John Donvan

Welcome to Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan. This week we have a debate that steps back, zooms out a little bit to look at where we as a species are headed. The question we’re asking is, will the future be abundant? And despite taking this long view, with all of the current news of war and climate change and AI, this conversation has a lot of resonance right now.

I’m handing off the reins for this debate and, trust me, you’re in very capable hands with our guest moderator, Xenia Wickett. Xenia is an expert in international affairs and that expertise has taken her all over the world, including to the White House and to the State Department, where she led South Asia policy and helped to set up the Department of Homeland Security. These days she runs her own business. It’s called Wickett Advisory, which offers coaching and geopolitical strategy to organizations and to executives. I’m delighted that she was able to join us for this conversation and to have her step in as moderator. So now on to the show. Here is Xenia Wickett.

Xenia Wickett

In 2011, the Pew Research Center conducted a study that showed for the first time that more Americans thought that their children were gonna be worse off than themselves than thought otherwise. That trend has continued. Imprinted in our basic genetic makeup is a commitment to ensure the propagation of the species. And not just its continuation, but in such a way that we are healthier and happier. And it’s in this context that I can’t think of a more important question to answer than whether the future will be abundant or not. What world are we leaving for our children, for our species? This is not about whether we are optimists or pessimists, nor is it about the political oscillations that consume the papers every day. This is a vital question to answer, one that drives behaviors, our own, that of our businesses, our societies and our governments.

So, to talk us through the dynamics and to answer the question of, will the future be abundant, we have two Peters. Let’s get into it and meet our debaters. Arguing yes, the future will be abundant, Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of XPRIZE Foundation and author of Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, and The Future Is Faster Than You Think. Welcome, Peter.

Peter Diamandis

A pleasure, Xenia. Good to be here.

Xenia Wickett

And arguing no to the question, will the future be abundant, is geopolitical strategist and author of The End of the World Is Just the Beginning, Peter Zeihan. Welcome, Peter.

Peter Zeihan

Great to be here.

Xenia Wickett

Now, because we have two Peters debating with us today, I’m gonna be referring to each of you as Peter D. and Peter Z. to try and minimize some confusion. Before we get started, I just wanna take a quick sense of what motivates you both to make this argument. So I’m gonna ask you each to take 30 seconds and tell us why you’re here today. Peter D., what are the stakes for you in this argument?

Peter Diamandis

Uh, an individual’s mindset is probably the single most important tool they have to solving problems and creating a better world. And our, uh, our inherent mindset that we evolved over 100,000 years is one of, uh, fear and scarcity, uh, but that doesn’t put you in a very good position to solve problems. And so my mission here is to give people a clear understanding of why the future is extraordinarily abundant and why they’re more empowered than ever before to create that future.

Xenia Wickett

Phenomenal. It’s about mindset. And Peter Z., the same question for you, why did you show up?

Peter Zeihan

We’ve been living through one of the most atypical periods in human history, and a lot of us have drawn linear forecasts as to where that takes us. We’re entering a period of extreme change, and my goal is to pe- get people to understand th- the size of the icebergs ahead of us and where they are so we can navigate around them. The future isn’t necessarily dark, but that doesn’t mean it’s gonna be anything we can predict.

Xenia Wickett

Okay. Let’s get to our opening statements. We want each of you to take a few minutes to explain your position. Peter D., you’re up first and you’re arguing yes to the question, will the future be abundant. Tell us why.

Peter Diamandis

Exponential technologies, and I define those as computations, sensors, networks, AI, robotics, 3D printing, AR, VR, blockchain, biotech, are technologies that are making those things that used to be scarce more and more abundant. Um, and so we’re living in a world where technology is transforming scarcity into abundance at an extraordinary rate. You know, everything that that we used to view as scarce, access to food, water, energy, healthcare, education, is, uh, blossoming. Now to be clear, we are living during a time that is chaotic and unpredictable and sometimes downright scary. I don’t deny that at all. We humans like going to sleep and waking up in the morning knowing that the world is the same as it was the night before, and it’s not. Uh, it’s changing at an accelerating rate. Um, and we’re not arguing that there are issues. There will be issues for sure. But even as it’s, uh, changing at this accelerating rate, what is happening is those things that used to be scarce are becoming abundant.

And so, you know, if we look at this and the… you know, I believe what’s called data-driven optimism, um, there is a huge amount of data that drives towards this, uh, vision that abundance is in fact, uh, the future. So first of all, global life expectancy has more than doubled over the last, uh, 70 years from roughly 40 years old to now, uh, hitting 75. Uh, you know, global child mortality has precipitously dropped from 43% in the 1800s down to under 4% today. Maternal mortality rates, women dying in pregnancy, over the last 20 years alone has dropped 34%, right? Uh, cancer deaths, uh, have reduced by a third over the last 20 years.

Uh, you may not believe this, but even democracy, uh, has blossomed over the last century. In 1900, about 1% of indivi- countries had universal, uh, voting rights. Today it’s 96%, right? Uh, extreme poverty has plummeted, uh, from 95% extreme poverty in the world down to under 10% today. Literacy rates have skyrocketed. Mobile phone uses, you know, we have some eight billion mobile phones. The poorest on the planet now have the most advanced technology for communications and access to knowledge. Uh, you know, we have five billion internet-connected individuals. Access to electricity has exploded. You know, uh, we are, have s- water safety. Uh, we have more access to food.

