very very close calls, for example, the Cuban missile crisis,
about which I read a book, and that if you
look at that chart over there on the wall, that's
Kennedy's doodles during the Cuban missile crisis. Thinking about the
(12:38):
choices that he's making, he thought that was between a
one and three and even chance this was end in
the nuclear war. That it ended in a nuclear war,
we would have had a couple hundred million people killed.
We wouldn't be doing this interview. So it could could
he could have happened in that insence, but it didn't.
How did it come not to happen? First, there was
some brilliant state craft, for example, to get out of
(12:59):
it so that they could otherwise there was a great,
great glob of grace and good fortune, I say, But
also there was a rivalry that went on for long
enough in which one of the parties, the Soviet Union,
ended up holloway being hollowed out by the contradictions that
(13:21):
were part of a Soviet command and control system turned
out not to be commitative of the lower So that's
how one story ended that successfully, and that could be
a possible analog for the current US China rivalry, and
which Chinese would say, we see in your divisions, in
your society and in your come up decadent of you know, whatever, whatever, whatever,
(13:46):
maybe you'll be the one.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
They perceived us as the Soviet Union.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
And we many Americans trying to tell our side of
the story, say well, they're going to be sort of
like the Soviet Union because actually they were coming us
and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
You know, obviously we look to the US Soviet relationship
for perhaps lessons from history. China feels in many ways
very different from the Soviet Union in some ways with
respect to foreign policy, you know, like I read Henry
doctor Kissinger's book on China, and he starts off by
pointing out that China has never never been particularly interested
in people beyond its borders, outside of the territorial questions, say,
(14:38):
related to Taiwan or Tibet, and even still today, it's
not obvious that China's interest with the rest of the
world expands much beyond the goods trade at all. Does
that affect your calculation the sort of internal when you
think about these statistics, the fact that yes, there are
these patterns of history, but also countries are different internally
and may have different motivations.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Absolutely, I mean a can you can take it at
the kind of level one, level two, level three, level four. Obviously,
each of the country's story is different. If you look
at Portugal and Spain, which is the first of these
sixteen cases, back of the time of Christopher Columbus, they
both were Catholic and there was a pope, and so
(15:19):
when the conflict got to the edge of a conflict,
the pupe said, I got a solution. Here's a line.
I'm gonna draw the line down here. This side is
going to be Portuguese, this side is going to be Spanish.
Then that's why people in Brazil speak Portuguese, because they
got on the Portuguese side of the line. But you
had a situation which you had a kind of a
ruling guru who could make a declaration. Unfortunately there's no
(15:44):
such person today to do that. But looking at the
Chinese cases, as you say, China's history has been one
in which historically it is wanted to be and thinks
of itself as the sun around which everything else rotates.
They've got a line about there can be only one,
you know, tiger in.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
The valley, but It's literally called the Middle Kingdom right
in the Middle Country, and.
Speaker 5 (16:08):
The Middle Kingdom was the meaning of it was the
middle between the Earth and heaven. So we're the We're
the that. But not about the Soviet not like the
Soviet Union wanting to convert everyone.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Right, China's never had a come intern.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
Fort and they haven't been trying to take over territories
of other parties other than just you know, they're in
their periphery and they haven't had an aspiration. Enry actually
has a good line about this. He said, you know
that the Americans and Chinese are very similar in that
both of us have a superiority complex, but only one
(16:45):
of us is a missionary. The other one doesn't think
people are even good enough to be Chinese, so they'd
like for you to mimic their behavior. But they don't
think you're ever going to become Chinese, and they don't
wanted you to become Chinese. I want you to rule
your country the way Chinese do. They want to They
want you to have respect, yeah, and they want to
be in their own domain. I would say that's roughly right.
(17:08):
Leak On you was the best, the most insightful China
Watcher and she China Watcher was leak On You. Leak
On You was the founder and father builder of Singapore,
and he was one of my mentors. I wrote a
little book about him. And uh Hey said about China,
this is going to be the biggest player in the
(17:29):
history of the world. It's going to be very uncomfortable
for Americans to get used to it, especially the idea
that some smaller yellow ration. There's a racial element in
the history and orever, he said. But he believed that
it was possible that the US in China could find
the way if they were smart, to share the Pacific
(17:51):
in the twenty first century. And I would say that,
you know, that would be the good news home.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
So both Joe and I did international relations, I guess
in the early two thousand, yeah, around that time, and
a line of thinking back then was that globalization was
going to save us all and we were going to
have our economies so enmeshed with each other that the
idea of going to war or military competition would just
(18:16):
be completely insane because it would mean mutual self destruction,
not with bombs, but with I don't know, consumer goods
like La booboos. So I had to throw that in there.
Do people still believe that, because on the other hand,
it seems like the central conflict between the US and
China right now is economic. But on the other hand,
(18:37):
we haven't had outright military war.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
So good to remember how the cycles go. And I
think I remember that period since I've been teaching for
a long time. The theory that somehow economic entanglement would
prevent war was a famous theory in the beginning of
the twentieth century as well. So the biggest, the best
(19:01):
selling book in the decade before World War One was
Norman Angels book I write about this actually in Destined
for War, called the Great Illusion, and he said, there's
not going to be wars anymore because the cost of
war will so greatly exceed the benefits that the winner
(19:22):
will be a loser. And if you asked Andrew Carnegie,
who was the richest man of the time in nineteen fourteen,
for the Christmas nineteen thirteen fourteen, he sent out Christmas
cards to his favorite four thousand people, who included the
pins of every state, and he said, there's not going
(19:43):
to be war anymore because now we have this.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
You know, Merry Christmas, No more war.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
Exactly, and he said, and I have built the peace
Palace at the Hague where people can go and resolve disputes,
So it's not going to be necessary to have the
fighter war. I would say that's a grand delusion. It
turned out out to be right. Now, what's right and
wrong about it? Interesting? So is it true that the
(20:08):
US and China, both financially and in terms of supply
chains and in terms of economy are so entangled today
that this should provide some counterbalance to the geopolitical and
military impulses for confrontation. Absolutely right. And this is what
(20:31):
you can see in Trump and She at their recent summit.
I mean, of the people in the current foreign policy world,
Trump is a far, far, far outlier in this respect,
in that he thinks it's possible that the US in
China can actually both be involved in such a kind
(20:53):
of economic relationship that will be beneficial to both parties. Now,
partly that's because I think he's so some of the
people who are pessimistic about this have kind of given
up on American competitiveness and thinking, you know, maybe we're
not as competitive. Trump has I think a romantic view
that the US can win, you know, every race. But
(21:15):
on the other hand, he also has a businessman's view
that's possible for people to be entangled in ways in
which they can be fierce rivals and can also be
somehow cooperating. So I've been stretching for silver linings because
there's as many, many, many things. Nothing like about true,
but I think it's conceivable if you look look at
(21:39):
see what he said after the summit, when he tweeted
at first he said it was great success for us
on a ten point scale, that was a twelve. Actually
what he understood was he came up against somebody who's
as strong and has as many cards as he does,
so you have to find a way to cooperate with him.
(21:59):
But if that's true, if the both of the parties
are searching for ways to cooperate, could this be a
stabilizer in what would otherwise be I would say yes
it could, and could it just end up in some
kind of a a So Henry, who was my other
most mentor about China, kept saying, Henry Kissinger, sorry that
(22:22):
we need a new strategic concept that's that's comprehensive enough
to encompass the fact that we're going to be the
fiercest doucinity in rivals at all times, each of us
really really does want to be number one, and it
matters in many many But at the same time we're
so entangled that we require cooperation or the other for
(22:44):
our own survival. So this sounds like a contradiction. It is,
But we managed a version of that a little bit
in the Cold War. This one's much more complicated because
the Soviet Union was never really a serious economic rival.
