The New Rules of Power — with Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill

24:14Fiona Hill:But it's absolutely right that they all see themselves as very strong states, and states in which societies, individuals, people have no role. And that is really the kind of the fundamental difference for now still with the United States and with European countries. I mean, we've got over time, particularly over the course of the 20th century, to a point where we believe that societies and our populations have more say in how power is exercised. And of course, that's a fundamental struggle going on right now in the United States, as we try to move in a different direction. And if you see in the case of Ukraine, for example, Ukrainians have been willing to sacrifice large numbers of people.

24:48Fiona Hill:I mean, yes, it's extraordinarily difficult for them, but they've proven to be just as resilient as the Russians have, but for a very different reason. They have had to fight for their existence and for their survival. And I think that the way that Trump has presented this whole war in Iran, this is not about United States survival. It's not about the American people. This is a war of choice that he made. And that was also the backlash that we had in the United States in other countries after Iraq and the invasion of Iraq. Afghanistan might have been a different matter, given 9-11 and the attacks on the United States by bin Laden, and that sort of sense that the United States was in peril at that time.

25:23Fiona Hill:But if you look back to the wars of the 20th century, to World War I and World War II, particularly in the case of the United Kingdom and many other countries, there was a sense that the society also had to rise to the occasion. And remember that the deaths in World War II on the part of the UK and all of the then Commonwealth countries were as great as the worst battles in World War I. So people were willing to sacrifice where they saw themselves as individuals, as families, as groups, as people and as their countries on the line. And I think that the difference here is that no one in the United States sees the United States being on the line in this particular conflict in Iran.

26:01Fiona Hill:And that's also the case with Ukraine. Now, Europeans are having a big debate about how much they are on the line now in Ukraine, but they certainly don't see themselves. They see their livelihoods on the line, but not themselves, their own existence on the line in what's happening in the Gulf. Although, you know, perhaps that might shift as the economic and other problems become more acute. I think the difference is, just to say what Fiona just said in a sentence, is there's a big difference between wars that are existential and wars of choice. If you are an Iranian and you are in the regime, then you are fighting for your survival, for your family, for your future, for your life.

26:42And you have no exit. There's no, you know, losing is your death and the disappearance of your regime and everything that you think you've built. If you're Ukrainian, then you're fighting for your existence, for your country, for the ability to speak your language, for the ability to raise your children the way you want. You're fighting actually for your existence as a nation and you're fighting against a country that wants to eliminate you as a nation. If you're America in Iran, why exactly are you fighting? You're fighting because Trump was angry that he didn't get rid of all the nuclear facilities in the bombing strike last year, I guess, you know, or you're fighting for, you know, Trump's need to make friends with Netanyahu or to show that he's on their side.

27:32I mean, who knows what it's Trump has never made it really clear why he's fighting or why America is fighting there. So obviously you're not going to get either Americans willing to make huge sacrifices or Trump himself wanting to make huge sacrifices and wanting to, you know, lose, make lose, lose political points or lose people or lose aircraft or lose weapons, because that's the you know, he's not fighting for something that's that's that existential. And you could say this story of Russia is a little bit different. But one of the reasons why in these asymmetric wars, when you have one big power fighting a small one, why they often come out differently from what you expect.

28:12Look at Vietnam. Look at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Look at the U.S. in Afghanistan as well. One of the reasons why they come out differently from what you would think if you just looked at which country is larger, which is smaller, which has more military ability and which has less, is that the reasons why they're fighting are so opposite. I mean, I think if the United States really was, if there was an existential war that Americans felt— If Canada invaded us? Canada invaded us, or if, I don't know, if China invaded us, we would, I think Americans would fight. I don't think it's a, I don't think it's a problem of democracy.

28:48I think it's a problem of why are we in this war? And I have to say, I mean, it's interesting if you, I've had this conversation recently with a lot of Europeans actually about would Europeans fight Russia? And many people say, no, they won't. And people are always looking at surveys before the war that show, I don't know, I'm making this up. Some large percentage of Spaniards won't fight for Spain and so on, or Germans won't fight for Germany. If you had done those same kinds of surveys in Ukraine before the war, and I think they were done, it would have been similar. You know, everything changes once the war begins and it's in your country and it's threatening your life and your children and your way of, you know, your existence.

