Goldman's Jared Cohen and George Lee on the Unprecedented Shocks in Geopolitics

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

Tracy, there's a lot going on in the world.

Tracy Alloway (0:26)

Are we gonna start every podcast with that sentence?

Joe Weisenthal (0:29)

This is sort of a cliche now, right? There's a lot going on in the world. I have to say, you know, I recently, we're recording this February 25th. I don't know the exact date it's coming out. I recently took a vacation, and I did a pretty good job, Tracy. Wouldn't you say of like being unplugged? Like I probably sent like six or seven tweets. I don't think I responded to any emails or what's that message.

Tracy Alloway (0:49)

I actually noticed this, that the volume of Joe's digital presence was way, way down. And normally listeners, normally when Joe is on vacation and sometimes bored, he just starts firing off emails saying like, oh, we should do this and we should do that. None of those this time. It was a vacation for me too.

Joe Weisenthal (1:10)

A vacation from your co-host. Yeah, I really did not do much. And then I have to say like re-entry into the world, my 3,500 emails, catching up everything that happened in a week in the world was a lot this time. And I'll just say, it's a cliche to say a lot happens, but it was like, okay, I really have some catching up to do it. I felt it and it made the re-entry from vacation worse.

Tracy Alloway (1:35)

Well, it's not just the number of things that are happening. It's the significance as well, right? So I imagine one of the things you came back to after your week off was the idea of a rift, a growing rift between the US and Europe. There is all these lingering concerns as well about competing with China, AI technology, big themes to think about.

Joe Weisenthal (1:59)

I know, I saw, I was like scrolling on my phone, I saw like JD Vance has given this big speech in Munich. And I'm like, do I want to watch this on the beach in Tulum? I do not want to watch this on the beach in Tulum. But now I have to understand how the world changes and again, from week to week, but big things afoot in the world. And how should we make sense of these? And how should we cut through the noise and all that stuff? Anyway, I'm very excited. We really do have the two perfect guests to discuss big things in the world, like technological changes, especially through the geopolitical lens and the straight up geopolitics. What will be the nature of the US's relationship with Europe and other countries? We're going to be speaking with Jared Cohen, President of Global Affairs and co-head of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute, and George Lee, the other co-head of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute. So Jared and George, thank you both for coming on Odd Lots, joining us in the studio.

George Lee (2:55)

Thank you. Thank you. As I mentioned to you before, I'm a longtime listener, first time caller, love the pod, so thrilled to be on it with you.

Tracy Alloway (3:01)

Oh, thank you. I love it when people say that on air.

Joe Weisenthal (3:04)

I know.

Tracy Alloway (3:04)

I have a question just to begin with. What is the Goldman Sachs Global Institute?

Joe Weisenthal (3:08)

Good question.

George Lee (3:09)

Sure. I'll start, Jared, you should pitch in. So the Goldman Sachs Global Institute is a new platform at the firm. We formed about two and a half years ago, and the goal is to promote the firm's thought leadership at the intersection of technology change, geopolitics and markets. And the idea is that these factors have become extraordinarily consequential. For boards, CEOs, investment committees, and many of our client types. And so this ability to transmit our thinking, be provocative, share a worldview is just a great way to engage our clients. It's been a lot of fun.

Jared Cohen (3:47)

The only other thing that I would add is for some of the really kind of big strategic clients, let's take Sovereign as an example. There's a lot of ambitions that they have over the next three to five years. And what the Institute does is we pull together all the expertise that we have at the firm to essentially cover their ambitions. So when they say, here's at a high level what we want to try to do in the AI space or here's what we want to try to do in the Indo-Pacific region, our job is to be able to respond as a firm to help them think through and define what that looks like and then to help them make it happen. And through the combination of our banking franchise and our asset management franchise, that's what we try to do.