By the time you go to high codeor in the
Chinese case, China is media. But is there something in
(23:06):
that space? I think there is. How did this might be?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
So you mentioned that like compared to many others, Trump
is a US unto optimist and maybe even a dove
venu measures, which is a little weird given that, But
it clearly is how did this happen? Like how did
so much of the foreign policy elite in the US
over the last several years, it feel like, becomes so
(23:29):
doumor jaded, pessimistic about the prospect of peaceful coexistence.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
I think I think the main driver was structural in
the thucidityan story. Okay, so if you look at the
British in the period from nineteen hundred to nineteen fourteen.
They become to be more and more shocked by the
fact that the Germans are doing things that are supposed
to be ours. They're producing something that we're supposed to
(23:56):
be in charge of. Actually, it's interesting, and I can
describe this in the book as a famous document called
the crow cr W Memorandum. So the King of England
asks his foreign minister. He says, why is it that
we're being so nasty about the Germans? This is my cousin.
Guys are ruined.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
They literally his cousin.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
They go on vacation together in the summer, and he says,
but every time I read anything, every time I see anything,
everybody is blaming them for everything. Why is this? And
Crow explains to him the sea shock is shifting, and
as the seashell shifts, everybody's perspective is impacted and they exaggerate.
(24:39):
And this is kind of like normal. And I think
if you look at that Athens Sparta story, you can
find a very similar thing. The Athenians are doing what
they're doing, and the Spartans are talking to said, these
guys are hopeless. Look and see what they do every
day they get up and they think of some other
thing to be bishopous.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Just real quickly, if we zoom forward to World War
two in that scenario, is the US the rising power
that that Hitler was completely anxious about?
Speaker 5 (25:06):
Is that?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
How you fitted into that?
Speaker 5 (25:08):
I'll say that World War two cases a complicated one,
and they've been a good question where Hitler is attempting
to become a rising power in a situation that's already stabilized,
but then he has actually such territory. Mostly in most
of the cases, the rising powers don't have great territorial
(25:31):
or imperial aspirations in the in the in the Cold War,
in the Soviet Union, I mean, the Soviet Union did
really believe in their ideology that every country should be
ruled by a communist government and that they needed to
have a continuous expansion in order to basically legitimize their
(25:52):
own rule. Fortunately, most of most.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Cases, how much of the current tension between the US
and China, tension, discomfort, discombobulation, How much of that is
(26:21):
down to China rising as a power versus the US
declining as a power.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
I would say, in the good question, So in the
China's meta narrative, who ask Chiesian paying or when they're talking,
it's the inexorable rise of China. So there is confident
and he's just confident that they're rising into what will
be a Chinese century, as Teddy Roosevelt was if you
(26:52):
take the equivalent period in American history. But the other
component of this, which was not part of Teddy Roosevelt's,
is that the US is irreversibly declining.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
That's what she believes.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
That's what she believes. And the person who works for him,
who's is number four, and this closest idealogical person is
one Hu Ni. Now by some accident of good fortune,
have become one of their people, whom they one of
the people whom they enjoy talking to. I think mainly
because Kissinger I'm you know, his mentor or mintee, and
(27:29):
because I introduced them to Ducydities. I mean, is what
I said as the best publicity agent for a author
than ever in China, because they've sold more copies of
Thucyddy's Plopannian War in Mandarin since my book than in
(27:50):
the previous two thousand years. So in any case, one Hu
Ning is a serious thinker. He was a political scientists
in Originally he came to the US in nineteen eighty
nine on American Political Science Association fellowship or something to
(28:12):
study at the university or to be a fellow at
the university. And then he traveled all around the US
and he wrote a book that's called America Against America,
and you could go and it's in English. You can
see the English comic and it's a as the analysis
of the factors that we're going to splinter the country.
It's pretty good for the time, pretty hotel, and they
(28:33):
clearly continue thinking about that. I was there just before
the Trump She summit in Korea talking again to a
couple of people in the first circle, and they were
saying about the US. You know, the US. I mean,
here's one he was this stranger than we thought. I said,
(28:59):
what strang And she said, well, let me just let
me give you this to start that the list, he says,
New York is the city is the largest Jewish population
in the world, and they're gonna elect a Muslim mirror.
New York City is the YEMPI center of global capitalism.
(29:22):
They're gonna like somebody who's a socialist. It we're socialists.
The US is the government is providing food for one
in nine people in the US, and now they're talking
about with all theygat we used to do that, you
know when when when we had people who were poor,
(29:46):
but that we think that's one of our great achievements.
We don't. We don't hand out food and people have food.
The US is sending troops to cities. Said, we remember tenement.
Is this like tenement? This is not like you know,
the division of income has now become so great. They said,
(30:09):
you know, we saw this. This is data that two
thirds of the consumption is now by the top twenty
percent of the income owners. Well, excuse me. In most societies,
the people who were not that were being left out
with riot or you know that that would be that's
why we say we have to be a modern socialist state,
(30:32):
because they have to so you know, they're going down
all this like that. I said, what do you have
to remember is this is a strange country. It's absolutely.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Contradictions.
Speaker 5 (30:42):
Contradiction. I sometimes I kaleidoscope of contradictions, because every time
you move it it's another one. On the other hand,
it's been remarkably resilient and no other society with no
other governing system has been as successful over so long
a period of time, is this one? And then I
usually do my lines about God looks after drug so
(31:04):
children in the USA I love. But I would say
reasonable person could look at the country today and say
this looks pretty strange. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Yeah, So obviously there are the big structural questions that
will last for a long time, both China's economic rise,
US internal tensions, et cetera. But this year in particular,
Tracy started episode with all these headlines and that's daily
and Trump himself is you know, there's the contradictions within
the White House, et cetera. But just the events of
this year. Have they from today from January first to
(31:34):
today or from the inauguration today? Have your views changed?
Are you more optimistic less optimistic?
Speaker 5 (31:40):
Like?
Speaker 3 (31:40):
How what have you learned in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 5 (31:44):
That's a good question. So I would say two thirds
or eighty percent of the story is baked into the structure.
So if and as China continues rising, which I believe
it will, and growing at about twice the rate we do,
which I think it will, and advancing in technologies the
way it has been, which I think it will, even
(32:04):
though it has many many, many problems, but I think
they will manage more or less on that path, and
Americans will wake up more and more every day that
China is in your face doing something or whatever. So
that's point two in this doucentity and rivalry. Again, it's
natural for the ruling power to blame the rising power
(32:27):
for everything, and blaming China or hyping China threat or
demonizing China is kind of normal. And I would say
that Spartans were demonizing the Athenians, maybe not quite the extent.
So for Americans, we do it our way, But I
would say that that part is right. Those are the
(32:47):
negative components. While it may seem strange, especially in Cambridge,
for somebody to look for some signs of hope or
or silver linings in Trump, I think Trump understands that
nuclear war would be catastrophic and really really worries about
that in a way that the only other person in
(33:07):
the foreign policy establishment equivalent lately that has done that
was Biden, not Obama, not you know, eighty percent of
the others. So that's number one. More, he understands per
a bit. Secondly, he somehow he has this respect for she.
He admires China some of what he admires. Is there
(33:27):
autocratic rule? He says, how in the world did you
managed to rule one point five billion people with so
little objection? I wish I could manage my press the
way you do. You know, bab Baba, you've got a
lease on life. I mean, he's leader for life. Is
anybody any suggestions for me? So he admires that he
(33:49):
wants to be a great peacemaker. So I think it's
not inconceivable that we might come to have a strategic
concept that would be something like a partnership, which would
then balance. I think, will the thucydity rivalry continue in
every case? Yes? I believe it will, And will it
mean that this feeds of fear and all the things
(34:13):
that will be normal? But if it's also the case
that my survival as a country depends on a degree
of cooperation with you, so that we don't have a
nuclear war, because at the end of a nuclear war,
my country's caught, so that Hei doesn't end up ruling
us all with the two AA leaders. So could we
find so financial system in two thousand and eight, we
(34:36):
would have had the financial crisis, would have become a depression,
had it not been for a joint US China state
no trade. I mean, if we look at the rare
earth story, I mean that's what those are there?