29:30And that's the difference here, is that we're all fighting for different things. I don't think the problem is our democracy, the problem, you know, or the fact that we're Democrats. I think the problem is we're not fighting this war for very good reasons.

29:43Fiona Hill:And those surveys were done in Ukraine. And as Anne suggested, Ukrainians were not ready for the fight at all. And in fact, you might recall, if we go back to just before February 2022, there was a big debate in Ukraine whether Russia was going to invade or not. and in fact it was very hard for the U.S. government at the time, for Bill Burns as the CIA director, to get it across to the Ukrainians that this was real and there was going to be a Russian invasion. So I think that also just proves the point that we're trying to make here.

30:18Scott Galloway:We'll be right back after a quick break.

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33:26Scott Galloway:I want to move to Ukraine, and I'll start with you, Anne, as you've kind of been all over this for a long time and you've been early and often. I would argue that the most important news story of 2026 is the most underreported, and that is in the last 60 days, I sense just what is an incredibly wonderful pivot. and that is Ukraine has gone from defense to offense. And I don't know how much of that is me projecting my own desires and hopes in interpreting the news one way, but if you do, I'm fascinated by search volume. The SpaceX IPO will get about 8 to 12 times the amount of search volume as the war in Ukraine today.

34:04Scott Galloway:And there has been an enormous shift that I think is just incredibly positive for the West. One, am I projecting my own desires here, or do you see the same shift in momentum, if you will, from Ukraine going from defense to offense? So, as it happens, I was in Ukraine about 10 days ago and was having these conversations there, and I've just written something about it. And the real interesting part of this story is not so much that Ukraine has gone from defense to offense, is that Ukraine has changed completely the way this war is being fought. And so what you have to understand about the Ukrainian front line is that it's a kind of 20-mile-wide zone.

34:53It's not like a line that people are fighting against. It's a 20-mile-wide zone, which is now completely transparent. and the Ukrainians can see everything in it because of their extraordinary, the literally millions of drones that they've built in the last couple of years. They have reconnaissance drones, they have short-range drones, long-range drones. They can see the whole front line. And every time any Russian truck or car or person comes into the zone, they see that person and they can hit them. And these huge numbers of people dying, 1 ,000 a day, 30 ,000 a month, or being dying or being wounded, are coming from the fact that despite the existence of this zone, the Russians have, until now, continued sending people in it.

35:40And, you know, even at the beginning of this year and late last year, by doing that, they were able to move it forward a little bit. They were, you know, so many resources were being thrown into it that they were still moving. That has now stopped completely. They cannot move forward. And actually, in the last couple of months, they've lost. So there is a, it's not what I would call like a huge counteroffensive, at least not yet, it could be. But the Russians are not able to move. And that has happened at the same time as Ukraine's long-range drones, these, you know, which I've been in factories where they make them.

36:16They're like little mini airplanes. They're not what you think of. It's not like a little toy drone. It's a big thing, like the size of a long dining table. These long-range drones can hit, are now able to travel quite far into Russia and hit with enough force to destroy or at least damage. Literally every refinery in central Russia has now been hit, most of them more than once. A few days ago, they hit the refinery in St. Petersburg on the day that Putin was opening an important economic conference in St. Petersburg. And you could see people walking into the building with kind of billows of black smoke in the background, which it's pretty extraordinary.

36:56I mean, something burning in St. Petersburg as the leaders of the country are there, as if there was a big economic conference in Washington, D.C. and somebody exploded, not that we have any oil refineries in Washington, but if there were someone exploding one while they were there and everybody somehow going on as if that were normal. So they have this ability to hit longer range things. They have the ability to see the front line, and they also now increasingly have the ability to hit the supply routes into the front lines, while making it much harder for the Russians to supply and resupply their troops.

37:30And all of that has turned the tide, not just of the war, but of perceptions of the war. You know, there's been this kind of automatic assumption since the war began. And you actually you alluded to it in one of your previous questions. You know, the bigger country would defeat the smaller country sooner or later. And us helping Ukraine was just a matter of staving it off. Instead, what's happened is the Ukrainians have revolutionarily changed the drone industry. Hundreds of Ukrainian companies, small ones, big ones, it's a very decentralized grassroots effort. It's not been directed by one person, have rewritten the rules of war by redesigning drones and thinking differently about what they do.

