Strategic Compression with David Murrin

Geopolitical forecaster and strategist David Murrin joins Francis Gorman to argue that the world isn't experiencing ordinary volatility it's in the middle of a deep, structural transition between great powers. Drawing on his "Five Stages of Empire" framework, David lays out why he believes America's decline began after 9/11, why China is rising into the vacuum, and why he sees the next decade as a period of unavoidable escalation. The conversation ranges across the war in Ukraine, the Iran nuclear question, the battle for the Pacific, the hollowing-out of Western military capability, and the subtler war being fought through economics, infiltration, and influence. It closes on Ireland's exposure as a neutral state and David's blunt verdict that there is "nowhere to hide."

Key Takeaways

• David's "Five Stages of Empire" model frames how nations regionalise, fight a civil war, expand, peak, and decline and where he places the West today.
• His view that American power entered structural decline after 9/11, with China rising to fill the vacuum.
• The concept of "strategic compression" why rising powers are forced to act not when they choose, but when the window around them starts to close.
• Why he sees Ukraine and Iran as conflicts enabled and shaped by China, used as testing grounds for systems and tactics.
• His argument that Western societies are being degraded from within through long-running influence operations targeting domestic politics.
• A stark assessment of UK military readiness, and why he believes adaptability not hardware alone decides who survives modern conflict.
• What all of this means for a small, neutral, strategically significant state like Ireland.

Soundbites

• "Nature absolutely abhors a vacuum. It hates it."
• "It's as if we're playing draughts and the Chinese are playing three-dimensional chess."
• "The timing of hegemonic conflicts is never at the choosing of the hegemon."
• "There are no neutral countries in its story, so there are no places to hide."
• "Stand up and be counted."

Note: This episode contains forecasting and personal analysis that is, by nature, speculative and at times contested. These are David Murrin's own views, shared to open debate rather than to state fact. 

Transcript

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Entropy Podcast. I'm your host, Francis Gorman. Before we dive in, if today's conversation challenges you, sparks a new idea, or sharpens how you think about the world, don't keep it to yourself. Subscribe, leave a [00:01:00] review, and share this episode with someone who enjoys staying curious. I'm joined by David Murrin, a geopolitical forecaster, strategist, and author, whose work focuses on long cycle patterns in history, conflict, markets, and the rise and fall of great powers. He is known for analyzing systematic risk through the lens of empire cycles, military adoption, and what he describes as the West's strategic denial in the face of a rapidly changing world order. David, it's lovely to have you here with me today.

David Murrin: Frances, it's great to be here. Thanks for a lovely introduction

Francis Gorman: David, uh, it, it's great to, great to have you on 'cause there's a lot of things I wanna talk about that I think you have a fair grasp on. I know, I know you've, you've visited the Ukraine in, in, in recent times as well and, and got some visibility of what's going on in the, on the ground there, and we'll, we'll come back to that in a little bit.

But what I wanted to start off with is you look at today's world, what tells you that we're not just in a period of normal volatility, but a deeper systematic transition is going on beneath the [00:02:00] surface?

David Murrin: Well I think to really kind of see it, we have to understand a structure which I call the five stages of empire, and essentially how all nations go through these five stages of regionalization, at the end of which they have a civil war, and that civil war creates this process of lateralization because conflict is an agent of lateralization and adaptation.

They develop new forms of warfare. They're usually driven in the first place by expansive demographics. And then once they've created an outcome in their civil war, they just keep expanding. And that's mainly because the system is lateralized through conflict. It has unique USPs in the way it fights. So in England, the New Model Army and the New Model Navy were completely revolutionary ways for England to go to war.

And of course, what do we do? We go to war with everyone we can soon afterwards. And that starts the process of expansion in the second stage. And we went to the Dutch and we fought the Dutch, our nearest Protestant neighbors. And when [00:03:00] we finished with the Dutch, we started engaging the French. And we know that curve all the way up to final victory in, you know, 1815 with the end of Napoleon, which really ended with Trafalgar because after that stage he was constrained to a continent.

And then of course we went all the way up until 1870 and that whole constitutional revolution of Queen Victoria which was probably our peak, 'cause we were-- no two powers could match us at that stage. But gradually as we moved through 1870 and we moved into 1914, both America and Germany were our equals.

And if it hadn't been Germany, I believe it would've been America that went to war with us because they were in an industrialized state of comparable power looking to go and express it through militarization and control of the globe. And for Britain, that marked our decline at the beginning of the First World War and finished off by the second.

