#46 — John Robb — What (The Hell) Is Going On Right Now?

Podcast Notes Key Takeaways There are 4 layers to social decision-making:Tribalism: the common narrative people tell themselves about what makes their tribe special and binds themNationalism: the bureaucracies of governments and corporations that keep people in country working togetherMarkets: Markets (people) select their leaders in electionsNetworks: A selective group of people manipulate the markets for their own interestsChina is using its network technology to control the people in its country. They can delete any online message that they don’t like, can stop you from leaving the country, prevent you from getting a load, and can make people disappear. “Anything you say can be censored out…you can be completely manipulated in a way that makes you ineffective as a functional human being” – John RobbWhen there’s a decision to be made, there are two parties that are formed:Consensus: the people who support the ideaDissent: the people who oppose a prevailing idea The consensus isn’t always right. Back in January, China and the WHO reported that there was no spread of human-to-human contact of COVID-19 but that wasn’t true.If people could monetize their data, it would be a win-win situation because people would earn extra income and the government could use the data to track the spread of the coronavirus and the health of the population“It would be far more productive to get everyone together, government and corporate bureaucracy, to build an app that could make this happen and it would have to income this kind of payment” – John RobbThe US government also wasn’t prepared for a modern-day pandemic“Our planned response to the pandemic, the thing that we spent decades planning for, was based on an old-style, a very slow world, a world of the 1980s. And it wasn’t built for this kind of hyper-connected world.” – John Robb

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Today's episode is with John Robb, a former aeronautical engineer, special-ops soldier, and then the first internet analyst in the 90’s (followed by becoming an extremely successful entrepreneur). He chats with us about his research report that he releases monthly called “The Global Guerillas Report” and answers the question of “What the hell is going on right now?” in the life and times of Covid-19.

He predicted social networks and their impact on the world back in 1996. He also predicted this pandemic in January before most people knew what was about to happen. And he has a few other observations that I haven’t heard anyone mention anywhere else to date that make this one of my favorite episodes to date.

Simply put, John’s monthly “Global Guerillas Report” is some of the best research and journalism on geopolitical trends I’ve ever come across. John was months ahead of pretty much everyone else with predicting this pandemic, and for someone that thinks deeply about the ramifications of what's happening in the present (and for what can / what will likely happen in the future), this is one of my favorite conversations that I've had in several months cutting across almost every question on my mind with regards to the global situation we’re currently in. Enjoy.

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