The Imminent Global Power Shift and the Future of Gold (Uncut) 02-14-2025

David Murrin: The Imminent Global Power Shift and the Future of Gold

Welcome to Palisades Gold Radio, I’m your host Tom Bodrovics. Joining me today is David Murrin, global forecaster and author of Breaking the Code of History, Lions Led by Lions, and Red Lightning. David, thanks for joining me today.

How are you? It’s great to be here again, Tom. Very well, thanks. Not as brown as you are, but I’m surviving the English winter, which is always miserable.

Well, I have the luxury of getting a little bit more sunshine at this point in my life, compared to living in cloudy England, but I hope you can stand that. Every cell in my body is jealous. David, I wanted to start today by asking you, you know, really a 50,000 foot question.

You know, where are we in the empire cycle right now? So let’s just look at the Western Christian world. America is the last of the Western Christian empires and has been the hub of empire dynamics since the end of the Second World War, and America itself is in the terminal phases of decline. And so in a strange way, the vote for Trump was a vote for lateralism, adaptation, all of those mechanisms that the population desperately need, having recognised that more of the same linear Biden policies will just guarantee the outcome of national destruction.

But there are some challenges in this moment and where Trump’s, you know, many of the things Trump says quite amazes me how people don’t hold him more to account, because apparently the Ukraine war was meant to end on 24 hours notice. Now it’s 100 days and six months. This mechanism of promising to do things and not delivering is a repeatable pattern.

And yet some things are delivered upon. It’s an interesting mix. But in the case of America, America is in terminal decline.

And the idea that the golden years are going to follow or be just around the corner, I’m sorry, but empirical evidence doesn’t allow that to happen. Systems have huge momentum and turning them around requires real skill and judgment and also an environment that supports it. So to give you an idea of why I think the headwinds are going to be huge for Trump’s vision of turning America around in four year term and creating golden years simultaneously is how did Britain turn itself around after it lost its empire? And essentially it in the 70s was suffering terribly like the other Western countries from the consumerism, this consumer dynamic of a high condrative cycle and inflation.

And that’s a nightmare, absolute nightmare, because you’ve got high inflation, high interest rates, and you can barely survive. And so it was no coincidence coming off the top of that peak that that’s when Thatcher in the 80s enacted her changes as basic interest rates and inflation were falling, which gave her room to change things around and ultimately point the economy in the right direction. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

I think it’s the opposite is going to happen into the 2030 condrative peak, which is one of increasing rates and increasing inflation as commodity prices surge up again. And so he’s not going to be given the space to make change. In fact, he’s going to be caught with his pants down in a change that takes place with high inflation and high interest rates.

So for those people expecting America’s greatness to suddenly resurge through the front pages, I don’t think that’s going to be the story of his term. And so that’s the overall view. And one of the other reasons is there are two reasons.

One is I don’t think he’s fractionally as smart in his policies and operation as Thatcher was, because Thatcher was a lateral person with a vision, but with linear discipline and structure around her. So I think the comparison is such he’s not. And more importantly, we did it under the umbrella of American protection.

So we had some protection from outside forces in that case, the USSR. America is the umbrella, and it’s now finds itself completely on the back foot with respect to the Chinese military expansion and capabilities. And it’s quite terrifying watching that evolution of shipbuilding, new weapons, innovations, what I call revolutions in military affairs.

And I’m afraid that it’s all great that, you know, they’re looking at sort of lateralizing and making efficient the Department of Defense. I think the Doge thing is a little bit suspicious. I think that really represents, yes, efficiency on one level, but it’s a direct challenge to Congress.

And I do think Trump is making a challenge to Congress and the Constitution. And people will realize that he doesn’t think that a third term is out of the question, along with other changes. So there’s some big things happening underneath the clouds of, you know, the Riviera on Gaza, and you know, having Greenland and invading Panama, which are all interesting ideas we can talk about in their own ways.

But something more is happening. The freedoms of the American people, I think, are being eroded as we watch. And all of the mechanisms of the founding fathers are being challenged right now.

And people do need to consider, you know, the risks that go with that. I also made another observation. And that is America is a very unique empire in that it’s a very sophisticated empire that didn’t rely on colonization and an ownership of territory.

More importantly, it made countries like itself ensure they were democratic, and then spread his footprint of defense and extracted a dollar, a dollarization mechanism back to the center. But I think at the end of most cycles, systems really show who they are. And I think Trump is going to behave like an emperor, as we’ve seen with some of his de facto statements, which are pretty, pretty out there for, you know, a so called democratic country.

And I also think his disrespect for the alliance structures which hold America in that web of power is really going to be a very challenging part of one of the one of these areas of not believing the hub of the collective defense system, which is America and saying to Europe, we’re not going to come to your aid, we’re going to aim for China. I understand the strategic mechanisms, but America can’t afford to see Europe fall. It couldn’t in the First World War, it couldn’t in the Second World War.