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Yeah, okay, metal on Graham's table.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
We were going to ask, so there are a bunch
of these are mission coins?
Speaker 5 (34:55):
Is that right? These are just from from services. But
this here, see if you can separate it, these are
rare earth magnets. And you can seet careful, okay, in
any case, because we'll get it. We have become dependent
(35:16):
upon China for how many things in our supply chain,
and they fortunately depend in honice for how many things.
So part of the reason why they got the stale
made in the current. What would otherwise be? You know,
Trump's bullying another country is that he comes up against
somebody as strong as we are. So in that case
he's adapting and adjusting. No, I would say, you know,
(35:38):
if I'm looking for silver linings, I'm looking in that space.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
I hate to end on a down note, and I'm
conscious of the time and you have to run off.
But in terms of the US China cold war turning
into a hot war, what should we be looking out for?
Because as we started this conversation, every day, there's a
new headline about, you know, China's moving this naval vessel
into this particular body of water, and there's propaganda airing
(36:04):
in China that's prepping the population for an imminent Taiwanese invasion.
That sort of thing. What would you actually look for
as a warning sign.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
So I think most of the news lines that we
hear or statements from people are China hype. And you
cannot accuse China of anything today in the US without
getting a residence. So nobody, I mean, I get blamed
(36:37):
it Casley for being the China sympathizer by simply saying
what you're asserting is false. Yes, of course there's many
many things Chinese doing, but it does so. For example,
one of the favorite cluses out China has the fastest
nuclear build up in the world because they're going from
about five hundred weapons to about one thousand weapons in
(36:59):
twenty which answers, well, that's a historical statement. And if
you look at the number of warheads we went to
from in the Eisenhower period or the Kennedy period, in
both cases there were more that just happened not to
be true. Not there'll be many, many, many accusations of
that kind, and I think those will continue because so
(37:21):
China has developed a manufacturing ecosystem. It basically can produce
anything at scale that half the price that we can
well lo and behold. If you go to Walmart, sort
to home depot, half the stuff or more is made
in China. Well, people will complain about that. So that
part of seems right, But I would say that most
(37:42):
of this is just hype. Where you find danger is
where there are third parties whose initiative might in this
like the story of Coursera, produce a set of reactions,
and they're the most The leading candidate of Taiwan and
the current president of Taiwan Lie who done taking many,
many dangerous actions. I think fortunately, both in the Biden
(38:05):
administration and in the Trump administration, they've had conversations at
that leader level about not letting this person by some
irresponsible action. Dragosoptism. You know there is that the Chinese
rules of engagement in their exercises in the Straits and
in the South China Sea are now such that it's
(38:28):
not very difficult to imagine a collision of a ship
or a plane. We saw that at the beginning of
the Bush administration when they collided with one of our spyplanes,
and so could that escalate? And I think that's why
again getting back to communication channels between the two parties
(38:50):
where they can talk candidly and privately in order to
have a circuit breaker if some accident happens, which I
think on the current path would be likely to happen.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
I'm going to ask one more very quick question because
you brought up manufacturing just then, and something else that
we've been noticing lately is there's a tendency among a
lot of Western economies, especially to talk about building up
their own manufacturing capacity, including in terms of munitions and
rare earth minerals. As you just mentioned. There was a
headline I think just yesterday about the UK wanting to
(39:22):
build ammunition within its own borders instead of relying on allies.
What's the underlying motivation there, Because most people would look
at a headline like the UK wants to make its
own bullets as you know, a predecessor maybe to some
sort of military conflict.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
Well it's good. I mean it is puzzling, and there
are a lot of puzzling things. But I would say
that whenever it's pointed out that people that you're dependent
on some other party for supply of something. So for example,
for the US, rare earth magnets are required for almost everything,
(40:01):
so for cars, for iPhones, for laptops, for f thirty fives,
for comahook whistles or whatever. So how would we allow
ourselves to be dependent on China because that gives them
something that they can squeeze that supply chain and be coarse.
So I would rather be independent on that. And so
(40:24):
any politician would then make an announcement, Okay, we're declaring
they were going to be independent, asking what would be
required to be done in order to reach that stage?
People are not asking, so that would be at the
next level. Similarly, if you look, for example, for most pharmaceuticals,
most of the pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical precursors that we
(40:46):
use for any medicines come from me, the China, or
from Indian. Well maybe we should do these ourselves. Munitions
we shouldn't be giving out a So the fact that politicians,
when they see somebody says here's it been, it's your vulnerability,
declared that we're going to be independent, as I would say,
predictable if you look and see what behaviors follow from that,
(41:08):
the answer is not very many. So I'm almost thready
to accept the proposition that we're going to be inextricably
entangled in supply chains and economics, in which case some
version of mutual deterrence of the sort that we found
in the nuclear balance maybe where we end up. Now.
(41:32):
Is that a good place to be compared to the elsewhere? No,
I've read to be independent, but compared, I mean, is
that something we can manage if you have competent governments
and managing And I would say, you know, yes.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
All right, Professor Allison, thank you so much for coming
on all lots and inviting us to your office here
at Harvard. Thank you so much. Yeah, a lot to
look at to have you here.
Speaker 5 (41:57):
Glad to be on the problem. I thank you good questions,
and I'm glad to see two serious students with international there.
Speaker 6 (42:05):
We took our background and went and took final highest
praise I got, Joe.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
That was a real treat.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
It was a real treat. Just being in doctor Ellison's
office was really nice. I just I could go You've
heard me already say this, But like being a professor
at an elite American professor Tess so sick and then
like it would say, such a it's like such a
dream career they have.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
You know what bothers me is you and I both
did international relationship. Yeah, and I think we have a
similar complaint. But like that conversation that we just had
with Professor Allison was what I thought international relations was
going to be. You know, we were going to sit
there and pontificate about US China relations and then compare
it to Sparta versus Athens in ancient Greece. And instead
(43:06):
it was basically all philosophy. It was like game theory. Yeah,
I know it's and like it was so abstract, Like
I think I had entire courses where we didn't even
name a single country like by name. It was just
if country A does this, what does country be do?
Speaker 3 (43:21):
It's such a weird discipline for that reason, and as
an adult, I've tried to read some international relations books
and it's all this like weird game theory and tables
and stuff like that and just not my thing. I
think there's there's probably I know we're going off on
a little bit of a tangent here. It feels a
little bit like, you know, the same phenomenon in economics,
(43:42):
for example, Like you study economics, you're you're gonna think
about like, well, what's gonna happen to the unemployment rate,
what's gonna happen with the stock market, cetera, And then
you read academic economics, and I'm not as like, you know,
I'm like, as I've grown older, as I've matured, I'm like,
you know, I've like I appreciate academic econ more than
(44:03):
I did when I was in my youth, and I
was like, this is done with all these equations and
stuff like that. It's all fake. I don't think that
isn't much anymore, but it does feel like kind of
disconnected from like, wait, I thought economists talked about, you know,
the unemployment rate and stuff like that, and then you
read what a paper is about.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
It's very abstract.
