The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway

No Mercy / No Malice: Art of the Sellout

7d ago17:342,170 words
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As read by George Hahn. https://profgmedia.substack.com/p/art-of-the-sellout Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Scott Galloway and this is No Mercy, No Malice. If you aren't at the table, you're on the menu. Last week at the Summit in Beijing, Trump made it clear that Taiwan is on the menu. Art of the sellout, as read by George Han. In Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney had a warning for nations that have relied

on the U.S. lead world order that provided relative peace and prosperity for eight decades. If we're not at the table, he said, "We're on the menu." Hitting home after last week's Summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump made clear that whether Taiwan was at the table or on the menu was entirely his call. "I don't talk about those things," Trump said, referring to a private conversation in which

Xi asked whether the U.S. would use military force to defend Taiwan.

There's only one person that knows that, "You know who it is?

Me. I'm the only person." But the question isn't whether Trump will stand by the U.S. commitment to an independent Taiwan, breaking faith with our allies as a feature of his administration, not a bug. It's how much he needs to be given to look the other way.

A. Significantly less than Xi was previously prepared to pay. The conventional wisdom was that China was preparing to invade Taiwan in the next few years, but that shifted. The most recent U.S. intelligence assessment in March concluded. Chinese leaders do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027.

Nor do they have a fixed timeline for achieving unification. Seeing Iran and Ukraine deploy asymmetric warfare against opponents with superior firepower may have given China's hawks pause. And so, not a single member of the Chinese military has combat experience. Meanwhile, the tracking people's daily newsletter, analyzing 7,000 official Chinese statements

since 2021, noted that Beijing had softened its rhetoric from Biden to Trump, despite the trade war. Biden was seen as a systemic threat who was determined to encircle and suppress China,

According to tracking people's daily, while Beijing views Trump's transaction...

it understands and can work with. I believe she made a deal with Trump.

Look the other way on Taiwan and in exchange, Beijing will purchase enough Trump mean coins

to make him wealthier than the CEOs who accompanied him at the summit. One sign of a deal, Trump said he would withhold a $14 billion arms package from Taiwan without receiving any concessions. If she bribing Trump sounds implausible, consider the record.

Trump has enriched himself and his family by $4 billion in his first year back in office.

Citizens for responsibility and ethics in Washington, a corruption watchdog, flagged examples of Trump conflating personal business with U.S. interests in Brazil, Indonesia, Serbia, Syria and Vietnam. Several months after Qatar gifted Trump a $400 million plane to replace Air Force 1,

Trump issued an executive order to provide Qatar a U.S. security guarantee with conditions

similar to NATO's Article 5. Probably just a coincidence. But wait, there's more. Justin Sun dodged an SEC lawsuit alleging securities for odd after announcing he purchased

$75 million worth of the Trump family's world liberty financial coins.

According to Bloomberg, 19 of the top 25 wallets that purchased Trump mean coins to secure a dinner date with the president were owned by foreign nationals. And for those with the means to erase their criminal record, Trump reportedly commands low seven figures for a pardon. But all of that is nothing compared to the shake down he perpetrated on American taxpayers

with a $10 billion lawsuit alleging the IRS had failed to keep private the tax returns Trump once promised to release.

This week, the DOJ announced a settlement in the form of a $1.776 billion fund to compensate

Trump allies, including January 6 insurrectionists. Of course, the real money is in market manipulation. From suspicious puts, placed just before tariff announcements to oil bets made minutes before Trump announced a ceasefire with Iran. Trading on inside information is a bipartisan tradition, but Trump's transgressions are

orders of magnitude more brazen and profitable than anything we've seen. It took Nancy Pelosi four decades in Congress to amass $130 million in the stock market. Trump recently disclosed 3,700 stock trades from the first quarter of this year valued somewhere between $220 million and $750 million. We need investigations and prosecutions.

However, the Supreme Court immunized the president and he promised to grant preemptive parties to everyone within 200 feet of the Oval Office. Besides, there isn't anyone to bring the case as Trump has gutted the DOJ, SEC, IRS, and other agencies responsible for rooting out financial corruption. China doesn't need to fire a shot to repatriate Taiwan.

According to a Bloomberg analysis, a conflict over Taiwan would cost the world economy and estimated $10.6 trillion, roughly 10% of global GDP in the first year alone. By comparison, the OECD predicts the Iran war will slow global GDP growth from 2.9% to 2.6% in 2026 and from 3.0% to 2.5% in 2027.