But Europe does need to do more to defend itself. So how do you do that? I don’t think you do it with a stick. And I think a little less stick and a little more carrot across many of his policies might be a more collegiate way of creating change.

Well, David, there’s so much there to to dig into. But I’d like to start by just analyzing the let’s say the monetary situation or the inflationary landscape with which Thatcher had the ability to turn around Britain, as you said, versus Trump has right now is is the biggest difference right there. Let’s let’s just say from a monetary standpoint, the ability to issue more debt and grow into a different, let’s say, monetary regime or part of the cycle versus America is in right now.

So if the way I tend to think about is each empire is a Gaussian curve of some form. And on that curve, it rises and it falls. But it’s also got a cycle of superimposed upon it, which is this 56 year Kondratiev cycle, which I would say every two cycles is much bigger than the interim cycle.

So we’re in a much bigger cycle now than we were in the peak into 75, for example, much more like the cycle that started the First World War, far more entropy and essentially far more chaos to be unleashed. And you have to navigate through those as national systems and empires. And so Britain was able to make the change because if imagine if you were, you know, you had a national debt of say, 10 pounds, let’s make it really simple.

And you pay interest rates on on that money. As the interest rates came down, suddenly you had money in your treasury because you weren’t paying the interest rate. But you’ve managed to do it at the high level.

And therefore, as interest rate came down, suddenly you had spending power and freedom and headroom in your fiscal policies. That’s exactly what hasn’t happened to Britain right now, thanks to the Labour government’s rather rather childlike economic policies. And I don’t think it’s going to happen to Trump, either.

I think the change, for example, of removal of 20 million immigrants, a huge number, is massive. A, it’s a drain on the GDP of the country, because those people are no longer productive. And B, you then spend money trying to remove them and creating measures to keep them out.

So although that may be a laudable policy for Trump’s vision of how you actually reduce the cost of infrastructure, which I can relate to, living in England, where infrastructure is completely blown up and overloaded by immigration, it does come with a huge cost. And that cost, then, is a burden. And, you know, it’s all very well saying we’re going to save lots of money through Doge.

I think that’s going to be much harder, ultimately, to make real gains and changes than we actually think. And certainly, and the magnitude to measure up against the cost dynamics and the increasing debt dynamics. And I think this year is going to see a massive bond fall in price.

That means deals are going to go up and borrowing is going to really, really hit hard. So under that scenario, he doesn’t have a falling wind. He has headwinds.

You know, the example of Doge, I think, is quite interesting to me. You know, on one side, we see a lot of corruption. We see a lot of cuts that seemingly are easy to make.

And on the same hand, there are systems that I think any rational person would keep that also seem to be under threat. So how do we kind of separate those two different ideas at this point? Well, I think, first of all, a really great natural group of people looking for efficiency cuts is something every government will benefit from. But there’s obviously an underlying agenda.

And Project 25, which is all about how to give the executive of America ever more power, takes the whole of the Trump movement head to head with the Constitution. And I suspect that what’s going on as well, parallel to these cuts in terms of inefficiency and, as you say, fraudulent actions, just like she’s used them to change his regime around, saying that, you know, any kind of corruption will be not tolerated. Well, I’m afraid a lot of those people just probably just didn’t agree with him.

And I suspect that Doge is doing something similar, or will be doing something similar as you go on. And all you’ve got to do is go and look at what’s happened to the FBI. Anyone linked to the investigation of the Capitol riots, anyone linked to Trump, essentially an investigation, all gone, all under attack.

Now, that is a concern, because actually, one of the guardians of the Constitution are the legal system, which is under attack too, and the FBI. So there’s an awful lot more than just efficiency cuts going on. But, you know, they’re very, very shrewd in terms of how they’re operating as a group, and how they’re very clear, thanks to Project 25 in 2025, how you channel more power to the executive.

But you’ve got to remember, the American system was built with checks and balances between the Constitution, the Senate and the executive. But what Trump wishes to do is completely change that power. That’s not the democracy that the founding fathers created, that this is something very new that’s coming America’s way.

Well, I mean, you had kind of touched on that at the beginning there, this idea that Americans’ freedoms, you think, are under threat. Why do you think that is? And give us some examples of what you mean by that. Well, I mean, first of all, if you just look at Trump’s first term, he was initially constrained by four generals in a necklace.

So I’d say his better ideas got through, and the other ideas were filtered out. And of course, that’s not his style. He doesn’t like to be constrained by anything.

But he had to learn how to use the levers of Washington. And he did. And one by one, they all, you know, were pushed aside.

None of them have anything, you know, complementary to say about their ex-president, which is again of note. And we ended up with the Capitol Hill riots, which were really a revolution. They weren’t anything but under any legal construct.