Speaker 5 (44:20):
You're right.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
One thing that did surprise me was when the professor
was talking about his latest trip to China. Was it
his latest trip, well, one of his trips to China
where he was talking and trying to or hearing from
Chinese policymakers about how they're very confused by America and
in particular the example of capitalist New York electing a
(44:42):
socialist mayor, and I thought like, if anyone can understand
socialism with capitalistic characteristics, it must be the Chinese.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
It should be it should be very intuitive. No, I
thought that was like just overall though very I mean,
it was a little bit grim, the idea that almost
like we're kind of a borrowed time here. It's like,
it's been a really long time since a Great Powers
war by historical standards, and so it's already been a
long time. Historically, they come along work frequently, and now
(45:11):
the conditions are in place for this, you know, the
so called a Thucididy's trap as he sees it. I'm
not thrilled that in the best case scenario, for the
rest of my life, there's always going to be a
risk of that being right around the corner the moment
some third party country does something, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Well the leash the other thing. And again this goes
back to why I'm so frustrated with IR as an
academic discipline. But like the emphasis on good state craft,
good state craft makes a difference. Yeah, right, you know,
he talked about the Cuban missile crisis and JFK and
we came very very close to absolute disaster there, but
it was ultimately averted by the individual actions of human beings,
(45:54):
both in Russia and in the US. And I feel
like that's kind of what's missing in ir It's that
like emphasis on individual choice and motivations and incentives and
how to actually do good state craft rather than just
like look at everything through the prism of either neoliberalism
or realism power. Yeah, or did you ever do gender theory?
Speaker 3 (46:16):
I don't think I took that.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
There is an interesting one. The reason we had the
Cuban missile crisis is because men and large objects.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
I've but it I am really interested in this idea
that unlike the US, So he used the term I
think he said missionary sort of to characterize how the
US sees and spread democracy and liberalism and capitalism. And
of course the Soviet Union also had this impulse to
spread communism, and everywhere there was a communist party, it
(46:46):
felt some tug to back them up, and that's how
the Soviet Union got mired in Afghanistan for years and years.
China doesn't really seem to have that. It wants to trade,
I mean outside of it wants to consolidate it's physical territory.
But it does not seem you know, like, you know,
there's a great story several months ago, apparently the Cubans
(47:07):
came to China, And as for advice, I said, well,
have you tried liberalizing your economy? Have you tried basically
not being communists? Like it doesn't have that impulse the
same way the Soviet Union did, and nor does they
have it like the US does. So I'm curious, like,
as China truly becomes a global power, is a great power,
it seems fairly rare historically for it to have so
(47:28):
little interest in how other countries manage their affairs.
Speaker 6 (47:32):
Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
I enjoyed the line about, you know, like, it's not
really about getting more people to be Chinese, because it's
special to be Chinese in the first place.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
We're not good enough to be Chinese.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Yeah, all right, shall we leave it there at Chinese.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Joe, let's leave it. Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at The
Stalwart follow our Guesst Graham Allison. He's at Graham t Allison.
Follow our produce users Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman armand Dash'll
Ben at Dashbot and Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. From more odd
Loots content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots
were the daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and
you can chat about all of these topics twenty four
(48:13):
to seven with fellow listeners in our discord discord dot
gg slash od lots And.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
If you enjoy od lots, if you like it when
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And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can
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(49:02):
Stood in a
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Wasn't thal Joe?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
In preparation for this conversation today, I sat down this morning.
We're recording on what is it? November twentieth, that's correct,
and I typed US China into Google news results. Here's
a selection of headlines. US Commission says China could invade
Taiwan with little advance warning, China leveraged India Pakistan conflict
(00:46):
to trial and tout its military strengths, Pacific Islands on
frontline of future US China war, and then finally the
US China Chip War. Are we ready?
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I was just gonna say, I feel like the Chips
in particular, or every other day, there's a different headline
about what's allowed or what's not. But to your point,
this is the story. I mean, there's Ai, there's a
couple other things, and then the US China relationship.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Absolutely, and it seems almost inevitable at this point that
we talk about US and China in competitive terms, right
and also in militaristic terms. And this has been going
on for as long as I can remember.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
At this point, it's building up right, Like really in
the last decade. You know, when we were younger, thought oh,
we're just going to trade together and maybe they'll even
liberalize it become a liberal democracy.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
One day, it didn't happen. But in the last ten
years or nine years, it's really picked up. How much
people are framing this in military terms.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, I wrote that paper back in like two thousand
and two that China was going to invade Taiwan by
the two thousand and eight Olympics. So my view of
this might be different to yours. My view has also
been proven to be incredibly incorrect, So I'll leave it
at that. But you know, we recorded this episode with
Henry Wang a few months ago where we were talking
about US China relations and he mentioned one person, Yeah,
(02:03):
and he said, you got to get him on the show.
You got to get his perspective on this view of
US China competition and are we doomed destined to end
up in a military conflict. So here we are, We're
going to do it.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
We're in his office. Let's do it, all right.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
We have, in fact, the perfect guest. We have Professor
Graham Allison. He is the Douglas Dylan Professor of Government
at Harvard University, and he, of course is the one
who coined the term the Thucidities trap to describe the
potential outcome of US China competition. So really the perfect
person to speak to about this, Professor Allison, thank you
(02:40):
so much for coming on all thoughts.
Speaker 5 (02:41):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
So I mentioned the thucidities trap, and I think a
lot of listeners will know what it is, and probably
a substantial portion of our listeners are really into ancient
Greek history and know all about it. But when you
first came up with that term, was there a light
bulb moment in your head where you thought like, this
is the way to characterize the future of US and
(03:05):
China relations.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
So thank you and answers. Yes, I think I had
actually speaker Kevin McCarthy here at the Forum event a
couple of nights ago, and he was reminding me that
when he was trying to figure out what was happening
with China, he called me up and he said, would
you give me a tutorial? I said, of course, I'd
(03:27):
be under too. We've started this conversation and his first
question when we began was what the hell is going
on here?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
That should have been my first question.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
Good question.
Speaker 5 (03:37):
Basically here, every day and every way, somehow or another,
there's a story about China, threat, China, competition, China, China,
and China, I said in a word, if you're trying
to capture this from a phrase, this is a classic
lucidity and rivalry. So China is a meteoric rising power
(04:00):
never before in history as a nation risen so far,
so fast, on so many different dimensions. A country that
we couldn't even find in our review mirror at the
beginning of the century because it was so far behind us.
It's very hard to find in our rearview mirror today
because it's either beside us or ahead of us if
(04:20):
you think about arrival. So a meteoric rising power. The
US is a colossal ruling power. Never since Rome has
a country been so powerful in so many different dimensions
for such an amazing period of time. In fact, I
just have a peace. They'll be in foreign affairs next week.
On the longest piece, this is the longest period without
(04:45):
great power war since Rome eighty years. We celebrated in
September without great power war. Historically, every generation or two,
for the last few thousand years, there's been great power
or wars, so amazing, colossal ruling power who's not only
(05:05):
been good for itself, but actually good for an international piece.
So Thucydides, when he was trying to understand what the
hell was going on in ancient Greece, wrote about what
he called the rise of Athens and the fear that
this instilled in Sparta that made war virtually inevitable. So
(05:26):
think about a seesaw on a kid's playground, and one
heaviest on the one end and one lightest on the other.
And the heavy is kind of in control. I can
jiggle you if I want to, blah blah blah. Now,
all of a sudden, the light starts heavy weight, and
he gets a little bigger and a little bigger. Pretty
(05:46):
soon I'm feeling Wait a minute, I maybe I have
only one foot on the ground. Maybe maybe I'm feeling less.
So when you see this tilt of the sea saw
and the tectonics of power, this concretes a discombobulation for
both parties. The ruling party thinks, hey, wait a minute,
(06:08):
what's happening here? I used to look down on you.