But what's interesting is we were really part of a much bigger system, the Western Christian world as I call it, which goes back to the Portuguese and the Spanish and the French, and the Dutch were in there too. And then we came [00:04:00] along as the biggest empire and America is the last of the Western Christian empires.

And it went into decline after 9/11. When people who are American historians tell me that America's empire was as great as Britain's, I'm sorry but you just have to study the history books. Britain truly ruled 25% of the globe and for a period no one touched it. It controlled wherever it, it looked, uh, barring the local insurgencies that challenged us at times.

Whereas America is a much smaller version of that empire construct. Went into decline after 9/11. Over 2002 and '3 I was telling people this had happened and people were falling off their chairs. They couldn't imagine America ever going into decline. And they used to ask me a question, "Well, you know, if America's in decline who's going to replace us?"

And I said, "The Chinese." Because the Chinese cycle started with the Boxer Revolution, their regionalization finished with their civil war. And what most people don't realize is after 1949 they went out and fought everyone they could until 1975 until they [00:05:00] came up against the Vietnamese And most importantly, the glass ceiling of America that was being to win a Cold War and exert regional Asian power.

And so you've got the decline of one and the rise of the other, and nature absolutely abhors a vacuum. It hates it. And so what you see is this rising system. And the thing that we have failed to understand is that communism or any form of hierarchical system can still be highly adaptive and highly creative.

It's not the domain of just free democracies. It's the state of a system that has high levels of lateralization and humans that can adapt. And we've really come up against a brick wall. We were seduced, you know, to give them our industrial base because it was cheap for inflation. And they've conducted since 1996 the most sophisticated campaign to bring down a hegemonic enemy in the world's ever seen.

And we're seeing our columns of power being brought down all around us today.

Francis Gorman: It's a really interesting view of the world that you're articulating there, [00:06:00] David. One, one, one thing that struck me was, I suppose, subtleties of symbolism that the Chinese put on display when President Trump visited there recently. Like, one, one thing that strikes me is the sizing on the chair when he sat beside Chinese leader.

You know, he, he was, he was... his demeanor was made to be smaller in stature, et cetera. Do you think we are at a, an infliction point now where China is more powerful than the United States of America? Is that what you're basically getting at in, in that

David Murrin: it's certainly of more than equal power in the crossover between a young man that's grown up under a grandfather's, you know, like system and organization, and the grandfather is just strong enough to perceive to be able to resist the strength of that young dynamic system. And in fact, what's happened after the Gulf is a disaster for America because America has failed to use its power effectively, thanks to the poor strategy and thinking of [00:07:00] Trump.

The Iranians are building a nuclear weapon, I believe, underground in places like Axe Mountain. Uh, they're not going to give up their nuclear capability because they know that with it they become a superpower in the region. They have a structure which I believe is expansive towards the destruction of Israel, and they have conducted themselves with that intent for the past two decades.

And at the same time, they've learned that they can control the Strait through access area denial weapons, and with that comes economic leverage and know there won't be a negotiated peace. And Trump is deluding himself that there's gonna be a negotiation 'cause he's trapped. He doesn't wanna go forward into full military action, and he doesn't want to admit how wrong he is, so he's giving the supply shock time to build, which is in Iran's favor.

And when he went to China, he went as a supplicant, and he went on his knee without doubt. Forget the chair size, forget the significance. He was on bended knee, in effect, to Xi, and that was followed a week later by Putin. So, you know, Xi must be feeling the most powerful man in the [00:08:00] world nowadays after those two visits.

Francis Gorman: That's really interesting. So you're forecasting the Iranian war is just at a stalemate, it, it can't be won? What's, what, what's the, what's the, what insight can you give me in terms of where this is actually gonna end up?

David Murrin: Well, it can be won, but you need to, to win something, you need to win with intention. And the first thing America has done is it's, it's emptied its midcourse interception capability in terms of THADs and SM-3s from their warships, and they've done that to, you know, protect Israel. But in the process, they've emptied those very same magazines they need to protect Japan, South Korea, and their bases against the Chinese.

And it was no coincidence that the Chinese passed on hypersonic glide vehicle technology, which manifested finally in the Fattah 2s to Iran. Iran didn't make them. They were given the technology to empty the midcourse intercepting magazines. And it's as if we're playing draughts and the Chinese are playing three-dimensional chess, and they [00:09:00] are.

