Erik Prince is an American businessman, former U.S. Navy SEAL, and the founder of Blackwater, a private military company established in 1997. A graduate of Hillsdale College, Prince heads Frontier Resource Group, a private equity firm, and promotes economic development in emerging markets. He hosts the podcast Off Leash with Erik Prince, launched in 2023, and founded Unplugged, a privacy-focused smartphone company. Prince, a vocal advocate for privatizing military operations and deregulation, has been linked to controversial arms deals and Trump-era political operations. Erik Bethel is a General Partner at Mare Liberum, a fund focused on sustainability and national security in the maritime domain. He is a global finance professional with experience in the private and public sectors. In 2020, he was nominated to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Panama. Previously, he was nominated by the President and confirmed unanimously by the Senate to represent the United States at the World Bank. At the World Bank, Erik participated in the analysis and deployment of over $100 billion of capital in the developing world through grants, loans, equity investments, and other financial products. Previously, Erik spent over twenty years working as an investment banker and private equity professional at Franklin Templeton Investments, J.P. Morgan, and Morgan Stanley. Erik earned a BS in economics and political science from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He serves on several Boards, including the United States Naval War College Foundation, is a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and is an Advisor to Oxford Analytica - a geopolitical think tank. He speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and Mandarin. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://www.roka.com - USE CODE SRS https://www.betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://www.bubsnaturals.com/shawn https://www.meetfabric.com/shawn https://www.shawnlikesgold.com https://www.helixsleep.com/srs https://hexclad.com/srsFind your forever cookware @hexclad and get 10% off at hexclad.com/srs! #hexcladpartner https://www.moinkbox.com/srs https://www.paladinpower.com/srs https://uscca.com/srs Guest Links: Erik Prince X - https://x.com/therealErikP LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/erik-prince Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/off-leash-with-erik-prince Frontier Resource Group - https://www.frgroup.com Unplugged Phone - https://unplugged.com Erik Bethel LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/erik-bethel-692604Mare Liberum - https://www.mareliberumcapital.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Full Episode
Eric Prince, Eric Bethel. I was hoping you guys would meet someday. Glad to make that happen.
Eric's with a K. Yeah.
Truly an anomaly. Three of them in the building right now. But just thank you guys for coming, both of your repeat guests. former ambassador to World Bank, Eric Prince, former CEO of Blackwater, Navy SEAL. So I wanted to get you- Ambassador of happiness. Ambassador of happiness. I wanted to get you guys in here about this Taiwan stuff that's going on.
So the timing couldn't really be better for me. I got the vice president of Taiwan coming on here pretty soon. And so everything just lined up perfectly. And I want to use this interview to kind of educate the audience and not only the audience, but myself on why Taiwan is such a strategic location and why it's so important in the world. And when it comes to chip manufacturing, all this stuff.
But I did not realize how delicate that situation was due to its history with China until I started prepping for this interview. And I mean, I knew the semiconductors and it's been terrifying to me to think that China might take them and they say they will by 2027. But when you look at the history, it's pretty dicey. And so Eric Bethel, if you don't mind giving us a brief history on
Taiwan and China and how delicate the situation actually is.
I'm not a historian, but I'll give you a rough outline. We gotta go back way, way, way early. So the Dutch arrived, well, the Portuguese discovered Taiwan. They called it Ilha Formosa, which means beautiful island. The Dutch arrived in the 1620s or so and formed little villages of sorts. The people that were living in Taiwan were Austronesian tribes.
There were no ethnic Han Chinese living there at the time. And the Dutch were at the time competing with the Spaniards. The Spaniards had a settlement in one part of the island. The Dutch had a settlement in the other. And it was ironically the Dutch that began bringing in folks from mainland China into Taiwan. They were typically from Fujian province, but some came from the south.
And over time, Taiwan was essentially a backwater. Neither the Ming Dynasty nor the Qing Dynasty gave a rip about Taiwan. And in, I want to say 1895, somebody will correct me on this, I'm sure, the Japanese took it over and it was a part of Japan until after World War II. never in Taiwan's history was it a part of the Chinese Communist Party.
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