And so the question is, why is this happening? Why are we seeing this incredible abundance and access that people have? And it’s not that we humans have gotten smarter. We don’t have better forms of government or better politicians. It is the technology. Technology is a resource liberating force. It transforms scarcity into abundance over and over again, right? We used to go kill whales to get whale oil to light our nights. Then we ravaged mountain sides. Then we drilled kilometers under the ground to get access to oil. And now we have 8,000 times more energy hitting the surface of the s- uh, the earth from the sun than we consume as a species in a year. Uh, energy will become squanderable abundance, right? And that tips water and that tips health.

And so all of these things are increasing abundance. Uh, I have zero question… Now, to be… And by the way, anybody who wants access to this data, if you go to diamandis.com/data, I have 50 charts showing over the last decades and century this increasing access to abundance. So, uh, it’s not about creating a world of luxury for everybody, but it’s about creating a world of possibility for everybody.

Xenia Wickett

Peter, thank you so much. And now let’s hear from Peter Z. You’re answering no to the question, will the future be abundant. Tell us why.

Peter Zeihan

Peter D.’s absolutely correct, the world of the last 75, 80 years has gotten better and better and better and better, but it’s important to understand why we’ve been able to pa- go down this technological path. Uh, we’ve had three things going on. Uh, first of all, we had globalization. Uh, at the end of World War II, the Americans found themselves facing off against Stalin on the plains of Europe, and it was a war we knew we could not win. We knew we needed tens of millions of people to stand not behind us or with us, but in front of us to serve as cannon fodder. And that meant bribing them, and our bribe was globalization. We used our navy to open the seas so that anyone could go anywhere and interface with any partner and access any commodity and any product and sell into any market if in exchange you would join us against the Soviets. And it worked, and it generated the greatest prosperity and security the world has ever seen.

But the Cold War ended in ’92, and ever since then the United States and a series of ever more nationalist political contests has elected the guy who wants to do away with it faster. And the biggest difference between Trump and Biden when it comes to international economics is that Biden was able to hire a grammar checker. Uh, the road hasn’t changed, and this is a very strongly bipartisan issue. And we’re moving away from the generations of security and economic growth that gave us the ability to go down this technological path.

Then there’s demographics. Uh, pre-Stalin, we all lived on farms where kids were free labor, so you’d have as many of them as you could put up with plus one, because that’s how you found out it was too many. But then Stalin brought us globalization and industrialization and urbanization, and all the new industrial jobs were in towns. So we moved in to take them. Well, in town, kids aren’t free labor. They’re just a source of migraines. So you just fast-forward 30 years to the seventies to the nineties, we entered this weird period where we had huge numbers of young workers and huge amounts of consumption because of it, but not a lot of kids that we had to spend money on. It was demographically speaking, a moment in time.

You fast-forward another 20 years to the 2000s and the 2010s, and we now have lots of mature workers who are over 40 but not yet retired. People were at the height of their income but their expenses were under control, so we saw a huge tax base, huge infrastructure spending, lots of production, lots of investment, which generated, among other things, the tech boom that brought us the world we’re in now. But this too is only a moment in time. And in the 2020s we’re now aging out. Whether it’s Spain or Italy or Germany or Japan or Korea or Taiwan or China or Thailand, this is the end of the road because that bulge now hits mass retirement. And we have to come up with something that works without investment or consumption or production. And we’re not gonna get that first, right on our first try.

And then finally, there’s China. China is a country that exists because of globalization and demographic change. It’s utterly dependent upon globalization for access to raw materials and access to markets, but it’s also the fastest urbanizing country in history, which means it’s the fastest aging population in ca- history. And they’ve already aged so quickly and so far that consumption-led growth or cost-competitive production has already faded into memory. Their birthrate fell by more in the last six years than it did among European Jews during the Holocaust, so even repopulation is now statistically impossible. And China will cease to exist as a unified industrialized political economy within 10 years.

Major shifts in economic models take at least a couple of decades, and they are messy. The shift from imperialism to globalization, for example, took the better part of five decades and gave us two world wars and the Great Depression. So no, abundance is not the word that I would use to describe the future. We’ve passed that already.

Xenia Wickett

Okay. Thank you both very much. We know where both of you stand and why you stand there. So let’s take a quick break and we’ll dive into the discussion on the question, will the future be abundant, after this.

Welcome back to Open to Debate. We’re debating the question, will the future be abundant? My name is Xenia Wickett, and I run Wickett Advisory, a business that works to bring new perspectives to your thinking, helping you make better decisions. And I’m the guest moderator for today’s debate. We just heard opening statements from X Prize founder, Peter Diamandis, and geopolitical strategist, Peter Zeihan. And I want to try and summarize those briefly.

Peter D., you argued yes to question of, will the future be abundant? Your principal points were that exponential technology changes are making scarce things more abundant at an incredible rate. You acknowledge the fact that we’re living in a frightening time and that the world is changing at an accelerated rate, but you gave us some statistics that emphasize your optimism. You talked about the doubling of global life expectancy over 40 years, the, uh, lowering by a huge factor of child mortality and maternal mortality, the blossoming of democracy. And you asked the question, why is this happening. Uh, and your answer was technology is a resource liberating force and that energy will be a squanderable abundance.