Now you're looking me straight on. And maybe even so
my perspective. I used to be able to push a
button and things would happen, and now I push the
button and the things don't happen because my relative power
has changed. Psychologically, I'm accustomed to being at the top
(06:29):
of every backing order Americans. My wife says about me, wa,
wash the cosmetics off my chest, and it says, USA
is number one. Number one is who we as our identity.
If you do the television, they scan you know whatever
people hold up there, number one for their team, whatever, whatever.
So the idea that somehow somebody is challenging my position,
(06:53):
as I used to be the biggest economy. Now I've
an economy. I used to be the main trading part
of it. Yet now I used to be everything that
was made was made by us, that was made. So
as this happens, historically, we've seen over and over this
discombobulation that leads into lots of misperceptions, miscalculations, misjudgments, and unfortunately,
(07:19):
in about three quarters of the cases, this sends up
in war, often a catastrophic war. So sorry, that's a
long version.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Of that's perfect.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Sparta ended up attacking Athens, right because they were scared
of the rising power.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Well, basically what happened, I mean, it's a little more
complicated than that, but yes, basically, as the discombobulation was
occurring and Athens became more and more full of itself,
as the rising power always does, and the ruling power
become more and more fearful, then it turns out that
some third party activity in Corsera that wouldn't have mattered
(07:56):
to the two parties otherwise. So something that's otherwise incidental
or easily managed with throwing a layer of misperceptions and
miscalculations and you get there. Another wonderful example, I think
the one that's closest to what we're now seeing is
the period from nineteen hundred to nineteen fourteen that led
(08:17):
to World War One. So if you ask yourself, how
in the world could I assassinate an archsdooke in Sarajevo,
which was so inconsequential that it didn't even make the
front page of the newspapers in New York. Within five weeks,
all of Europe was caught up in a war. And
when you looked afterwards, people said how did you guys
let this happen? And as Beulau, the chancellor for Germany,
(08:42):
he said, ah, if we only knew.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
So, the rising distrust and the anxiety about status position,
it's not that it directly provides the impetus for war
per se, but that it creates the conditions such that
reserve as an incident or an and that oh, because
there's no trust, because there's all this concern. It can
be that random thing, an large duke, some people in
(09:07):
a third city.
Speaker 5 (09:08):
Something happens in Taiwan, something happens here, something happens here.
And because as this seesaw is shifting as the rising
and ruling, the technonics or moving, the mis perceptions or magnified,
and miscalculations multiply, and the impact of third party incidents
(09:31):
or accents amplified, so things that would otherwise be manageable.
This is just nonsense. Let's deal with this problem. All
of a sudden, I see it as you doing something,
and then when I see that you see something, one
thing leads to the other. So if you look in
the case of Athens and Sparta Corran a city state,
(09:53):
that neither of them cared much for it. In particular
trusted at all gets involved with Era, which is now Corfu,
and there's a fear that they're going to have a
navy that will be able to challenge Athens, so that
the Athenians get more excited. So one thing leads to
the other. You get kind of a vicious cycle of
(10:14):
misperceptions and miscalculations that then all of a sudden, certain happens,
and once they something happens, oh my god, I have
to react that action and reaction, and there you get
to somewhere you don't want to go.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
We don't talk about ancient Greek history enough on this podcast,
in my opinion, but I do need to bring it
up to date. So you know, some people would argue
that China has been on the rise for decades now,
and I'm sure people have different starting points, but let's
say since the nineteen nineties, and you know, now thirty
or forty years later, we're at a point where there
(10:45):
is competitive rivalry both militarily and economically, but we haven't
had war so far. As you just noted, we've had
eighty years of peace between the great powers, which is
our good news story of the day. But why is
that and doesn't mean that you need to reconsider the
throcidian framework.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
Well, again, Thucydites is very thoughtful about this. He didn't
say that there was a specific moment or point in
the story. And in the book that I wrote called
a Destined for work in the US and China, Escape
through Cynities Trap, I looked at the last five hundred
years and find sixteen incidents or sixteen cases in which
(11:28):
a rising power seriously threatens a ruling power, the World
War One being one interesting and dramatic example. So in these,
sometimes before the rising power has actually overtaken the ruling power,
something happens sometimes after. So it's that is not about
some specific moment in time. It's about a dynamic that
(11:53):
then when something happens, something happens. So if you look,
for example, at the Cold War, which is one of
the so in the sixteen cases, twelve in the war.
If you want to model for war, think World War One,
but four in the No War. So that's good news,
one of which is called Cold War. So it's called war,
(12:16):
but it's not war. It's war on every four bullets,
bombs and bullets. So in the Cold War we had
several very very close calls, for example, the Cuban missile crisis,
about which I read a book, and that if you
look at that chart over there on the wall, that's
Kennedy's doodles during the Cuban missile crisis. Thinking about the
(12:38):
choices that he's making, he thought that was between a
one and three and even chance this was end in
the nuclear war. That it ended in a nuclear war,
we would have had a couple hundred million people killed.
We wouldn't be doing this interview. So it could could
he could have happened in that insence, but it didn't.
How did it come not to happen? First, there was
some brilliant state craft, for example, to get out of
(12:59):
it so that they could otherwise there was a great,
great glob of grace and good fortune, I say, But
also there was a rivalry that went on for long
enough in which one of the parties, the Soviet Union,
ended up holloway being hollowed out by the contradictions that
(13:21):
were part of a Soviet command and control system turned
out not to be commitative of the lower So that's
how one story ended that successfully, and that could be
a possible analog for the current US China rivalry, and
which Chinese would say, we see in your divisions, in
your society and in your come up decadent of you know, whatever, whatever, whatever,
(13:46):
maybe you'll be the one.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
They perceived us as the Soviet Union.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
And we many Americans trying to tell our side of
the story, say well, they're going to be sort of
like the Soviet Union because actually they were coming us
and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
You know, obviously we look to the US Soviet relationship
for perhaps lessons from history. China feels in many ways
very different from the Soviet Union in some ways with
respect to foreign policy, you know, like I read Henry
doctor Kissinger's book on China, and he starts off by
pointing out that China has never never been particularly interested
in people beyond its borders, outside of the territorial questions, say,
(14:38):
related to Taiwan or Tibet, and even still today, it's
not obvious that China's interest with the rest of the
world expands much beyond the goods trade at all. Does
that affect your calculation the sort of internal when you
think about these statistics, the fact that yes, there are
these patterns of history, but also countries are different internally
and may have different motivations.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Absolutely, I mean a can you can take it at
the kind of level one, level two, level three, level four. Obviously,
each of the country's story is different. If you look
at Portugal and Spain, which is the first of these
sixteen cases, back of the time of Christopher Columbus, they
both were Catholic and there was a pope, and so
(15:19):
when the conflict got to the edge of a conflict,
the pupe said, I got a solution. Here's a line.
I'm gonna draw the line down here. This side is
going to be Portuguese, this side is going to be Spanish.
Then that's why people in Brazil speak Portuguese, because they
got on the Portuguese side of the line. But you
had a situation which you had a kind of a
ruling guru who could make a declaration. Unfortunately there's no
(15:44):
such person today to do that. But looking at the
Chinese cases, as you say, China's history has been one
in which historically it is wanted to be and thinks
of itself as the sun around which everything else rotates.
They've got a line about there can be only one,
you know, tiger in.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
The valley, but It's literally called the Middle Kingdom right
in the Middle Country, and.
Speaker 5 (16:08):
The Middle Kingdom was the meaning of it was the
middle between the Earth and heaven. So we're the We're
the that. But not about the Soviet not like the
Soviet Union wanting to convert everyone.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Right, China's never had a come intern.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
Fort and they haven't been trying to take over territories
of other parties other than just you know, they're in
their periphery and they haven't had an aspiration. Enry actually
has a good line about this. He said, you know
that the Americans and Chinese are very similar in that
both of us have a superiority complex, but only one
(16:45):
of us is a missionary. The other one doesn't think
people are even good enough to be Chinese, so they'd
like for you to mimic their behavior. But they don't
think you're ever going to become Chinese, and they don't
wanted you to become Chinese. I want you to rule
your country the way Chinese do. They want to They
want you to have respect, yeah, and they want to
be in their own domain. I would say that's roughly right.