Taiwan is the digital economy's carotid artery, but more important if you're she, it has

deep economic ties to China. An estimated 80% of Taiwan's businesses are linked to China, despite Taiwan's recent efforts

To disconnect from the mainland, China remains its second largest trading par...

only the US, with exports accounting for 20% to 25% of GDP.

Meanwhile China has a history of deploying economic coercion.

Between 2010 and 2022, the Mercator Institute for China Studies documented 123 instances of economic coercion from the PRC. It has also executed a multi-decade campaign to isolate Taiwan in diplomatic terms, reducing the number of countries that officially recognize the island nation to 12. Add on cyber attacks, espionage and disinformation, and she doesn't need a D-day style assault.

China's soft invasion has already made inroads and will continue to advance until Taiwan capitulates.

Taiwan's most valuable company, TSMC, controls 72% of the global foundry market, producing

chips for AMD, Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm.

The company also produces 90% of the world's most advanced chips. Taiwan's dominance isn't an accident, but the result of a state policy to leverage chip making for national security purposes. In 2001, journalist Craig Addison coined the term "silicon shield" to describe how Taiwan's chipmaking monopoly resulted in a de facto US defense commitment, even though

we dropped our recognition of Taiwan in 1979 in order to normalize relations with China. Two decades later, there's a crack in the silicon shield. The single biggest threat to the world economy, the single biggest point of single failure,

is that 97% of the high-end chips are made in Taiwan.

Treasury Secretary Scott Beson said in January at Davos, "If that island were blockaded or that capacity were destroyed, it would be an economic apocalypse." Another way of putting that, "If push comes to shove, the US and the rest of the world would likely choose stability over Taiwan's sovereignty." Actually we might not have a choice, considering how drones have disrupted warfare.

China produced 2.5 times the number of drones we produced in 2025, but as Noah Smith observed this week, drones use lithium-ion batteries and rare-earth electric motors, both of which are almost entirely manufactured in China. Currently China controls 60% to 70% of rare-earth mining and 90% of the global processing capacity. This dang-show-paying famously said in 1992, "The Middle East has oil!" China has rare-earths.

Adding chip-making to its economic arsenal would give China unilateral power to tax the global economy, as well as leverage over other nations that far exceeds the $1 trillion it deployed to fund infrastructure projects around the world via its belt and road initiative. In his 2017 book, Destined for War, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Graham Allison wrote, "When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, alarm bell should

sound, danger ahead." As a rapidly ascending China challenges America's accustomed predominance,

these two nations risk falling into a deadly trap first identified by the ancient Greek

historian Thucydides. At their summit, she asked Trump whether the two nations could avoid the Thucydides' trap and forge a new paradigm for major power relations. Trump registered the insult, the implication of U.S. decline, but blamed Biden and insisted that the U.S. is the hottest nation anywhere in the world.

Future historians will likely have trouble gaging she's skill. On the one hand, he's a serious statesman. On the other hand, his opposite number is Donald Trump. Regardless, the Chinese see blood in the water. Even if American leadership won't acknowledge we appear to be committing superpowers suicide.

In January, a Beijing Think Tank published a report called "Think Trump," whi...

that tariffs, attacks on allies, anti-immigration policies, and the president's war against

American institutions have strengthened China while weakening the U.S. citing polarization,

government dysfunction, and Latin American style instability. The report's authors labeled Trump an accelerator of American political decay. A decade ago, our priority was to manage the Thucydides' trap such that we maintained our leadership of the rules-based world order, avoided conflict, and increased global prosperity.

Today, we're riding shotgun with a president who never met an American interest he didn't

seek to monetize. Superpowers don't die when adversaries breach the gates. They die when the people inside start auctioning off the gates.

I write often about what we're losing by dismantling the rules-based order, less often

about the cost of building it in the first place. It's Memorial Day weekend in the U.S., a holiday meant to honor those who died serving

our country, though most Americans observe it by barbecuing, drinking, and shopping.

Pulling down the U.S. led order robes our children of their future. But it also demeans the memory of American sons and daughters who gave what Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion. Shame on Trump, shame on his enablers, and shame on us, if we fail to pull the country off of Trump's auction block.

Life is so rich.

Support for the show comes from Odo.

Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with it doesn't different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.

So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's OdoO.com. Support for the show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with it doesn't different

apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. But my over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odo for free at Odo.com. That's OdoO.com.

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