Arguing no to the question was Peter Z. And Peter Z., you acknowledge the fact that the world has got better, but you thought it was important to understand why it had gotten better over the last century or so. And you said there were three reasons for that. The first was globalization. The second reason that you put for why things have gotten better are demographics. Uh, you describe moments in time where there was abundance of people, as in the last 20 years, but you talked about as we move into the 2020s, you’ve got a population bulb that is hitting mass retirement. And then the third reason you laid out was around China. You describe China as a country that will cease to exist in, as a unified industrialized economy in the next decade. You talked about those three factors, globalization, demographics and China, being on a positive trajectory and now hitting a negative trajectory.

So, let me pick up and ask you both a few questions. The first question, and this is for both of you, abundant for whom? How do imbalances and inequities factor into your thinking? Does it matter where you sit, what nationality, what country, what ethnic or socioeconomic group? And maybe I’ll start with you, Peter D.

Peter Diamandis

It matters in the beginning, but it doesn’t at the end, right? Uh, in the beginning when the first mobile phones cost a million dollars in, uh, New York, Manhattan, for the Wall Street traders and they worked very poorly. Now there are $40 handsets and they’re available to billions of people, and they work incredibly well. And not only do they work incredibly well, on this handset, which every child, you know, on the planet has access to, comes the world’s information, two-way video conferencing for free, libraries of books, entertainment, knowledge, information that were never available to the heads of nations 20 years ago are now available to the poorest. There are eight billion handsets on the planet.

So what we see is technology is a democratizing and demonetizing force. Uh, and so you know, things do begin, when they work poorly, they’re available to the richest who take the risk. Um, and eventually, they rapidly demonetize and democratize and are accessible to everyone. We’re seeing this on communications. We’re seeing this on energy. And so, uh, I believe that this is a force and it’s a non-stoppable force. And it is what is causing increasing abundance.

Xenia Wickett

A lot of people have described, uh, technologies like AI as things that increase inequality. What’s your argument to the people say that actually, these technologies are increasing inequality rather than decreasing? And then I’ll come to you, Peter Z.

Peter Diamandis

When you digitize anything, in the early days of its growth it’s deceptive. 30 doublings later, it’s a billion-fold bigger and it’s disruptive. And it’s dematerializing, demonetizing and democratizing. We’ve seen this over and over again across every technology. AI is gonna be ultimately the best educating system, the best healthcare system will be available to the poorest child and the wealthiest child, delivered by AI platforms.

Xenia Wickett

Okay, thank you. Peter Z., uh, the question, abundant for whom?

Peter Zeihan

Geographic factors and demographic factors are not the same everywhere. Uh, some countries are aging faster than others. Others have better borders and better economic geography. And as a rule, gross oversimplification, the Western hemisphere looks pretty good, uh, with the United States being one of the youngest demographies in the world as well as Mexico. That buys us a lot of time to figure out the details. But when it comes to technology at its core, th- the demographic structure is everything. Uh, developing new technologies requires a huge number of people in their twenties and their thirties who are social, who are integrated, who can work as a team and can imagine the future and then figure out how to operationalize and then figure out how to mass manufacture it. The problem with this process is that every step up until mass manufacture generates no income, and that means you have to have a huge amount of capital to push this whole process forward.

Now, in the 2000s and the 2010s, we had a exactly that world. We had the millennials, which were many, and we had the boomers, who were nearing retirement but had not yet retired. So they had their life accumulation of savings, which pushed down capital costs for everybody. That’s one of the reasons why growth these last 25 years has been so robust, lots of young, smart people, lots of money for them to do things with. Well, that’s over. As of December of last year, half of the world’s baby boomers had already retired and they’d liquidated their savings. And so we’ve seen capital costs triple. They’re gonna triple again in the next few years. The oldest millennial, sorry millennials, turns 45 next year. They’re no longer the young bucks, and the next generation down is small and, to be perfectly blunt, kind of antisocial.

So the environment that has allowed us to push the technological envelope so far, so fast, so consistently, it’s already behind us. And we’re already seeing those adjustments throughout the tech space with layoffs, with shutdowns, with focusing more on manufacturing now rather than idea generation, because we’re realizing we’re ch- losing China at the same time. So the, the risk here isn’t that we’re not gonna push the envelope forward. I’d say that’s almost impossible. The risk here is we’re gonna lose too much of where we have and we backslide a little bit. And we’re gonna find out the answer that question in just the next five years about whether or not we can retool fast enough. North America basically needs to double the size of the industrial plant. And if we fail that, then we lose a lot of what we already have.

Xenia Wickett

I can see that Peter D. disagrees, so Peter D.-

Peter Diamandis

And-

Xenia Wickett

… back to you for a few seconds.

Peter Diamandis

… vehemently disagree.

