Former CIA Director, General David Petraeus: Hard Power, a New Global Order?

0:01General David Petraeus:It is certainly more dangerous than any time since the end of the Cold War. Because of the complexity of the world right now, you know, it's not just East versus West, it's much more than that. Hello, and welcome to Giant Ideas with me, Cameron McLean, and me, Tommy Stadlin. We're co-founders of Giant Ventures, which builds and backs purpose-driven companies. At Giant, we're lucky to meet extraordinary people with Giant Ideas that are changing the world. This podcast brings you behind-the-scenes access to those ideas and the inspiring stories of the people behind them. We explore how one giant idea can kickstart a billion-dollar company, shape culture, and transform life as we know it.

0:48Today on Giant Ideas, we're joined by General Petraeus. From leading coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to running the CIA, General Petraeus has shaped the world on and off the battlefield. We explore his insights on global security, technological warfare, leadership under pressure, and what the future holds for geopolitics. This promises to be a rare and wide-ranging conversation with a man who has stood at the centre of history. We're going to cover a lot of controversial topics. We won't have time to follow up and challenge on all of them, but I hope you enjoy the conversation. General, welcome to Giant Ideas.

1:23General David Petraeus:Thanks, Tommy. Cameron and I came of age in the 90s in a world which was becoming just progressively safer and richer. It was dubbed the end of history. That's all completely changed now. And it feels like we're in an era of strongman populism, nationalism. We have war here on Europe's borders and around the world. And I guess the sort of rules-based international order seems somewhat irrelevant to a lot of global leaders. Would you agree with that characterization? and is this the new world order we all just have to deal with? And is it here to stay? Well, geopolitics is back with a vengeance.

2:00General David Petraeus:And over the last 12 years or so, during which I've been the chairman of the KKR Global Institute, we've seen the world transformed from one that could be described as benign globalization, in which all the barriers to trade and investment, capital flows, even technology and people flows were all being reduced. Globalization as measured by global trade was going up like this and economics largely drove geopolitics and now as i mentioned geopolitics is back with a vengeance the holiday from history as they say is over all of those barriers are now going up instead of going down the threats of tariffs now most recently from the united states causing significant uncertainty and again inevitably will create further barriers again to trade capital flows, investment people and technology flows.

2:48General David Petraeus:So all of that has transformed the world situation. And in fact, I think there's a speech, there's a part of a speech by the Singaporean foreign minister that captures this brilliantly. And I'll just read that to you if I could. The world is now shifting from unipolarity to multipolarity, from free trade to protectionism, from multilateralism to unilateralism, from globalization to hypernationalism, from openness to xenophobia, and from optimism to anxiety. Other than that, all is well, but no, your characterization is correct. And obviously the Singaporean foreign minister very much agrees with that.

3:31The chairman of our advisory board at Giant, David Miliband, who, as you know, is the former foreign secretary here in the UK, his characterization would be that we're in an era of chaotic globalization, still a global world, but one of true chaos. I guess another thing that was popular to say and think here in Europe in particular, I guess pre-Brexit and pre-Trump first term, was that everything was about soft power, not hard power. And that suited us in the UK in particular, because potentially we didn't have that much hard power, but we had a lot of soft power. Do you think it's fair to say we're now firmly living in a world of hard power rather than soft power?

4:06General David Petraeus:I think that there has been a shift in that direction. I think soft powder still does matter very considerably. And soft power often can solidify the gains through hard power, if you will, and vice versa. They can be complementary. But yes, I think that there's much more hardball being played now than was the case again a decade or more ago. Perhaps it's a truism that every generation thinks their era is particularly dangerous, particularly anxious. But would you say it's objectively fair to say that the world is more dangerous today, more dangerous than any time perhaps since the Cuban Missile Crisis?

4:43General David Petraeus:It is certainly more dangerous than any time since the end of the Cold War. You can argue, because of the complexity of the world right now, it's not just East versus West. It's not just two Cold War antagonists facing off along the inter-German border in Germany. It's much more than that. You see challenges everywhere you look in the world and not just traditional challenges of Russia invading Ukraine, the challenges in the Middle East, most of which are sponsored by Iran. The issues in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait is much, much more than that. You see challenges still with Islamist extremism.

