YouSaid · the spoken record

Graham Allison

lines on the record: 46
first: 2025-11-27
most recent: 2025-11-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Honored to have you here, glad to be on the program. I thank you. Good questions and glad to see two serious students of international affairs.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some version of mutual deterrence of the sort that we found in the nuclear balance, maybe where we end up. Now, is that a good place to be compared to elsewhere? No, I would rather be independent, but compared, I mean, is that something we can manage if you have competent governments managing? And I would say, you know, yes.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Asking what would be required to be done in order to reach that stage, people are not asking, so that would be at the next level. Similarly, if you look, for example, for most pharmaceuticals, most of the pharmaceuticals and the pharmaceutical precursors that we use for any medicines come from either China or from India. Well, maybe we should do these ourselves. Munitions, we shouldn't be giving out a fact that politicians, when they see somebody says here's a dependency or a vulnerability, declared that we're going to be independent is, I would say, predictable. If you look and see what behaviors follow from that, the answer is not very many. I'm almost ready to accept the proposition that we're going to be inextricably entangled in supply chains and economics, in which case...”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is puzzling and there are a lot of puzzling things, but I would say that whenever it's pointed out to people that you're dependent on some other party for supply of something, so for example, for the US rare earth magnets are required for almost everything. So for cars, for iPhones, for laptops, for F-35s, for tomahawk missiles or whatever. So how would we allow ourselves to be dependent on China? Because that gives them something that they can squeeze that supply chain and be coercive. So I would rather be independent on that. And so any politician would then make an announcement, okay, we're declaring that we're going to be independent.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Communication channels between the two parties where they can talk candidly and privately in order to have a circuit breaker if some accident happens, which I think on the current path would be likely to happen.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and the current president of Taiwan Lai, who's taken many, many dangerous actions. I think, fortunately, both in the Biden administration and in the Trump administration, they've had conversations at the leader level about not letting this person by so many responsible action Drag usoftism. The other is that the Cheney's rules of engagement in their exercises in the Straits and in the South China Sea are now such that it's not very difficult to imagine a collision of a ship or a plane. We saw that at the beginning of the Bush administration when they collided with one of our spy planes. So could that escalate? And I think that's why, again, getting back to...”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just happened not to be true. But there'll be many, many, many accusations of that kind. And I think those will continue because China has developed a manufacturing ecosystem. It basically can produce anything at scale at half the price that we get. If you go to Walmart to Home Depot, half this stuff or more is made in China. People will complain about that. So that part seems right. But I would say that most of this is just hype where you find danger is where the third parties whose initiative might, like the story of Coursera, produce a set of reactions. And they're the leading candidate of Taiwan.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think most of the newslines that we hear or statements from people are China hype. And you cannot accuse China of anything today in the US. Without getting resonance. So nobody, I mean, I get blamed occasionally for being a Chinese sympathizer by simply saying, what you're asserting is false. Yes, of course, there's many, many things China is doing, but it does, so for example, one of the favorite clauses now is China has the fastest nuclear buildup in the world because they're going from about 500 weapons to about 1,000 weapons. Which answer is, well, that's a historical statement. And if you look at the number of warheads we went to from in the Eisenhower period or the Kennedy period, in both cases there were more.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Care for it okay. But in any case, We'll get it. We have become dependent upon China for. How many things in our supply chain, and they unfortunately depend on us for how many things, so part of the reason why they got the stalemate in the current, what would otherwise be Trump's bullying another country, is that he comes up against somebody as strong as we are. So in that case, he's adapting and adjusting. I would say, you know, if I'm looking for silver linings, I'm looking in that space.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He wants to be a great peacemaker. So I think it's not inconceivable that we might come to have a strategic concept that would be something like a partnership, which would then balance, I think, will the Thucydide rivalry continue in every case? Yes, I believe it will. And will it mean that this feeds of fear and all the things that will be normal? But if it's also the case that my survival as a country depends on a degree of cooperation with you so that we don't have a nuclear war because at the end of a nuclear war, my country's gone. So that AI doesn't end up ruling us all. We're the two AI leaders. So could we find some financial system in 2008, we would have had the financial crisis would have become a depression had it not been for a joint US-China statement?”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Components while it may seem strange, especially in Cambridge, for somebody to look for some signs of hope or silver linings in Trump, I think Trump understands that nuclear war would be catastrophic and really, really worries about that in a way that the only other person in the foreign policy establishment equivalent lately that has done that was Biden, not Obama, not 80% of the others. So that's number one. More he understands very, very bad. Secondly, he somehow has this respect for Xi, he admires China, some of what he admires is theor, autocratic rule. He says, how in the world did you manage to rule 1.5 billion people with so little objection? I wish I could manage my press the way you do, blah, blah, blah. You've got a lease on life. I mean, he's... Leader for life. Has anybody anything suggestions for me? So he admires that.