So, you know, you can-- Now it's gonna take three to four years to replace those stocks at current production rates, which means the whole of the Asian basin sits ready for Chinese first strike action. And I'm afraid, you know, history says when those moments come, those opportunities are taken. And so what does it mean for America?

America is caught 'cause it doesn't have the willpower to commit itself to a full campaign to take back the straits, which involves being on the ground. I classify the US Army as a pre-FPV army, not a post-FPV army like the Ukrainians, and you can assure that the knowledge that the Russians have learnt in their wars will go to the Ukrainian IRGC.

So there are a lot of vulnerabilities that go with getting ashore, trying to take those places, but they may well be forced to do it when the supply shock builds, oil breaks higher, and at the same time, the longer the Iranians have, the worse the, the nuclear breakout looks. So what sort of things could be done behind the scenes?[00:10:00] 

If we were dealing with a smart strategic president who had a single brain cell when it comes to this stuff, uh, and I don't say that lightly because he's a, he's almost the opposite of a strategic thinker. He's a strategic destroyer. Then you would hope that somewhere in the bowels of the, of the skunk works of America, they're turning a GPU 57 and strapping on rockets, so it penetrates deeper than eighty meters and goes down a good three hundred meters, and they build enough of them to take out the 27 missile cities and the nuclear facilities, and then the game is over for Iran.

And that is the best out. Now- If they don't develop those weapons or can't, there is another option which seems absolutely unthinkable, but I believe it is being discussed, and that is the use of penetrating ground, you know, penetrating nuclear weapons on these same sites to ensure their destruction. And strangely enough, the fallout and the consequences outside I think would be very minimal.

There've been [00:11:00] 24,500 nuclear tests since the end of the Second World War that no one noticed. So there's a big gasp because it's used in anger. But in terms of fallout, small yield weapons with deep penetration could actually save America from succumbing to basically the loss of the Pacific, the loss of Japan and South Korea, which is a loss of the world to communist power.

So there's some very big decisions around Iran that need to be taken, and I'm sure the Israelis are considering them too

Francis Gorman: When, when, when you say nuclear weapons being deployed, people automatically go to mushroom clouds and mass death toll. And I know Trump has been war savoring the potential use of a nuclear weapon in some very strongly worded language that was quite unpresidential at, at times on, on Truth Social. you, are you saying, David, that there is a more focused nuclear warhead that doesn't have that [00:12:00] mass casualty impact?

David Murrin: so w-, you know, nuclear warheads have varying yields. So the smallest critical mass is seven, seven kilograms of uranium, a suitcase bomb. That's what you'll find in an artillery shell. And you can model them to be worth similar to 1,000 tons of explosive, 2,000 tons of explosive. 3,000 tons is sort of roughly where the Lebanon fertilizer blast was.

So you can moderate their yield, so they're actually much smaller. And if you deploy them so that underground when they explode, then the radioactive fallout from that is very small, apart from the blast through the doors perhaps of the facility or back out through the entry wound. So, you know, e- entry tunnel.

So I think it's a much smaller issue than we think of as a mushroom cloud. I don't think you'd even see it. But there is a psychological issue of a mushroom cloud and the use of a nuclear weapon, which is huge. But at a time like this, where America is on course to be defeated by China in the Pacific, it has some [00:13:00] very difficult strategic decisions to make about the level of intent it's prepared to manifest to preserve its system and sense of freedom or sense of freedom about to be corrupted into, into dictatorship by Trump, whatever you wanna call it

Francis Gorman: Do you think the only threat to the Western world at the moment is military, or is there other factors at play here?

David Murrin: W- we are sadly, uh, and we talked about, you know, my work in deep cycles. I believe there is a hegemonic war cycle of 108 to 112 years, and in between there are these peaks which made the Cold War, or for example, Napoleon III's challenge in the 1850s and '60s, which almost became wars, which didn't. Although you go back to the Seven Years' War before that, and the whole st- war, the whole state was just between France and Britain, was so on edge that they actually fought in that interim period.

But it goes back to the Spanish, you know, being challenged by the [00:14:00] French. It goes back to the Napoleonic Wars where, you know, we challenged the French. It goes back to Germany challenging us. So there are at least four of these things that are clearly part of the cycle in the modern European world, and we're in it, and it started in with the invasion of Ukraine, and it doesn't peak in its energy and its ability to agitate relationships that create this outcome until 2030.

And so we've only got escalation ahead of us. There's no, you know, downhill moment or force within the system that reduces the tensions in the world. And China has fully committed itself to being a global maritime hegemony. Make no mistake, it is not gonna stay in the Asian basin or the third island chain.

