u/mutherhrg

So I picked up long distance cycling again, and thought to myself, why not listen to some of Zeihan's old interviews and lectures, see how much he has gotten right and wrong over the years, as well as reading a bunch of his articles and new videos as well. I have listened to maybe around 20 hours over a week and it's all fresh in my head, so I want to subject them to you guys. They range from around 2017 to 2026. I will go about them randomly, but will try to group some of the themed subjects together.

>Airbus will go completely out of business, Boeing will be the only passenger jet maker left, this is because of Brexit, that America will force the UK to stop supplying Airbus with engines and wings- 2019

>Brazil will never surpass America as an agricultural producer, or even come close because their soil are shit. (Brazil has surpassed America in soybean and other Ag products on and on since.) -2019

>Brazil will experience a total collapse of their agricultural industry due to loss of fertilizer due to the Russian sanctions after the Ukraine war. Mass famine will follow- 2022

>There will be global famine and chaos, 1 billion dead of starvation within a year of the Ukraine war, due to the loss of Russian fertilizer and energy.-2022

>That even with the above massive famine, billion dead and global chaos, that all Americans will feel is a 10% inflation rate. (And there will not be any violence or 2nd order effects from the total collapse of the global economy)

>That sanctioned Russian oil and gas would never be viable on the black market, because every nation on earth would immediately try to sink or seize those ships-2022

>That Russia would easily take over Ukraine within a matter of months. He then completely switched 180 degrees after Ukraine's success at counter-attacking and predicated that Ukraine would be able push Russia all the way back to their borders. Also something about Ukraine shutting down Crimea water supply and causing large scale famine and a humanitarian crisis there. (Ukraine already cut off Cimera's water years ago)

>That Russian oil/gas wells would completely stop working without Western technology or expertise because the Russians or Chinese have zero idea how to maintain them or drill new wells.- 2022

>Bitcoin would go to zero

>A.I is utterly fucking useless because the world would lose the ability to produce even basic GPUs after globalization collapses.

>Trump was gonna to lose the 2024 election.

>That the Chinese are fucking stupid and cannot do long term planning

>That the Apple 14 was gonna to be the last Iphone model, due to the complete collapse of the Chinese economy that year.-2022

>4 American destroyers parked in the Malacca strait would be enough to completely destroy China by shutting down their oil flow.

>Germany was gonna to completely collapse due to loss of cheap russian gas.-2022

>That without America policing Europe, that Europe would immediately be tearing each other throats out like they did a century ago.

>The usual Chinese doom and gloom. Total collapse in 2022 or 2023, he switched it to a vague "A decade away after that"

>The UK was gonna to have to choose between the 51st state or total collapse

>That the Chinese were less technologically advanced and skilled than Thailand, Meixco, malaysia, vietnam and Russia. -2026

>Chinese semiconductor industry was only capable of making extremely low end chips, and that the Biden sanctions were going to completely destroy the entire Chinese semiconductor and electronic industry-2022

>That China can only make 90nm semiconductors and can never get more advanced than that. -2022

>China making 7nm semiconductors isn't a big deal because it's a shitty chip and they could only make it via imported ASML DUV machines at sky high prices anyway so it doesn't count, and they would never ever be capable of making their own DUV or EUV machines- 2023

>Deepseek is just a fraud.

>China overcounted their population by 100-300 million and that COVID killed off around 10 million chinese.

>China doesn't have the technology enough to dig a big hole- 2026

>Chinese shale will never take off because the Chinese don't have the skills or technology to do so.

>America has more navigable rivers than the rest of the world combined. (He cannot shut up about this)

>Weird long rants about baby boomers, zoomers and millennials at almost every single lecture or interview.

>That Canada and Mexico are nothing more than America's resource slaves and there's nothing that that can change that relationship.

>Keeps claiming Argentina or turkey will be regional hegemons any day now.

>A Ford aircraft carrier is so strong that it can basically defeat a major navy like the entire France or British navy by itself.

>He keeps calling the two Japanese light aircraft carriers as supercarriers, despite being 1/4th of the tonnage. He doesn't call the chinese carriers supercarriers, even though all 3 massively outmass the Japanese carriers.

>Japanese navy is the 2nd largest and 2nd strongest navy in the world, and the only one with true global reach other than the America navy. He also states that they are the only other navy in the world that can conduct major combat operations in the persian gulf. (Do note that the Chinese navy has something like 5 times the tonnage, 10x the VLS cells and Japan doesn't have critical blue water navy ships like nuclear submarines)

>Japan will use their navy to ensure that their oil/gas/fertilizer flows stays stable by policing the persian gulf after the Americans leave, while also cutting off China's maritime trade with their vastly superior navy.

