Hidden Forces

In Episode 159 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Chris Brose, fmr. Staff Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a fmr. speechwriter to two Secretaries of State, and the current Head of Strategy at Anduril Industries, a defense product company working at the bleeding edge of innovation in defense strategy, procurement, and development. This is a conversation about the story t...

In Episode 158 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University, who served as special assistant to the president for national security affairs in the Obama Whitehouse and on the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton.  The two explore the history of isolationism in the United States and apply those lesson...

In Episode 157 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Ian Easton, Senior Director at the Project 2049 Institute and author of "The Chinese Invasion Threat" about the likelihood and consequences of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The Taiwan Strait is one of the most dangerous flashpoints on earth and the island of Taiwan sits right in the middle of one of the busiest maritime sea and air rout...

In Episode 156 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Wall Street Journal reporters Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck about their new book, "Blood & Oil" that chronicles the rise to power of Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, a story full of multi-billion dollar business deals, high-powered finance, and political intrigue. The first 15 minutes or so of their conversation deal with Bradley...

In Episode 155 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Bill Nelson, Chief Economist & Executive Vice President at the Bank Policy Institute, who spent most of his career working at the Federal Reserve, with a brief stint at the Bank For International Settlements. Before joining BPI, Dr. Nelson served as a deputy director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board and a...

In Episode 154 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Sinan Aral, MIT Professor and author of "The Hype Machine," about the promise and the peril of social media. Is social media a force for meaningful connection, collaboration, social support, and access to life-saving information? Or is it a propaganda machine that, left unchecked, will destroy democracy, civil society, and our health? C...

In Episode 153 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with authors Kevin Coldiron, Jamie Lee, and Tim Lee, as they explain how the behavior of financial markets today is not, as is commonly believed, some function of the economy, interest rates, or political developments, but rather a manifestation of what they call "the rise of carry" or the suppression of volatility.  In finance, a carry trad...

In this short segment, Demetri Kofinas shares some thoughts to end the summer and looks ahead at what listeners can expect to hear in the next few months. You can access the Hidden Forces episode overtimes, transcripts, and rundowns to through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page . All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application. If you en...

In Episode 152 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Soner Çağaptay , the Beyer Family fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute. Soner has written extensively on U.S.-Turkish relations, Turkish domestic politics, and Turkish nationalism and is the author of several books on Turkey including his latest "Erdoğan's Empire: Turkey and the Politics of the...

In Episode 151 of Hidden Forces , In Episode 151 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with journalist, author, and documentary filmmaker Margaret Heffernan, whose best-selling book Willful Blindness, was named one of the most important business books of the decade by the Financial Times. Her latest book, "Uncharted," addresses many of the core themes and subjects that have captivated our atten...

In Episode 150 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Rick Rule, President & CEO of Sprott US Holdings and Senior Managing Director of Sprott Inc. a global, alternative asset manager focused on precious metals and real assets with approximately 12 billion dollars in assets under management. After spending most of the last decade in a period of prolonged underperformance, gold has spent the...

In Episode 149 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Orville Schell, Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society about the implications of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's monumental speech at the Nixon Library, the history of engagement with China's Communist Party, and what a New Cold War with China will mean for the future of peace and security. Dr. Schell's care...

In Episode 148 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Michael Anderson and Vance Spencer. Mike and Vance are the founders of Framework Ventures, a thesis-driven venture capital firm whose team of technologists, researchers, and investors partner with founders and teams to build token-based networks and develop the requisite cryptoeconomics, governance, and community to scale.    The team's...

In Episode 147 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Muneeb Ali, co-founder of Blockstack, a full-stack decentralized computing platform and app ecosystem that puts users in control of their identity & data.  The two spend the first half of their conversation discussing the recent twitter hack and what lessons can be drawn from the attack. The rest of the episode (including the overtime)...

In Episode 146 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Irshad Manji, a public intellectual, best-selling author, and Emmy award nominated documentary filmmaker whose latest book "Don't Label Me," attempts to educate readers on how to have conversations about politically sensitive subjects without inflaming the culture wars. It should not surprise anyone to learn, therefore, that today's con...

In Episode 145 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Camila Russo, the host of the Defiant podcast and author of "The Infinite Machine," the first official account of the rise of the Ethereum blockchain. The first 25 minutes of this conversation explores Camila's experience working as a journalist in Argentina, how she got interested in covering cryptocurrencies, as well as her process fo...

In Episode 144 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with philosophers Brandon Warmke and Justin Tosi about the phenomenon of grandstanding, which they define as "the use and abuse of moral talk for the purposes of self-promotion."  Although moral grandstanding is a spectacle most commonly associated with those on the political left, the practice of grandstanding is an entirely bipartisan phen...

In Episode 143 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Vivian Lee, President of Health Platforms at Verily Life Sciences (an Alphabet company) about America's broken health system, how to fix it, and why it's been so difficult to do until now.  According to an Institute of Medicine 2012 study, we waste 30 cents of every dollar we spend on health care. That's over $1 trillion per year. Nearl...

In Episode 142 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Tony Greer, editor of the Morning Navigator and founder of TG Macro. This episode begins with a clip from David Portnoy (a.k.a Barstool Dave or Davey Daytrader), in what is probably the most epic hype video ever created for stock trading.  Portnoy has come to personify not only the recent rip-roaring retracement in equities, but also, t...

In Episode 141 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Joseph Nye, the co-founder of the international relations theory of neoliberalism who is credited with developing the concept of "soft power."  In his latest book "Do Morals Matter?," Dr. Nye meticulously weighs the ethics of the foreign policy decisions of American presidents from F.D.R. to Donald Trump. He argues that good moral reaso...

In Episode 140 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Thomas Rid, Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies about active measures, the history of disinformation, and political warfare. We live in the age of organized deception. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakeni...

In Episode 139 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. In this nearly two-hour long conversation, we discuss how monopoly, commercial concentration, and regulatory capture drive outcomes in our economy, markets, and political system...

In Episode 138 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with Adam Tooze, professor of history and Director of the European Institute at Columbia University about the German Constitutional Court's recent ruling. In its decision, the German Court finds that the European Central Bank's 2015 bond-buying program would be illegal under German law unless the ECB can prove the purchases are justified. Th...

In Episode 137 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with professor of finance at Beijing's Peking University, Michael Pettis. Profesor Pettis' research has focused mainly on Chinese financial markets, global trade & capital flows, and central banking. He spent seventeen years on Wall Street running fixed-income trading and capital market desks and has advised governments on privatizations of...

In Episode 136 of Hidden Forces , Demetri Kofinas speaks with CoinDesk Chief Content Officer Michael Casey about "The Great Monetary Inflation" and the future of digital money. The two chronicle the financialization of the global economy that occured between the end of gold convertibility in 1971 and the Great Financial Crisis of 2008. They discuss how the period of the 1970's weighed heavily on t...