It's coming for every ocean, much as Britain did and America did as maritime hegemonies

Francis Gorman: So wh- when we break that out in terms of making it a reality, what does that look like? To take Taiwan, they, to take South Korea? We've got North Korea there that [00:15:00] is obviously an ally and aligned with China. You've got Russia who's also an ally

David Murrin: So let's go back, and the reality is already that the war in Ukraine was enabled by China, and Putin was encouraged to proceed, and his war effort has been supported all the way through increasingly by China, and the Iranians are the same. So, uh, China's already thrown two large rocks at us, which are generating full-scale regional conflicts.

So how does it look in the Pacific Basin? What do the Chinese need to do? Well, they're all locked up behind the first island chain in a time of conflict, and as we've seen in the, uh, Tai- in the, in the, uh, s- in the straits issue, access area denial systems prevent your ships from going through narrow blockages, and the Japanese control the gate between Okinawa and Taiwan, and Taiwan is the gatepost.

So their first real need is to keep the gate open, and since the new [00:16:00] Japanese prime minister's arrived, she is kickass. She is really clearly remobilizing Japan to face the threat of China, and I would say rather enthusiastically trying to keep that gate closed. And that alone represents a threat because Japan is a fully industrialized system, the only one comparable of some degree to Chinese manufacturing capability.

And keep it in the war, and we have a chance. Lose it, and we have all sorts of problems for the rest of the world. But they're being very, I would say, aggressive about closing that gate, and the more they can close the gate, the more the, the Chinese feel they have to act, and that's called strategic compression.

And my studies suggest that the timing of hegemonic conflicts are never at the choosing of the hegemon. They build themselves up. They scare the people around them, who then react, and they realize their opportunity is narrowing, and they move as a result of strategic compression. So I think the strategic compression on China comes through [00:17:00] the opportunity of midcourse interception and stretched American forces and what's going on in Japan, which is full, you know, attempts to close the gate and prevent them from getting to the third and i- and second island chain

Francis Gorman: And, and when we, when we look at that, Taiwan is obviously there as, as a, as a prime target, and President Trump kind of has alluded that America may or may not support Taiwan if a conflict happens with China. My understanding is Taiwan are highly strategic, though, to our technology sectors in, in the West.

If we lose Taiwan, does that have other implications for the world?

David Murrin: Look, I think Taiwan Semi has been expanding its manufacturing of chips into other locations. Um, and i- it's still not as significant as on-island production. Um, but I think actually Taiwan's role is slightly different. To the Chinese, it's represents the structural reunification of China [00:18:00] following Chiang Kai-shek's, you know, movement there at the end of 1949.

It's like a completion of the motherland, and I think that we can't underestimate that. It's like Britain losing Scotland and Wales, you know, and saying, "Well, we want them back because we're not complete without it." So there's some understanding, although originally it was actually a Japanese possession, so it's a little more complex than that.

But that's how it's set up in the CCP narrative. But the most important thing is it's a gatepost. It is the western gatepost for the access to the second and third island chain, and the expansion that China has to enact, and that is to get to the third island chain and push America out, destroy South Korea as an independent state and Japan, and make that region, as Japan planned to do, an empire zone which allows it to then integrate its industrial base and build the biggest navy in the world, and some years later come out and take our world ocean by ocean.

That's its strategy

Francis Gorman: I'm gonna pause there for a minute, David, 'cause I have [00:19:00] to let this percolate a bit inside my mind as, as to what that means. And it's, it's quite, it's quite frightening, but if, if I look at what China have done, they have been hesitant to have direct military conflict. It, it's more been through hybrid warfare by empowering proxies, um, by empowering nation- nations like Iran and Russia, et cetera. Do you see that there is a, a, a multi-tiered play here where we c- create disruption and unrest within Western democracies by tinkering with the political systems, you know, the ideologies, create fractures there, that are no longer have the, the buy-in of the people, and the West slowly deteriorates before it ever gets a kinetic-faced conflict?

David Murrin: Um Well, there are two questions there. Is China preparing to use [00:20:00] force? Is it able to use force, and how decisive does it feel it will be? Well, you know, like any country that's developed new systems, it needs to be sure they're going to work, and it much prefers to use it on a weakened enemy than a stronger enemy.