Peter Zeihan

(laughs)

Peter Diamandis

Yeah. So, that is so wrong, in my opinion. Um, what’s happening is we have more, uh, individuals more empowered with technology than ever before. We’ve created an interconnected globe where people have gigabit bandwidth anywhere on the planet. They now have the ability to use AI to code at a speed like never before. The cost is demonetizing of the ability to innovate and create, right? It used to be that it would cost you $100 million to sequence a genome. It’s now down to 200 bucks. Your ability to code used to require a massive amount of education. Now you can, uh, code just by, you know, explaining through natural language what you want.

So the speed of innovation is exploding onto the scene, and the number of individuals who have got access to this technology is greater than any time ever in human history. And entrepreneurs that used to require, you know, 50 or 100 or 200 people to create a company are now creating a company that’s delivering a, uh, valuable asset or resource with two or three people. So I think we’re seeing a Cambrian explosion of innovation, uh, by no means a decrease, and it’s gonna be accelerating.

Xenia Wickett

Tell me what you think the future looks like in, say, 2050. And maybe take an American, a standard American, what do you think life looks like?

Peter Zeihan

I think we’re gonna make it over the hump. I think we’re gonna succeed in doubling the size of the industrial plant, and I think we’re gonna make it through to when the millennials’ kids enter the market and rebalance our demographics here. I don’t think it’s gonna take til 2050. I think 2040 will be plenty of time. And we will have a system where we are largely immune to international shocks and we have local workers serving local markets using local resources. And getting there is going to be the fastest economic growth in the history of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. It’s not a good story, it’s a great story. It’s a story of growth, but I wouldn’t call it abundant. It will be driven by a breakdown of the old system.

Xenia Wickett

Okay. So Peter Z., 2050 looks good. It’s much more localized, but it’s an ugly way to get there. Peter D.?

Peter Diamandis

Uh, so I’m gonna, I’m gonna agree with Peter Z. on a lot of that, uh, and I do think 2040, it’s hard to predict beyond 2040, honestly. Uh, we’re gonna be, in the next 20 years, uh, we’re gonna be adding healthy decades onto the human lifespan. I mean, that’s one of areas that I’m focused on. Um, yeah, fingers crossed. And, uh, we’re about to launch a massive X Prize in that area, but we’re gonna add 20 healthy years. Uh, the, uh, study done out of Harvard, London School of Business, and Oxford said that for every healthy year you add to the lifespan of humanity, it’s worth $38 trillion to the global economy. Right? So we have more people living longer, healthier lives. Um, it’s positive on both sides of the equation, more empowered than ever before.

Uh, we’re gonna see AI have the most disruptive and most re-inventive, uh, impact. Um, there’re gonna be two kinds of companies at the end of this decade, those fully utilizing AI and those out of business. It’s gonna be that black and white.

Xenia Wickett

I wanna move on to climate. And Peter D., I wanna turn to you first and say, aren’t we using up the earth’s resources? Uh, will there ever be a tipping point at which we can’t multiply them or become sufficiently efficient or productive to deliver more with less? Is science gonna allow this?

Peter Diamandis

This idea that we are scarcity bound, again, is built into, uh, our old brain that evolved for hundreds of thousands of years. We’re living, again, in a world where technology liberates resources. So, again, we used to kill whales to get whale oil, right? Now we’re on the verge of fusion, um, which will give us near infinite energy. We still have an oil economy, and we will for the next 20 or 30 years. It’s not an issue about that, but we’re gonna be increasing the amount of resources available to us. We fight over water. W- you know, there’s 97.5% of the water on the planet is salt, 2% is ice, and we fight over a half of percent of the water on this planet. But we can… There’s an abundance-minded way of thinking about it. There’s plenty of water. We live on a water planet. It’s just not in usable form. That’s where technology comes in to capture, you know, trillions of tons of water out of the atmosphere, we call it rain, or desalinate water out of the oceans.

You know, what other resources do we consider scarce? Because I can show you the technologies that can make it abundant. Uh, I’ll just say for climate real quick, our ability to bring the earth back into balance is something fundamentally critical. And I think I would rather be fighting that battle today with the tech we have versus, you know, 20 or 30 years ago.

Peter Zeihan

My concern, it’s that we don’t have the tools to deal with it yet. Uh, I think the best example I can give you is what it takes to put up a solar panel. Uh, aluminum is the most energy intensive of the primary industries that we have if you look at steel and fertilizer and the rest. Taking raw silicon and turning it into a finished silicon panel requires seven times the energy that it takes to make the same volume of aluminum. And we’re probably going to lose most of our capacity to product polysilicon at scale when the Chinese break down. So, the issue here is ultimately out of timeframes. Uh, how long does it take to build the industrial plant? How long does it take to apply the technology? And the issue that Peter D. and I, I have always struggled with is whether or not we’ve already passed the point of no return on these technologies and we no longer need the old system to push it forward or whether we do need time to move it forward.

And I think the best example I can give you there of where we haven’t crossed the Rubicon yet is AI. AI chips are all three nanometer smaller. They all come from the same city in Taiwan, but that makes it sound a lot simpler than it is. There are 9,000 companies that are involved in the manufacturing system to allow those fabrication plants to work, and over half of them only produce one product for one customer, and they have no competition anywhere else in the world. So if you peel out any small section of the global system that’s technologically oriented, like say Germany, which is in a severe demographic collapse right now, we lose the ability to make those chips at all or certainly, at scale. Now, we can rebuild that ecosystem, but it takes time. So everything that Peter D. said about productivity, I, I agree. The question is whether that’s this decade, the next decade, or the decade after.