But again, the law never had the power to seem to prosecute him. So he feels as if he is invulnerable. And in that respect, I would describe him at that stage as a very, very extreme narcissist.

But I think we’ve now got something else. We’ve got a man with a messianic complex that basically survived assassination, survived every attempt to put him in prison. He must feel invulnerable inside.

And that’s a very, very dangerous construct for any country to be led by. It may look good initially as nationalism, you know, burns high and the system rises, but it has huge ultimate flaws. And it was the very construct that the founding fathers sought to stop gaining power in America.

So that’s why I think in many ways, it just affirms to me, this is the end of one American cycle. And whatever comes next is a new cycle with a different construct. And the Constitution will be eroded under Donald Trump.

And then if he lives long enough, he’ll serve a third term. David, you also mentioned this idea of using carrots versus sticks. And the sticks, in my mind right now, being waved about wildly are the tariffs.

Do you think that this is the wrong way to go about creating change and creating a better trading dynamic in the world for the US versus actually creating, let’s say, maybe a tax incentive or more of a carrot approach? I mean, I think carrots, big carrots and big sticks, but well in the background, are a far better motivation of all human endeavor myself. I think that Trump somehow is operating under the belief that America is essentially the hegemon. It was just when he came to office in 16.

But a lot has changed. And Chinese power has truly surged. And America doesn’t have the ultimate say in anything anymore, thanks to the power of China.

I don’t think he’s really caught on to that in terms of the way he’s the strategy he has. I think the other piece that’s important is America is unique in that it sits on the web of a complex set of alliances. And alliances are based on trust.

And when you start to break trust with your alliances, like NATO or Canada, or NATO via Greenland, wherever you go, you break trust, you break the alliance structure, and then everyone loses. And I’m afraid this sort of large stick, bash everyone on the head of policy is doing just that. It’s creating distrust.

And it doesn’t make for a stronger system for America, because its empire is based on that process. And as I think we talked about, along a number of your shows, you know, someone in Kansas says, well, why are we fighting in Ukraine? And why are we? Why are we, you know, our soldiers overseas? And my answer to that person driving their car in Kansas safely, is that you’ve lived in the American empire and the American empire used a military footprint that basically gave everyone security in the envelope and extracted dollarized debt and dollarized values back into the states, which gave you your ability to drive around and live such a comfortable life. So if you want to maintain it, you need to maintain the borders of dollarization and influence.

And if you don’t, you need then they implode and on the margin you lose out, especially as all mature systems live on very small margins. So noted to all Americans who feel that they could be isolationist. I think that’s a very dangerous concept.

And yet, that’s part of the MAGA story and the Trump story. And it just fails to recognize the fundamental nature of the empire system that America created, not one of colonization, but one of military footprint and dollarization within the footprint, which is now contracting massively. When you say contracting massively, is that because of, let’s say, global appetite for the dollar? No, it’s contracting because the first milestone for America when it made its first step as an empire was its war with Spain in the early 20th century.

And essentially, what it did was it wanted to get across the Pacific, build coaling stations on what were Spanish possessions, and that would give access to the big markets of Asia. And that was its fundamental first building step. We’re now seeing a reversal of that.

We’re seeing, you know, Chinese military capabilities potentially very, very quickly, excluding America from the whole of the Asian basin, and countries within it making decisions in different ways in terms of how much American influence they accept or don’t accept. And so at the same time, you see China’s trade dynamics and its partners, and I don’t believe in the global south and the global north, but I’m talking about the axis of autocracy trade, as little as possible in dollars as they can. That, on the margin, destroys what margins are left for the empire’s profitability and takes it into deficit.

And I think it’s well and truly in deficit right now. David, as we’re talking about this cycle of empire, and specifically about the US, contrast for us this idea of where the US is, you know, in a declining part of its cycle of empire versus China right now. Is China still on the upswing? You know, how do you, how do you see the contrast or the dislocation between these two cycles? America is throwing the last, like, throw of its dice.

It is trying to lateralize itself to turn this sinking ship around. And there’s no doubt that Trump and MAGA are a lateralization agent. Whether they’re efficient enough to do it in face of the headwinds is the real issue.

But, you know, there are many things that that they seek to do, which actually are all about rebuilding. And I can see that story and it gets ticks apart from the imposition of self and a narcissistic sort of empire ship on top. So it’s trying to make that turn.

China is an empire that went into expansion after its civil war just at the beginnings of the end of 1949, 47. And it has been expanding ever since for those people that say it was peaceful and it’s never harmed anyone. It fought a war with everyone it could until about 1975.

And then American power in the Asian basin got stronger. It didn’t have any nearby neighbors to fight against, had a bit of a bad time with Vietnam. And so it tried one more time in 96 in the third Taiwan Straits crisis to confront America directly and it couldn’t do it.

And so it went underground and it went covert. It seduced the West into investing its manufacturing base in the process. The West knew this of its own manufacturing base.