And by launching Russia against the West and Iran, the, uh, Chinese have observed American ca- technology in the Gulf very clearly about how the intercepts are made and will have created corrective measures. And the petri dish, which is the battle for Ukraine, has all been fed back into China and their dark factories and their socialization of how to use those systems.

And so they've gained. They've gained the battlefield experience of their allies and put... taken it back into a central position and harnessed it on an industrial scale I suspect that'll scare us. So do, in history, people build such arrays of toys and not use them? Very hard to find an empire that's ever not used its toys in this particular position.

But at the [00:21:00] same time, as you correctly point out, it has-- The Russians have a program called Active Measures, which goes back to the Cold War. It is basically the degradation of a Western society to the point where it's not prepared to defend itself, and the Chinese have a similar infiltration program.

Now, Active Measures is really interesting because Putin picked it up. He didn't create it, but he definitely personified its spread, and its target was the right side of Western politics. And why you say the right and not the left, where it would be seen as more naturally fertile ground, is because when you threaten a country that's democratic, it always moves to the right with greater nationalism and self-protection.

So if you can infect the right and turn the immune system off, then nothing happens. And in fact, let's think of the examples. There's MAGA, which is a really good example of an infected right, where America has suddenly ended up with sort of frenemies with Russia, which is bizarre. You can see it in [00:22:00] Germany, where the right actually would disarm rather than rearm, as Merz is doing at the moment.

You can see it in France, and you might see it in Reform somewhere buried deep under there, where they've been semi-pro-Russian in ways which, you know, shimmer in the darkness. So the Active Measures of Russia have all-- are all around us and undermining us. But the Chinese, when the Russians moved out of Britain, for example, moved in in spades.
So it's not just that we are in denial and weak and unable to face an enemy. I think we may have well been systematically subverted in a pincer movement between Russia and China

Francis Gorman: The, the embassy that you just touched on there, you're referring to the massive Chinese embassy in

David Murrin: In London?

Francis Gorman: of London?

David Murrin: Yeah

Francis Gorman: Interesting. Do you think that's symbolic or strategic?

David Murrin: And for the Chinese, it's a gift. To operate all those people, have an intelligence center in the heartland of London, what a gift. I mean, we're mad. And, you know, there will be a huge number of operatives. They've already created systems and shadow police stations which affect, you know, Chinese immigrants and try and exert on them.

We've allowed the Chinese into our system because we've wanted them in our educational system to pay for our universities, because the Treasury thinks that that's the only source of money they're gonna get from a powerful Chinese [00:24:00] economy, and the Foreign Office somehow benignly think that if you're friends with your enemy, you can somehow do something about it rather than actually recognize them and cauterize them.

And, you know, we've got leadership which just fails to have any courage to realize we are at war, and we need to prepare for it, and we need to explain to our society that, you know, the social benefits we once had now have to be turned back on defense. And in the process, we could actually create a real economy again, and there may be huge benefit from that rather than just a one-way spend as they like to think about it

Francis Gorman: How ready is the UK for war in your opinion?

David Murrin: What scale would you like me to answer upon? One to 10, one to 100?

Francis Gorman: Let's go for a middle ground, one to 50

David Murrin: Okay Minus 30

Francis Gorman: That bad

David Murrin: We are totally exposed. Let's go through it. We have no army. We have 12 artillery pieces. We have no tanks. Our army is still trying to work out what it will be, [00:25:00] and some of its leaders are very gifted, but they're not resourced. The Navy has been decimated by a lack of funding on the most epic scale.

You know, our Type 45 destroyers, which if they worked would be world-beating, have just fallen to disarray, and we're lucky to get one or two afloat, and we don't upgrade them with anti-ballistic mi- ship missiles and Aster 30s. Our army doesn't have air defense systems for the country. We could be, for example, buying Aster NG or SAMP in the next generation, which has an ability to hit maneuvering incoming warheads, but no, we haven't thought about that.

We have a few, you know, Sky Sabers, which is great for the House of Parliament and a couple of other buildings, and that's it. We have no drone capability, no counter-drone capability at scale. It is terrible. Our aircraft carriers, which I don't think are a bad idea if properly defended, have planes on them that can't carry any weapons.

The ships themselves aren't defended. It is, it is so bad that literally in any other period in history, you'd string up the [00:26:00] people responsible, and that goes back to prime ministers, it goes back to Ministry of Defense heads, it goes back to Chief of Defense staff. They're all culpable for what is the most appalling situation, and yet we have been at war with Russia effectively for four years.