38:17They didn't have as much artillery, although they still use that. They didn't have a huge air force, but what they have is this ability to do that. And suddenly the perceptions of them are different. Suddenly, the Gulf states want visits from Ukraine and from the Ukrainian military because they want the drone interceptors that Ukraine has to hit the Shahids, the kind of drones that Iran and Russia now both use as attack drones. Suddenly, European companies want to do deals with Ukrainian drone companies. And there are several big joint venture projects now happening all over Europe as well as inside Ukraine.

38:52And suddenly, Ukraine isn't a victim. It's a provider of security. and it's a provider of security despite the fact that the U.S. cut off supplies to Ukraine. I believe, hoping that that meant that Ukraine would surrender. And despite the fact that negotiations fail, the Trump administration led negotiations, they are enormously helped by Europe's, by European money and cooperation with European companies. But a lot of it is coming from the society itself. And I think, in fact, this change happened a while ago. It really began a year ago. But Scott, you're right that in the last couple of months, it suddenly becomes clear.

39:35And the perception is shifting. And that changes also the way the Russians see the war. I'm sure Fiona has been following that. And that changes the way the assumptions people are making about its outcome. It could be that there is another shift and the Ukrainians begin moving forward. That hasn't happened yet. But certainly the ability of the Russians to move forward has stopped completely.

39:58Scott Galloway:And Fianna, I'll put the same question to you that we asked about Iran. What does the domestic political landscape look like right now in Russia?

40:04Fiona Hill:Well, it looks very different from Iran, let's say, and also from the state of Ukraine. Because look, everything in Russia is a vertical of power leading up to Putin. And I think in the way that Anne has just laid out what's happening in Ukraine, and in this case, strong society is beating out strong states. And there's a lesson in that. I mean, you made a quip earlier about Canada, and I would actually say that Canada is actually reacting to the United States and thinking more about its defense against fending off the United States after predatory commentary, as well as predatory policy and tariffs and other things as well.

40:38Fiona Hill:Look at the Danes and the Greenlanders reacting to things that the United States has said. I think there's a big lesson in all of this here that we can see in the case of Russia and Putin. Putin keeps everything very tight-hulled. It's top-down. Yes, there's innovation on the battlefield by Russian soldiers, just like you might see in Ukraine. But Putin is scared of his own society. He's scared of that mobilization. In Ukraine, people had to step up because the state didn't have the capacity. It wasn't incapacitated, but it was pretty weak. It still remains quite weak and feckless at times. We talk all the time about corruption.

41:11Fiona Hill:We see all the infighting. Ukraine's been notorious for cycling through all kinds of forms of leadership, and each of its leaders going after the other on corruption. a lot of it justified. We still talk about this. And yet, Ukraine keeps going, yes, with support, because it's crowdsourced, it's networked, there's flattened hierarchies. All of the innovation that Anne is describing here is because of that mobilization, that activation of Ukrainian society working in lockstep with the military. That's not what you're seeing in Ukraine. And in Russia, I mean, in Russia, rather. And in Russia, Putin is now starting to get very nervous about Russian society and perhaps the elites.

41:50Fiona Hill:I mean, we hear stories about this. I wouldn't, you know, overplay it because Putin has all kinds of repressive capacities. But it's certainly the case that now his choices are shrinking. And, you know, as Anne has described on the front line, he's not as close as he would like to be to be able to be taking the whole of the Donbass, which is certainly one of the intermediate goals. And he's going to have to make some tough decisions as to whether he keeps on escalating these bombardments against Kiev, whether he starts doing more nuclear saber rattling, putting more pressure on Europe, and really still trying to get others to hand him Ukraine's capitulation.

42:25Fiona Hill:Because the situation for him doesn't look as great as it did earlier. Now, he will always think that there will be some way of getting himself out of this bind, but it's him making all of the decisions again. And it's just a question of whether the constraints around him, in terms of the number of people who will continue to volunteer, as Anne's described about all of the casualties here, in the last months, we've seen the numbers of dead, not just injured, increasing. And in fact, it's kind of flipping now the ratio of dead to injured in a way that is very detrimental to Putin. So, you know, for him, it's more of constrained choices and consequences.

