Global Meet-Up #1 (Tokyo): Japan's Geo-Political Outlook
What are my first impressions of Japan?
Five trains later, I'm getting frustrated. I'm like, “Regardless of how many people are on the train, I'm going to dive in.” There's 10 people around me. There are 10 guys around me. Train comes in, the carriage is full. I'm like, “There's no way we're getting into the train, but I'm sick of waiting.” We go, all 10 of us at the same time, get in the train, and for whatever reason, we all fit.
There's no conflict. It just happens miraculously. And we're like, “This is really strange.” That's my first experience with Japan.
I'm on my way from the airport to the hotel. I'm sitting, and I realize—and it's shocking to me—there's no beeping. We're on the highway. We're going really fast from the airport to the hotel, and there's just no beeping. I say to my friend who picked me up at the airport, and I ask her, “Why does no one beep in Japan?” And she's like, “Because it's bad manners.” And I'm like, “Yes, it is bad manners, but we beep all the time in China, so why is no one beeping in Japan?”
That's the second story. The third story is we get to the hotel, and a podcaster invited me to Japan, the Naokiman Podcast. They're paying for the hotel, but the hotel needs a credit card. I take out from my wallet my credit card and I give it to the hotel staff.
She comes back and says, “It says debit card.” And I'm like, “I know it says debit card, but it's a credit card, trust me.” She goes back to talk to her manager, and I can't understand why they come back and say, “It's a debit card.” I say, “It's both a debit card and a credit card.” And they're like, “It's a debit card.” I'm like, “It's a credit card, trust me.” After a bit, I'm like, “Fine, here's a credit card.” And they say, “Yes, thank you.”
Those are my three stories of Japan so far. The point is that these stories basically confirm to me my suspicions about Japan before I came here, which is that Japan is an extremely harmonious society, which is very cohesive and where people are able to synchronize just subconsciously. Think of the subway, the train story, where everyone knows how to fit into the train without actually coming into conflict with each other. That's very impressive.
At the same time, Japanese are very rules-obsessed, right? If you need a credit card, it can't be a debit card; it has to be a credit card. It can't be both a credit card and a debit card; it has to be a credit card. Those are my impressions of Japan so far.
Japan’s development and East Asia
How do I see Japan developing?
I was on a Naokiman podcast this afternoon. We talked for 3 hours. I basically laid out my understanding of what's happening in East Asia. I think that right now there are two major flashpoints in the world. You have the Middle East, you have Ukraine, and I think the third flashpoint will be East Asia.
I think East Asia will be the most complicated because you have some pretty sophisticated geopolitical actors in East Asia, including South Korea, North Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Australia. It's a very complicated situation. But I'll just summarize for you what we really talked about.
The US strategy is to retreat or remove itself from providing security guarantees in East Asia. Because for the past 50–60 years, it's America that guaranteed peace in East Asia. And as a result, the East Asian economies have skyrocketed. They boomed these few decades.
But from the American perspective, that's not really sustainable because that means paying for the upkeep of 50,000 troops in South Korea, 50,000 troops for Japan. America doesn't really want to do that anymore.
America wants to retreat. And once America retreats, there will be two points of contention in East Asia. The first, of course, will be Taiwan. The Chinese strategy is to, over time, economically unify Taiwan. The idea is that as the global economy becomes worse and worse, Taiwan will become much more dependent on China. And this will lead ultimately to political reunification. That's the Chinese strategy.
From the Japanese perspective, that would be a disaster because if Taiwan were to reunify with China, this would create an embargo on Japan. Because Japan needs access to the resources of Southeast Asia. Taiwan would block Southeast Asia from Japan, and this would create long-term security issues for Japan. Japan cannot allow that.
Japan is very quickly remilitarizing, and we can see a lot of potential tension in the shipping lanes of Southeast Asia. But China doesn't actually want to engage with Japan. The Chinese strategic mentality is to avoid confrontation and to use other mechanisms, economic coercion, diplomacy, in order to resolve military disputes.
