Susan Kokinda

And I think they understand, at least the people calling the shots right now, certainly in Russia and with Xi Jinping in China, they see the United States as something very different than they've had to deal with.

for decades and decades.

And in that world, do they still need to play assets like the IRGC to maintain their position on the chessboard and so on?

I tend to think not.

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head.

I mean, you know, they're not replacing their population and they've got a very stratified society, you know, and you have a whole lower level of society, which is not really participating in, you know, the kind of, you know, development and economic growth that you're seeing in terms of the way they play.

Look, they played the free trade system.

Right.

You know, and as President Trump has said, I don't blame him, you know, but honestly, they didn't set up the free trade system.

They just played it.

But they created a very stratified society.

You know, the social credit system, you know, is clearly I mean, I think that's one of the big aspects of it.

The social credit system has to be a damper.

In terms of the ability of your society to actually develop um because you're basically exerting a certain level of mind policing.

And once you have mind policing people are not going to think independently they're not going to think creatively, so that the durable basis for a future society which is.

population replacement.

And, you know, a population, a generalized population, which can create and produce and participate, I think they've left themselves incredibly vulnerable, because they just sort of plugged into this world free trade system.

And, you know, milked it for what it was.

in the context of the way they were running their society.

It's not unlike the problem that the Soviet Union faced back before the end of the Soviet Union.