Xenia Wickett

I, I’m gonna go back. We’ve got so much to cover in so little time, so I’m gonna ask for quite snappy responses if I can get from you. I wanna go back to you, Peter D. There’s a war in Ukraine. We’ve got a growing conflict in the Middle East. Peter Z.’s already brought up China and his view that China is, uh, my language, not yours, Peter Z., but effectively in decline and over the next decade. We have a vulnerable Taiwan. Um, I haven’t even talked about Iran and Russia. Are we on the verge of a great powers war, and does that, how does that, this conflict affect your assessment?

Peter Diamandis

There’s no question that there’s lots of reasons to be scared, concerned, frightful and so forth. What I draw confidence from is, uh, history as well as a projected future. You know, if you ask anybody, uh, you know, would you rather live in the year 1900 or the year 2023? If you truly understood what life was like in 1900 where you were working 80-hour work weeks, your 12-year-old kids were in the factories, you were dead by 40 from tuberculosis, um, you’d have to, uh, you’d have to answer, “I’d rather live today.” Uh, and so the world has gotten extraordinarily better by almost every measure, not every measure, but by almost every measure over the last 123 years.

And over that 123 years, we’ve also seen World War I, World War II, the Spanish flu, the Vietnam War. 150 million people died needlessly in those conflicts, and yet the world has gotten extraordinarily better. Um, this is not a, a straight and linear path. It, it’s got ups and downs, ups and downs, but what I truly believe is yes, we’re gonna have these problems and we’re gonna overcome them. And the number one way to allow people to become more peaceful, um, is to give them access to prosperity.

Xenia Wickett

Peter Z., I want to talk to you about population ’cause that’s one of the big issues that you’ve put on the table. Um, Thomas Malthus back in 1798 predicted that population growth would outstrip food production. Since then, uh, numerous other scientists and experts have said similarly, including most notably, uh, Paul Ehrlich and his wife in The Population Bomb in the late sixties. They’ve all been wrong. Why is this moment different?

Peter Zeihan

Industrialization. Industrialization plus technology introduced us this very con- simple concept called synthetic fertilizer, and it was applied at scale. And we were able to put it on geographies that without it could not grow food, things like the Brazilian Cerrado, for example. And that effectively increased the amount of land that we could cultivate by a factor of three, and that’s what’s kept us all alive. As long as there is no disruption to the synthetic fertilizer supply chain, we’re good.

China’s where the single-largest source of phosphate comes from. Belarus and Russia are the single-largest source of potash. Nitrogen is a natural gas derivative, and we’re gonna lose access to a lot of that from the Russian space and the Middle East as well. So we’re going to have to hack the genome of plants in order to grow more food with less fertilizer, and it is a race against time whether we can figure out a way to improve yields on the genetic side faster than we lose the ability to produce it on the synthetic fertilizer side. And I do not have enough confidence to tell you how we’re gonna come down on that race.

Xenia Wickett

So time is a big issue here. Peter D., in your 2012 book Abundance, you quote Matt Ridley that, and I love this, “Saved time is the best definition of prosperity.”

Peter Diamandis

Yes.

Xenia Wickett

And you give a whole host of examples of how time is being saved. You’ve done that today as well. But many would argue today that time is an increasingly rare commodity. Expectations of what we achieve in any moment has multiplied many times over. So, what do you say to the argument that actually time is shrinking, in fact?

Peter Diamandis

Every human on the planet has one thing in common, 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week. And it’s how you use that time that differentiates wealth and capabilities. And you know, Google saved us from going to the libraries. ChatGPT is now giving us increased, you know… So yes, we are resetting our expected performance per unit time, and it’s exploding onto the world, right? And so our ability to solve problems, to create new products, to, to, uh, create additional prosperity is increasing at a exponential rate because of these technologies.

Xenia Wickett

Okay. We’re gonna have to wrap up our discussion. When we come back, we’ll bring in some more voices to further the conversation around this question, will the future be abundant? We’ll be right back.

Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m Xenia Wickett, executive

laughs) coach, moderator and speaker. I’m joined by X Prize founder Peter Diamandis and geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan, who have been debating the question, will the future be abundant? We’re gonna bring some other voices in, some, uh, members of the audience. Up first, we have Alexa Mikhail of Fortune magazine. Alexa, welcome. What’s your question for the debaters?

Alexa Mikhail

Peter D., I’ll start with you. You know, you mentioned that, you know, advances in technology and research has really expanded, you know, not just lifespan but health span, and, and we’re gonna have these 20 extra years. So I kind of want to talk about what those years are really gonna look like and what it’s gonna sort of mean to age in this country, given that this is sort of uncharted territory, especially that I think people would argue that people are also aging into poverty, people are dealing with caregiving duties. And s- and so what’s that gonna, gonna look like?