It built an economic powerhouse through that process and then it started to militarize. Now, it should have made its military challenge back in 75, in 70 onwards demographically, but it didn’t have the technology and capability. So it’s really a system that’s been held under a glass ceiling by American power and now has one last throw of the dice.

If it doesn’t challenge for global hegemony in the next few years, forget 2049, that’s way too far ahead. If it doesn’t challenge for it, it’s declining demographics will undermine it. And that’s the interesting situation where if you’re Emperor Xi thinking about how do I create my dream, he doesn’t have time.

And I would argue that and have argued that China went into a five year plan like the Nazis did when they when they started them to power, which meant they would be bankrupt to a war in 1940. And they started war in 39. As a result, I think 2025 is that year where China has to move militarily to basically validify its investment in its military.

And because of this demand gap and the shift from fixed property investment into more mobile industrial investment, which has created real problems for them. So I think that Trump’s tariffs are actually risk triggering something where she’s not like Putin. He’s not as risk orientated and he will go at the last moment rather than before it.

But I think tariffs and aggression from America will serve as justification as it did for Japan with the oil embargo that led to their involvement in World War Two in Pearl Harbour, which was they were they were going to run out of oil for their warships. Now, China’s built a fortress economy in a way that most people don’t realise with huge stockpiles. The reason why I like EV cars is you can fuel them basically through the electricity via coal, which is domestic.

And the reason why we can’t make climate change work or reverse climate change is because China and now America have both had to go for the cheapest form of energy to keep themselves in the game and competition. But net net, I think China sits on the cusp of making its big move. And that’s really scary this year.

When Trump talked about peace coming to the world, I had to fundamentally disagree, because we are on the upramp of entropy into the peak of 2030. So we won’t see peace in Ukraine, which looks like we’re not going to see peace in the Middle East. And I think more importantly, in that context, Iran is now desperate.

And it’s trying to make a nuclear breakout. And the only response to that can be American IDF bombing of the nuclear facilities, which will close the Gulf and spike oil. So there’s a there’s a fair amount of trouble and entropic trauma coming our way very, very soon, I believe.

David, you know, the idea that the demographic picture ends up being a real challenge for China is something that I think sometimes gets missed. Obviously, we’ve talked about it on the show before, but explain to us how you see that as, you know, such a headwind for this, this system that has the ability to plan in such a long term and with such vision in that, in that way. I think that all of these empire cycles, self-organization of human systems at the beginning of the cycle comes through demographic expansion, and human systems self-organize.

And something about that self-organizational energy changes when the population starts to decline. Now, I think in China’s terms and sense, automation will make up some of, compensate for a large degree initially, which is why they’re still very dangerous. And their debt is nothing like America’s debt, because it’s the first round of empire debt, which predominates the country’s investment in its own USPs.

But then you’ve got to use your USPs to dominate your opposition, and then you pay it all back as a monopoly. So the debts of China and the debt of America are two very different structures that I’ve never seen other people recognize as dissimilar. And so America projects its debt problems onto China and says, oh, look, you’re the same.

It’s a completely different scenario. But when we think about, let’s say, where China is right now, I’ve heard the argument that they can always export, let’s say, their manufacturing base to Taiwan or a country with a better set of demographics. Is there an argument to be made that they can buy, you know, let’s say, leveraging the inroads or the logistical system that they have built? Is there an argument to be made that they can overcome some of those demographic challenges by doing that? Yes, there are.

And I think, you know, that’s why just because their demographics have tipped over, they’re not suddenly going to go into recess and suddenly not be the threat they are. They will find mechanisms to compensate far more effectively to great longevity of their threat versus America’s problems of trying to turn the ship around with headwinds and dynamics which, you know, are not optimal. So again, you know, I don’t think that the pendulum’s swung in America’s favor at all in this regard.

What do you think is happening with the monetary system of the world right now? You know, we’ve seen a spike in gold moving out of London and into the US. And I want to get your take on if this is because of tariffs or because there’s some type of, let’s say, balance sheet reset coming to the US. Look, I mean, you can never, I don’t know the reasons why gold was taken from London to America, so to speak.

I would, I do think that America under Trump is definitely thinking differently. And it is thinking as if, what does it do to retrench itself? The whole argument around Greenland and the Panama Canal is interesting because until this moment, America’s boundaries have been the boundaries of its empire, which have been around the globe. So therefore, there wasn’t a wall to keep people out, apart from the Asian continent, where Russia and China lived.

But everything else was American. I think just like the Chinese created the first, second and third island chain constructs to defend against America, and now subsequently become offensive lines, America is in the opposite stage. And they found themselves thinking, well, what do we do? What’s our retrenchment line? And of course, Greenland is critical to control the North Atlantic.

