The Billionaire Class Has No Idea What's Coming - Daniel Silva

0:00People are making comparisons to the Gilded Age. Not even close. The wealth disparity now, I mean the Gilded Age, it pales in comparison to where we are now. I don't know how long a society can hold together with this level of wealth disparity. There is also a rise of a global super rich that has just checked out and they live in their bubble and they're just not invested in their fellow human beings. I am blown away by it because when I talk to certain people or even if I'm on Twitter, Mayor Mondani's messaging is resonating with a very large group of people. This system is so corrupt. It's become crony capitalism.

0:36It's become a circuit of legislators into big corporations back to legislators to give people this sort of self-dealing of what they want. And it's not really the form of capitalism that you and I grew up with. And so there's less meritocracy now. And so the mayor's message is resonating. If I put that out on Twitter, I've got billionaire know-it-alls that'll tell me that I'm misguided and I bought into the propaganda. I haven't. I'm sensing the pulse of the population. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. And yes, we're back. It is my favorite time of the year. Why is that?

1:12I'm holding a Daniel Silva book, and the new title is Ransom. uh i gotta tell you i i don't know how you do this by the way because uh each book is more compelling than the last one uh gabriel alan has now accompanied us now through decades of geopolitical change mr sobo and yet decades the stories are more relevant than ever i sort of feel like you're a clairvoyant i may hire you to be one of my psychics actually you tell me what's going to happen in the future. But when you sat down to write Ransom, what felt different or urgent about the world this time? And it's great to see you, by the way.

1:53It's good to see you too. Go to the second half of the book first. Everyone knows that Russia has been at war with Ukraine for going on five years now, I guess. But what is less well-known, particularly here in the States, is that Russia is engaged in an absolute clandestine shadow war of sabotage and subversion against all of Western Europe. I have sort of written about this. I had been given some guidance, and I've touched on it a little bit over the years. But in 2019, we finally were able to pin down who was doing this and we came up with a name and it's called unit 29155 of the gru which is their military intelligence service um they um have been carrying out assassinations sabotage um they used to be able to act really with impunity because before the war russians of course could travel at will in in western europe uh now that they've had to um we've had the the the sanctions and the travel bans.

3:08The GRU has had to change their playbook. And that's the backdrop for this novel, that Russia has engaged in a secret war of sabotage against Western Europe. They're trying to destroy liberal democracy, the global order, and replace it with one friendly to Moscow. They're also trying to punish the countries like Denmark that are some of Ukraine's biggest supporters. and that's what's going on in the background. But it starts off with a nice, lovely kidnapping of a rich British socialite. So it's a fast-paced, fun, entertaining read.

3:51It's definitely a hybrid. It's a blend of a couple of different kinds of genres. I want to go to your methodology first, because once again, it's very topical. You're predicting some things that are in the near future. I don't want to give some of the plot lines away, but I just want to go to your methodology. Looking at the world, get the global dashboard on blank. Unfortunately, it's on tilt right now. And so you're sitting there saying, okay, how can I write a compelling story where I can also leave some relevant information for the reader about what's going on in the world? And so when you were turning the Rubik's Cube of the world in your mind, Daniel, why did you settle on this story, this plot?

4:38Without giving too much away, I was fascinated by the drone incidents. And the Europeans have been very reluctant to come out and say flat out who was behind these drone incursions in Scandinavia and Germany and elsewhere. But if you read between the lines of the Danish statement after the fact, it's very clear who they're talking about and who was behind this and who they think was behind it. And look, when it comes to drones, it's an overused phrase, but Pandora's box has been opened. the Ukrainians used drones to great effect they kept them in that war now they're launching devastating strikes deep inside Russia Iran has used drones in their conflict and in my opinion the Russians have used drones to disrupt European travel to create chaos it is only a matter of time in my opinion before we have a major terrorist attack or an assassination that involves drones.