>Japan is immune to Chinese martime shipping attacks, due to them being able to sail east into the pacific. (Despite all of Japan being in range of Chinese missiles/drones, or that Japan also has to go though chokepoints the strait of Malacca or the SCS to reach the persian gulf, not to mention China's own navy)

>Japan will become the next asian superpower due to all those factors, despite them having all the same problems that China has but worse.

>That the Chinese navy is weaker than the Japanese, British and France navy, despite out-massing all of them combined.

>That most of the chinese navy is just small attack craft and that they have shit range, that even their destroyers have ranges of only 600 miles.

>Claims that America will leave the middle east and that war between Iran and the Saudis will erupt without America holding them back and that oil production will be disrupted as a result.

>He flips flops about Israel alot, but he keep whitewashing them, downplaying Gaza and keeps claiming that they will be peaceful and settle down anyday now once America is no longer interested in the region.

>Chinese superstition about Feng shui is a large reason for the China's real crisis???

>Russian heartland theory about how Russia needs defensive barriers to ensure national survival, and that Russia is fucked because the rest of Europe will utterly rape Russia otherwise (Despite the fact that Russia have nukes, or that Europe isn't filled with bloodthirsty invaders)

>He completely shits on renewables and EVs, claiming that they don't work unless they are in the perfect location for it and that batteries can't scale up because of all the critical minerals that we need, he keeps going on about cobalt and lithium, despite the fact that a lot of the newer batteries chemistries don't use those rare and problematic minerals anymore

>Solar doesn't work because the sun doesn't shine at night and long term battery storage isn't viable.

>The way he talks, it's almost as if he sees the rest of the world as bloodthristy animals that will immediately start state piracy and wars, without America to keep them in line.

>He's bullish on SEA, despite their total reliance on middle eastern oil that he claims will go away for good, or the fact that the region has pretty bad demographics and geography and is generally a shitshow even at the best of times.

Even if the strait reopens today, the world is fucked. Let's do the basic math here, oil tankers travel at around 25km/hr, as fast as a bicycle. So even if the strait reopens today, it will take them anywhere from weeks-2 months to travel to their destinations around the world. In fact, one of the main reasons why we haven't seen even worse effects is that the last remaining oil tankers were only just starting to reach their destinations last week.

And consider this, this is for all the tankers trapped in the straits, hundreds of them, but nowhere enough to supply a oil starved world by themselves. Once they go out there's only some relief, there's still a need for all the other tankers outside of the gulf to go into Persian gulf to start loading oil/gas and fertilizer and critical supplies and for a constant supply chain. Once again, the travel time to get new ships inside of the Gulf will take weeks, and weeks more to go out and deliver their cargo. It will likely be more than a year before the oil delivery schedule goes back to normal.

Oh and realistically, it's not like all the ships will rush in and out of the gulf once a peace deal is announced. A few ships will trickle though at the start, and it might take days/weeks for the world to have enough confidence that the peace deal is solid enough for the majority of ships to make the transit.

And that's not even considering the fact that oil/gas wells can become permanently damaged if they're sealed, with their output declining the longer they remain sealed. And again, even if the strait reopens today, it might be weeks before enough new ships arrive for the gulf states to start reloading again. Not to mention the fact that quite a bit of oil/gas infrastructure has been damaged/destroyed in the war. No matter what happens, it looks like the oil/gas output of the gulf states have been permanently damaged. Nobody will know just how much oil/gas those closed wells can output after this, or how fast that they can repair the damage, not even the gulf states themselves.

There's also the fact that countries all over will be buying much more usual to make up for this two month shortfall, as well as to replenish their reserves and to expand them greatly, because who knows when the fighting might flare up again. Which means that the world will likely see record high oil/gas purchases for years, until every nation has glutted itself on oil. Which means higher prices of course.

Oh and Russia's oil refinery and oil/gas loading ports are getting hammered by Ukraine right now. Reducing yet another major global source of oil. And it's not like the fighting there will end anytime soon.

So yeah, even if everything goes back to normal tomorrow, oil prices will likely remain sky high for years, maybe until 2030. And of course, the standoff could last for who knows how many more months. Maybe until next year? And there's always the chance that the fighting could flare up again and even more oil/gas infrastructure is hit. Most country's oil stockpile will start to run dry by June/July too.

The point is that the world is locked in at point. There's no preventing it, not unless we find a way to teleport the oil to where it needs to go. The only solution that could work is if the collective governments all got their heads out of their ass and started going at renewables and EVs and alternative fuels at full speed, the same way China has been doing. But that's just a bandaid fix at this point, would have been more effective if they had started before the current crisis....