The Panama is critical to ship shipping commercially, and most importantly, US and Pacific and Atlantic fleets to swap over. So I think we saw in that process, the first sign of like a stronghold. What do you do if you lose Asia and you lose Europe? What does it look like to defend America? And perhaps this idea of returning the gold has some sort of echoes in that psychology, which is give me everything that’s mine and put it in my vaults.

So I do think that, you know, gold is going to, it’s very close to a short term peak, probably the next couple of days. But it is going to continue to do amazing things. And somewhere in this process soon, we will see silver and platinum, you know, suddenly become appealing because they haven’t been appealing.

And they’ll become financialized metals rather than just commercial metals with apparently limited usage. So I stand by, you know, the one investment I’ve talked about for the past couple of years, that I know that if I talk about it, and people own it, it’s still going to work in a number of years time. Whereas Bitcoin, I believe, has peaked all time.

It made its peak in December, exactly the price that mathematically I calculated it should. And we are now in a very, very bad cryptocurrency collapse, which was a speculative bubble, which was reflective of stocks and every other aspect of investment. So I think that area is going to have a really hard time.

And I think the commodity markets looking like they’ve set up the grains are moving, copper is moving, oil is moving off its base. Obviously, there’s sellers capping it. But the ultimate thing that’s going to take oil through the tops of everyone’s levels is, I think, the bombing of Iranian nuclear positions and facilities, which is just inevitable now.

Okay, before we get to all of that, what, you know, you said that we’re probably heading for a, let’s say, a short term peak in gold here. Where, what is the, let’s say, the cycle length or probability length of a longer term, or let’s say that the ultimate high price for gold in this cycle? Where do you think that, or where do you see that? Yes, but somewhere around 10,000. I mean, time wise? Well, look, I think gold will probably peak before the peak of the cycle in 2030.

So, over the next three years. Okay. So, it’ll go up another, it’ll multiply another three times from here.

And silver will end up at 100 bucks. And so, is that move in silver and, as you said, platinum as well, just because of, let’s say, that contrast or that semi-monetary nature of those metals? Or a re-recognition of that? Look, I think we’ve lived in a financialized economy, where basically we’ve used debt and the printing of money to compensate for lack of productivity by multiplying what productivity is left each year and increasing its leverage and looking like it works. And we are moving into this peak, into this, it’s not just a contractual cycle, it’s a war cycle.

And in that, all that matters is your physical productivity and physical things. So, if you look at Ukraine and you look at Russia, it’s their output that matters, that supports their war machine. And so, this financial financialization bubble is going to burst.

And I think we are now seeing the peaks in place from which the burst takes place. And its replacement is real productivity, real everything, because that’s what makes your system able to defend itself in difficult times. So, gold is something you can hold on to.

Gold is something you can transfer between governments in lieu of services provided and weapons provided. It always has been in war, the greatest, strongest currency. And there’ll come a time when governments demand it from their people.

So, you know, we probably won’t see the peak in official terms, because your gold will be taken from you by your governments because that’s happened before. So, the trick here is to manage the highest price you can get before your gold is lifted from you, which is its ultimate destination, which is a government vault. So, those things are all factored in an awful lot in my work.

And there’s a lot of stuff that I look at to monitor whether it’s safe or not to hold the gold metal. We’re a long way away from that, though. Right.

Why is it that you think that Bitcoin has hit its all-time high? You know, there’s many, many people on that side that believe that this is the digital gold, the way of the future. You know, take any example or narrative that is constantly repeated in those cycles. But why do you think that it’s hit its ultimate high? Well, I think Bitcoin has been one of the most amazing trading mediums because it literally is the perfect unconscious psychology of all these investors who really are not aware of their own behaviors.

So, the pattern recognition system I use is probably better in Bitcoin than anything else. And I’ve been able to literally get the big ups and the big downs in precision that most people couldn’t imagine. The precision with which we peaked just around 109 tells me that there’s a really good chance that was a major, major high.

And we’re going to go sub 50 even if it goes up again. Now, why am I even more confident? Because when I look at things like Ether, which is, you know, another prime coin, but man, it was making, wasn’t even making a new high as Bitcoin was making a new high. When I look at Dogecoin, when I look at the meme coin concept, which is gamble me up, please, guess on a name.

That is the ultimate speculation that people saw in 29 with stocks. So what we have just seen is a speculative bubble. And that speculative bubble, once you get to the peak of it, you never get back.

Whatever you call it, a beautiful tulip or a beautiful stock, you never return to those prices. And I’m watching it and monitoring it real time into those December highs and around the election. To me, it has all the evidence of a super major high, which the stock market does, too, by the way.

And we’re talking about all time high for 10 years when this changes. So really, what it is, is the end of a liquidity cycle. And I think liquidity is drying up globally.