5:28General David Petraeus:You see cyber threats that are much more complex and diabolically clever. There are challenges of movement of people. Of course, think about what happened when all of these refugees from the Middle East and Africa descended on Europe and the effect that that has had on individual countries, politics. And again, the list goes on and on. And so without question, the world is much, much more complex. And I think it is definitely much more dangerous. and I think you can even make a case that it's more dangerous than at any time since the end of World War II. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld would likely not have bombed Iran.

6:10Trump just did. He's also talking openly about simply taking Greenland from an ally. Yet this seems at odds with the America First isolationism of the MAGA movement. What is America's strategy?

6:22General David Petraeus:Well, I think it's still emerging. I think there's still an internal debate going on within in the party in power. And keep in mind, of course, it's in power not just in the White House, but in both houses of Congress. And a majority of the Supreme Court justices nominated by Republican governments as well. And it's really a debate between traditional Republicans, who I think would describe themselves as thoughtful internationalists and so forth, and supporting values and principles, et cetera, and those who think that America, again, should be a bit more America first, which can translate into America more isolated.

6:59General David Petraeus:But that's not necessarily true. And we're seeing even President Trump just in recent weeks warm up to the idea that more should be done against Russia. There is potentially a speech coming today in which the president will announce that the U.S. will resume security assistance for Ukraine. It will, I hope, champion the new changes in spending in NATO countries, a very substantial increase in that. I would hope that it will also herald the approval by the White House of a variety of sanctions that have been put forward in the Senate by Senator Lindsey Graham and have support by over 85 of the 100 senators in Congress.

7:44General David Petraeus:So again, I think very much internally. There are those who want to retreat a bit more to Fortress America. I think there are others who want to focus solely on the Indo-Pacific to the detriment of other locations. I would argue that that is unwise because what happens in the Indo-Pacific deterrence in particular rests upon potential adversaries' assessment of your capabilities on the one hand and your willingness to employ them on the other. And if you show that you're unwilling to help others in need, for example, to provide continued assistance for Ukraine if you don't help our allies and partners in the Middle East, that undermines that element of deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, keeping in mind that everything obviously has to achieve some degree of balance and you can't give all of your air and ballistic missile defense systems to Ukraine if you are going to need some of those elsewhere, Middle East or obviously Indo-Pacific.

8:40General David Petraeus:So again, very much, I think, a continuing debate within the administration, different elements trying to gain the president's ear. And right now it appears that he is inclined to support Ukraine again, given that Putin has not responded the way that he thought he would actually, and hoped he would, when he said he could end the war in a day or perhaps a few weeks. How does China see all of this? Presumably it's an opportunity for them to grow their influence around the world at a time when the US is hitting allies with tariffs and threats. Well, first and foremost, we should recognize that China is providing the lion's share of components to Russia for its renewed military industrial complex.

9:26General David Petraeus:Russia is taking horrific losses on the battlefield, not just in soldiers where they've sustained over 100 ,000 or where they've sustained over 1 million killed and wounded during the course of the war. but also in terms of tanks and armored personnel carriers and all the other hardware and so forth that's on the battlefield, given that Ukraine is pioneering. It's on the bleeding edge of the future of warfare, which is unmanned systems, remotely piloted air, ground, maritime systems increasingly cleverly employed, such as in Operation Spiderweb, where trucks went into the Russian Federation with drones in their roof.

10:07General David Petraeus:All of a sudden, they're parked outside strategic airfields, some of them thousands of kilometers apart. The drones come out and a million dollars worth of drones damages or destroys$7 billion worth of Russian strategic aircraft. And so the unmanned systems are truly changing the face of war. No man's lands now are the most lethal in world history. I think tanks and armored personnel carriers cannot even survive to go into them. So again, as you look at all of this that's playing out in the world around us, first of all, China is supporting Russia very substantially. It's also learning a great deal from what's going on there, as are other countries around the world, although I fear that the US, UK and others are not learning fast enough, frankly.