Peter Diamandis

It’s, uh, it’s a challenge, Alexa, because people are probably not saving enough money for those extra years. Uh, the reality is people retire because of one of three reasons. Either they’re in pain, uh, they’re low on energy, or they’re forced to retire. But what happens at 65 or 70 if at the top of your game, you’ve got all the energy, all the capabilities, everything you’ve ever had and more? I think it’s gonna be a boom for global GDP if we allow people to continue working. Um, I think we’re gonna enter a new period of life where you’re starting your next startup, you’re getting your next university degree, uh, you’re exploring the world even more. You know, we shut down people’s earning capacity at 65. Why? What if they don’t have to? I think it’s a huge economic, uh, window of opportunity, uh, that is coming.

Xenia Wickett

Peter, if you wanna respond quickly, go ahead.

Peter Zeihan

We obviously have to change the political incentives right now, and that remi- requires reform of a lot of programs that encourage people to stop even before 65. And from a medical point of view, the technology to watch is biologics. Because if we can figure out a way to make people productive without the mental degradation, that obviously moves the, the metrics on a lot of this. Because if you can do that, we get an extra group of people, roughly 70 million in the United States, who can be part of whatever the future solution and struggles are as opposed to being part of the problem. And that is one of the very few technologies that I’m, like, watching very, very closely ’cause it looks like it’s right at the cusp, and we might be able to tip that into usefulness within the next 24 months. And that’s very promising.

Peter Diamandis

Pushing hard.

Peter Zeihan

Please, please, please continue.

Xenia Wickett

Thanks so much, Alexa. Next, I wanna invite Diane Francis to our stage. Diane is from the National Post. Diane what question do you have for the debaters?

Diane Francis

Well, I, I think this is a marvelous, uh, debate. I really am enjoying it. Here’s my question, human nature. Malevolent usage, lack of regulation, anti-regulation, ignorance, and algorithms in a form of very dangerous religions and theologies. Tech can’t solve that. In fact, could be and is being utilized to a bigger and worse extent than before. And I’d like Peter to comment on that as well.

Peter Diamandis

I, I, I’ll jump in, and you’re absolutely right. There’s no question that we’re gonna see malevolent use of AI, and it’s my biggest concern over the next one to five years. I think we’re gonna see the election be patient zero, uh, in this situation. I think, uh, on the flip side, what’s going on is what I would call lose of privacy, uh, is going to be a countervailing force. It’s hard to hide things more than ever before. So our… You know, it’s gonna be a white hat/black hat race in terms of AI being used to help determine, uh, malevolent AIs usage. And one question to ask everybody listening is, do you believe that human nature is ultimately good or bad?

I believe it is ultimately good, and I believe that an entrepreneur, and this is my mission is to inspire and guide entrepreneurs to create a hopeful, compelling and abundant future for humanity. That’s my massive transformative purpose. I say it every morning. It’s drives all of my organizations and my companies. Entrepreneurs are individuals who find problems and fix problems. And so, you know, the world’s largest problems are the world’s biggest business opportunities. So when you see a problem, yeah, it’s an entrepreneurial opportunity, and I think we have more positive-minded entrepreneurs trying to find and slay and solve problems than any time ever in human history.

Xenia Wickett

Peter Z., I think that question was also framed at you, wasn’t it, Diane?

Peter Zeihan

Sure. Let me give you the bad and then the good. First, the bad. Uh, we’ve got two major powers, the Russians and the Chinese, who are going to vanish from the world over the course of the next generation or two. The question is whether it happens fast or slow. And when countries feel they’re in a corner and they have nothing to lose, the chances of them doing something that they normally wouldn’t consider, of course, rises very high. Uh, but let me give you two examples of why I don’t think that their decline is gonna be catastrophic for the rest of us.

In the case of China, they don’t command the top technology. They import all the server time. They import all the chips that are necessary for them to access AI at scale. And we’re already in the early stages of the Biden administration and whoever follows Biden probably working to build a wall in that space. The Russians, back in 1987 when the KGB realized that the end was nigh and remember, back in the late eighties the KGB controlled the Politburo, uh, they basically had a meeting where they decided whether or not they wanted to spread nuclear weapons around the world and salt the earth to destroy whatever the West might do next. And they decided the answer was no. Even in the darkest hour for a lot of these countries, the, the desire to end the human condition just doesn’t exist.

That doesn’t mean they die quietly. That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems. And we are still cleaning up the mess from the Soviet disintegration. But it does mean there are limits. I am far more concerned about powerful individuals that maybe don’t have restrictions on their actions than I am about powerful countries that are getting desperate, and that’s a different sort of problem.

Xenia Wickett

Peter D., I think you’ve just come up with a great suggestion of another debate, which is are people inherently good or bad. Um, great question, Diane. Do you have a follow-up?

Diane Francis

I just, uh, I, I think that putting the hands of increasingly powerful tech into people that may not be good is something that I don’t see talked enough about. I just wondered, you know, how optimistic are you, Peter? Because you’re, you’re my optimist.

Peter Diamandis

There are gonna be challenges and issues in the near term. Uh, it’s the one to five year period that I’m concerned about, navigating that, um, and getting hu- allowing humanity to, uh, to adjust to it. Uh, it is transformative change. And, and I think we humans do not like change. We like waking up in the morning and knowing that the world was the same as it was when we went to sleep, no matter what condition we’re in. And we’re in an accelerating period of change, and it is creating more abundance, which is the topic here

laughs).