5:55And that's what I wanted to write about. And then I, of course, write about things in an accessible way. I think the magic of my books and why the series succeeded where other series like this have sort of fallen by the wayside is that they do appeal to readers who might not necessarily pick up an international thriller. And that's certainly the case with this book. Gabriel gets drawn into this latest adventure because he agrees to appear at a fundraiser for the National Gallery of Art in England, and one thing leads to another, and he finds himself trying to track down a missing British socialite.

6:44So again, I don't want to spoil the plot, but there is a man in here. He's a real estate baron by the name of Edward Knight. He's got a secret. Yeah. And I'm not going to tell people what that secret is, but he's got a secret dangerous enough, Daniel, to pull Gabriel out of retirement. Okay, so where did the character come from? Is this a real world? Is there a real world archetype behind him? Is this a composite of some people you've met in your life or you've observed through the news? No, he is a creation. But there are plenty, and you know this better than I do, there are plenty of people like Edward Knight.

7:28People in the property business who, as it's been explained to me, borrow a lot of money, try to make the right purchase, try to turn those properties into money-making properties. And, you know, things go sideways in a hurry in the commercial real estate business. And a lot of people sort of get out of alignment with their debt and their property. And that happened to Edward Knight. And for better or worse, the wrong person rode to his rescue. But there are a lot that are... you you can probably name them yourself there there are you know small british family um uh companies that are that are involved in in the property business yeah i mean i i love the guy i mean and i've met this guy by the way so i just want you to know that's it that's this guy okay this is why i love the guy because you know he's he's right out of central casting so well wait Wait, wait, can you explain that?

8:34Why did I get him right? And why is he right out of central casting? Well, because he's trying to have an image about himself. And unfortunately, what we know is, if you remember the beginning of The Godfather, the first sentence that Mario Puzo writes is a quote from Honoré de Balzac. And what does he say? Behind every great fortune, there is a great crime. There's a great crime. And so what we know is a lot of these people are dressing a certain way and they're acting a certain way and they're involved in certain things that are legitimate. But there's also some things lurking underneath their personalities.

9:13And, you know, and we know this from our time in London that there's been some laundry facilities in London for cryptocratic cash for decades. I mean, there was even a book written a few years ago called The World's Butler about this sort of creation of laundromat facilities. And I think you've done something which I think is so fascinating to me. I feel like you've replaced your villains over time. Your villains used to be called warriors. Your villains have been terrorists. Your villains have been a whole assortment of the world's rogues. But I feel like we're meeting oligarchs and mobsters and financiers and now a property billionaire.

9:59And I guess has dirty money replaced the KGB as a great antagonist for spy fiction? For me, it has. And look, my character is an art restorer. Everyone who reads my books know that the art world, the art world is almost a character, and a long-running character in this series. And the art world is a wonderful confluence of all kinds of different people. People are attracted to art for its beauty, but also for the instant patina of elegance and gravitas that it conveys on the holder of art. Art is a great place to launder money. Art is a great place to conceal money. Art is a great place to offshore money.

10:49And so I've dealt with art world corruption throughout this series. But I don't know about you, but I am deeply concerned about wealth disparity.

11:08And people are talking about this like making comparisons to the Gilded Age. Not even close. The wealth disparity now, I mean, the Gilded Age, it pales in comparison to where we are now. I don't know how long a society can hold together with this level of wealth disparity. There is also a rise of a global super rich that has just checked out. and they live in their bubble and they travel on their own aircraft. They know no boundaries. They have allegiance to no country. And they're just not invested in their fellow human beings. And frankly, there is, you know this better than I do, there is a lot of criminality and corruption in the world.

12:07I tried to get at this one time with an FBI source of my note, how much of the economy is corrupt and criminal? And it really could put a hard figure on it, but I think it's up there. I think there's just a tremendous amount of corruption in the world right now. When I was growing up, I would have told you consumption tax in the US like a VAT would have been a foolhardy proposition. I think now it's incredibly necessary because it would pick up all of this consumption and this nefarious black market activity that's happening in the economy. And it would also yield a better outcome for our fellow Americans.