10:58General David Petraeus:But China, I think, if you will, understandably, is opportunistic. It's had a number of initiatives, whether it's a Belt and Road Initiative or what have you, to sew up supplies of critical minerals, to achieve ports or bases or what have you in other parts of the world, to try to get countries to align with it through a variety of political and economic and so forth schemes and initiatives. Some of this is the regular actions of a country that is becoming an ever greater superpower. some of it is a bit more aggressive than I think certainly should be for them if they were trying to achieve objectives without repelling others.

11:38General David Petraeus:Think about the European investment accord with China that was reached during the final months of Chancellor Merkel's time in Germany when she was the president of the European Commission, I think it was, or the rotating body of the EU. and the World Warrior diplomacy was so off-putting that EU put it on hold, that investment accord. It's also caused huge problems elsewhere and very aggressive actions in the South and East China Seas, the LOC, the border, if you will, between India and China, where in three separate incidents, dozens of Indian soldiers were killed. It's upon the roof of the world, the line of actual control it's called, and so forth and so on.

12:25General David Petraeus:And one questions whether they're learning from that sufficiently for their achievement of objectives or not, because a lot of that behavior does continue. You paint the picture of a chaotic multipolar world, but who do you think will be the dominant superpower of the 21st century? Well, I think it's the United States, but I'm a former economics professor. And so you always answer a question like that with two words, it depends. And it depends on the policies and actions and investments and so forth that the US makes. If we reduce over much our R &D spending, if we employ overly damaging tariffs with countries, the ramifications of a lot of what is going on are very considerable.

13:14General David Petraeus:At the heart of it, though, is a dynamism in the U.S. that has made America great again and again and again. The incentives and critical masses of innovation and entrepreneurship are so significant here, the market size is so much, and so forth, that I think if we pursue pragmatic policies and initiatives and efforts around the world, that this will continue to buoy the United States and to keep it the, if you will, the preeminent superpower. But there's no question about the dynamism in the Chinese economy, the enormous output in certain sectors, the investment in many sectors that they're making, some of which leads to accusations of unfair trade, and so on.

14:02General David Petraeus:But again, you by no means can discount the extraordinary dynamism of parts of the Chinese economy, even as they deal with major challenges, whether it's a demographic downturn that could turn into a death spiral. You know, they're losing five to 10 million people out of their workforce a year. And they're now actually starting to see their population reduce overall as a result of the lack of childbirth. You see very substantial debt levels, especially at the subnational level. We're not sure how high they are. The real estate sector is still in considerable difficulty. And that's anywhere from 30 to 35 percent of the economy, depending on how you collate all the different sectors that are connected to it.

14:49General David Petraeus:But no question that what China has achieved is truly extraordinary. I'm sure you all have been there and seen the incredible infrastructure that they have and so many of the other elements of a booming economy that they've built, even as, yes, the economy is slowing down. Yes, employment opportunities for university graduates and so forth are not what the graduates like to be. And again, a variety of other challenges. General, you've been really involved in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. You've visited the region a lot. you've worked with the Ukrainians and I assume giving them some advice. I would love to hear your view on how that conflict could be ended in a way that is satisfactory for the Ukrainian people.

15:34General David Petraeus:I think there is definitely for Ukraine, if and only if the US and the West are at large. So it's certainly first and foremost, the European countries and European members of NATO, but also all other countries in the world that cherish the kind of values that Ukraine also embraces. So again, democracy, vibrant, free speech, capitalism, and so forth. And not to say that all of these elements are by any means perfect in Ukraine, there are imperfections and so forth. But again, against a country that has invaded them without provocation and inflicted incredible lost damage and destruction on them while taking incredible casualties on its own side.

16:19General David Petraeus:As I noted earlier, over a million killed and wounded on the Russian side. And by the way, 500 ,000 of them so seriously wounded or killed that they could not return to the front lines. Look, as somebody who commanded two different wars and then a theater in which there were multiple wars, I can't comprehend these numbers. I literally cannot get my head around them, if you will. They are so staggering. But if we enable Ukraine to change the dynamic on the battlefield once and for all to prevent Russia from achieving any gains right now, they're achieving only incremental gains, to be sure. But they and they're taking horrific losses, but they are also inflicting, again, enormous damage and destruction on Ukrainian infrastructure and a host of different sectors.