Peter Zeihan

I think you can be a little bit more optimistic, Ms. Francis. Um, we have a little bit more time than I think most people think. If we have a problem with the chip production, which I think we’re going to, that buys a few more years right there. And the fact that we’re already having these discussions, I mean think about everything that is going on in the American Congress right now, what a mess it is. They still found a time over the last several weeks to have an open session about the ethics of artificial intelligence. So unlike previous technological revolutions where we come very late to the game, we’re discussing this one as it unfolds. Uh, doesn’t mean we’re gonna get it right on the first try, but we’re at least not going into it blind.

Xenia Wickett

Thank you so much, Diane, for your questions. Let’s bring on Andy Wang. Andy is the host of the podcast called Inspired Money. Andy, welcome. Go ahead with your question.

Andy Wang

Thank you, Xenia. From an investor’s perspective, there are always growth opportunities and at the same time, other areas that are contracting. I’d like to hear from both Peter D. and Peter Z., given your respective outlooks, what areas might be beneficiaries of major trends over the next couple of decades? Are there companies, sectors or geographic regions where investors should look for opportunities?

Peter Diamandis

So Andy, um, uh, I’m investing my money, my venture fund money, uh, my time, uh, in two areas, uh, health span, healthcare, biotech. Uh, I think, uh, uh, you know, there’s people would give an extraordinary amount of their wealth to add 20-plus healthy years, and AI. I think those are the two largest markets on the planet, uh, and they’re gonna transform every single thing that we have and we do. Um, what’s on the, on the downside? Any company that is not an exponential organization, uh, that is born, you know, uh, you know, more than 30 years ago are gonna be out-competed, out-thought, and actually massively disrupted, what’s coming down the pike.

Peter Zeihan

I think we need to focus on the scarcity in order s- to have the opportunity to turn it into abundance. So number one, we need to diversify the semiconductor supply chain for the best chips. Right now, we are incredibly fragile in that, and anything breaks anywhere and the whole thing stops. Building that will take years, but it’s certainly within our technical ca- capacity to do it. And the benefits, I agree with Peter D., are so outsized. It’s totally worth our time.

Uh, second, if agriculture goes the way I’m fearing, we need a drastic increase in production. Uh, the two ways to do that, ironically, are both related to AI. One is automating farming to a degree so that each individual plant gets individual attention. That requires AI on the tractor in order to put pesticides, fertilizers, water, whatever it happens to be, on a plant by plant basis. I call it digital gardening.

Uh, and the other aspect is hacking the genome of absolutely everything. Uh, we’ve been moving in that direction for 30 years. Uh, 10 years ago, corn plants were 13 feet tall. Now they’re closer to five, but they generate three times as many kernels as the old system did. We need more of that. Because if we can’t provide broadcast agriculture for a place like Brazil, then places like Illinois need to at least double input, uh, to prevent a billion people from starving. Uh, this can probably all be done in less than a decade, but you know, chop-chop.

Peter Diamandis

I, I agree 100% with you, Peter. You know, it is, we’re seeing incredible… We’re seeing a new species of rice that are able to have multiple crops per planting. And for those who are concerned about GMO, listen, GMO has never killed anybody, but I can guarantee you it’s saved hundreds of millions of lives.

Peter Zeihan

I’m less interested in rice. Um, soy, I think is the one that’s gonna be the real game changer because it’s a protein plant instead of a starch plant.

Peter Diamandis

We also have vertical farming and cultivated meats coming online. The idea that we have to eat food the way it’s always been produced and that we’re to grow an entire cow to get access to meat is gonna be seemed a- as insane in the future. Why not just grow the protein that you need to make a good burger?

Peter Zeihan

Tha- that’s a full topic for a whole nother debate

laughs).

Peter Diamandis

I agree

laughs).

Xenia Wickett

Thanks so much, Andy. Really grateful for your question. I’ve got a question for the two of you, if I may, which is what’s the one argument, and maybe we’ll start with Peter Z., what’s the one argument from your colleague that you agree or disagree most with and why?

Peter Zeihan

Well, ac- you know, we actually don’t disagree on what technology can do. We don’t disagree really on what the pace of technology can achieve. Our big disagreement is whether the system we’re in today is sustainable in the near-term future or not or if we have to go through a bit of a drop before we start back up. I would argue that demographics very clearly means that we’re gonna have to take a breather here. I don’t see a way around that. I don’t see how manufacturing supply chains that allow technology to have led at scale can continue this decade without a massive reorganization. Uh, but on the rest of this, I’m with him.

Peter Diamandis

(laughs) And I have to say, I agree with much of what Peter Z. has said here. Uh, the only thing I would say is it’s a linear extrapolation to believe that reengineering the supply chain will take as long as it has because we’ve got, we’ve got capabilities coming from AI that are gonna help us much more rapidly reengineer. We have, we even talked about quantum technologies coming down the pike that are gonna be impacting material science and biology in an extraordinary fashion. So, I think if we were gonna try and re-replicate the old school system we, we’ve developed over the industrial military complex of the last century, yeah, it will take many, many decades. But, uh, I think we have shortcuts to be had, uh, based upon technology. Having said that, um, yes, there are supply chain issues. We saw that during COVID, which, uh, can be, put us in a precarious situation.

