Hidden Forces

Podcast Update: The Will to Win, Memetic Desire, & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Demetri shares his thoughts about the news cycle and provides listeners with a sneak peak into the next 5 weeks of content, including episodes on the will to win and memetic desire.

Ultrasound Money & the Ethereum Triple Halving | Nikhil Shamapant

In Episode 191 of Hidden Forces [https://www.hiddenforces.io/podcasts], Demetri Kofinas speaks with Nikhil Shamapant, the author of a recently published and widely circulated 79-page report that sets an ambitious 18-month price target on Ethereum of $150,000 per ETH—more than 30x the current level. Nikhil believes this will be driven primarily by two upcoming changes to the underlying Ethereum protocol which will reduce the supply of ETH by the equivalent of roughly three Bitcoin halving cycles. The changes are scheduled to take place in two phases beginning with the adoption of EIP-1559 in mid-July of this year and culminating with the formal transition to proof-of-stake in late 2021, turning Ethereum into the preferred savings vehicle in crypto, according to Nikhil. The second part of this episode is an hour-long conversation that we recorded with one of EIP-1559’s main champions, Tim Beiko. We brought Tim on the program in order to do a deeper dive on the protocol changes referenced in our conversation with Nikhil, including changes to the network fee model (i.e., basefee burning & tips) and the block reward subsidy (i.e., staking), as well as changes to the user experience, the impact on miners and miner extractable value (MEV), network scalability, staking rewards, & much more. You can access our episode with Tim and download the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page [https://patreon.com/hiddenforces]. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added [https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-How-Do-I-Get-and-Use-My-Audio-RSS-Link-] to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334] | Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP] | Stitcher [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/demetri-kofinas/hidden-forces] | SoundCloud [https://soundcloud.com/hiddenforces] | YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8URhgYos5fjHqFSO4RSIEg] | CastBox [https://castbox.fm/channel/2629539] | RSS Feed [http://hiddenforces.libsyn.com/rss] Write us a review on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334] Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website [https://hiddenforces.io/] Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas [http://www.demetrikofinas.com/] Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces [https://patreon.com/hiddenforces] Join the conversation on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/hiddenforcespod/], Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/hiddenforcespod/], and Twitter [https://twitter.com/hiddenforcespod] at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas [https://twitter.com/kofinas] Episode Recorded on 05/07/2021

The Sources of Chinese Communist Party Conduct | Josh Rogin

In Episode 190 of Hidden Forces [https://www.hiddenforces.io/podcasts], Demetri Kofinas speaks with Josh Rogin, a Washington Post foreign-policy columnist and author of the book Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century. Rogin’s book explains for mainstream audiences how the Chinese Communist Party works: its history, nature, motivations, operations, and objectives. It does so in a language that is both accessible and at times entertaining because it’s full of personal anecdotes colored by Josh’s own reporting which is a testament to his skill as an investigative journalist and as someone with a reputation for breaking big stories. While we don’t break any stories today, some of what you will hear in this episode is probably going to be news to you. You are going to learn how CCP influence operations work, who they target, and how they compromise influential individuals in both the public and private sectors, including CEOs, University administrators, and elected officials, along with their spouses, friends, and family members. You’re also going to learn how the CCP uses tactics of blackmail, repression, and counterprogramming, both within and outside of China's borders in order to coerce and drown out its critics as part of a relentless culture of intimidation that is foundational to the party’s identity and history as an underground influence organization. Lastly, you’re going to learn why all of this matters to those of us living outside of China and how Western governments should respond to a threat that is no longer gathering but is in fact quite clear and immediate to those of us who have devoted time and attention to understanding this very important issue. In the subscriber overtime, Kofinas and Rogin delve deeper into the financial side of this story, and how for years, the CCP has used US financial markets to fund the buildout of not only China’s military but also its surveillance systems, including those used to monitor and control repressed minorities in the country’s autonomous regions. Most notable among these is Xinjiang province, where over 12 million Uyghurs are currently living under what international human rights organizations and governments agree are genocidal conditions that involve atrocities such as forced labor, compulsory reeducation, and coercive harvesting of hair and bodily organs. We also delve into Josh’s independent reporting on the origins of Covid-19, the troubling connections between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and America’s own public health officials, and why the lab-release hypothesis is actually much more credible than the mainstream media would have you believe. This is a serious conversation. No doubt about it. But everything that you are about to hear today has been widely reported on and is becoming increasingly well understood among those in positions of power within the corporate and policymaking communities. The rise of China in this context signifies something very different than what most of us imagined and hoped for at the beginning of the 21st century. Confronting it demands urgency and resoluteness that is arguably comparable to that last seen in our collective response to the Soviet threat enunciated most clearly in George Kennan’s seminal 8,000-word telegram to the US State Department in 1946. It is a challenge that we can and will overcome, but it’s time that we all get on the same page about what it means, what is required of us in order to confront it, and how our lives will drastically change as a result. You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page [https://patreon.com/hiddenforces]. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added [https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-How-Do-I-Get-and-Use-My-Audio-RSS-Link-] to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334] | Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP] | Stitcher [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/demetri-kofinas/hidden-forces] | SoundCloud [https://soundcloud.com/hiddenforces] | YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8URhgYos5fjHqFSO4RSIEg] | CastBox [https://castbox.fm/channel/2629539] | RSS Feed [http://hiddenforces.libsyn.com/rss] Write us a review on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334] Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website [https://hiddenforces.io/] Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas [http://www.demetrikofinas.com/] Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces [https://patreon.com/hiddenforces] Join the conversation on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/hiddenforcespod/], Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/hiddenforcespod/], and Twitter [https://twitter.com/hiddenforcespod] at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas [https://twitter.com/kofinas] Episode Recorded on 05/04/2021

Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe | Niall Ferguson

In Episode 189 of Hidden Forces [https://www.hiddenforces.io/podcasts], Demetri Kofinas speaks with historian Niall Ferguson about his latest book, “Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe.” The book is a historical tour de force of epic disasters ranging from pandemics to botched military responses, to nuclear accidents. What all these catastrophes share in common is a striking combination of operator and managerial error resulting from systemic problems that became calamities in the face of predictable, though unimaginable crises. While Doom is mainly a history of disaster, its lessons apply most urgently in our own time, which provided us an opportunity to explore some of the contemporary challenges that we face in western society with someone who thinks and writes about such risks and opportunities regularly. At the top of this list is an emerging cold war between the United States and a coalition of authoritarian powers led by China and Russia, two nations that are increasingly cooperating on matters of national and economic security. This episode also includes a discussion about financial markets, digital assets, and the health of Western economies. In place of an overtime, Demetri recorded a premium-only episode with Grant Williams on endgame scenarios for the economy, including a conversation about the prospects for runaway inflation and how to manage that risk for your portfolio. You can access the premium episode, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page [https://patreon.com/hiddenforces]. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added [https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-How-Do-I-Get-and-Use-My-Audio-RSS-Link-] to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334] | Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP] | Stitcher [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/demetri-kofinas/hidden-forces] | SoundCloud [https://soundcloud.com/hiddenforces] | YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8URhgYos5fjHqFSO4RSIEg] | CastBox [https://castbox.fm/channel/2629539] | RSS Feed [http://hiddenforces.libsyn.com/rss] Write us a review on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334] Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website [https://hiddenforces.io/] Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas [http://www.demetrikofinas.com/] Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces [https://patreon.com/hiddenforces] Join the conversation on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/hiddenforcespod/], Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/hiddenforcespod/], and Twitter [https://twitter.com/hiddenforcespod] at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas [https://twitter.com/kofinas] Episode Recorded on 04/26/2021

Existential Risks & the Future of Humanity | Toby Ord

In Episode 188 of Hidden Forces [https://www.hiddenforces.io/podcasts], Demetri Kofinas speaks with Toby Ord, a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at Oxford University and author of “The Precipice,” a book that focuses on the big picture questions facing humanity’s long-term future and the risks which threaten to put a premature end to our existence. The purpose of today’s conversation is first, to get you to reflect on this question of whether or not humanity and our future is worth fighting for, and second, to reflect on what that means in terms of human action, politics, and global cooperation. What are the existential risks that we face as a species? How do we calculate those risks? Where do we focus our attention, how do we prioritize, and finally, what can we do to mitigate those risks that we deem worthy of our attention? For those interested in learning about existential risk factors, this part of the discussion begins near the forty-minute mark and focuses mainly on the threat of nuclear war and the geopolitical dimensions that escalate its likelihood. The overtime is spent primarily discussing the risks posed by both natural and engineered pandemics, biological terrorism, and artificial intelligence. The two also discuss asteroid impacts, climate change, and supervolcanic eruptions. You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page [https://patreon.com/hiddenforces]. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added [https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/articles/212055866-How-Do-I-Get-and-Use-My-Audio-RSS-Link-] to your favorite podcast application. If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following: Subscribe on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334] | Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/show/0TK6u251zGSlMgJKH6cOaP] | Stitcher [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/demetri-kofinas/hidden-forces] | SoundCloud [https://soundcloud.com/hiddenforces] | YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8URhgYos5fjHqFSO4RSIEg] | CastBox [https://castbox.fm/channel/2629539] | RSS Feed [http://hiddenforces.libsyn.com/rss] Write us a review on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-forces/id1205359334] Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website [https://hiddenforces.io/] Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas [http://www.demetrikofinas.com/] Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces [https://patreon.com/hiddenforces] Join the conversation on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/hiddenforcespod/], Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/hiddenforcespod/], and Twitter [https://twitter.com/hiddenforcespod] at @hiddenforcespod Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas [https://twitter.com/kofinas] Episode Recorded on 04/21/2021