How Melting Ice Is Redrawing the Global Order | Rana Foroohar

Demetri Kofinas (0:00)

What's up, everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas, and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens, that challenge consensus narratives, and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. As polar ice melts and you see routes open, the Arctic has become the most consequential and least understood geopolitical theater in the world, according to Rana Faroohar. She joins me in today's episode of Hidden Forces to discuss her book, Sea Change, which provides a sweeping account of how the Arctic is quickly becoming the new arena of global conflict as the world's great powers battle over trade routes, resources, and military dominance. Rana and I discussed the strategic logic behind agreements like the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort between the US, Finland, and Canada, why China has spent two decades quietly ring-fencing the world's maritime choke points, the Trump administration's approach to Greenland, NATO, and the Western Hemisphere, and the reversal of 40 years of market-nose-best policies on trade economics in favor of more state-directed, national security-focused trade and industrial policies. We close with a discussion about domestic politics, the fight over the future of economic nationalism, the populist backlash against AI and corporate concentration, and what, if anything, could rebuild a shared sense of civic responsibility and shared sacrifice in American life. If you want to access the transcripts and intelligence reports for this and other episodes, which include summary sections with key takeaways, you can access those by subscribing to our super nerd tier at hiddenforces.io/subscribe.

If you want to join in on the conversation, become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, discounted access to third-party research and analysis, and in-person events like our intimate dinners and weekend retreats. You can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to info at hiddenforces.io. And I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this incredibly important and expansive conversation with my guest, Rana Faroohar.

Rana Faroohar, welcome back to Hidden Forces.

Rana Foroohar (2:26)

Thank you so much for having me. I feel like really special to get round two with you.

Do very many people get round two? What?

Demetri Kofinas (2:33)

Not many. There's some people do. Special people.

Special people get more than one appearance on the podcast. Your last appearance, I think it was in 2018 or maybe 2019

Rana Foroohar (2:42)

Yeah. It was around my first book.

Demetri Kofinas (2:44)

That's right. Well, was it your first book, Don't Be Evil?

Rana Foroohar (2:46)

Oh, it was Don't Be... No, that was my second book. That was my second book.

Demetri Kofinas (2:50)

Your second book.

Rana Foroohar (2:50)

Yeah.

Demetri Kofinas (2:51)

So, this book is titled Sea Change, America's New Great Game in the Arctic Circle. I feel like this sort of breaks with your previous books, which were more about corporate concentration, distributional economics, kind of progressive economic issues.

What led you down this road to do a book about essentially what is essentially national security, geopolitics, and a bit of industrial policy?

Rana Foroohar (3:16)

Well, just by saying those three things, you've actually kind of brought us to where we are in the political economy in America right now. So, national security, industrial policy. I mean, these are things that actually are part of a conversation, not just in progressive economic circles, but actually in conservative circles as well.

I have always been interested actually in industrial policy. My first book, Makers and Takers, was looking at why does the financial system not serve Main Street? Why can Wall Street be way up here and we can still be having an economy that a lot of people feel crap in? That held, and it's actually part of this story in the sense that one of the reasons we have such a bifurcated economy is that in the neoliberal era and the post Reagan-Thatcher revolution in the 1990s, we decided to outsource our industrial supply chains. We basically decided that making things in America didn't matter anymore. As long as everybody could be a software developer or a banker, that was okay. That was the top of the pyramid of the economy. But we're now living in a world post COVID, post war in Ukraine, post Iran war, post choke points, US-China conflict, climate change, migration, that you need resiliency. You need to be able to build things. And layering into that, when the Biden administration came in, I was friendly. I was tight with a lot of those people. It's really funny when you suddenly, I've been doing my job long enough that the Biden folks come in and I'm like, oh my God, I used to go shoe shopping with Heather Boucher and now she's in the White House.