12:48But to your point, Daniel, about the indifference, I am blown away by it because when I talk to certain people or even if I'm on Twitter, Mayor Mondani's messaging is resonating with a very large group of people. I'm not a believer in the message because I'm more of a capitalist, but I'm gonna let you know the system is so corrupt. It's become crony capitalism. It's become a circuit of legislators into big corporations back to legislators to give people this sort of self-dealing of what they want. And it's not really the form of capitalism that you and I grew up with. And so there's less meritocracy now.

13:29And so the mayor's message is resonating. If I put that out on Twitter, I've got billionaire know-it-alls that'll tell me that I'm misguided and I bought into the propaganda. I haven't. I'm sensing the pulse of the population. I think this is something you do, frankly, an amazing job with. I think you have a very good sense for where we are. And so tell me about conceptions and misconceptions. Okay. And so where do you think when you, because you're obviously writing to your readers and you've done an amazing job of being with them in every step of the way, where do you think your readers are on the wealth disparity right now?

14:16Where do you think you are? Because yes, I agree with you that the billionaire class has closed themselves off. They've generally become very indifferent and they almost laugh at the thing with some level of cynicism, but your reader is a wider berth of people than that. So where do you think your readers are on this big issue you know i i haven't really given that much thought about where they are but i would think that um with very few exceptions as i imagine i have a i know i have a a couple of billionaire readers but um i i think that most americans sort of agree with this but you know they differ obviously as you just pointed out on the prescription how to handle it and so um do you have unfettered capitalism and which which is what we have right now we have no enforcement of any kind going on in our economy right now as you know no it's very dangerous because it creates a wild west but it also does is for people that grew up the way we did in the middle class they look up at it and say okay i can't get ahead they've got a they've got a concrete ceiling above my head you know Yeah.

15:29So I think that all of my readers, virtually all of them, would think that it's not healthy to have this kind of wealth disparity in our society and that people who work their asses off at low-wage jobs and no matter how hard they work at$7 an hour,$8 an hour, they're barely surviving. They're barely keeping a roof over their head. There was a fascinating report that came out a couple of months ago about the state of the average American's finances. And they were discussing it on the morning roundtable on CNBC. And I'm not going to say which host had this reaction, but he was startled and shocked to learn that the overwhelming majority of Americans have no savings whatsoever.

16:24that if their refrigerator broke, they wouldn't be able to replace it. If their car breaks down, they wouldn't be able to get it running again. And yes, we've had this explosive growth in the stock market and all of these top five or seven firms or these gigantic firms are making huge amounts of money, but we are leaving more and more people behind. And it's not going to end well. It's not going to end well. This disparity, it's not healthy. And I don't think there's any example in history where you have this kind of disparity that a system held together for the long term. Thank you for tuning in to Open Book.

17:09And if you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button below so that you're the first to know when our new episodes drop each week. We've got a lot more coming. And now back to the show. So it brings me to the point about democracies. because again, I always learn something from your books and I want to frame the question this way. Do you think democracies, and I'm really focused on the American and the UK democracies, do they possess the strategic patience or has social media made long-term thinking nearly impossible for them? Do you think we are doing any long-term thinking on any issue?

17:51I mean, I guess that the current administration has a vision of undoing the system that arose, say, starting in the 1960s, where it had this huge expansion of trade and had the effect of lifting. there's a statistic in the New York Times this morning a gentleman from the IMF wrote about that 43 % of the world's population in 1960 lived in desperate poverty. It's shocking. I mean, imagine if that were today's population I forget what we're up to in the global population but now it's down to 10%. And so this system that we built up after World War II We did raise votes and we lifted a lot of people out of poverty.

18:42These guys want to undo that. And I know that the trade has been disruptive to our economy. There's no question about that. But I worry that they're lurching us into a situation that's going to have potentially explosive effects. but like the Chinese are you saying that the Chinese can think long term part of that is and the Persians are like this they've been around for a long time these are very very old societies and cultures and I do think that we don't look over the horizon the way we used to for a while we did I mean, think of the brilliance of the Truman administration and Marshall and those guys who could have turned their back on the world.