Peter Zeihan

Let me give you an example to show you the promise and the peril. Um, textiles, you know, very unsexy technology. It was the root of industrialization over a century ago. The model has always been the same. And up until the nineties in the United States, it was women in Appalachia with sewing machines. Well, then we got NAFTA, and the model moved to Mexico, where the women with the sewing machines were cheaper. And then we had the WTO, where it moved to India and China, where the women with the snowing, sewing machines were cheaper.

Then we had COVID, and suddenly we didn’t have clothes. So, some enterprising folks in North Carolina built some facilities that are two acres under one roof that take raw cotton, clean it, turn it into thread and then yarn and then cloth and then clothes. And the end product is cheaper than what you get out of Bangladesh per, per unit. And these places have a staff of two. We had no idea we could do that until we were pushed and we found out we had to. We’re gonna find things like that as we re-industrialize, but we’re not gonna know what they are until they happen.

Peter Diamandis

You’re making the exact point I wanna make. A company, Variant3D, that’s here in Malibu is 3D printing clothing at an extraordinary rate in that lights out scenario. And I think, uh, this is what entrepreneurs do. They demonetize and democratize. And I think anybody listening to this, you know, there are massive opportunities to get ahead of the curve.

Xenia Wickett

Now’s the time to bring it home with closing remarks. I’m gonna go to you, Peter D., first. You have the floor. Leave us with a reason to believe that yes is the answer to the question, will the future be abundant?

Peter Diamandis

Okay. I built an AI model, um, called PeterBot, and I’m gonna ask PeterBot to go ahead and, uh, respond to Peter Zeihan. PeterBot, would you?

PeterBot

Peter Zeihan’s assertion that we are returning to a world resembling pre-World War II is overly pessimistic. The world today is vastly different with exponential technologies driving progress. Let’s focus on leveraging these capabilities to create a future that surpasses any previous era. I understand Peter’s concerns about a pricier and slower world, but I see this as a temporary transition. I believe in the potential of technology to solve global challenges. History shows that advancements have consistently improved our lives. Let’s dive into a few concrete examples.

One, energy. We’re witnessing a global shift towards renewable energy sources like solar and wind, with costs plummeting and installations surging worldwide. Two, transportation. Electric vehicles are gaining traction with major automakers investing heavily. Additionally, we’re seeing advancements in autonomous vehicles, hyperloop technology, and even flying taxis. Three, education. Online learning platforms are democratizing education, allowing people worldwide to access high quality educational resources. Virtual reality and augmented reality are transforming the learning experience. These examples illustrate how innovation and technology are reshaping various sectors, creating opportunities for positive change and a brighter future.

Peter Diamandis

So that’s, uh, you can access peterbot.ai. You can ak- ask it questions about, uh, uh, uh, about… It’s trained on my books and my blogs. You know, I believe in data-driven optimism, and the data has been consistent up and to the right, uh, for the past century. And technology, which has made that transition, is not slowing down, it’s accelerating. Is there danger out there? Uh, of course. Uh, do I believe in entrepreneurs and individuals to find and solve problems? More than ever before, and I think they’re the only ones who do. So is there world becoming more abundant? Uh, a hundred percent. Uh, it is becoming abundant in terms of access to all the fundamentals.

Xenia Wickett

Thank you, Peter. Thank you, PeterBot. Um,

laughs) and now Peter Z., you’ll have the final word. Your rebuttal, please. Tell us why you answer no to the question, will the future be abundant?

Peter Zeihan

We don’t have the redundancy yet. We don’t have the resiliency yet. And if things go with demographics and China and de-globalization the way I’m anticipating, we don’t have that in finance or industrial materials or manufacturing or, above all, agriculture. And until we do, people are gonna get left behind at scale. Uh, hopefully, over the next 20 years we can work out the kinks of this transition and not lose a lot of what we’ve achieved in the last century. But if you look back on the, the two millennia of history before 1900, that suggests that, um, unlocking that potential’s a lot more difficult than it seems to us at, at the moment we’re in now.

Xenia Wickett

Thank you so much. And that concludes our debate. I’d like to thank our debaters, Peter and Peter and PeterBot. Thank you for both showing up and for approaching this debate with an open mind. We appreciate your bringing thoughtful disagreement to the table and your being open to debate. Thank you to our guests, Alexa Mikhail, Diane Francis, and Andy Wang, for contributing your probing questions. And thank you, the audience, for tuning into this episode of Open to Debate.

As a nonprofit, our work to combat extreme polarization through civil and respectful debate is generously funded by listeners like you, the Rosenkranz Foundation, and supporters of Open to Debate. Open to Debate is also made possible by a generous grant from the Laura and Gary Lauder Venture Philanthropy Fund. Robert Rosenkranz is our chairman. Clea Conner is CEO. Lia Matthow is our chief content officer. Alexis Pancrazi and Marlette Sandoval are our editorial producers. And Gabriella Mayer is our editorial and research manager. Andrew Lipson is head of production. Max Fulton is our production coordinator, and Damon Whittemore is our engineer. Gabrielle Iannucelli is our social media and digital platforms coordinator. Raven Baker is events and operations manager. And Rachel Kemp is our chief of staff. Our theme music is by Alex Clement. And I’m your host, Xenia Wickett. We’ll see you next time.