I think the Chinese strategy will be to use North Korea as a point of leverage. The idea is, you're North Korea, and you're poor, but because you're poor, you have nothing to lose in this game, right? North Korea threatens South Korea with artillery, and then North Korea would lob missiles in the Sea of Japan. This would create a lot of crises in East Asia, in which case Japan would need to negotiate with China in order to keep North Korea at bay. That's the Chinese strategy.
And the Japanese strategy would be—Japan is actually in a lot of trouble, because there are three major issues.
The first major issue is the aging crisis. Every developed nation in the world faces an aging crisis, but Japan is far ahead of the curve. Japan is aging faster than other nations. And this is causing a lot of problems for Japan, especially immigration, right? If you have to bring immigrants in order to keep the economy going.
The second major issue is Japan is not self-sufficient in the way that the United States and China are self-sufficient. Japan is very dependent on imports and exports to feed its economy, to feed its people, basically.
And the third issue is that Japan has a lot of historical enemies in East Asia. Historically, Japan has had feuds with the Korean Peninsula, with China, with Southeast Asia. The geopolitical outlook is not great for Japan.
I think that the next 10 years will be critical for Japan. Because either Japan solves its demographic crisis right now, or at least in 10 years, basically its aging crisis—if it does not solve this problem in the next 10 years, I think Japan will cease to exist as a nation-state in 50 years' time. That's how serious this problem is. The aging crisis is a huge problem in Japan.
What I said in the podcast, and we can talk about this, is what Japan is facing is a stark choice that other nations won't face, but which Japan has to resolve by itself.
I think Japan, in the next 10 years, will attempt to resolve its demographic crisis by introducing mass euthanasia. That's our prediction. I think Japan will be forced into making this choice, where the only way for the nation to survive is by encouraging those who are over 80 to do euthanasia. And I don't see any other path. It's either Japan makes this choice or Japan ceases to exist in 50 years' time. And this is something we debate.
We're joking on a podcast, because we are talking. And I was joking that the solution is to get these old people to use psychedelics. If they use psychedelics, they will see that death is actually meaningless. And this is something that has a lot of validity because we know people who have near-death experiences. And after they die, they recognize that: “You know what? Death is just the beginning.”
There are also people who have cancer. And for the longest time, they were just dreading death. But the moment they start using psychedelics as part of their therapy, they start to be more welcoming. They start to be more open-minded about the possibility of death. They don't have fear of death.
The moment you start to lose the fear of death is the moment that you live life to your fullest. It may mean that you die, but it also means that before you die, you are really motivated to make the best of your time. You spend more time with your family. You spend more time doing what you love rather than just dreading.
The aging crisis and the transfer of power
What happens if Japan does not resolve aging crisis?
The first comment is we know exactly what would happen if this trend continues, where the elite are getting older and older and they refuse to surrender power.
What's going to happen is something called rat utopia. And this was an experiment conducted by John Calhoun in the '60s and '70s. Basically, he was interested in population growth and what it would mean for society if you have abundance. What would abundance mean for humanity?
He created this experiment where he took a room and turned it into a colony for rats. And in this room, he created a paradise: just free water, free food every day, no predators. These rats could just do whatever they wanted. And then he put these rats in this colony.
He tried this experiment for dozens of times. And every single time, it ended with a mass extinction of the colony. All the rats ended up dying. The reason why was, in nature, male rats fight over breeding rights. And the strongest rat, the alpha rat, gets to have his wife and they have children. And the other rats run off to start their own colonies or die out in nature. This is survival of the fittest, basically. And that's just the rule of nature.
But in this scenario, ratopia, no one dies. And even though the alpha male rats are able to beat up the other rats, the other rats have no place to go. They just hang out together. And eventually, they gang up on the alpha male rat. The alpha male rat will protect his family, but eventually he's just so sick of fighting rats over and over, he just runs away.
Then the other rats come and rape the female rat. And then the female rat is so sick of fighting off these rats that she loses her mind and she starts attacking her own children. And then these children run off, and because there's no adult protection, they also join this feral group of rats. And then you have gang warfare.