We are Putin's greatest European enemy because he remembers how we were the backbone that fought for the Falklands, had a nuclear system that was pr- being prepared to use it, and in effect negated the Soviet army's capability to come into Europe. Even though America was larger, it was Thatcher's intent that protected us.

So he recognizes we're hated. He attacks our subsea cables, and yet we, we see their warships escorted by RFA supply ships. I mean, they must be quaking when they see an oil tanker chasing them that's painted in gray. The signals we send are appalling. So I'm afraid there should be a absolute public outrage at what's happening.

Francis Gorman: I don't get the sense, and I spend quite a bit of time in the UK, that, that [00:27:00] people care that much at the moment

David Murrin: I think people are incredibly deluded. They feel that Ukraine is a war, uh, far away. They feel that the Iranian war is someone else's war, apart from when they fill their car up. And they are totally frustrated by incompetent leadership on an epic scale, and they're disheartened. And yet deep down, they understand we need to defend ourselves.

And if the option came to vote for someone that stood for that, I think the response would be overwhelmingly surprising to the political body

Francis Gorman: Interesting. Very interesting, David. I've a, I've a lot of takeaways from this conversation already that I need to break down in, in, in my evening and, and, and go back over it. It's, uh, it's a fascinating area. W- when you say, and, and people may be surprised by this, the UK has been at war with Russia for four years already, you're talking about the cyber warfare aspect.

The, you're

David Murrin: I'm talking about direct action, blowing things up on our [00:28:00] territory, losing our power stations, um, seeing our submarine, submarine hall have a fire miraculously. None of these are accidents. Seeing that oil tanker crash into another oil tanker, oh, it just happened to be Russian. Seeing our subsea cables being, you know, mined and, and surveyed.

Sorry, that's called war by any other term

Francis Gorman: I, I, I know one of the papers did a breakdown on this year. I can't remember which one specifically, but they talked about all of the acts of Russian destruction on British soil, I think down to warehouses being burnt down and, and, and different pieces. Why is that not making mainstream news? Why is that not being surfaced in a way that can be understood properly?

David Murrin: Well, the rot really starts when you look at the Novichok attack in Salisbury, because that was designed to break down the barriers of weapons of mass destruction, in this case, a chemical weapon. Um, when all three of those chemical biological weapons [00:29:00] got a nuclear response in the Cold War, and what all we could do was turn out some lights somewhere in a northern Russian town to show we were unhappy.

And with that lack of capability came, has con- uh, a continued lack of intention. So, you know, Labor, I mean, Boris, I think for all his bad hair and lack of strategic discipline, understood that, you know, if someone burned your house down, you burn their house down. Maybe a couple more, to be honest. But Sunak was a weak man, you know, known for not wanting to be a war prime minister, and though institutionally we supported Ukraine throughout his tenure, he did everything he could to weaken our defenses and also present a really weak aspect of intention.

And if Sunak was bad, you can square that process with this current prime minister because he just, you know, makes these weak, like flopping words about war and defense and then just starves the armed forces to the point of destruction

Francis Gorman: What, what does all of this [00:30:00] for the day-to-day lives of people across the West in terms of how the markets are reacting and how the economy is going to, I suppose, sustain going forward? If, if, if we're into an e- era of continued conflict, continued disruption, how do businesses refocus? How does the economy stay stable, or are we going to hit an extreme depression or recession across

David Murrin: going, we're going to hit an extreme event. And currently, with the Straits of Hormuz blocked, we've got this... Imagine this huge supply shock which is just building and building, but that surges inflation through our system. We know that inflation is hard to live with because, you know, everything goes up but actually wages.

People can't pay for things. Um, so there's a huge cost of living crisis, like, coming down the track And more importantly, there is a bond crisis. And that bond crisis is not just the gilt market, which is the weakest in terms of the highest yield of the G7 bond markets, [00:31:00] but there are critical stages where they're about to really bungee jump, or I describe it like become hot bubblegum and just stretch.

And that brings a completely different way of life. Now we can't fund ourselves, most of our interest payments, you can't do the social welfare. I mean, the government spending will implode as a result, and we'll be lucky to get out of it because America is on course to go bankrupt somewhere in the next three years on this, in this process.

And how do you fund a war? You can't buy exquisite systems, and so, you know, cheap mass weapon systems are all we can fight with, and we are going to end up emulating Ukraine in some ways where they didn't have the money, so they create cheap, affordable mass. So affordable mass is going to be vital for us in ensuring that we learn the Ukrainian lessons.

