On this day five years ago, Scott made a list of graded predictions for how the next five years would pan out. How did he do?
He correctly predicted that Democrats would win the presidency in 2020. He correctly predicted that the UK would leave the EU and that no other country would vote to leave. He seemed under the impression that Ted Cruz would rise up to take Trump's mantle, but to my mind the only person in the Republican party who has a meaningful chance of opposing Trump is DeSantis. I think a lot of the technological predictions were too optimistic (specifically the bits about space travel and self-driving vehicles) but I don't work in tech and amn't really qualified to comment.
Near the end of the article, in a self-deprecating moment, he predicts with 80% confidence that "Whatever the most important trend of the next five years is, I totally miss it". To my mind, the most significant "trend" (or "event") of the last five years was Covid, and I think he actually did okay on this front: the second-last section of the article is a section on global existential risks:
Global existential risks will hopefully not be a big part of the 2018-2023 period. If they are, it will be because somebody did something incredibly stupid or awful with infectious diseases. Even a small scare with this will provoke a massive response, which will be implemented in a panic and with all the finesse of post-9/11 America determining airport security.
- Bioengineering project kills at least five people: 20%
- …at least five thousand people: 5%
Whether you think those two predictions cames to pass naturally depends where you sit on the lab leak hypothesis.
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Notes -
I have never taken Zeihan that seriously, but will conceded that with respect to Russia I think his record is actually pretty good. I mean his book explicitly stated that he thought Russia would invade sometime during the 2020’s and they did, seemingly for the reasons he thought they would (I.e Russias bad demographics and obtaining a more defensible border with Europe).
Good ?
It's just bullshit.
Moscow would have taken Ukraine perhaps whole if they could, though they'd probably have left Galicia to the Bandera fans because why invite more pain. Azerbaijan ? Armenia ? Moldova ?
Belarus is only close with Russia because the West got fed up with Luka and tried to remove him. Hence he has no choice but to cozy up to Russia.
I follow a scholar who's concerned with China and speaks the language, he doesn't even mention Zeihan. He's not taken seriously at all.
He's really a joke, in his talk on China in an interview with Rogan, 80% of what he said were obvious lies. (China can't build high tech, China can't innovate, etc)
I’d be interested in who you follow on China (I agree Zeihan is a clown on China).
Tanner Greer - @scholars_stage on twitter.
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How do you know those were reasons that actually factored into the decision? That's just Zeihan's own hobby horse, he always explains things with demographics, hell, he predicts AI being essentially a nothingburger because the world will start running out of 20-somethings in 30 years!
For all we know Putin was mainly driven by the impression that his subversion network is successful. Russian demographics are at least better than Ukrainian, and on par/perhaps better than European. Zeihan's «natural borders» story is, uh, I'm not sure it's even a sincere argument – he oscillates between treating it as a realistic consideration and some Russian neurosis from the time of Mongols and warfare dominated by low-tech infantry.
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