This is what happens to society if this trend continues, where the boomers refuse to give up power. Just imagine a scenario where you have a lot of young men, and right now they distract themselves with OnlyFans and Bitcoin and JPEGs and pornography, right? But eventually you reach a point where they form into groups, and that was just urban warfare. It's a civil war throughout.
Eventually society's like, “Screw this. We're going to send these men off to die in war in order to maintain social stability.” You destroy your society by killing off the young. But that's the only path forward if you don't allow the proper transfer of power from the old to the young. This society will die out.
This is something that every major industrial country faces today. Not just Japan, but China, the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, everyone.
I think that my analysis of Japan is that it would have a cultural resilience to resolve this issue. Because the trick for the future is not to actually win wars. You can't do that nowadays with nuclear weapons. The trick is to maintain cultural cohesion and that mentality. That means the old have to surrender power to the young.
And only in Japan, I think, could that happen. I'm not saying it will happen. I'm saying, of all these societies I see, I think only Japan could pull this off. And if Japan pulls this off, then I can see Japan becoming a superpower of East Asia. It's the most pressing problem for humanity. That's our first point.
The second point is, why is this happening? Why is it that the old refuse to share the power? And we've never had a situation like this in human history before.
Primarily because we never had so much peace and prosperity before in human history. It was impossible for the old to live this long. But now that they're 80, 90—Chuck Grassley is 90 years old—what if they just retire and give it to someone who is more capable?
I think the answer is because we've adopted an extremely materialistic worldview which worships individual achievement. We worship people like Elon Musk or even a trillionaire, but we also worship people who live to 100 years old. It's like, “Wow, what an amazing individual achievement.”
In a lot of places, if you live to 100 years old, you get a visit by the mayor, there's a parade for you. You're celebrated. And you should be celebrated for living to 100 years old. But we don't think about the cost of having people live this long.
We adopted this extremely materialistic worldview that is competitive, that is individualistic, that is extremely selfish. And we reward people for that.
I think the only solution moving forward is to adopt a much more nationalistic, much more religious worldview. Which is to say, it's probably good to sacrifice yourself for the greater good. It's a noble thing to think of community before you think of the individual. But again, of all the societies that I see around me, China, the United States, Europe, I think only Japan can pull this off.
Will porn-addicted young men really revolt?
It is very true that the young people seem apathetic today. It seems as though they're no longer interested in politics, they're no longer angry. It seems as though the internet has been able to channel a lot of their anger away. They spend a lot of time watching porn, playing video games, and apparently that has sort of dissipated their natural anger.
I think that's incorrect. We have to use a longer time horizon. The example I would use is the 1844 revolutions, which really destroyed old Europe. And what sparked the revolution was famine. It was climate change, wet weather, which caused the potato famine. It caused a lot of starvation, and that's when the entire society started to burn.
The idea that today, the young people can just watch porn online and get food delivered to them using Uber Eats—yeah, sure. But let's imagine a scenario where the global supply chain chokes up. And they're not going to be able to access food. Now that they're hungry, now that the economy has collapsed around the world, now I think they're angry.
And the Strait of Hormuz—it's a huge issue, and no one really appreciates what this really means for the global supply chain and the global food supply. Because, sure, the Strait of Hormuz, a lot of energy passes through that, but you know what? A lot of fertilizer passes through that as well.
About 20% of the world's fertilizer goes through that. Most of the world depends on fertilizer, especially the Global South. Imagine a scenario where there's famine in Africa, and it's going to have huge repercussions for the world, because then you have this mass migration into Europe. And this is going to be a sick society.
The thing about history is once a spark starts, every place gets ignited. I think it's easy to say, “We're special and we've solved the food problem. We've solved the abundance issue, so we're going to be immune from history.” I would disagree.
I think the entire world that we live in is much more fragile than we think. Can you imagine, 2 years ago, the United States would be striking Iran, fighting this pointless war, destroying the global economy? They got access to oil. It would have been unimaginable 2 years ago. I think 2 years from now, the world will be much more unimaginable.
Zionism, Hindutva, and Japan
Will Japan ally with Zionism and Hindutva?