So, yes, I think it’s a much bigger high than people realize. And it was super fueled by Trump’s promises of a perfect world coming their way, which for reasons earlier I mentioned is, I think, far from the reality people face. Well, you know, it seems that the economic reality just in the U.S. that he’s facing paints a completely different story in this, let’s say, this euphoria around all of these changes in this, I want to say, chaotic time in America’s history, I think has has spurred a lot of enthusiasm in the markets.

And it really makes me wonder when reality is going to to come and, you know, slap investors in the face, considering how they’ve allocated capital over the last couple of years. You know, I watched the thing on the valuation of Palantir being one of the most overvalued companies ever in the history of the stock market at this point. And, you know, it just doesn’t seem to matter, though, at this point.

Well, what it is, is all this printed money goes into fewer and fewer things. And what it’s really generated is the ultimate plutocracy. Look at all those rich people around Trump.

I mean, it’s just like Rome was as it started to run its corpulent decline. Plutocracies show a huge, huge disparity between the public and the plebiscite and the people at the top. And that ultimately is a really bad situation because the poverty line is rising through the American population as we speak incrementally every day, not and the people at the top benefit from the money printing because their assets go up.

And then suddenly they go down. And I think we’re reaching the stage where they will go down. Look at look at Nvidia.

There was another one, which I said was the last of the magnificent seven that is now peaked. It’s on the way lower. And we’ve even seen the bubble break with the idea of, you know, small language systems rather than large language systems.

And, you know, whoops, China’s ahead of us again. Another advance technologically that they hold over us. And I’m afraid the state that we’re now in is they lead the technological ages in so many aspects of the world and things that we didn’t think about.

They’re developing weapons. I mean, a really great idea. They’ve got 64 conventional submarines and have a real problem making air independent sterling engines.

They’re concerned that lithium batteries might catch fire and lose a sub. So what do they do? They create a little nuclear reactor, which doesn’t power the engine. It just recharges the batteries and they’re going to lengthen the subs by a few feet to take the reactor in.

And suddenly 64 what were conventionally submarines have limited endurance and range. Suddenly can range beyond Japan and interdict the US Navy and I wait for it. They are so innovative.

It’s terrifying. I want to go back to the point that you made about those surrounding Trump. Let’s say basically just getting rich.

I don’t think we can, let’s say, only relegate that type of allegation to just the Trump administration. I think I look, I think it’s been there in all administrations increasingly as we’ve gone through this money printing process. But I would argue it’s never been so overt.

Just look at the inauguration. It said everything. And so it’s that sort of covert to overt dynamic, which America is now facing.

It’s facing what it really is, not what it thought it was. And it’s in everyone’s full view. David, you mentioned the, you know, one of the catalysts for this next phase of the cycle, and especially phase of the commodity cycle being Iran and possible attacks in and around there.

The Middle East is such a hot spot. So where do you think, or what are the most important points to consider when looking at that area of the world? So, you know, I do a podcast with my son Horatio, because my oldest son Winston’s gone to the Navy, so he can’t do it. So we did our first one.

And we were talking today about what we’re going to talk about next. He said, Dad, I just, I went to have a haircut. And I ended up with this somewhat heated row over the people cutting my hair and the guest over the fact that, you know, that they were saying total genocide in Gaza, hundreds of 1000 people killed.

And I said, look, just look at the statistics. And we’re in ages reply was, could we talk about what’s going on in the Middle East? And because I don’t have a clue what’s going on. So what I would be saying in that podcast to everyone is, the thing to remember is, yes, it is an area that has a problem because Israel superimposed itself from what was once a Palestinian homeland.

It now owns it, the Palestinians are displaced. And it’s a constant saw, although the other states are far closer to Israel would be without that saw being in place. But the real saw is Iran, and Iran as a Shia power, with only 15% of the Shias population being in the Middle East, really made the first break of independence outside Western rule with the revolution in Iran, and led a challenge in effect for domination of the region.

And most recently created a crescent of proxies, which extended through Hamas. And for those people that say, well, you know, the people in Gaza are Sunnis, and why would Shias ever give Sunnis money to fund Hamas? It’s because they share the common goal, the destruction of Israel. They funded Hezbollah, they funded the Axis of Resistance in Iraq, and they funded the Houthis.

And they used that to create the Sword of Damocles, with many, many potential missiles, able to saturate the armed armed defences, so that they could hold Israel in check. And piece by piece, after the October the 7th, the Israelis, like flattened or they flattened the resistance in Gaza. I would still say that they were not for the first week, I think they probably had a control in the first week.

But subsequently, if you look at the tactics of Hamas, which have to represent a government, not a terrorist organization. So I tend to think of it as a state on state war, where one state went to war with the other. But in warfare between states, the leadership of each country is meant to protect its civilians.

Hamas had the agenda of pulling its civilians overhead, of surrounding leaders with children, because it wanted its population to die, because the statistics separated Israel from its allies in the West, because the left side of our politics said, oh, look, that’s genocide, you can’t do that. So considering the challenges the Israeli Defence Force faced, the population density of between 1.6 and 1.8 million people, the Hamas statistics in the order of 46,000 dead are remarkably small compared to the operation and challenge they faced. So I don’t actually think genocide is the description.

