Balaji Srinivasan

And the Western rightist believes implicitly that if they lose the argument, they can always resort to coercion in the form of invasion.

And that's been true for like 500 years.

And it's particularly true for America for the last 35 years since the unipolar moment of Krauthammer right around the time of Gulf War I. But it's no longer true.

And so coercion doesn't work anymore, and you have to use persuasion.

Why does coercion not work?

Because even the NSS, National Security Strategy of 2025, acknowledged it's a multipolar world now, right?

Like, that's why, you know, there's a withdrawal from, you know, Asia.

That's why there's—they're withdrawing from Iran.

That's why, you know, there's at least a standstill with Russia-Ukraine.

That's why there's—it's a grudging schizo pullback, but it's happening.

And so what that means is that having a gun is not everything.

You know, like somebody quoted it to me.

They're like, oh, yeah, well, apology, how many divisions has the Pope?

You know, which is Stalin's quote.

And I said back to them, you know, as the other saying goes, blue jeans and rock and roll have more power than the Red Army.

It's not like the USSR collapsed due to invasion.

right?

It collapsed due to essentially a dysfunctional, in a sense, nervous system.

So that's another way of thinking about it.

The network is like the nervous system and the state is the body, right?