43:02Fiona Hill:The other thing is that oil, everyone's expecting that Russia would have benefited enormously from the increase in oil prices. But in fact, the sanctions that were imposed by the Europeans and others on Russian oil have actually constrained some of those revenues. And revenue isn't the same as having more manpower and more weaponry and this kind of ability to turn the innovation tide against Ukraine. It's still costly for Putin to buy from abroad, from China, you know, etc. components that he needs or the military needs for their weapons development. So it's not a tipping point at this particular point, but we can see that the picture has become darker from Putin's perspective.

43:43Scott Galloway:It feels like autocrats fall slowly than suddenly. And when you see Putin, it feels like Putin's on the run right now when he is scared to put on kind of these big celebrations for fear. and I've heard he's got buddy doubles everywhere and isn't seen in public. And I don't know how much of that is wishful thinking on our part. The question is, do you think there is a non-zero probability that Putin could fall, that this is an existential threat to him? And if so, is there a risk that he does something very bold, irrational? Because can he come to some sort of negotiated settlement that is perceived as a loss?

44:25Scott Galloway:Is that an existential crisis for him? Does he end up finding a window on the eighth floor somewhere if he's perceived as weak and having lost this war?

44:35Fiona Hill:Well, he's thinking all the same things that you've just let up, Scott. So absolutely, he's making all these calculations all the time. I'm sure all the windows where he is are very low or they're sealed shut very firmly. But putting that joking aside, for Putin, yes, he worries about this all the time. Because if you look back through Russian history, it isn't always the case that every war resulted in the demise, and Anne's been writing about this and others have, of the Tsars. But it's certainly the case that a defeat in war could be pretty disastrous. And in fact, if we look at World War I, the war that Putin never talks about, it was the implosion of the Tsarist regime that caused Russia to have to pull out of World War I.

45:16Fiona Hill:But that treaty that was signed and concluded by the Bolsheviks, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and probably sitting actually talking to us somewhere near Brest-Litovsk, in fact, was concluded as a strategic decision to get a kind of breathing space for some kind of regrouping. And in fact, Stalin, of course, took most of that territory back again a couple of decades later with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. All of this is to say that Putin is probably wondering and others around him are wondering if there is some possibility of getting a strategic pause at this point that might allow him to get a better grip on the situation.

45:54Fiona Hill:But that's also very dangerous. I don't think we're right at that point yet, but I think absolutely it's correct to lay out the fact that something could happen very suddenly. Because if you look back at the Soviet Union, there were all kinds of predictions of the Soviet Union's demise. And then it happened in ways that people never really anticipated. And Putin is always worrying from the perspective of Russian history, because he's a very good student of Russian history, about a situation that could become detrimental to him. So he's constantly thinking about how he maneuvers in the spaces that he sees.

46:25Anne? A few months ago, there was a leak from the office of one of Putin's advisors, Sergei Kyrieko, who's actually a former prime minister of Russia. And the leak was of a kind of slide deck, a presentation. And the presentation was a description of how we will sell the end of the war to the Russians. In other words, it was a great victory. We defeated the combined forces of the West. You know, we damaged Ukraine. We, you know, we avoided worse consequences. We took over the territories of, you know, along the coast. We took over Crimea. And it's a way of trying to sell this story of victory to the Russian people.

47:15So someone inside the Kremlin is definitely already thinking about how, what if the war ended now? What if there was a ceasefire now? How would we explain it and yet stay in power? So that option is definitely under consideration. The question is whether Putin is in a position to take it. And the question is, if he doesn't take it, how much pressure will he be under from other people who want it? I mean, it's pretty clear that there's a part of the Russian elite that does want the war to end. And of course, there's a part that never liked it and was unhappy from the beginning. There's probably a part that connected to the security services that are now so invested in the defense industry and in the buildup of the army that they want to keep going.

48:04And what we you know, what may be happening is some kind of, you know, game behind the scenes where where those two groups are competing for power. Your point about autocracies falling slowly and then all at once has been repeated so many times in Russian history that it's almost a cliche. I mean, it is true that right up until the final moment that the Soviet Union didn't exist, nobody could imagine a world in which it didn't exist. And literally a year earlier, nobody predicted that it would be gone. And the same was true of Tsarist Russia, which up until the last minute also seemed eternal and would be there forever and nobody imagined any alternatives.