(17:08):
Leak On you was the best, the most insightful China
Watcher and she China Watcher was leak On You. Leak
On You was the founder and father builder of Singapore,
and he was one of my mentors. I wrote a
little book about him. And uh Hey said about China,
this is going to be the biggest player in the
(17:29):
history of the world. It's going to be very uncomfortable
for Americans to get used to it, especially the idea
that some smaller yellow ration. There's a racial element in
the history and orever, he said. But he believed that
it was possible that the US in China could find
the way if they were smart, to share the Pacific
(17:51):
in the twenty first century. And I would say that,
you know, that would be the good news home.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
So both Joe and I did international relations, I guess
in the early two thousand, yeah, around that time, and
a line of thinking back then was that globalization was
going to save us all and we were going to
have our economies so enmeshed with each other that the
idea of going to war or military competition would just
(18:16):
be completely insane because it would mean mutual self destruction,
not with bombs, but with I don't know, consumer goods
like La booboos. So I had to throw that in there.
Do people still believe that, because on the other hand,
it seems like the central conflict between the US and
China right now is economic. But on the other hand,
(18:37):
we haven't had outright military war.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
So good to remember how the cycles go. And I
think I remember that period since I've been teaching for
a long time. The theory that somehow economic entanglement would
prevent war was a famous theory in the beginning of
the twentieth century as well. So the biggest, the best
(19:01):
selling book in the decade before World War One was
Norman Angels book I write about this actually in Destined
for War, called the Great Illusion, and he said, there's
not going to be wars anymore because the cost of
war will so greatly exceed the benefits that the winner
(19:22):
will be a loser. And if you asked Andrew Carnegie,
who was the richest man of the time in nineteen fourteen,
for the Christmas nineteen thirteen fourteen, he sent out Christmas
cards to his favorite four thousand people, who included the
pins of every state, and he said, there's not going
(19:43):
to be war anymore because now we have this.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
You know, Merry Christmas, No more war.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
Exactly, and he said, and I have built the peace
Palace at the Hague where people can go and resolve disputes,
So it's not going to be necessary to have the
fighter war. I would say that's a grand delusion. It
turned out out to be right. Now, what's right and
wrong about it? Interesting? So is it true that the
(20:08):
US and China, both financially and in terms of supply
chains and in terms of economy are so entangled today
that this should provide some counterbalance to the geopolitical and
military impulses for confrontation. Absolutely right. And this is what
(20:31):
you can see in Trump and She at their recent summit.
I mean, of the people in the current foreign policy world,
Trump is a far, far, far outlier in this respect,
in that he thinks it's possible that the US in
China can actually both be involved in such a kind
(20:53):
of economic relationship that will be beneficial to both parties. Now,
partly that's because I think he's so some of the
people who are pessimistic about this have kind of given
up on American competitiveness and thinking, you know, maybe we're
not as competitive. Trump has I think a romantic view
that the US can win, you know, every race. But
(21:15):
on the other hand, he also has a businessman's view
that's possible for people to be entangled in ways in
which they can be fierce rivals and can also be
somehow cooperating. So I've been stretching for silver linings because
there's as many, many, many things. Nothing like about true,
but I think it's conceivable if you look look at
(21:39):
see what he said after the summit, when he tweeted
at first he said it was great success for us
on a ten point scale, that was a twelve. Actually
what he understood was he came up against somebody who's
as strong and has as many cards as he does,
so you have to find a way to cooperate with him.
(21:59):
But if that's true, if the both of the parties
are searching for ways to cooperate, could this be a
stabilizer in what would otherwise be I would say yes
it could, and could it just end up in some
kind of a a So Henry, who was my other
most mentor about China, kept saying, Henry Kissinger, sorry that
(22:22):
we need a new strategic concept that's that's comprehensive enough
to encompass the fact that we're going to be the
fiercest doucinity in rivals at all times, each of us
really really does want to be number one, and it
matters in many many But at the same time we're
so entangled that we require cooperation or the other for
(22:44):
our own survival. So this sounds like a contradiction. It is,
But we managed a version of that a little bit
in the Cold War. This one's much more complicated because
the Soviet Union was never really a serious economic rival.
By the time you go to high codeor in the
Chinese case, China is media. But is there something in
(23:06):
that space? I think there is. How did this might be?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
So you mentioned that like compared to many others, Trump
is a US unto optimist and maybe even a dove
venu measures, which is a little weird given that, But
it clearly is how did this happen? Like how did
so much of the foreign policy elite in the US
over the last several years, it feel like, becomes so
(23:29):
doumor jaded, pessimistic about the prospect of peaceful coexistence.
Speaker 5 (23:34):
I think I think the main driver was structural in
the thucidityan story. Okay, so if you look at the
British in the period from nineteen hundred to nineteen fourteen.
They become to be more and more shocked by the
fact that the Germans are doing things that are supposed
to be ours. They're producing something that we're supposed to
(23:56):
be in charge of. Actually, it's interesting, and I can
describe this in the book as a famous document called
the crow cr W Memorandum. So the King of England
asks his foreign minister. He says, why is it that
we're being so nasty about the Germans? This is my cousin.
Guys are ruined.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
They literally his cousin.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
They go on vacation together in the summer, and he says,
but every time I read anything, every time I see anything,
everybody is blaming them for everything. Why is this? And
Crow explains to him the sea shock is shifting, and
as the seashell shifts, everybody's perspective is impacted and they exaggerate.
(24:39):
And this is kind of like normal. And I think
if you look at that Athens Sparta story, you can
find a very similar thing. The Athenians are doing what
they're doing, and the Spartans are talking to said, these
guys are hopeless. Look and see what they do every
day they get up and they think of some other
thing to be bishopous.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Just real quickly, if we zoom forward to World War
two in that scenario, is the US the rising power
that that Hitler was completely anxious about?
Speaker 5 (25:06):
Is that?
Speaker 3 (25:06):
How you fitted into that?
Speaker 5 (25:08):
I'll say that World War two cases a complicated one,
and they've been a good question where Hitler is attempting
to become a rising power in a situation that's already stabilized,
but then he has actually such territory. Mostly in most
of the cases, the rising powers don't have great territorial
(25:31):
or imperial aspirations in the in the in the Cold War,
in the Soviet Union, I mean, the Soviet Union did
really believe in their ideology that every country should be
ruled by a communist government and that they needed to
have a continuous expansion in order to basically legitimize their
(25:52):
own rule. Fortunately, most of most.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Cases, how much of the current tension between the US
and China, tension, discomfort, discombobulation, How much of that is
(26:21):
down to China rising as a power versus the US
declining as a power.
Speaker 5 (26:28):
I would say, in the good question, So in the
China's meta narrative, who ask Chiesian paying or when they're talking,
it's the inexorable rise of China. So there is confident
and he's just confident that they're rising into what will
be a Chinese century, as Teddy Roosevelt was if you
(26:52):
take the equivalent period in American history. But the other
component of this, which was not part of Teddy Roosevelt's,
is that the US is irreversibly declining.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
That's what she believes.
