Matt Bevan

1.4 billion and 99 problems.

The trouble is, not one of these problems is helped by Xi's decision to spend an eye-watering amount of money on elephant-plagued ports in Sri Lanka, or investing in train graveyard adjacent Bolivian lithium mines.

And the economic effects of a war over Taiwan could make all of those problems exponentially worse.

Now, this notion of spending enormous amounts of money on security and foreign adventurism while your domestic economy stagnates is not new.

We all know that there's one particular country out there periodically spending billions of dollars bombing the Middle East while its own bridges fall down and citizens with full-time jobs go bankrupt paying for insulin.

But that's just America being America, right?

We're familiar with the pathology of a US president launching a scholar's maid attack on a vastly less powerful country, having done no preparation beforehand for what he'll do if it all goes wrong.

But just because Xi Jinping has spent years meticulously preparing for a war rather than launching a high-speed attack, does not mean he's in the right.

because that would imply that war is inevitable and leaders only have agency over the way they prepare for and engage in that war.

The thing about this chess metaphor is it implies that the game must go on.

It doesn't have to go on.

It's a game you don't actually have to play at all

The better metaphor may not be two titans sitting down to play an epic chess match which will decide the fate of the world, but rather two dudes playing chess on their phones while bills pile up on their kitchen table.

They could just put their phone down and start addressing that very long list of problems.

But as we all know, mobile phone games can be very addictive.

If you're listening is written by me, Matt Bevan.

Supervising producer is Cara Jensen-McKinnon.

It's produced by Adair Shepard and Pat Sunderland.

Our tongue twister of the week is investing in train graveyard adjacent Bolivian lithium mines.

Try saying that more than two times quickly.