48:46So it's important, of course, to remember that Putin has a grip on power unlike almost any other leader in the world. He controls enormously economic, political, social, propaganda levers. and at the same time, it's important to remember that there is nothing more fragile than a system in which there is no obvious successor. You know, the funny thing about Putin is that not only do we not know who would replace him, we don't know how that person would be chosen. There's no Politburo, there's no Soviet Communist Party, there's no internal group who would choose the next leader. So you have this weird, precarious situation where you have this strong system that without him would be suddenly very chaotic.

49:39Scott Galloway:We'll be right back.

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52:01Scott Galloway:We're back with more from Ann Applebaum and Fiona Hill. Well, if there was one word, I think if you had, if you could go back in time or if somebody saw what had happened in these wars and then had the ability to communicate, you know, could only have one word to describe any learning from this to inform future policy or military strategy. I think the word would be asymmetry. And that is, you know, I wonder if a$1.4 trillion military budget with expensive platforms has just been rendered obsolete. And when you look at what Ukraine's been able to accomplish, when you look at Iran's ability to kind of strike back and wreak havoc with their neighbors, it just strikes me that we literally need to tear up the old kind of playbook here and what should have huge impact on our policy and our expenditures.

52:53Scott Galloway:and I'll go through who I think are the winners and losers and I want each of you to respond. I think ultimately, big winner, and I don't mean to in any way diminish the loss of human life and the destruction, but I think Ukraine is probably gonna become the third Silicon Valley behind Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv. And I think if there's any sort of sustainable peace, Kiev could arguably be the next Palo Alto. I mean, what they have done there, the fact that they are now advising the US and Gulf nations on how to defend themselves offensively and defensively just speaks to the innovation coming out of Ukraine right now.

53:29Scott Galloway:I think Iran, quite frankly, I hate to admit this, I think is somewhat of a winner. They've discovered something inadvertently or strategically more powerful than nuclear material, and that is the Strait of Hormuz. And I think that they have no intention of giving up that leverage. I think they may come out of this stronger. And obviously, the biggest loser, Russia, toothless tiger. And I think the U.S. is an enormous loser here. I think our ability to deliver violence, which I think is a real asset all over the world, has been vastly, I think that threat has been diminished or that power has been diminished.

54:04Scott Galloway:And I'd like to think that Europe's a winner here by staying at least economically steadfast behind Ukraine. I'll start with you, Anne. Where do I have that right and where do I have that wrong? No, I think the broad contour is right. I mean, remember that we still don't know what will happen. You know, I still think Iran is a pretty unstable country and an unhappy country that doesn't have the, you know, they haven't created a new industry like the Ukrainians have. So I didn't know that I would be able to call them a winner. But I would add another kind of lesson to what you just said. The lesson is that the projection of power and influence is not only about military strength.

54:49And actually, this is something that the U.S. used to know not even that long ago, like 10 years ago. It was something that Americans understood, American statesmen understood. The U.S. has historically had influence in the world, not because or only because of their military ability, but because they had the ability, almost unique ability, to have these values-based alliances. They had allies who would create institutions with them, who would voluntarily work with them, whether on defense projects or on economic projects. They had countries that wanted to imitate and copy the American system.

55:29They had systems of aid and cooperation in almost every country on the planet that people wanted to be part of. That was the source of American power and influence.

55:40Scott Galloway:We were the operating system. We were the operating system. We wrote the system, the world as it was created after 1945. I mean, it went through different phases and, you know, Cold War and post-Cold War are different and so on. But the operating system was largely one that the U.S. designed or was at least a very large participant in. And we were the primary beneficiaries of that system. And that was part of why we became the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. And for reasons that you're right would take another podcast, full podcast to explain and debate, we have decided to give that up.

56:20Or the Trump administration, I think in his first, Trump's first attempt to put it to an end, didn't really succeed. and now really in only, you know, just over a year have pretty much succeeded in undermining that system, maybe forever, but anyway, doing it an enormous amount of damage. And what is the result? We don't have allies who want to help us in Iran, not least because they don't understand why we're there and what we're doing. We don't have people working with us to achieve the things that we want to achieve because we're not building, you know, we're not planning with others. We're not building international agreement to achieve our goals.

57:00Instead, the idea is that we're going to simply impose our power on other countries using military strikes and guys who come out of the air, and that's how we're going to win. And it's almost like a child's idea of how power works. It's a kind of elementary school vision of how you project power. You just bomb stuff, and then you win. That is not how the United States became the world's most influential country, and it's not how we achieved good outcomes in the past.