17:03General David Petraeus:But if we enable them sufficiently, and some of this is just providing them money to increase their military industrial capacity, they will produce 3.5 million drones this year alone. By the way, do the math, and you realize that they can actually do what the Ukrainian commander told me they did recently, a couple months ago when I was over there. I asked him, how many drones did you employ yesterday against Russia? He said 7 ,000. Think about this. This is becoming their artillery, their close air support, their infantry, all of this in one. And it is, again, extraordinary what they're doing to these Russian offenses, but truly stopping them so that Putin cannot, even he, cannot imagine being able to achieve additional gains on the ground, which, again, they're doing right now, but in very, very small increments in a day.

17:57General David Petraeus:But it does add up over time. And so that would be, I think, the goal. How do you do that? Additional security assistance. I'm pleased to hear that President Trump is going to figure out some mechanism, some way that will get additional anti-air and ballistic missile defense systems and interceptors in there. Other countries are doing likewise. That's very, very important. But it's across the board. It's in a variety of other areas. If European countries seized the nearly$300 billion in Russian reserves that are in their banks and just gave it to Ukraine, they have done something already with the interest accrued on those$300 billion of reserves.

18:37General David Petraeus:But if they gave that to Ukraine, Ukraine itself can actually make the implements of war that can enable it to change that dynamic that is so important, as I mentioned. And I think you then, at the very least, would have a frozen conflict, or at best, you might actually achieve some kind of agreement, an armistice or what have you, so that at least the fighting and damage and destruction are stopped. Ukraine can achieve what I think is going to be an extraordinary future because of all that they have done during their war of survival, their war of independence, especially in the military sector.

19:15General David Petraeus:They will emerge as not just the largest and most experienced and most competent army in Europe, they will emerge as the military in the world that is the most cutting edge when it comes to employing the systems of the future, which are right now remotely piloted air, maritime, and ground drones, robotics, everything else, and will over time increasingly become AI enabled, in other words, algorithmically piloted drones. One thing that comes across from the description and the picture you just painted is how much warfare has changed technologically. As venture capitalists, we get a small glimpse of that.

19:55And it's very clear, I think, that technology, not just drones and AI, is going to transform and is transforming how wars are fought across the world. We get pitched by quantum computing startups who will be able to crack military codes, for example, inexpensive drones, which allow Ukraine to launch and punch above its weight. But of course, those drones can help terrorists as well. So how do you think technology will reshape warfare?

20:21General David Petraeus:Well, we're seeing it right in front of us, actually. And we're also seeing where traditional manned systems are still very, very valuable. And I think there will still be a need for both. But what you see in Ukraine is the incredible capabilities that unmanned systems bring to a force, especially one that is at a manpower, a very substantial manpower disadvantage, advantage, which is outmanned, outgunned, out everything else, out-economied, if you will, the Russian economy's 12 to 15 times that of Ukraine and so on. But think about what they have done. I mentioned Operation Spiderweb and what an extraordinary strategic achievement that was.

21:01General David Petraeus:But also look at the maritime drones and the aerial drones that have enabled Ukraine, a country without a traditional navy, as we would know it, surface ships, to sink one-third of the Russian Black Sea fleet and push them all the way out of the Western Black Sea to enable Ukrainians to export grain by ship again, as opposed to the other much less efficient means. Again, aerial drones found the ships, maritime drones sank them. We recently saw a maritime drone off the west coast of the occupied Crimean Peninsula shoot two air defense missiles off the maritime drone and shoot down two advanced SU-30 Russian fighters.

21:42General David Petraeus:And again, many other cases of real innovation. I go out there fairly frequently. I just made my sixth trip there a few months ago, and I'll be back there in September. And I always make a point to visit one of the drone units to see the latest advances. And they're just flat breathtaking. Even the modest drones now have four antennas on them to enable them to keep a command and control link, a link to GPS, a link to Starlink, whatever else it may be to work through the intense electronic warfare assets of Russia. And both sides have these, of course. But now to counter that, they're actually spooling out little fiber optic cable behind them, like the most minute fishing line you can imagine, which can't be jammed, of course.