If you look at the two forces that are aggressively expanding throughout the world, it's Zionism. Because what are Israelis doing in Argentina? There are a lot of Israelis right now in Argentina. And there are movements of Israelis to the Mediterranean, where Jared Kushner has bought Sazan Island in the Adriatic Sea of Albania. That's caused a lot of problems, a lot of protests in Albania. Zionism is expanding rapidly.
Hindutva is the Hindu version of Zionism. And it's basically trying to expand the Indian diaspora. And that's why you see so many Indians in Australia, in Canada, in Europe. It's being driven by this Hindutva ideology.
What I think is naturally going to happen is this growing alliance between Zionism and Hindutva. Because there's not that many people in Israel. There's a lot of people in India. It makes sense to go to Argentina, buy up all the land with Zionist capital, and then bring in Indian laborers to grow the place.
I think it's natural because if you look at Israel and India, they get along really well. There's only four countries in the world where Israel has a net favorability rating. And one of them is India. And I think it's Kenya, for whatever reason. But it's not that many. But one of them is India.
I think there's a deep-rooted respect between the Jews and the Indians. If you go to any American university, there are two ethnic groups that dominate: the Jews and the Indians. I think there's a lot of natural synergy between these two groups.
I don't see how Japan fits into this alliance, though. Maybe there is a possible solution to this, but if Japan were to join this alliance, then this would be a path forward for Japan.
Japan’s cultural resilience and work ethic
Can Japan change?
I think that if you look at the global supply chain, Southeast Asia is particularly vulnerable. The reason why is you have a lot of people in Southeast Asia, not enough resources. Places like Indonesia, Malaysia, are going to face a lot of political turbulence for the next 10–20 years.
If we focus on Japan, it seems Japan is in the worst-case scenario because Japan is heavily industrialized, but it's also heavily dependent on global trade, especially on energy from the Middle East, and also food from other places.
I think that Japan will be one of the first industrial nations to suffer the major repercussions and consequences of the Strait of Hormuz closure. And you will have a lot of problems in Japan.
But I think that once these problems arise, once Japan recognizes how stark the future is, then I think that Japan will make some important changes that were previously unimaginable. And Japan will prove much more culturally resilient and flexible than other places. And I think it's probably because the situation in Japan is particularly stark. And that's point one.
Point two is, as the United States retreats from the Pacific theater, the United States sees Japan as its major proxy. Because the United States is interested in divide and rule. Before, it could use divide and conquer to control the world, but now it cannot, because a lot of nations refuse to submit to American power. Now America is forced to use divide and conquer. Japan is the main proxy for America.
And as a result, America will protect Japan. Because at the end of the day, the Western Hemisphere is extremely rich. Japan won't have to suffer a food or oil crisis because they can continue to import this from the Western Hemisphere.
Also, Japan is very wealthy. Japan has $3.5 trillion invested overseas. It has a trillion dollars in US Treasuries. You pay more for food, but you're still getting food. A lot of places in Southeast Asia and Africa are going to starve to death and have famine issues.
But I think that as a culture, as a people, the Japanese will also recognize that it's probably not a good idea to be completely dependent on America in the long term. And it's probably important to diversify and make some social changes to adapt to the new reality. I don't think the future in Japan is as bleak as people would imagine it to be.
Why am I hopeful about Japan?
What I'll say is this. Young people throughout the world, especially in industrial economies, they no longer want to work, right? America, young people, they could choose to work in factories. There are lots of manufacturing jobs in America that pay really well. They don't want to do that. They would rather take whatever meager savings they have and go and gamble on cryptocurrencies.
The expectations and attitudes and the values of the young people are really skewed. Maybe before, my generation, to make 80,000 a year working as an engineer was considered really prestigious. Now the young people, if you ask them, “What do you want to do? And how much money do you want to make?” Their average expectation is to work as a social media influencer, like me, making 600,000 a year. And then, which I probably got when I was 21 years old, right? It's insane what their expectations are. This is a problem throughout the world.
The thing I will say about Japan is that, for whatever reason, there's still a sense of conscientiousness in Japan, where if they do something, they want to do it well.
