David Wallace-Wells

speaker

678 appearances 5 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 16 Sep

David Wallace-Wells’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

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The Opinions · ‘Platner Is Vile.’ McConnell Is Missing. Welcome to American Politics. · 11 Jul 2026 podcast

And it seemed that the economic warfare that we had entered into would be less damaging to America and its allies than we were worrying about at the outset of the war.

This has been a surprise to me.

This is a war that's been full of surprises.

We learned that Iran with its cheap drones could sort of match the U.S.

military.

We learned that the Hormuz weapon was probably the most powerful weapon involved in either of these militaries, more powerful than anything the U.S.

could manage.

We've learned something about the humbling of American empire and what we can do in the world.

But one other thing we've learned is that the closure of the Strait, which we were told in the spring would be absolutely catastrophic for the global economy, has had its effects

There has been suffering, particularly in Southeast Asia.

There have been impacts in Europe and America.

But those impacts have not been nearly as dramatic as we were warned about.

I was just looking at the price of oil futures this morning.

And, you know, at no point in this conflict did the price of oil go above what it was even when Russia invaded Ukraine.

And certainly not – it didn't reach the levels that we saw in the 1970s, which is sort of what everybody in the energy world was telling us to expect if this would go on even two months, let alone five, six months.

And so I think one thing that may be happening is that whereas two months ago Donald Trump thought –

even if we're taking an L on this, we got to move on because we got to reopen the strait.

He may now be thinking, you know what?

We can endure the pain of continued closure.

That is not going to be as, you know, as damaging to American interests as we worried.

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