And you mentioned n- that I'd been out there recently, and the thing I would like to share with everyone is what we have to do to survive. And we look at Ukraine and think, "Well, you make these marvelous drones and UGVs and adaption [00:32:00] systems," but no one asks how they did it, and they did it through a social transformation.

They are a fully lateralized wartime system. That means there are no linear people who can't see beyond their railway tracks. Everyone is adaptable, like, they work through chaos and adapt rather than go, "Oh my goodness, I can't do it." And the function of war, I argue, in these large cycles of 108 to 112 years, is to force societies to lateralize and to move away from linear processes which are pr- predominantly run out of productivity.

They've run out of the anti-entropy, as I call it, to push back the universe's entropy, and the result of that is that we have wars, and the system that can't adapt gets wiped out. And at the moment, if I was to judge our system and say on a score of one to 10, where is it in terms of linearity, at one where it's just completely linear and 10 like Ukraine, it's super adaptable and has every chance of winning and surviving, we're a one.[00:33:00] 

So we need to understand and the, the processes Ukraine went through. And people like Starmer, the Labour Party, the whole group would not even survive a week in conflict. They just, just can't think fast enough, not adaptable enough. They would be disastrous. So Britain's heading for a disaster because it's led by the wrong people in a time of conflict and shock, and everything they do will make it worse, not better.

And just like when you go back and you think about it, what took place in the Norwegian campaign, that campaign forced Chamberlain out, who epitomized the linearity, and replaced it with a fully adapted Churchill from which we were in a very dark place, but we fought back. And I'm afraid that's probably our future.

And the question is, who is that person? Well, Nigel Farage is lateral and he is adaptive, but he's not a wartime leader. He's not strategic, and he has no interest in the military, and that's his greatest failing. And, you know, in terms of Reform's offering, at a time like this when they will be swept to [00:34:00] power, I think, one way or the other, it's a shame that they haven't really furnished the nationalist, you know, rearmament program, which can re-stimulate real growth and productivity and solve a lot of economic problems.

But they haven't even gone there, because maybe they think the electorate's not interesting or not interested. But I think the British electorate's the smartest on the planet, and if you stood up as a leader and said, "This is where we are," most people would go, "Yep." And if you lost your benefits to defend yourself and you had to work harder, they probably would

Francis Gorman: That's, yeah, that's, that's very interesting that you say that. I had Dov Baron on the show last year, and he talked about emotional source code, he talked about COVID, he was, he's British himself, and he said, "If you wanted the British people to take the vaccine, you should've just said, 'We're British. We're better than everyone else. We need to show them how it's done. Let's get the vaccine, lads, and, and let's move forward.'"

David Murrin: Yeah

Francis Gorman: the same thing. This is w- we're British, we need to lead. Let's, let's, let's show the rest of the world how it's done. [00:35:00] Let's rearm, let's regroup, let's be strategic here

David Murrin: See, the problem with our response to COVID is I argued at the time, and I wrote evidential papers which have only been verified, it wasn't an accidental release. It came from a weapons laboratory owned by the PLAN in Wuhan, and it was designed to inhibit our ability to, to make keep our debt. And so they explained that if you were like us and you locked down, then essentially you would thrive.

And like a bunch of morons, the West went, "Yeah, I'll do it." And the only countries that actually questioned it were Scandinavia and Boris' regime. And the only reason they rolled into it was because they weren't properly protecting the old people, and as a result of it, they rolled into a place they shouldn't have been at.

I think the people's idea that, that you... we should have carried on with our economy, let, uh, the old people shelter, and let the young people get on with it with a very low mortality rate. We all knew that's what should have happened. If there was a resistance to [00:36:00] vaccinations, it was the concern you can't trust a drug company, which probably right, and at the same time, the concern that it wasn't the right course of action.

So I think that resistance was not just from a few, it was the common sense feeling that the population had, and I don't think it was handled well at all. And as a result, our debt structure is significantly weakened, uh, £400 billion weaker than it would've been, which we could have spent on defense instead

Francis Gorman: So you're saying, David, that your take is COVID was engineered to do harm?