You don't really see that anymore around the world. I'm from China, I live in China. And people don't take their work seriously. Even if Japan has problems, it's nowhere as bad as anywhere else. And I think a lot of it has to do with the cultural cohesion, where people would feel embarrassed if they didn't do a good job. They'd rather not work rather than do a bad job.
But in China and the United States, you have a lot of attitude where, in China, we have a phrase called “bai lan,” which is “let it rot.” Rather than do a good job, just do a terrible job because that's what other people deserve.
In China, it's really strange, but the attitude is: to express your individuality, to express your autonomy and agency, do a really crappy job. 'Cause that's the only way to rebel against the system. Whereas I don't think that this would ever happen in Japan.
Taiwan, China, and the United States
Will China invade Taiwan?
Taiwan—Japan would absolutely get involved in the war, because again, Japan sees Taiwan as vital to its core national security interests. Because Taiwan would block Japan from accessing Southeast Asia. And this would hurt Japan in the long term, strategically. But I think the chance of China actually invading Taiwan is extremely minuscule. And a lot of this has to do with Chinese geopolitical thinking.
What I can say is the Americans play chess, which is direct, logical, and confrontational. Chinese play Go, which is indirect and long-term and very patient.
China doesn't like military conflicts. China does whatever it can to avoid direct military confrontation. An example is Iran, where the only reason why Iran would agree to a ceasefire is China applied a lot of the pressure on Iran. Go back to mid-April or April when the ceasefire was announced.
I didn't understand at that time why Iran would agree to a ceasefire. Clearly, Iran had a lot of the advantages, and clearly America was on the back foot. America was not prepared for a long war, and even Trump said this:
We didn't expect them to close the Strait of Hormuz. We didn't expect them to attack GCC energy infrastructure. We weren't prepared for this.
Clearly America was on the back foot. Iran had a strategic advantage. Why stop the war? And the reason why you stopped the war is China says, “You guys stop the war because you're hurting the economy too much. You're hurting our economy.” And China buys 90% of Iranian oil, so that's a lot of pressure.
But the way China does this is interesting. China didn't come out and say, “We don't support this war or whatever.” China got Pakistan to come in to be the mediator. That's how China operates. It's always behind the scenes. It's always back channels.
China does not like confrontation. It creates a lot of issues for China. There's a lot of Chinese strategic texts, like Sun Tzu's Art of War and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, that determine how Chinese perceive strategy. That's point one. China does not like military confrontation.
Point number two is, right now there is a political shift in Taiwan. There's a very charismatic chairwoman of the KMT, the opposition party in Taiwan, named Cheng Li-wun. And she's been saying:
Why is there a fight between China and Taiwan? We're just one big family.
And she's very young, very charismatic, and she'll probably be the next president of Taiwan. And she's committed to peaceful reunification. She actually visited China, I think, a couple of months ago, and she was greeted by the president.
If you just let things work out naturally, I think it makes a lot of sense for Taiwan and China to unify. And a lot of the reason why is Taiwan is a very small place that depends on the Chinese mainland economy. People just want a better standard of living, and it makes more sense to unify than fight. And that's point two.
Point three is the Americans actually are encouraging reunification between Taiwan and China. Just think about game theory and how I would behave if I'm Donald Trump. I want Taiwan to be unified with China. Why? Because first of all, China would give me a lot of benefits. For example, how we ended this war with Iran, for example, buying my oil. This is commercial.
If I'm America, I'm like, “Fine, you unify.” What do I lose? I lose nothing.
China does not benefit at all from invading Taiwan. It may not even win militarily. That's the issue. Why take this huge chance when, over time, Taiwan and China want to reunify naturally?
Will Trump sell out Taiwan?
Why would the United States give up Taiwan? And the reason why is Trump is transactional. He doesn't have any ideology. Taiwan's democratic, who cares? What can I trade Taiwan for? That's all he cares about, right? And because Taiwan is the ultimate national goal of China, China's actually willing to sacrifice a lot for Taiwan.
Geopolitically, about America, I don't really lose that much by surrendering Taiwan. But I think I gain a lot from China if I were to surrender Taiwan, including energy deals, where China buys a lot of energy from me, including helping me deal with Iran, including creating friction between Russia and China.
