This guy says exactly what (certain) Americans want to hear, so he's very popular. But, like his audience, he's swimming in a ocean of misinformation.
It is true that America has no immediate physical threats, that it has vast tracts of incredibly fertile land, that its demographics are healthier than nearly all of the developed world’s, and that its gigantic landmass makes it easier to build out solar and wind power capabilities.
If you want decent coverage in English, the BBC and the Guardian are better, though not without blind spots.
Which seems nonsensical considering their readership is strongly correlated with the subset of Americans who think we should do things like Western Europe. I'm sure they have metrics and have A/B tested it but still, seems weird...
In a somewhat myopic way. Social security is great, but laïcité is bad. Scandinavians can do nothing bad, but the rest of Europe is a big mess. Free speech (as it is seen in the US) is a fundamental right, but not for those who criticise organised religion (like those European blasphemers).
Reports of anything in places like Germany, France, Spain, or Italy is always ambivalent.
From my experience this reflects the majority point of view in American liberals.
You think American liberals want to silence critics of organized religion? Have you met a liberal?
His talks are surely interesting.
This lends his argument more credence in my mind, not less.
Also he's clearly speaking in generalities as a rhetorical device. Obviously China can do "some" high-end chip work, and obviously not all cell phone and laptop chips are made in the US. But he is correct that the high end IP and design work is US-centric, with a decent chunk of manufacturing as Intel maintains US fabs.
It's the same as if I said "France doesn't produce oil, all the world's important oil supplies come from the Persian Gulf nations!". That's technically wrong, as France is currently world's 72nd largest oil producer (https://www.worldometers.info/oil/france-oil/) and the US/Russia/North Sea/others are a large chunk of global markets. But it is correct in that the world writ large cannot function without middle eastern oil, whereas it can function without French oil.
The reason the US doesn't build low-end chips at scale is economics. The reason China doesn't build high-end chips at scale is capability.
Does it matter though? Sure, China might be three or four years behind the bleeding edge, but does that gap actually make as much of a difference as Zeihan thinks it will? If you replaced all my electronics with an equivalent that was five years older I would be mildly inconvenienced but my life wouldn't change at all.
He also ignores some pretty big things. Like I've read all his books and watched probably twenty hours of his talks and not once has he brought up the fact that American Millennials and Gen z-ers are not having children.
I don't know what talks you've seen or if you've read his latest book, he's brought up quite a bit that Gen-Z is tiny, and that American Millenials only buy the US an extra few decades, and that current millennial fertility rate is extremely low (I've only seen this last point on more recent podcasts, to be fair). We don't get to escape mass-aging, we just get to watch the rest of the developed world go first and hopefully gain better position/draw some lessons on what to do about it.
I don't see how. Has 5G changed anything at all? People today are using their smartphones with 300mbit 5G connections for the exact same things they were using them for with 30mbit 4G connections and largely the same things they were using 3mbit 3G connections for. What's changed since 2012? Do you use your smartphone any differently than you did a decade ago?
https://www.spiceworks.com/tech/networking/articles/lte-vs-f...
What? Multiplayer VR does not require that much bandwidth.
efficient, reliable
To me this is where 5G is worse than useless. The advent of 5G means companies have effectively stopped expanding 4G networks. The places I go with no data connectivity are exactly the same as they were five years ago and ten years ago. Where does 5G exist that 4G didn't exist beforehand?
Part of the reason the Internet of Things sucks so hard is that 4G communications are insufficient to reach the scales/speeds/latency required to do anything at scale or requiring low-latency communications with it. You've likely experienced this while trying to browse the internet on your data plan in a crowded area, where you then switch to an unsecured public wifi hotspot out of frustration. That's why we've largely seen the sector stick to overpriced consumer toys and other non-critical applications.
At any rate the rollout is just beginning, to the point where 5G is still more of a marketing term (I think T-Mobile was selling 5G capable phones before it even rolled out any hardware), and supply chain issues are biting everything. But the business incentives are there, give it a few years.
Did that happen? No. Does that make it misinformation? No. Why was he so confident though? Why did his audience believe it?
Because theres a whole lot of misinformation around. I think his basic pitch is that fossil fuels are amazing, America has lots so it will win and the rest of the world but especially China will collapse when it runs out.
Can you think of any hot topics of misinformation that might affect your reception of such an argument when China is the world leader in wind, solar, battery, EV, Rail, electrolizer, green hydrogen, HVDC, Hydro, Nuclear etc.
1. Access to key resources (food, energy, other products/services). That includes being able to manufacture
2. Demographics
His general position is that the current state of the global economy for #1 is due to risk free global trade due to American guarantees on shipping safety post-WWII. He thinks this is unlikely to continue forever, and he works through the scenarios for individual countries if supply chains have to become more regional/local.
He basically says some countries are in good positions (France, Norway, Sweden, US, most of Southeast Asia) because they have decent demographics, enough military (mostly naval) power, and enough access to critical resources. Other countries are in bad positions (China, Korea, a bunch of others I'm forgetting)
He's "pro-America" mainly because the US is energy independent, food independent, capable of manufacturing anything (and if they can't, they already have alliances with the rest of the Americas to do it), with decent demographics, geographic isolation from other countries that have issues, and a good military to protect shipping. He's "anti-China (and Korea)" because they have rapidly aging demographics, limited access to a bunch of supplies, and no naval power (and in Korea's case, they are stuck in the middle of a bunch of other potentially hostile powers).
I think the US audience is definitely more likely to accept his messages, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong. He could be completely wrong, but it's at least a very interesting perspective (and I think the basis for some of Elon's recent comments).