19:39They could have turned their back on Europe when it was falling apart after the war. And they said, no, if they go down, it's going to have disastrous effects. We're going to be fighting there again. And they went in and they built this system. and whatever the problems we have with NATO, it is the most successful military alliance in history. The period of peace that we have experienced in Europe, with the exception of the war now and then the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, it's unprecedented in European history. No period has ever been as peaceful as the period that we created after World War II.

20:25I just think it's a terrible mistake that's thrown it all away. Well, listen, I couldn't agree with you more. And I think that this is also a lot of people don't understand it. When you quiz people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and this is the generational dilemma in America, as we lose our living memory of what happened in the Second World War and the reasons for the Truman Doctrine and the ensuing policies that came out of the administration, people don't remember it, Daniel. And so now we're sitting here, you're trying to explain it to them. They're saying, well, I don't care. That was 80 years ago.

21:01And this is the dilemma. It's almost like what Neil Howe wrote about in the fourth turning, as we lose our generational memory, we get a reset. But I think I think what I love about this book is you have three things going on in this book. And again, not giving up the plot, but you have a great war going on with the West, with a weakened adversary. You know, the Russians have less GDP than the state of Texas, slightly below Italy. They're a military and nuclear arsenal, but they really don't have the muster that they once had, but they understand propaganda. They understand how to use the GRU and their intelligence system and assassinations, and they're wreaking havoc.

21:48I mean, in my time on Earth, I believe they caused the Brexit. I believe they also caused this pain that we're going through in terms of questioning our democracy and the integrity of our electoral process. And a result of which they've done heavy, heavy damage. and you're bringing it together in a very contemporary, very easy to understand, literate way. And then the second thing going on, which I think you also capture so well for people, is that there is a right and wrong in a society. There is. There's a right and wrong. And ultimately, what side of that do you want to be on? You could be corrupt and loaded, or you could be slightly less loaded, but maybe have a more valuable life because of your morality.

22:39Isn't that one of the central messages of the book? I hope so. I hope so. And I hope that also what comes through is that the belief system of my character and what a decent person he is. And I think that's the best advice you can give to some of the people you're just referencing, to be decent. um kind of follow up though to you're talking about this character though because he's always he's you know he's the michael carleone of spy spy novels okay poor sob is always trying to retire and they keep bringing back we can't get rid of him yeah but i i get it by bringing him in the side door though and and and And how I get him back in is a story in itself.

23:35But I want to follow up on something. You're talking about how much damage they've done and Brexit. Okay. They set out to literally rot and corrupt British institutions, the British financial system, and British politics. That was a goal of the Kremlin, to use the money to rot British institutions. And there's a lot of reasons why Britain is in the situation it's been. And I mean, this is not some small little republic that we're talking about. This is the United Kingdom. and they are in a period of just unbelievable political turmoil to where people are using the ungovernable word to describe the united kingdom of all places and i'm i i truly believe that that the long-term russian plan to to to corrupt and corrode the financial industry the british politics, I think they had a big hand in them.

24:38There's no question about that. And you do such a brilliant job writing that. I want to go to Alon for a second. So you started post 9-11. War on Terror is now gone. You've reinvented him many times. But I want to wipe the whole slate clean. And let's talk about a young Gabriel Alon, not who he is today. And let's say you were going to invent the character today for 2026. What agency would he work for? Would it still be the Mossad? And what would keep him up at night as a fresh Alon, 2026, given where the world is today, not where it started when you started writing about them. You know, and I was having this conversation with a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency just yesterday.

25:38We were talking about the startling, shocking changes that have taken place in Israel over the last few years, how the right word drifted the country. And we were talking about Gabriel in that context. and I explained to this former CIA director that, for example, my character would never have authorized detonating a bunch of pagers without any idea where these pagers were going to go off and who was going to be killed. They've killed many, many innocent people, many innocent children. I said, my character would never have done that. He said to me, that the United States would never have authorized that operation.