Remember what happened. Trump visits China and then there's some secret meetings. And then after the meeting, Trump says to a reporter:
You know what? I don't really care about Taiwan that much.
And you know what? That arms shipment to Taiwan, forget about it. I'm not going to give you arms. That's what Trump did. And then what happened was Putin visits China to sign the Siberian pipeline deal. That didn't happen. That was supposed to happen, but it didn't happen. Clearly a deal was made.
The roots of Japanese cohesion
Why is Japan so cohesive?
I think there's certain explanations or certain reasons to compel Japanese cohesion. The first is that, for the longest time, China was sort of gravity in East Asia. Japan always felt threatened by China, not just militarily, but culturally as well. If you're Japan, how do you distinguish yourself culturally from China? Because you obviously don't want to be colonized culturally by China. That's the first impetus for cohesion.
The second thing is the continuity of the culture. You look at China, China doesn't have any continuous culture. This is a great misunderstanding of China. The last ethnic Chinese dynasty was the Han dynasty in about the year 500. After that, most Chinese were ethnic minorities.
The Tang dynasty were not ethnic Chinese. They were what we call the Xianbei zu, which is a Turkish people. But they disguised themselves as Chinese to better rule the people.
Obviously, if you're ethnic Chinese, as opposed to if you are a minority, you're going to govern the country differently. If you are ethnic Chinese, you believe in greater China. You believe that it is China's destiny to expand outwards. And that's what the Han did.
But if you are an ethnic minority, what you're first and foremost concerned about is maintaining your rule over the people. You want to maintain a more insular foreign policy. And that's what the Tang did.
As more foreign rulers come to rule China, the Mongols, the Qing, these other groups, they saw China as a plantation economy, where they saw the people as a resource, as an energy to be exploited, to be extracted.
That's China. Japan is different. Japan has never been conquered. It's been defeated, but it's never been conquered. That's a huge difference, right? Even though Japan lost World War II, the Americans never imposed an American government on Japan.
You can say, “Well, there really wasn’t a difference.” There was actually a huge difference. If the elite were American, Japan would be a very different place today. But the elite stayed Japanese. And as long as the Japanese adhere to certain American foreign policy objectives, the Americans left Japan alone.
I think these are the two major reasons: because Japan needs to defend itself against Chinese cultural hegemony, and because Japan has stayed culturally homogeneous for most of its history. Not forever, but for most of its history.
Another factor is the hostile environment (earthquakes, tsunamis) which forces Japanese to work together.
Taiwan and American demand
Why would Trump allow China to take back Taiwan?
Audience question: If Trump allows the US to take over Taiwan, as you've mentioned, Japan will be cut off from the sea lane that connects its imports from the Middle East. Wouldn't that deteriorate Japan's economy? I cannot imagine a situation where Trump will allow Chinese to take over Taiwan.
Trump knows there's no way Japan allows Taiwan to reunify with China. And that's why he's encouraging it. Do you understand the logic of this? He's a business person. He's trying to create demand for three things:
- American energy;
- American weaponry;
- American financing.
He basically wants Japan to keep on buying US Treasuries. And how do you do that? You create demand. And how do you do that? You create conflict.
Because if China is willing to pay a lot of money for Taiwan, Japan will probably pay more money for Taiwan. He's a business person. That's how he behaves.
Audience question: You're saying that Trump is trying to implicate his responsibility to Japan. He doesn't want China to take over Taiwan, but he wants Japan to fight back by itself.
He is a business person, and he understands that both China and Japan want Taiwan. He's trying to trick both into bidding as much as possible for Taiwan, knowing neither will get Taiwan. They're going to bid indefinitely. Does that make sense?
If I'm Taiwan, think about this. If I'm Taiwan. If I join China, Japan is pissed off at me. And Japan is a huge market for Taiwan. If Taiwan sides with Japan, China's screwed over. China's going to be pissed at me. And China would embargo me. It's in my benefit to play both sides.
Taiwan's playing both sides. The United States is playing both sides. How's it possible for China to take over Taiwan? Is it possible?