The Tucker Carlson Show
George Friedman Predicts the Next 50 Years of Global Affairs and the Importance of Space Domination
Wed, 23 Apr 2025
Unstable as things may feel, America isn’t collapsing, says geopolitical forecaster George Friedman. It’s merely going through a predictable and necessary reset. In ten years, we’ll be fine. George Friedman's website: http://geopoliticalfutures.com/ (00:00) Introduction (01:03) Where Will the US Be In 50 Years? (06:08) Spy Satellites and Space Strategy (10:35) Is the Pentagon Lying About China’s Technological Abilities? (20:00) The Storm Before the Calm (28:58) The Fall of American Universities Paid partnerships with: ExpressVPN: Go to https://ExpressVPN.com/Tucker and find out how you can get 4 months of ExpressVPN free! MeriwetherFarms: Visit https://MeriwetherFarms.com/Tucker and use code TUCKER25 for 15% off your first order. Jase Medical: Go to https://Jase.com and use code TUCKER at checkout for a discount Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Where Will the United States Be in 50 Years?
Chapter 2: What is the Future of US Space Dominance and Satellite Technology?
You believe the United States can remain dominant in space over the next 50 years? We are dominant in space. Our technology is way ahead of us, but we're modest, deliberately so. We understate our capabilities.
Feels like, though, there's got to be some hard pivot or something. You know, there's some disaster that resets people's expectations.
It's called Donald Trump. i think that's what it did what i'm saying is he's the wrecking ball that lincoln was and the wrecking ball that roosevelt was and jackson was he's shifting the country we have these incredible problems i wrote a book called the storm before the calm we're in that storm and after the storm we enter a very different place
George, thank you for doing this. So you have made a career of predicting the future, and I think that you've done a better job than anyone I've met in predicting sort of the big picture movements of nations. Clearly we're in, and I hope we can talk about this in a transition away from the post-war order, but I just want to start at the end.
Where do you think the United States will be in 50 years?
Well, I think the United States is withdrawing not to isolationism, but to Fortress America. It's interesting that the Mexican president called for Fortress North America.
Yes.
And it was a very wise move. We were engaged, forced to be engaged in the wars because the United States cannot be invaded. Canada can't invade us, no matter if they'd like to now. Mexico can't invade us. It's the command of the sea that's our defense. When the Germans started U-boats in the First World War, sinking Lusitania, that's when we invaded, intervened.
When the British Navy looked like it was going to fall in the hands of the Germans by invasion, that's when we got agitated. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, that's where we were agitated.
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Chapter 3: Is the Pentagon Overstating China's Military Capabilities?
Anybody recall that? There was no missile gap. The U-2s went over the plane place and they spotted all of it. We were way ahead of them. Our technology is way ahead of us, but we're modest, deliberately so. It's not that we, the scientists don't brag about us, but we understate our capabilities and we overstate the Chinese. That's always a good way to get budgets.
You know, we are much better at this. We've been at it a long time, far longer. And the Russians are third. The Russians are not second. Chinese are second. But command of space is now what the command of oceans was.
Interesting. And you think the Pentagon deliberately overstates Chinese capabilities in order to justify its budgets? The Pentagon would never do that.
No, but there's a sense of passivity in the United States on military things. There's a sense, okay, let's not waste money on defense. And there's a whole psychology developed in World War II of how to get money out. But I think the president and everyone else knows who is involved in this, that space is the battleground now.
And the amount of money Elon Musk has put into his X-Force, and he's boosting a lot of the satellites, is enormous. But everybody's in on the game.
Elon Musk seems like a big player, though.
He certainly is. I mean, he's a very smart guy. Maybe not likable, but he's a very smart guy. He went into electric cars. And then he went into, along with people like the Amazon king, I forget his name, Bezos. He went into rockets. And of course, it was just a hobby. But it emerged into a major business, and they're both major foundations of the Americans' launch program.
Because right now, you have to launch a lot of satellites, because you know you're going to lose a lot of them. And if you lose a lot of them, you lose a tactical advantage on the ground and a strategic capability in nuclear war. So we're emerging into a new age, which normally has a new technology. And this new technology is partly satellites, but that's really 1950s stuff emerged.
But the way these satellites are made is, is not made from the normal metals and plastics that we had in the past. Particularly their sensors are built with material science and solar energy and extraordinary things that will be integrated into the earth as World War II technology became very present in the American economy in the 50s. That's what's going to happen.
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Chapter 4: What Does George Friedman Predict About the Current 'Storm Before the Calm'?
But we depended on him with his narrow expertise. What we had lost in the federal government was a class of people with common sense. When I was a kid in the Bronx, there were party bosses. Charlie Buckley ran the Bronx. One day, my father, who had finally bought a car, had an accident. The insurance company wouldn't pay. So somebody said, go see Charlie Buckley. He went to Charlie Buckley.
Charlie Buckley made a phone call. He had an email. Carrier, you know, messenger's on the way to house with a check. But you remember, you vote for me, your vite votes for me, your children will vote for me. And there was a way to petition the government. Remember, the Constitution guarantees us the right to petition the government.
The party bosses, as corrupt as they were, and they were certainly corrupt, were our channel to the government. They were our channel to corporations. Smart, yes. But they were taken out, and they were replaced by technocrats.
