A lot of right-wing news sites picked up on this recently, with headlines like "We [the globalists] Have Lost To Trump". While that microsection of discourse was interesting-- and it caused Ian Bremmer to become visibly irate-- I don't think that was by far the most interesting thing said by this panel. Some observations of mine, after having listened to the whole thing:

• As a preface, the four panelists are Ian Bremmer, Graham Allison, Allison Schrager, and Walter Mead. I wasn't familiar with any of them, so I looked them up: "authors", "political 'scientists'", "intellectuals", and so forth. It's very clear from listening to them talk-- they are very high IQ individuals. I thought much of their commentary was spot-on in terms of nailing down specifics, and taken from a sort of neutral-observational standpoint. They are also on the spectrum somewhere between "amoral" and "actively malevolent", which I'll get to more in future bullets.


• Lots of compliments are paid to Donald Trump-- the panelists call things as they see them, and they're not above giving credit where credit is due. At the same time, the entire conversation is set against a sort of wistfulness, that things aren't going "their way". There were even a few audible groans from the audience at certain remarks made.


• Trump uses tariffs as a negotiating tool-- I call them "threats": and they work! He takes the maximalist position, then walks down from there. One theme which begins very early on this panel is a begrudging acknowledgement that there is a marked shift from large, globalist organizations towards smaller groups of countries making bilateral agreements with one another-- with a sort of reluctant acceptance that the globalist order did have cracks, it wasn't going perfectly by any stretch.


• Trump views himself as both an expert negotiator, but also a peace maker: he is vehemently opposed to wars, There was a repeated theme of Ian Bremmer and Graham Allison disagreeing on how successful Trump will be at foreign policy negotiating, especially when it comes to China: Allison emphasizes the close relationship between Xi and Trump, whereas Bremmer thinks that Trump's obvious "China containment" posture will drive a large wedge between the two nations. After all, Trump is trying to squeeze China out by being tough with other nations, like Vietnam or even Mexico: "I'll talk, but no China deals for you."


• Isreal repeatedly wins wars, but can never establish a sustainable peace after that. Walter Mead celebrates that enormous damage was done during the Biden regime to Iran and its proxies-- but that it won't matter, because "that's not how the Middle East works"-- there are multivarious factors which destabilize the region.


• The Trump administration's economic policies are pro-growth, but not fiscally responsible either: they may run into issues with bond yields, and trying to fight off price inflation as they enact their agenda. At this point on the panel, Allison invokes the "animal spirits" argument, saying "Trump's cabinet and the people around them are self-made billionaires, why can't there be more people who do it our way?", a "feeling of excitement." My personal view is that while economics is partially numbers and math, we're dealing with human beings-- the culture, morale, etc. all play a huge role.


• Regarding Tik-Tok, Allison equated it to prohibition: "If 170 million people like something, it's not very smart to be against it. And Trump won't be against it. Are there deals to be made? Sure, of course, and deals will be made." Once again, disagreement between Bremmer and Allison; Bremmer views Trump as such: "Let's not act like Trump is just another President-- don't normalize this... he doesn't view himself as being constrained by the rule of law... if Modi sat down with Elon and launched a cryptocurrency, we'd call that a kleptocracy, but because it's Trump and Elon in America, we're complicit with it." Allison? "Trump is an unprecedented phenomenon-- yes it's not normal, but it's amazing and we should study it."


• The globalist's failure, as summarized by Walter Mead: "We, the professional, administrative, managerial class thought that history was over, and that all we had to do was manage things according to rules which were all clear and known, that everything will be incremental going forward. But the reality is, that's not how things work in moments like this. And let me throw in, part of the 'us' which is losing here is Europe."


• Lots of astonishing remarks were made, such as equating globalism with indoor plumbing. There is an interesting summary by Ian Bremmer of the current Trump coalition: "You have 'Dark Maga', Elon, wants more free trade, deal on China, H1Bs-- and 'Deep Maga', populists afraid of uniparty, believe all these people are just out to screw them, don't mind a big state but just want it to take care of average American... Trump's big personality will paper over the cracks in the short term, but those cracks are just going to keep growing."


• Then, The Big Quote, which really frames these WEF-adjacent people in a nutshell. From Walter Mead, channeling Bill Clinton: "'Shame only matters if you let it.' You just keep putting one foot in front of other, don't let those other people barking and screaming bother you, just keep moving forward." Remember: the "other" people "barking and screaming" are the electorate! They are you, and me! They are hundreds of millions of ordinary people, who have a mandate to rule. How many elections has Walter Mead won? How about Ian Bremmer?


• At one point, Ian Bremmer let slip: "Remember, everyone here is a lot of equities at stake, when talking China." Is that what this all boils down to? In the next breath: "Let's not act like Trump is just another President-- don't normalize this... he doesn't view himself as being constrained by the rule of law... if Modi sat down with Elon and launched a cryptocurrency, we'd call that a kleptocracy, but because it's Trump and Elon in America, we're complicit with it." Then in the next, Allison Shrager: "Populism is just a reaction to the tech revolution, just like it was to the industrial revolution."


• I was curious who was in the audience-- a curiosity which was soon satisfied in the "Q&A" section at the end, opening with a journalist from... the Washington Post. As the questions proceeded, it was obvious from the tone that all of these people, very much including the supposedly-neutral "journalists", are all insiders to this brazen cabal.

Never before have I heard such an obviously smart group of people get the particulars so right, while simultaneously extrapolating all of the wrong conclusions.

In their view of the world, everything should be like "Star Trek": one giant government run by managerial technocrats, and that by their sheer administrative brilliance they can circumvent The Fourth Turning and human nature. To them, their current failure wasn't due to their model being flawed-- it was simply down to mediocre execution-- and that next time around, the plebes can be made just that little bit more complacent, so that they go along with "the rules": fifteen minute cities, eat zee bugs, men can have periods, and all the rest of it.

The arrogance and hubris of this group was and is without limit. There is zero humility, or recognition of "you know, maybe we're not as smart as we think we are, and the populists have a point?"