57:30Fiona Hill:I couldn't agree more. I mean, basically, it's also an autocrat's view or an authoritarian status that you consolidate all of the power at the top, and then you use all of your repressive and violent capabilities to basically force everybody else into submission rather than bringing them along with you. The other thing is that what I agree with and on Iran, I don't think Iran has really benefited from this, although everybody who has something that they can use as a chokehold, a choke point has actually benefited. The Houthis, you know, you've given all kinds of ideas to all kinds of other countries and groups that have one thing or two things or a few things in the case of China with critical resources and minerals, for example, that they can use and leverage against everyone else.

58:16Fiona Hill:and what America had always been in the business of, if we go back to the United States role over the last 30 years, was breaking out of all of those chokeholds, was breaking away from the dominance of one set of countries or one individual, the tyrants of the world, and from breaking their ability to be able to repress and to try to literally call the shots by shooting at everyone. And I think the secret of the United States, which Anne has already laid out very eloquently, was really in the strength of its society. I don't want to say civil society because people always get confused by that and think it's the kind of NGOs and other things that Anne and myself and others have been involved in.

58:58Fiona Hill:But it's rooted in the institutions of that society. That includes the federal government institutions that were run by experts with great expertise and universities where you had a partnership on innovation. It wasn't just about the Beermost, the giant, huge companies that have come to dominate the defense sector. And it was all about subversion in a positive way of people coming in and innovating in the way that Ukrainians have done in the battlefield in a society at large. And now what we've seen is each of those great innovators, the heads of Palantir and Starlink and, you know, Musk and Karp and everybody else have actually become autocrats in their own right.

59:40Fiona Hill:They're stifling everybody else's ability to innovate. And I think what Ukraine is showing us is the old model of states and society working together, of civilians being part of the innovation and investing in that kind of innovative capacity is the way to go. And it's where we started off after World War II and during World War II. It's where the UK was in World War I and World War II. It's where most European countries were as well. I think actually what Ukraine could show is that the beneficiaries of all of this ought to be society, the private sector, the innovators, and that we need to find some kind of model after this, a refresh after all of the justice settled here, while the justice settling, to basically get ourselves back into gear again.

1:00:23Fiona Hill:So a trillion plus defense budget that's going to be top down is not the way to go at all. You're absolutely right. That is not the model.

1:00:32Scott Galloway:It feels as if it's such an indictment on U.S. priorities that a lesson from this is that soft power is underrated and hard power is overrated.

1:00:41Fiona Hill:Correct.

1:00:42Scott Galloway:And we've just gotten it all wrong. So to the extent that you're willing, I'm going to ask each of you to speculate what these regions are, what might happen. And let's go 12 months out, Russia and Iran. And I realize nobody has a crystal ball, so this is pure speculation. But if you were to try and game theory this, I know you each advise governments and think tanks. What do you think, sitting here in a year, hoping and trusting you'll come back on the podcast, what do you think we'll be looking at in terms of the situation in Ukraine and Iran? Anne, I'll start with you. So I really dislike predicting the future.

1:01:21Scott Galloway:It's because you're smart, Anne. And there's Twitter to remind you. There's Twitter to remind me. And there's also, you know, there are events that you don't predict or foresee or, you know, Putin dies or Zelensky dies or something, you know, that I feel are not in my control. You know, the only thing I think I would say about Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine will not disappear as a country. It will be more integrated with Europe. It's possible that we would have a, I won't say a different regime in Russia, we could have a different leader if things keep going the way they go. That's one alternative.

1:01:58It's also possible that we could have between now and then a broader European war. So it's possible that in the, as you were asking, will Putin lash out? Will he, will he try to, you know, how will he try to somehow want to use this moment to prove what he believes, which is that NATO isn't real. So he may, he may something in the, I would, I would think in the region just to test whether of the United States would come to anybody's aid. This would be not just a test of NATO, but also, of course, a test of the United States and its alliances, as we were discussing. So I think all those things are possible.

1:02:37In the Middle East, I would find it very hard to predict what would happen. I mean, I can tell you what I hope would happen, which is that I do hope there will be a regime change or some evolution inside Iran. And it seems to me that has to happen And sooner or later, it's unsustainable for the country to go on being this poor and to be this dominated by a small group of people. But that's my wishful thinking rather than a prediction.

1:03:04Scott Galloway:Fiona?