Speaker 5 (27:04):
That's what she believes. And the person who works for him,
who's is number four, and this closest idealogical person is
one Hu Ni. Now by some accident of good fortune,
have become one of their people, whom they one of
the people whom they enjoy talking to. I think mainly
because Kissinger I'm you know, his mentor or mintee, and
(27:29):
because I introduced them to Ducydities. I mean, is what
I said as the best publicity agent for a author
than ever in China, because they've sold more copies of
Thucyddy's Plopannian War in Mandarin since my book than in
(27:50):
the previous two thousand years. So in any case, one Hu
Ning is a serious thinker. He was a political scientists
in Originally he came to the US in nineteen eighty
nine on American Political Science Association fellowship or something to
(28:12):
study at the university or to be a fellow at
the university. And then he traveled all around the US
and he wrote a book that's called America Against America,
and you could go and it's in English. You can
see the English comic and it's a as the analysis
of the factors that we're going to splinter the country.
It's pretty good for the time, pretty hotel, and they
(28:33):
clearly continue thinking about that. I was there just before
the Trump She summit in Korea talking again to a
couple of people in the first circle, and they were
saying about the US. You know, the US. I mean,
here's one he was this stranger than we thought. I said,
(28:59):
what strang And she said, well, let me just let
me give you this to start that the list, he says,
New York is the city is the largest Jewish population
in the world, and they're gonna elect a Muslim mirror.
New York City is the YEMPI center of global capitalism.
(29:22):
They're gonna like somebody who's a socialist. It we're socialists.
The US is the government is providing food for one
in nine people in the US, and now they're talking
about with all theygat we used to do that, you
know when when when we had people who were poor,
(29:46):
but that we think that's one of our great achievements.
We don't. We don't hand out food and people have food.
The US is sending troops to cities. Said, we remember tenement.
Is this like tenement? This is not like you know,
the division of income has now become so great. They said,
(30:09):
you know, we saw this. This is data that two
thirds of the consumption is now by the top twenty
percent of the income owners. Well, excuse me. In most societies,
the people who were not that were being left out
with riot or you know that that would be that's
why we say we have to be a modern socialist state,
(30:32):
because they have to so you know, they're going down
all this like that. I said, what do you have
to remember is this is a strange country. It's absolutely.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Contradictions.
Speaker 5 (30:42):
Contradiction. I sometimes I kaleidoscope of contradictions, because every time
you move it it's another one. On the other hand,
it's been remarkably resilient and no other society with no
other governing system has been as successful over so long
a period of time, is this one? And then I
usually do my lines about God looks after drug so
(31:04):
children in the USA I love. But I would say
reasonable person could look at the country today and say
this looks pretty strange. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Yeah, So obviously there are the big structural questions that
will last for a long time, both China's economic rise,
US internal tensions, et cetera. But this year in particular,
Tracy started episode with all these headlines and that's daily
and Trump himself is you know, there's the contradictions within
the White House, et cetera. But just the events of
this year. Have they from today from January first to
(31:34):
today or from the inauguration today? Have your views changed?
Are you more optimistic less optimistic?
Speaker 5 (31:40):
Like?
Speaker 3 (31:40):
How what have you learned in twenty twenty five?
Speaker 5 (31:44):
That's a good question. So I would say two thirds
or eighty percent of the story is baked into the structure.
So if and as China continues rising, which I believe
it will, and growing at about twice the rate we do,
which I think it will, and advancing in technologies the
way it has been, which I think it will, even
(32:04):
though it has many many, many problems, but I think
they will manage more or less on that path, and
Americans will wake up more and more every day that
China is in your face doing something or whatever. So
that's point two in this doucentity and rivalry. Again, it's
natural for the ruling power to blame the rising power
(32:27):
for everything, and blaming China or hyping China threat or
demonizing China is kind of normal. And I would say
that Spartans were demonizing the Athenians, maybe not quite the extent.
So for Americans, we do it our way, But I
would say that that part is right. Those are the
(32:47):
negative components. While it may seem strange, especially in Cambridge,
for somebody to look for some signs of hope or
or silver linings in Trump, I think Trump understands that
nuclear war would be catastrophic and really really worries about
that in a way that the only other person in
(33:07):
the foreign policy establishment equivalent lately that has done that
was Biden, not Obama, not you know, eighty percent of
the others. So that's number one. More, he understands per
a bit. Secondly, he somehow he has this respect for she.
He admires China some of what he admires. Is there
(33:27):
autocratic rule? He says, how in the world did you
managed to rule one point five billion people with so
little objection? I wish I could manage my press the
way you do. You know, bab Baba, you've got a
lease on life. I mean, he's leader for life. Is
anybody any suggestions for me? So he admires that he
(33:49):
wants to be a great peacemaker. So I think it's
not inconceivable that we might come to have a strategic
concept that would be something like a partnership, which would
then balance. I think, will the thucydity rivalry continue in
every case? Yes? I believe it will, And will it
mean that this feeds of fear and all the things
(34:13):
that will be normal? But if it's also the case
that my survival as a country depends on a degree
of cooperation with you, so that we don't have a
nuclear war, because at the end of a nuclear war,
my country's caught, so that Hei doesn't end up ruling
us all with the two AA leaders. So could we
find so financial system in two thousand and eight, we
(34:36):
would have had the financial crisis, would have become a depression,
had it not been for a joint US China state
no trade. I mean, if we look at the rare
earth story, I mean that's what those are there?
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Yeah, okay, metal on Graham's table.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
We were going to ask, so there are a bunch
of these are mission coins?
Speaker 5 (34:55):
Is that right? These are just from from services. But
this here, see if you can separate it, these are
rare earth magnets. And you can seet careful, okay, in
any case, because we'll get it. We have become dependent
(35:16):
upon China for how many things in our supply chain,
and they fortunately depend in honice for how many things.
So part of the reason why they got the stale
made in the current. What would otherwise be? You know,
Trump's bullying another country is that he comes up against
somebody as strong as we are. So in that case
he's adapting and adjusting. No, I would say, you know,
(35:38):
if I'm looking for silver linings, I'm looking in that space.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
I hate to end on a down note, and I'm
conscious of the time and you have to run off.
But in terms of the US China cold war turning
into a hot war, what should we be looking out for?
Because as we started this conversation, every day, there's a
new headline about, you know, China's moving this naval vessel
into this particular body of water, and there's propaganda airing
(36:04):
in China that's prepping the population for an imminent Taiwanese invasion.
That sort of thing. What would you actually look for
as a warning sign.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
So I think most of the news lines that we
hear or statements from people are China hype. And you
cannot accuse China of anything today in the US without
getting a residence. So nobody, I mean, I get blamed
(36:37):
it Casley for being the China sympathizer by simply saying
what you're asserting is false. Yes, of course there's many
many things Chinese doing, but it does so. For example,
one of the favorite cluses out China has the fastest
nuclear build up in the world because they're going from
about five hundred weapons to about one thousand weapons in
(36:59):
twenty which answers, well, that's a historical statement. And if
you look at the number of warheads we went to
from in the Eisenhower period or the Kennedy period, in
both cases there were more that just happened not to
be true. Not there'll be many, many, many accusations of
that kind, and I think those will continue because so
(37:21):
China has developed a manufacturing ecosystem. It basically can produce
anything at scale that half the price that we can
well lo and behold. If you go to Walmart, sort
to home depot, half the stuff or more is made
in China. Well, people will complain about that. So that
part of seems right, But I would say that most
(37:42):
of this is just hype. Where you find danger is
where there are third parties whose initiative might in this
like the story of Coursera, produce a set of reactions,
and they're the most The leading candidate of Taiwan and
the current president of Taiwan Lie who done taking many,
many dangerous actions. I think fortunately, both in the Biden
(38:05):
administration and in the Trump administration, they've had conversations at
that leader level about not letting this person by some
irresponsible action. Dragosoptism. You know there is that the Chinese
rules of engagement in their exercises in the Straits and
in the South China Sea are now such that it's
(38:28):
not very difficult to imagine a collision of a ship
or a plane. We saw that at the beginning of
the Bush administration when they collided with one of our spyplanes,
and so could that escalate? And I think that's why
again getting back to communication channels between the two parties
(38:50):
where they can talk candidly and privately in order to
have a circuit breaker if some accident happens, which I
think on the current path would be likely to happen.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
I'm going to ask one more very quick question because
you brought up manufacturing just then, and something else that
we've been noticing lately is there's a tendency among a
lot of Western economies, especially to talk about building up
their own manufacturing capacity, including in terms of munitions and
rare earth minerals. As you just mentioned. There was a
headline I think just yesterday about the UK wanting to
(39:22):
build ammunition within its own borders instead of relying on allies.
