The Grant Williams Podcast Ep. 118 - David Murrin

**Grant Williams** (0:10)
Before we get going, here's the bit where I remind you that nothing we discuss should be considered as investment advice. This conversation is for informational and hopefully entertainment purposes only. So, while we hope you find it both informative and entertaining, please do your own research or speak to a financial advisor before putting a dime of your money into these crazy markets.
You're about to listen to a special preview edition of The Grant Williams Podcast, featuring my very special guest, David Murrin of The Global Forecaster. David's been a guest of mine on the pod, he's been a guest on my video series about time, and each time has generated a ton of mail, understandably so, because what he has to say is, I won't say controversial, but it's certainly thought provoking, it certainly challenges a lot of norms on both sides of the debate, and I think for me, that's a key reason why I love having him on, love talking to him, and hopefully you will feel the same after this. Every episode of The Grant Williams Podcast, including The End Game, The Super Terrific Happy Hour, The Narrative Game, This Week In Doom, Shifts Happen, and my new series with Dimitri Kofinas, The Hundred Year Pivot, is available to Copper and Silver Tier subscribers at my website, grantwilliams.com. Copper Tier subscribers get access to all the podcasts, while members of the Silver Tier get both the podcasts and my monthly newsletter, Things That Make You Go Hmmm. So if you enjoy me here on the show, and if you'd like more high quality content like it, please make your way over to grantwilliams.com and join our exciting community today. And now, on with the show.
David, my friend, good to see you. It's been a while since we had lunch. How are we looking at the Thames? How are you? Well, I hope.

**David Murrin** (1:54)
Really well. It's great to see a winterized Grant who survived an English winter and is now flourishing like a daffodil that's in relief.

**Grant Williams** (2:01)
Well, Kamateli, I deserve some sort of medal, I have to say. I was the only person leaving the Caribbean to come and spend a lot of his time in the UK over the winter. The plane was empty going this way. But anyway, listen, matey, this time for a reality check, obviously there's so much going on and it's kind of right in your wheelhouse. I'm so thrilled to have a chance to talk to you because I used this phrase when we were chatting off air, just, I'm drowning in certainty.
And everybody is absolutely convinced that they know exactly what's going on and what's happening and how long it's going to take and the way the dominoes are going to topple. And it just drives me insane. So I thought, you know what, I know exactly who I'm talking to about this. One D Murrin Esquire, and here you are. So thanks for doing this. I'm really grateful.

**David Murrin** (2:41)
It's always a pleasure to be with you, Gro.

**Grant Williams** (2:43)
You said to me privately off air, so few people really understand this war.
That's really how I feel. And I'm not too stubborn to admit that I don't really understand it as well. I'm grappling around trying to understand the level of jeopardy, which seems a lot higher to me than the newspapers. And certainly the administration in the US would have you believe. So I guess with that as a comment from you, so few people understand this war, where would you begin in terms of understanding and helping to understand it? Would it be historically or would it be with decisions made recently?

**David Murrin** (3:16)
I think we've got to go to the big picture like power dynamics that have been enacted in front of us, that have driven Russia to invade Ukraine, Iran to challenge Israel. So I think it's worth spending a few minutes going through those. And so the first big picture is we've talked about previously the decline of American hegemony and the fact that America is in terminal decline with the power vacuum. And its military isn't, as Trump said, the greatest military in the world. It's good at some things. And you know, what happened in Venezuela was impressive. But actually the problem with hegemony is they sit there for long enough in hebristic arrogance, stop adapting, and other systems rise up underneath them with very powerful adaptations that remove their power base. So in the one case, you've got America, which has really not been a part of Ukraine, hasn't absorbed those lessons as we can see in the Gulf and talk about. And on the other side, you've got the rise of China, and China is basically ready to go to war. It's developed weapons and capabilities we will talk about that allow them to wipe out what was the American advantage 15 years ago has gone. And that has emboldened China over the past five years with respect to its allies, to push them forward a bit like you throw rocks at your enemy, and the rocks are Russia and Iran, and people dodge the rock and don't realize someone threw it, they just say, whoa, that rock's passed me. So that's fundamentally what's happening and it's systematic. And then the third big picture is this war cycle I've talked about, 108 years, 112 years, and the thing I want to take away from this, it's like a sort of pulse that raises the friction between human systems. And that doesn't peak until 2030 That means everything escalates, nothing deescalates, nothing lucky happens. There's no serendipity, it just gets worse. And it really started to engage with the invasion of Ukraine.