22:28General David Petraeus:It can be cut. There's actually a video of Russian soldiers running around with scissors trying to cut the link that has been laid out behind a drone. But again, these actions and reactions and counteractions have all been very, very impressive. And you can see where this is headed. Now, if you turn to the conflict that we all most want to prevent through deterrence, again, by having capabilities and a willingness to use them that the potential adversary sees, while not being needlessly provocative. of think about the Indo-Pacific, where the Indo-Pacific commander has publicly described something called hellscape.

23:05General David Petraeus:In other words, he wants to turn the Taiwan Strait. This is a 110-mile, pretty formidable amphibious operation if it were to take place, turn that into a hellscape. And the way he envisions doing that is with unmanned systems under the surface of the water, many, many, many of them, again, not small numbers, but huge swarms of them on the surface of the water in the air on ground in cyberspace and outer space in the cognitive space you name it the equivalent in each of those and again that is an extraordinary vision now it's not fully realized by any means but that's where all of this is headed and of course ai is enabling every aspect of command control communications intelligence surveillance reconnaissance and so on.

23:56General David Petraeus:Many of these headquarters around the world of the US combatant commands, the geographic combatant commands, as I was when I was US Central Command Commander of the Greater Middle East, many of these headquarters are way down the road in introducing AI to help them perform the different functions of combat. We must come on to Iraq in the few minutes that we have remaining. Obviously, an incredibly controversial war. I know we could talk about this for two hours, three hours, but we have a few minutes. What would you say are some of the main lessons that you took away? We should talk about the surge, which of course was a huge thing that you did.

24:36We'd love to hear your reflections, your regrets, what you think went well.

24:40General David Petraeus:First and foremost, I think is in each case, it highlights the importance of what you literally are all about, which is big ideas. In your case, giant ideas, I guess. But you've got to get the big ideas right. A strategic leader has to perform four tasks. First and foremost, and far away the most important, is to craft the right strategy to get the big ideas right, to understand the situation, the physical terrain, the human terrain, the enemy, the population, geography, all of this, neighborhood and so on, and the nature of that war, and then to craft the right strategy for that. Clausewitz reminds us, by the way, that the first, the most important, the supreme task of a military commander is to understand the nature of the war that he's going to fight and not to make it what he'd like it to be rather than what it actually is.

25:33General David Petraeus:We've learned this the hard way, not always admitting it, but it took us 13 years in Vietnam to get the big ideas right. The French never got them right in Indochina or in Algeria. It took us arguably seven years to get them right in Afghanistan and another year to get the inputs right to enable the big ideas to be implemented and the right architecture and so forth. And we only kept them right for about a year or so or less. And then our drawdown started to be based on not on battlefield conditions in Afghanistan, but on political conditions in Washington, which is not necessarily the right way to go about it.

26:09General David Petraeus:In Iraq, there were early on many impressive achievements, toppling of the government much quicker than most people thought. I was a two-star general at the time commanding the great 101st Airborne Division in the fight to Baghdad, and then some colossally bad ideas that cut us off at the knees and hampered us for years until, frankly, the start of the surge in early 2007. And these were firing the Iraqi military without telling them what their future was or how we were going to enable them to provide for their families and themselves. You created hundreds of thousands of individuals who now had an incentive to oppose the new Iraq rather than to support it.

26:47General David Petraeus:And then we compounded that by firing the Ba 'ath Party, to be sure, Saddam Hussein's party, but not just at the top level and the second or even the third level, but the fourth level, which is basically bureaucrats, tens of thousands of them, mostly Western educated by the way, much more inclined toward us than those who replaced them who were much more Islamist. But these are the bureaucrats we needed to run a country and ministries that we didn't sufficiently understand. So by the way, lesson number one is you really ought to understand a country that you're going to invade in a very granular manner and avoid these kinds of horrifically bad decisions that create far more enemies than they take off the field by their conduct.