I think if Britain and America were involved in that war, we would have created greater casualties. So I think we have to consider, on average, they were remarkably judicial. But then the next problem came with Hezbollah.

Hezbollah was brilliantly dealt with, with a Mossad intelligence operation with the Pages. The Pages didn’t just go off and incapacitate people. They were active for a period before, which meant that everyone was tracked, and the bunkers and the facilities that Hezbollah used were marked, and the relationships between people were marked.

So they had the perfect intelligence mapping system that meant two weeks into the war, they completely disabled Hezbollah capability, a remarkable achievement. And in the meantime, the Houthis have been firing missiles, but they’ve been kept slightly at bay, but not enough to regain control of the Red Sea. Now, Iran is in a real problem because the mission that the IDF took destroyed air defences because they’ve only got S-300s, even if they had S-400s, they would have been destroyed.

So they’re defenceless. They are literally without their crescent. They’re vulnerable.

And I think their internal pressures have been since that moment to make a nuclear breakout. And that’s what they’re doing. And that breakout can happen much quicker than people realise.

So we are looking at sooner rather than later, Trump being forced along with the Israelis, who need American technology to penetrate deep underground because they don’t have it in their missions and their mission capabilities. So I think we will see bombing of Iran. And that means two things.

The Gulf will be closed and oil will spike. It also means potentially a regime change. And the regime change would be a breath of fresh air, because if you remove the whole Mullah concept of Iran dominating the Middle East, and it just sat there and was, its population would be far happier.

And then there’s a chance of a lasting peace. So in an interesting way, although when I first heard it, I had to gulp the idea of Gaza becoming America. There is one thought left if the regime change in Iran, and that is the Palestinians.

And I don’t think they should be forcefully exported. I think that would be a terrible crime, but creating enough voluntary carrots and incentives for them to go to happier places when what they really face is rubble and no funding to repair their homes. Then I think that is a possibility and an opportunity, but it has to be constructed with large carrots to be voluntary, not coercive in any shape or form.

So interestingly enough, that might offer a long-term solution to peace in the Middle East if those two elements were negated and created. How do you think you go about creating carrots instead of sticks in that situation? And creating carrots instead of sticks? So right now, if you’re a Palestinian, heaven forbid, you’re about to go through another phase of the war. And essentially, it’s all about to start up again.

And if you were offered a home that was a really nice home in an area that was built, purpose built, and other people of your society could join you, and you were given incentives whereby you were given employment in some shape or form, well, that’s a huge upside from what the Gazans face. So that’s what it has to be. It has to be a very big expenditure.

And it has to come not just from America, but actually from the Middle Eastern countries themselves, who can’t accept or take any more Palestinians as refugees. So I think that’s the stick of the carrot that really, there is no stick that should be used in any shape or form. It’s got to be very large carrots.

In the same way, I would criticize the trade tariffs. Because if you want to create, as Trump quite rightly does, a return of the industrialization of America from China, I think using this giant tariff concept, upsetting Canada and your neighbors, threatening everyone is not the way to maintain those strong alliances that America depends upon. Far better to say, if you start up a steel mill, you won’t be charged tax for five years.

And when you do get charged 10%, and actually get the investment communities of America to invest in the areas that basically America needs strategically. And that’s the same for Britain and any other country, that we should be creating a strategic plan and applying tax imperatives to do something. And one of the things I think we’ve been fundamentally in error of is how we financially supported Ukraine, because we’ve given money to Ukraine.

But actually, if you look at the parallel to the Second World War, when war started, and America said, we’ll be the arsenal of democracy, Britain, first of all, paid for those weapons and systems with the gold it had. So we shipped all our gold over to America. And that started to rebuild and constitute the American industrialization program.

And because there’s very low capacity utilization following the decade after 1929. And the result of that process is that Britain shifted all of its wealth over to America to start up its war industry, which then we got some weapons back in return to survive. And they were able to go and build their military effectively and cost effectively, because we send so much money towards them.

That’s what we should have been doing with Ukraine. We should have been using their natural resources. And now, as Trump has highlighted, to create a lend lease arrangement with Ukraine, which meant that when they won the war, they paid the debt back as Britain just finished it did on the Second World War.

And then it would have stayed on the balance sheets. And it wouldn’t detract from our own defense. I think we’ve made a fundamental error by not pursuing that route.

David, kind of in an effort to kind of wrap up here. Do you think that there’s any room or possibility to have cooler heads prevail in any of these situations? You know, it seems like the war cycle that you and I have talked about before is this inevitable repetition of humans towards, unfortunately, these periodic times of conflict. But do you think that there’s any room to change that? Look, as I’ve tried to do a little bit with my work, and the reason why I went public with what I found, and breaking the code of war is the next stage of it, is it takes time to create worldview paradigm changes.

