Balaji and Steven Glinert on Network States, Supply Chains, and Allied Coalition Strategy

**Balaji Srinivasan** (0:00)
On the left, there's a lot of people who think you can just push a button to end homelessness, end poverty, just take all of Elon's money. And they just don't do any math, and they don't have any understanding of scarce resources. Scarce resources in the physical world, they don't understand scarce resources monetarily. They just think it was a cornucopia, a bounteous mother, government is GOV is GOD, government is God, but the bounteous mother form of God, which can just hand out everything. And the rightist, while more realistic often, is subject to a different, but symmetrical, somewhat symmetrical version of this, where they think if the leftist thinks there's infinite money, the rightist thinks there's infinite power. The rightist does not viscerally understand, oh, I need to work for votes.
I need to get political support. Just like the leftist doesn't understand scarce resource in the physical world, the rightist doesn't understand scarce resource in the digital world. That they actually need to get all these people to agree with them that this is a good thing. And you can't just point a gun at everybody.
Right? And there's limits to just brute force.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:59)
Who has more power today? Nations or networks? For decades, the internet has connected people across borders, creating new communities, markets and institutions that don't neatly fit inside traditional states. At the same time, global power is shifting as China expands its industrial capacity, and countries rethink alliances, supply chains and economic strategy.
The result is a growing debate about what comes next, a world organized primarily by nation states, or one increasingly shaped by digital networks that operate across them. Theo Jaffee and Sophia Puccini speak with Balaji Srinivasan and Steven Glinert about geopolitics, technology and the future of global power.

**Theo Jaffee** (1:45)
We are live in the Situation Room. Today is Thursday, May 28

**Balaji Srinivasan** (1:50)
All right, so can I show some slides or should I get started? Go ahead.

**Steven Glinert** (1:54)
You should probably talk about where this came from and like why we're both, like what the hell you've raised on online the last couple of days too, right?

**Theo Jaffee** (2:01)
Well, helmet, helmet guy.

**Balaji Srinivasan** (2:04)
You know, the thing is, so like this guy actually had a decent TikTok, which I'll talk about in a second, by the way, which is funny. Basically he has like a million followers on TikTok since 2022 He has never been a jingoistic nationalist on TikTok. In fact, I actually can't think of a single pro-American thing, or anti-Chinese thing he's ever posted on TikTok, right? So all the patriotism, uber-patriotist, whatever kind of thing, uber-nationalism is only on X, right? And the persona on TikTok is a completely different person.
And I didn't actually understand that until actually like, you know, a few hours ago or whatever, when he has like something where he's like, you know, Edie Amin did nothing wrong, basically, right? But it just, you know, the problem is like, you know, and some of the, a lot of people said, why are you being so nice? Blah, blah. And the way I approach things is, you know, tit for tat in game theory? Yep.
Like, basically there's a version of tit for tat where, like, you start out nice, right? I will basically cooperate with someone who will cooperate with me. I always start out nice. Steve, I mean, whatever, if you see me in business over the years, I always, always start. Go ahead.

**Steven Glinert** (3:19)
You're also, like, a genuinely nice person. Like, you're not that argumentative in person.

**Balaji Srinivasan** (3:24)
I'm not. And I try, like, basically, I'm always looking for the win-win. That is to say, how can that person win, you know, like, empathy? It's funny. The problem is, you know, Wokes weaponize the word empathy, and they use it to mean, give me all your money and die or whatever, right? And you're evil, whatever. But the thing is, empathy in the sense of understanding the other person's incentive structure and how they get a win is important, even if you're just a completely cold-blooded business person, right? In fact, the first thing I do when in any slide deck, any conversation before you go and do a presentation is, how does that person win, right? How did they get a promotion? How do you know, how did they, how does their business make money? How did they advance in life? They have like three, sometimes they even haven't even thought through their KPIs or whatever, right? And, you know, so like as an example, a concrete example, an academic, what is their number one thing they care about? They care about getting a first author paper on a study. What do they not care about so much? Maybe the IP licensing or something like that. So there's a win-win where you can give them a grant, they do a study, they get a great new first author paper, and then you have, you know, IP license obviously subject to whatever other rules the university and so on has, right? That is an example, anyway.