David Murrin: Absolutely. But not the kind of harm we think of. It was economic harm. It wasn't designed to kill a lot of people, it was designed to economically inhibit the productivity and increase the debt burden of Western economies. So the arms race that China started subsequently at great pace, which no one talks about, just about the, the beginning of COVID, we couldn't match them because we- our debt was used just to sustain our economies in ludicrous coping mechanisms

Francis Gorman: This is back to your analogy of 3D [00:37:00] chess

David Murrin: It is, I'm afraid. And they have been playing an amazing game of it

Francis Gorman: That's very interesting. Before we wrap up, David, obviously I'm based in Ireland and we're neutral, but we're, I won't say a superpower, but super strategic in terms of our technology landscape and our importance to Europe in terms of that technology, and the undersea cables are obviously a core part of that. If this goes the way you are predicting and the West ends up in a kinetic warfare, where do you believe sits strategically in that? Will we remain a neutral entity, or will we get dragged in under a European banner in some way? 'Cause we have zero military, and the fact that the UK-- Are you telling me the UK have, have limited military doesn't give me any comfort either, to be honest.

David Murrin: Well, let's just look at some, some good examples. What did China do with the Uyghurs? The Uyghurs didn't willingly submit. They were a hostile Muslim society, and [00:38:00] all Muslim societies are quite vibrant because they're running up their curve in late regionalization to expansion, and they suppress them with all sorts of social algorithms and tortured them and, you know, concentration camped them.

I mean, stuff that if people knew about it, they would fall off their chairs. They took that technology, and then they went to Hong Kong. Six generations, the most vibrant people you'll meet, and they were suppressed in three months. How did they do that? They took out the most strong, rebellious genes, and the rest just became like wheat in the wind.

So they control 1.2 billion people of a planet of about, you know, 7.6 or whatever. So they have the technology to go anywhere in the world and change an outcome. And in fact, the reason why the CIA-led revolution in Iran failed recently is because Iran has adopted the same technology and partially used it to suppress and isolate the leaders and make sure that they, they were removed so that the wheat was in the wind again for everyone else.

So I say that [00:39:00] because the ambition of China is to rule the world. There are no neutral countries in its story, so there are no places to hide. And ultimately, Russia and Iran and North Korea are agents of China. So yes, you might survive a little longer as a little bubble, and then one day, if we lose because, you know, we don't have enough support from everyone else, um, you too suffer the fate of the Uyghurs.

So there's nowhere to hide, and people often say, "Well, what do you do?" And I say, "You stand. You stand at your home, and you stand with your children, and you enable your country to wake up and be prepared to defend itself and to invest in the right technologies and choose the right leaders that we can get through this."

Because ultimately, we can get through this, but we have to wake up. This isn't a foregone conclusion, as we found out with Ukraine. If a country can mobilize and wake up and adapt and lateralize, it has a chance. In the near term, if we just looked at it, you have targets like the cables coming in. Cables are always gonna be targeted, I'm afraid.[00:40:00] 

You know, you have power systems which you share, so you will feel it. It won't be the glorious Switzerland, I'm afraid. And you know, already you've asked the Royal Navy to come inside your 12-mile limit because you have no protection, and Russian submarines hide inside the 12-mile limit. So you've asked the Royal Navy, when it can get a ship out to hunt one down, and basically can operate inside that limit.

And that's the right thing to do for both of us because that was just a weakness that we all live with in the ROC. Submarines were sitting there, Russian submarines, and the Royal Navy couldn't get to them. So that's a gap that's been precluded. The more gaps we close out, the more united we are, the more scale we produce, the greater intention we present to the enemy, and we harder-- we m-- it's harder for them to enact their strategy.

Francis Gorman: David, your insights have been fascinating. I feel like we could go on for another hour. thanks very much for coming on, and, uh, I think there's a lot to mull over here, and let's, let, let's see what the future has to bring

David Murrin: Well, just, you know, if you find this stuff interesting or even challenging, go to my [00:41:00] site. You know, you pay for a newspaper, it's £50 a month. For £50 a month you'll learn more about the world and what is going to happen than you will do from a newspaper. And I recommend everyone that's even touched on their curiosity do that as a first stage.

Stop. We were given democracy by our ancestors that fought for it, and we have an obligation for the blood they spilt to execute our knowledge and capability to make the right decisions. And what can we do, people say? We talk to our friends, it cascades through our groups, it affects our politicians.

We're socialized creatures, and every one of us is a node in that. So stand up and be counted

Francis Gorman: Great words to finish on, David. Stand up and be counted. Thanks very much. It was, it was a real pleasure having you on, and stay safe

David Murrin: And you, Francis. Love talking to you. Hope you don't need to, need to have too many Guinnesses after this.

Francis Gorman: I think I'm going straight to the Jameson. Thanks, David