You know, whether it was the hunter gatherers who became the agrarians, or whether it was the Industrial Revolution, or any of these worldview changes took decades. We don’t have decades, because it’s upon us right now. And so I am quite pessimistic that we have failed essentially, to overcome our cycle of unawareness, which is this conflict cycle, and hegemonic process over 112 years.

And the result is we will do it again. And we will suffer enormously as a result. And we will only perhaps realize after we’ve done it, the three times in a row, we’ve done the same thing.

Because history doesn’t really effectively record the essence of what was done, just the details, which look different each time. And they’re not, they’re fundamentally the same. They’re a hegemonic challenge, as a system rises, and then they create an industrial base.

And from the industrial base, they create a war machine, and then they go and challenge the declining system. And that happens every 112 years, and has done since the French challenged the Spanish, the British challenged the French, in the Napoleonic Wars, Germany challenged Britain in the First World War, which followed to the second, and China is now making its challenge to America. I’m afraid we are caught in an unconscious cycle.

And it’s the momentum of the people that are unconscious versus those that that might gain consciousness and then control, it all happens too late. And the only way that we that I can see this changes, is if there is something America has, that for example, a weapon system, it deploys, it gives it total control over space, something that we have not been told about, that suddenly appears that reconstitutes deterrence. And at the moment, I can’t see anything on the horizon that fits the bill.

Well, I mean, I guess, there’s always the small possibility, especially with some of these UAP phenomenon that we’ve seen. As of late, I guess, there’s always a small outsized possibility that something like that exists. But as you said, there’s, unfortunately, it seems that we’re just doomed to repeat these cycles.

You know, it’s very interesting. I wasn’t even going to mention that topic, but you brought it in. That is the only area of hope that I can see us literally breaking the cycle is exterior intervention.

And there is definitely signs that there are things in our skies. And if you look at the congressional hearings, that are certainly not ours. So we are not alone.

And, you know, I think it should be a question that people sort of smile at me and say, really, yes, I’m into military weapons, I’m into geopolitical power, I’m into markets. And you cannot, you cannot ignore what’s been taking place in Congress over the UAP hearings and the evidence presented, because it’s, you know, it’s no longer in question, do they exist? It’s really a question of what are they here for? And how does that relate to us? Well, it’s always, always a million different interesting rabbit holes to go down with you, David. I appreciate you coming on again to, to kind of elucidate some of these, these areas of interest for us today.

Is there anything that you’d like to leave our listeners to think about? Yeah, I would look at that, if these ideas have been challenging to you, or if these ideas have touched upon areas you’ve considered, I really encourage you to come to the website and sign up for my marination gold. Because in those articles, I explain what I think is going to happen in the detail, more detail than we’ve been able to cover, but also give you the tools to start to understand how these patterns work. So you can see it yourself.

And that’s really what I created them for. So I’d strongly urge you to make the move to do that if, if, if you were challenged, and it was a difficult conversation to hear. And rather than just saying, No, I don’t believe it, it’d be much nicer for you to see exactly the evidence that supports the case and then engage with that evidence.

And I challenge you to do that in the most respectful way. Well, I think the last time you and I spoke, we made a challenge to listeners to say if you agreed with us, if you disagreed with us. But the whole point of, you know, having different viewpoints on the show, to me is to be able to try to, to challenge our echo chamber to hold two competing ideas in your head at the same time and see where each one has merit.

And, you know, unfortunately, I think a lot of people do have a hard time with that. And I, I unfortunately, I think that that is a skill that is, is, you know, lacking in today’s population, really. And we would agree.

So I think I’d go further. You know, I’ve seen some of the comments that some of you write when Tom and I speak. And I really love discussion.

And I love challenge, but single word expletives, or just derogatory comments do not represent challenge. In fact, all they do is they represent the diminutive of those writing them. So I encourage you, if you disagree, and if you have arguments around why you disagree, put them on the list.

And then Tom and I will come back and we’ll find a way to to answer those questions, if they’re formatted in an intelligent, thoughtful and educated way. So I challenge you all to just try and do that. Yeah, that would be great.

A Q&A would be, would be an interesting format to be able to do. So for those that do want to challenge themselves and read more of David’s work, that’s all available at davidmurrin2ars.co.uk. And of course, on Twitter at Global Forecaster, F-O-R-C-A-S-T-R. David, thanks so much.

We’ve also got a new Murrin Instagram going out. It’s called Murrin Raw. And it’s basically quite a different product line in that it’s short clips about things which I’m talking about in a slightly different format.

So if you’re interested, sign up for that and spread the word so we can get it out to people, too. It’d be great. Perfect.

David, thanks so much for your time today. Always a pleasure, Tom. This podcast is for general informational purposes only.

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