26:27It would be against the law. My character is now completely out of step with what's going on there. He would, if asked, he would not serve in the current government with the extremists that are in that cabinet. But frankly, they've purged all of the people like Gabriel Lahn. All those old left of said jurors. Remember what Israel was like then. You know, he, as I've said, he grew up in a German speaking household. And a German is his first language. He lived in a very socialistic society. And Israel has just changed dramatically. So I guess that the biggest worry, I mean, he would, as a young person today, I think, I would hope that he would want this war to end.

27:22um and that he would want his country to help in the rebuilding of gaza um he would be working very hard to stop the settler violence that's going on in the west bank it's just completely unacceptable yeah um and and but but but this this government turns a blind eye to it in fact this hasn't in my opinion has encouraged it with its policies uh so he's weaker though or stronger the power oh i mean um hard to i mean look they are a hyper power now regionally um that um have extraordinary uh military power but but um look the divisions within the country and the society are profound um you know my friends who who are like the you know the old gabriel on that emerged out of the Ashkenazi, the elite security guys.

28:21And you know these guys, the elite that, you know, they refer to secular Ashkenazi Jews, which is what Gabriel is. He had no religion in his home growing up. That they're an endangered species in Israel. and so the settler right and the hard right the revisionist

28:50wing of Israel is descendant and so I don't know where this is going I don't know where this is going I have chosen to simply pretend that it's not happening I've not referenced anything in the series and I'm sort of playing with time a little bit and trying to, I would like to preserve the option to write about him as long as I want. And so I've airbrushed him a little bit, taken a few years off him. He presents a little younger on the page than he really is. But a lot of people have asked me, what am I going to write about it? I have no interest in writing about a war that's left over 100 ,000 people dead, 20 ,000 children.

29:34I have no interest in writing about this war. And I don't think anyone wants to read about it, to be honest with you, in fiction. This is one of the, listen, no matter how you look at it and no matter what side you're on it, people dying at that magnitude is a great tragedy. And so it's not political to say that. It's just an observation as a fellow human being, fellow - As a federal human being. Fellow traveler on earth. I mean, I just think that's where we are. But all right, so as you remember from our past, my producer and I, you took five words out of your book. Okay. I'm going to say the word and then something's going to come into your head and you're going to tell me what it is.

30:15Okay. You ready? I say the word wealth. Wealth. And you think of what? I think that to obtain and acquire wealth and to look after your family and to care for your children. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. but to acquire, my wife and I have a saying, how much money do you actually need? And so I would like people of extraordinary wealth to do more, as you said, to help their fellow human beings, fellow travelers here on earth. Yeah, listen, when I hear the word wealth, I hear danger. Okay. Wait, wait. I want to ask you, why do you hear danger? Because I grew up with no wealth, and I have a little bit of wealth now, knock on wood, in some ways because it makes your life a little bit easier, but it's also dangerous because it can lead to entitlement.

31:23It can lead to disassociation. It can lead to confirmed biases, Daniel. So if you're hanging out with wealthy people, guess what? You think everybody's doing well. And then if you go into one of the blighted manufacturing towns in the country, you realize, wait a minute, the people I grew up with are not doing well. And so it's dangerous because it could make you entitled. It could confirm your biases falsely. And you could get insulated from what's actually going on. And so you have to be very careful of those things. And the last thing, I have five children. I want them to have some hustle in them.

31:58and I don't want them to take anything for granted. So those are the things that come to mind when I hear wealth. One of the things that's so interesting about Palm Beach, I don't know if you spend much time there, Palm Beach is an island. It's on the barrier island. You got to cross the intercoastal and to get downtown Palm Beach is very, very nice now. Boy, you get across the freeway. And that's a whole other world out there that people in Palm Beach know about. And I actually did a fundraiser this fall to help the library system and to help feed and care for these people who are experiencing food insecurity out in West Palm Beach.