Azeem Azhar

And I feel, I mean, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you today was that it starts with those October the 9th rare earth rules.

You know, what breaks first?

in that environment?

Let me just dig into this question, which is, we have got these leaders.

And, you know, when you talk about self-reliance and you bring up these examples from the 1920s, we can also think about Juche, right?

The North Korean theory of self-reliance.

But what really are the politics of the leaders?

Because it does feel that...

China and Chinese communism looks very different today to how it looked in the era of the bicycle or just at the moment that Nixon started that rapprochement.

I mean, there is something changed.

So what are their politics and their influences around this particular question?

Well, I think there's something else that has changed in the international environment over the last 10 or 15 years.

which has been the explicit weaponization of dependency.

In this Ricardian trade world, we always have dependencies on each other.

Famously, the Airbus passenger jet is manufactured in 100 countries and the wings cross borders 20 times.

And you do that because of the gains of trade.

You do that because of the gains of specialization.

But underpinning trade is that sense of dependency.

And countries have generally been

a little bit wary of doing that.