What's the underlying motivation there, Because most people would look
at a headline like the UK wants to make its
own bullets as you know, a predecessor maybe to some
sort of military conflict.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
Well it's good. I mean it is puzzling, and there
are a lot of puzzling things. But I would say
that whenever it's pointed out that people that you're dependent
on some other party for supply of something. So for example,
for the US, rare earth magnets are required for almost everything,
(40:01):
so for cars, for iPhones, for laptops, for f thirty fives,
for comahook whistles or whatever. So how would we allow
ourselves to be dependent on China because that gives them
something that they can squeeze that supply chain and be coarse.
So I would rather be independent on that. And so
(40:24):
any politician would then make an announcement, Okay, we're declaring
they were going to be independent, asking what would be
required to be done in order to reach that stage?
People are not asking, so that would be at the
next level. Similarly, if you look, for example, for most pharmaceuticals,
most of the pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical precursors that we
(40:46):
use for any medicines come from me, the China, or
from Indian. Well maybe we should do these ourselves. Munitions
we shouldn't be giving out a So the fact that politicians,
when they see somebody says here's it been, it's your vulnerability,
declared that we're going to be independent, as I would say,
predictable if you look and see what behaviors follow from that,
(41:08):
the answer is not very many. So I'm almost thready
to accept the proposition that we're going to be inextricably
entangled in supply chains and economics, in which case some
version of mutual deterrence of the sort that we found
in the nuclear balance maybe where we end up. Now.
(41:32):
Is that a good place to be compared to the elsewhere? No,
I've read to be independent, but compared, I mean, is
that something we can manage if you have competent governments
and managing And I would say, you know, yes.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
All right, Professor Allison, thank you so much for coming
on all lots and inviting us to your office here
at Harvard. Thank you so much. Yeah, a lot to
look at to have you here.
Speaker 5 (41:57):
Glad to be on the problem. I thank you good questions,
and I'm glad to see two serious students with international there.
Speaker 6 (42:05):
We took our background and went and took final highest
praise I got, Joe.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
That was a real treat.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
It was a real treat. Just being in doctor Ellison's
office was really nice. I just I could go You've
heard me already say this, But like being a professor
at an elite American professor Tess so sick and then
like it would say, such a it's like such a
dream career they have.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
You know what bothers me is you and I both
did international relationship. Yeah, and I think we have a
similar complaint. But like that conversation that we just had
with Professor Allison was what I thought international relations was
going to be. You know, we were going to sit
there and pontificate about US China relations and then compare
it to Sparta versus Athens in ancient Greece. And instead
(43:06):
it was basically all philosophy. It was like game theory. Yeah,
I know it's and like it was so abstract, Like
I think I had entire courses where we didn't even
name a single country like by name. It was just
if country A does this, what does country be do?
Speaker 3 (43:21):
It's such a weird discipline for that reason, and as
an adult, I've tried to read some international relations books
and it's all this like weird game theory and tables
and stuff like that and just not my thing. I
think there's there's probably I know we're going off on
a little bit of a tangent here. It feels a
little bit like, you know, the same phenomenon in economics,
(43:42):
for example, Like you study economics, you're you're gonna think
about like, well, what's gonna happen to the unemployment rate,
what's gonna happen with the stock market, cetera, And then
you read academic economics, and I'm not as like, you know,
I'm like, as I've grown older, as I've matured, I'm like,
you know, I've like I appreciate academic econ more than
(44:03):
I did when I was in my youth, and I
was like, this is done with all these equations and
stuff like that. It's all fake. I don't think that
isn't much anymore, but it does feel like kind of
disconnected from like, wait, I thought economists talked about, you know,
the unemployment rate and stuff like that, and then you
read what a paper is about.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
It's very abstract.
Speaker 5 (44:20):
You're right.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
One thing that did surprise me was when the professor
was talking about his latest trip to China. Was it
his latest trip, well, one of his trips to China
where he was talking and trying to or hearing from
Chinese policymakers about how they're very confused by America and
in particular the example of capitalist New York electing a
(44:42):
socialist mayor, and I thought like, if anyone can understand
socialism with capitalistic characteristics, it must be the Chinese.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
It should be it should be very intuitive. No, I
thought that was like just overall though very I mean,
it was a little bit grim, the idea that almost
like we're kind of a borrowed time here. It's like,
it's been a really long time since a Great Powers
war by historical standards, and so it's already been a
long time. Historically, they come along work frequently, and now
(45:11):
the conditions are in place for this, you know, the
so called a Thucididy's trap as he sees it. I'm
not thrilled that in the best case scenario, for the
rest of my life, there's always going to be a
risk of that being right around the corner the moment
some third party country does something, you know.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Well the leash the other thing. And again this goes
back to why I'm so frustrated with IR as an
academic discipline. But like the emphasis on good state craft,
good state craft makes a difference. Yeah, right, you know,
he talked about the Cuban missile crisis and JFK and
we came very very close to absolute disaster there, but
it was ultimately averted by the individual actions of human beings,
(45:54):
both in Russia and in the US. And I feel
like that's kind of what's missing in ir It's that
like emphasis on individual choice and motivations and incentives and
how to actually do good state craft rather than just
like look at everything through the prism of either neoliberalism
or realism power. Yeah, or did you ever do gender theory?
Speaker 3 (46:16):
I don't think I took that.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
There is an interesting one. The reason we had the
Cuban missile crisis is because men and large objects.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
I've but it I am really interested in this idea
that unlike the US, So he used the term I
think he said missionary sort of to characterize how the
US sees and spread democracy and liberalism and capitalism. And
of course the Soviet Union also had this impulse to
spread communism, and everywhere there was a communist party, it
(46:46):
felt some tug to back them up, and that's how
the Soviet Union got mired in Afghanistan for years and years.
China doesn't really seem to have that. It wants to trade,
I mean outside of it wants to consolidate it's physical territory.
But it does not seem you know, like, you know,
there's a great story several months ago, apparently the Cubans
(47:07):
came to China, And as for advice, I said, well,
have you tried liberalizing your economy? Have you tried basically
not being communists? Like it doesn't have that impulse the
same way the Soviet Union did, and nor does they
have it like the US does. So I'm curious, like,
as China truly becomes a global power, is a great power,
it seems fairly rare historically for it to have so
(47:28):
little interest in how other countries manage their affairs.
Speaker 6 (47:32):
Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
I enjoyed the line about, you know, like, it's not
really about getting more people to be Chinese, because it's
special to be Chinese in the first place.
Speaker 3 (47:41):
We're not good enough to be Chinese.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Yeah, all right, shall we leave it there at Chinese.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
Joe, let's leave it. Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3 (47:52):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at The
Stalwart follow our Guesst Graham Allison. He's at Graham t Allison.
Follow our produce users Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman armand Dash'll
Ben at Dashbot and Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. From more odd
Loots content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots
were the daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and
you can chat about all of these topics twenty four
(48:13):
to seven with fellow listeners in our discord discord dot
gg slash od lots And.
Speaker 2 (48:18):
If you enjoy od lots, if you like it when
we travel to Boston to interview Harvard professors, then please
leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can
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(49:02):
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Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
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