Can I just ask you to pause? So Charlie Buckley, the ward boss in the Bronx, actually got the insurance company to pay the claim to your dad? The insurance company was going to mess with Charlie Buckley.
That's amazing. But it was a place where you could petition the government. With the rise of technocracy, there was no way to petition the government. Yes. So I didn't get the Medicaid that I'm supposed to get, whatever it is, because I had a good insurance policy. I didn't want to go to government insurance policy. Yes.
They fined me when I finally went to get Medicaid because I had not gotten it. But I had known that it wasn't necessary. No one ever said it to me. And there was nothing to petition, so I had to give in. So we have a federal government where you cannot petition the government. And that, I think, is the most important thing.
The second thing is that the experts do not have a layer of common sense above them. Wise men. And the same is true of the Supreme Court. There are lawyers. When the question on integration came up, the head of the Supreme Court was Warren, was- Warren Burger. Warren Burger. And Warren Burger knew that he had to have an absolute unanimity on desegregation.
And since he'd been a politician, not a lawyer, He brought the Southerners around and he built it in and they got a 9-0 vote. Every one of them on the Supreme Court now is a lawyer. Well, the law is more subtle than the law appears. There has to be subtlety. And so what happened was that the federal government fell in love with experts after World War II. Experts won World War II.
The people who built the atomic bomb, who built the bombers, the hands of both landing craft and everything. These were experts. And the federal government fell in love with expertise, which is a very important thing to have. Yes. But there was no Eisenhower above them who may not have known how to engineer anything, but had enough common sense to know how to use them.
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Chapter 5: How Are American Universities Changing and Affecting Society?
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Chapter 6: Will There Be a War Between the US and China for Global Dominance?
Yes.
So there was a time when we really cared what happened in the Congo. Back in the 60s, they supported Patrice Lumumba. We supported Maurice Chambe. Yes. Who cares what happens to the Congo? I don't want to say anything terrible about the Congo, but it's not our problem. Right. And everything was our problem. And our entire financial system was based on the two things. One,
bound imbalance trade to make the Europeans healthy. That was critical. But then we used these trade relations to build alliances in the third world. And one of them was China. And we did very well in China. We made China more dependent on us than on Russia. And we split that relationship fairly deeply. Chinese did not support the Russians in the reigning war.
It was a great strategy, but it leaves us in an untenable position if the Cold War is over. We no longer have to play this role. Now, the storm is the old elite and people supporting them are enraged at breaking norms and guardrails. Well, this country was built breaking guardrails, rules. It was called the revolution. That's how he believed it. And every 50 years,
socially, economically, every 80 years, institutionally, we break the guardrails. We reinvent ourselves. We're a country of invention. We're a country of reinvention. And when that happens, there's a terrible fight between the Anshan regime, the old regime, if you will, and the emerging regime. And Roosevelt was considered dictator, was charged with being dictator.
Roosevelt was said by Walter Lippmann, a very renowned person, the least... least capable president in our history okay and so jackson was and all of these were so he may well have been incompetent it may have been his staff who supported it doesn't matter but the united states is a great country because unlike European countries, it reinvents itself.
The war comes, the war goes, and we change with it. The Europeans fundamentally stay the same. So does China. How is the U.S. changing now? Well, firstly, what's ending? What's ending? The first problem that I said in the book, and this was published in 2020, I think, was the universities. The universities are the engine of our social structure. It's where the people come from.
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Chapter 7: How Does Economic Dependence on China Affect US National Security?
And the universities had become ideological places, as they usually do, but the ideology was Yes. And the universities had become massive, inefficient entities. So it's not simply the government that has to undergo a dramatic change. Harvard, who had been the place where the wealthy went, became a place for immigrants to go after World War II. Harvard has to change.
Now, the engineering part of this is difficult. And whether the president is engineering it well or badly or not, it's being re-engineered. And the opposition comes from those who see no need for change. Yes. Who see no need not to go into Ukraine. Right. But Biden saw no need to go into Ukraine. So it's not, we can't base this just on personalities. Right.
It was Biden who established a strategy of not going into Ukraine, but sending every miserable weapon we had. He used satellites first. So I tend to depersonalize history. Every president is an egomaniac. He has to be. To believe you can be the president of the United States, you have to have an ego. The difference between Trump and everybody else is he doesn't hide it. He celebrates it.
But I grew up around four miles from him. We were living in Queens. We'd left the Bronx. And he lived in Jamaica Heights, which is a very nice place to live. And I lived in Springfield Gardens, four miles away. Not nearly as nice a place. But that's how we behaved. We strutted around. We threatened people. We didn't mean it. We had a fist fight. We became friends.
It was, for me, his personality is not alien. For my wife, who comes from upper-class Australian life, it's horrible that he behaved this way.
Right.
For me? The Wasps don't like Trump at all. Hey, I remember Dominic. My buddy Dominic in Springfield Gardens. Yeah. He was the twin to Trump. Was he successful? Oh, yeah. He's an accountant now in Long Island.
So, I think you're saying that someone like Trump was inevitable in this moment.
He didn't have to have this personality. Eisenhower, who was a very wealthy man, and I don't think he saw anybody who was poor who wasn't his servant. cast himself as the champion of war, convincingly. Presidents are actors. Presidents shape themselves to the moment. Abraham Lincoln was a cheap lawyer in his own way. He came from Kentucky. He was practically a southerner.
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