1:03:05Fiona Hill:I have the same fear that Anne does of prediction. It's probably why I never went off to run a casino or anything like this. So I'm just not very good at those kinds of gambles and this. But anyway, I think that what we are going to see, though, is a real shift in the way that people think about the United States. And that will shift the balances of power because you're already seeing it. You are seeing countries not just starting to realize, but already have realized that the United States is not acting in their best interest. It gets back to everything that we've talked about now. The Gulf states' interest in Ukraine and closer connections.

1:03:42Fiona Hill:I mean, the Ukrainians were very well advised to go and start to forge new relationships with the Gulf countries. they didn't have an opening there previously, but now they do. Iran has shifted all of the thinking that everybody has in the Middle East as well about the configuration and balances of power there. And I think you're going to start to see many more regional groupings that are really about trying to mitigate the impact of United States actions and United States policies. Because I think people are no longer seeing Trump, you know, pun intended here as their trump card for things that could benefit them, although there will always be corrupt elites everywhere who are cashing in alongside the Trump family, you know, from here to there and everywhere.

1:04:22Fiona Hill:But a lot of people are starting to see that in the Gulf and in Europe as a real liability, not just an asset to be so close to the United States. And so those regional groupings, we're already seeing it in Europe. There's the Joint Expeditionary Force, which I think I've mentioned before, which is a subgrouping of now all NATO countries. It was originally set up to bring Sweden and Finland into closer coordination with the countries of the North, the North Atlantic, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Norway, you know, other NATO countries when they were not members. Now they are members. It's becoming a platform for more coordination on Ukraine.

1:05:01Fiona Hill:And as the United States pulls back from its commitments to NATO, and Anne's absolutely right, I would expect that Putin will be trying to show that NATO is the paper tiger, that Trump keeps calling it all the time. In any case, those countries will start to pull together more. It may not be the Spaniards who don't see this quite as existential, getting back to that point. But for countries like the Baltic states and Finland right there on Russia's borders, this is existential. and they will do what it takes and they will find platforms to coordinate and they will increasingly move away from reliance on the United States as much as they possibly can.

1:05:35Fiona Hill:So we might see more platforms for co-production, more platforms for working with the Ukrainians on that co-production and innovation, just like you're suggesting that Ukraine becomes a new Silicon Valley for military innovation. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if you saw similar, I'm not obviously as familiar with all the dynamics in the Middle East and the Gulf, but similar arrangements made in the Gulf in response to what's happened.

1:06:00Scott Galloway:Yeah, I take two things away from this, or two major things away from this conversation. One, going all the way back to Lincoln, that you can't win a war without public support, and you can't lose it with it. And two, what Anne was referencing, operating system. We used to be the operating system for two-thirds of the world's economy. It's been cut to a third because Canada, Europe, Latin America have decided they need to develop their own operating system and protect their own interests more vigorously. And what people don't realize is that that likely might be the greatest shift in power or the greatest erosion or forfeiture of power in the last couple centuries.

1:06:36Scott Galloway:Because to go from 66 % to 33%, isn't your power gets cut in half. Your power gets cut by 80 % because you're no longer in the majority control. I think this is arguably the greatest own goal in the last century, was deciding we're no longer setting the tone for two thirds of the world, but one third because we've been so reckless with our foreign policy. Anyways, that's my TED talk. Anne Alpabom is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Autocracy, Inc. Fiona Hill is a senior fellow at Brookings, former National Security Council official and one of the world's leading experts on Russia and geopolitics.

1:07:14Scott Galloway:This is our 400th episode and our producer Jennifer said, who do you want? And I said, either Anne Applebaum or Fiona Hill. And she said, let's do both. I think the two of you are a gift to journalism, thought leadership, and democracy at large. So much appreciate your good work and your time today. Thanks again. Thank you. Thank you. And congratulations on your 400. We should have had champagne. I hope someone's going to celebrate with you afterwards, right? Yeah, what a thrill. 400. I barely remember that. I don't remember what I had for breakfast, much less the first, but we keep on trucking.

1:07:47Scott Galloway:Stay safe, Anne, and thanks for your time, Fiona. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

1:07:56Scott Galloway:This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Janair. Cami Reek is our social producer. Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor. And Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropG pod from PropG Media.

1:08:42Thank you. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at MintMobile.com.

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