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. So I would say two thirds or 80% of the story is baked into the structure So if and as China continues rising, which I believe it will, and growing at about twice the rate we do, which I think it will, and advancing in technologies the way it has been, which I think it will, even though it has many, many, many problems, but I think they'll manage more or less on that path. And Americans will wake up more and more every day to China's in your face doing something or whatever. So that's point one. Point two, in this Thucynity and rivalry again, it's natural for the ruling power to blame the rising power for everything. And blaming China or hyping China threat or demonizing China is kind of normal. And I would say the Spartans were demonizing. The Athenians maybe not quite to the extent. So for Americans, we do it our way, but I would say that part is right. So those are the negative.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, excuse me, in most societies, the people who were not being left out would riot. That would be, that's probably why we say we have to be a modern socialist state, because we have to have, so, you know, they're going down the list like that. I said, what do you have to remember is this is a strange country. It absolutely is. It's a contradiction. I sometimes say a kaleidoscope of contradictions because every time you move it, it's another one. On the other hand, it's been remarkably resilient and no other society with no other governing system has been as successful over so long a period of time as this one. And then I usually do my lines about God looks after drunk little children in the USA. But I would say reasonable person could look at the country today and say, this looks pretty strange”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The US is the government is providing food for one in nine people in the US and now they're talking about withholding it. We used to do that when we had people who were poor. But we think that's one of our great achievements. We don't hand out food and people have food. The US is sending troops to cities. We remember Tinnamen. Is this like Tinnamen? I said, no, this is not like the division of income has now become so great. They said we saw this data that two-thirds of the consumption is now by the top 20% of the income earners.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said, What's strange? He said, Well, let me just strike down the list. He says, New York is the city is the largest Jewish population in the world. And they're going to elect a Muslim mayor? New York City is the Yempe Center of Global Capitalism. Going to elect somebody who said socialist. Say, we're socialists.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a serious thinker. He was a political scientist originally. He came to the US in 1989 on the American political science association fellowship or something to study at the university or to be a fellow at the university. And then he traveled all around the US and he wrote a book that's called America Against America. And you could go, and it's in English, you could see the English comic. And as the analysis of the factors that we're going to splinter the country, it's pretty good for the time. And they clearly continue thinking about that. I was there just before the Trump she summit in Korea talking again to a couple of people in the first circle. And they were saying about the US, you know, the US, I mean, here's one. It's a stranger than we thought.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what she believes. And the person who works for him, boosts his number four and his closest ideological person is one who ning. Now by some accident of good fortune have become one of their people whom they enjoy talking to, I think mainly because Kissinger was his mentor or mentee and because I introduced them to Thucydides. I mean, as the Publicity agent for authority ever in China because they've sold more copies of Thucydides Peloponnesian War in Mandarin since my book than in the previous 2,000 years. So any case, one Huning...”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say in the good question, so in the China's meta-narrative, we watch Xi Jinping or when they're talking, it's the inexorable rise of China. So they're his confident, and he's as confident that they're rising into what will be a Chinese century, as Teddy Roosevelt was, if you take the equivalent period in American history. But the other component of this, which was not part of Teddy Roosevelt's, was that the US is irreversibly declining.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say that World War II cases, a complicated one, and a good question where Hitler is attempting to become a rising power. Situation that's already stabilized, but then he has actually such territorial, most in most of the cases the rising powers don't have great territorial or imperial aspirations. In the Cold War, in the Soviet Union, I mean, the Soviet Union did really believe in their ideology that every country should be ruled by a communist government and that they needed to have a continuous expansion in order to basically legitimize their own rule. Fortunately, most most cases don't have that.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the summer, and he says, But every time I read anything, every time I see anything, everybody is blaming them for everything. Why is this? And Croo explains to him, the sea song is shifting, and as the seasaw shifts everybody's perspective is impacted and they exaggerate. And this is kind of like normal. And I think if you look at the Athens Sparta story, you can find a very similar thing. The Athenians are doing what they're doing, and the Spartans are talking to each other. These guys are hopeless. Look and see what they do. Every day they get up and they think of some other thing to be missurous.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the main driver was structural in the Thucydidean story. So, if you look at the British in the period from 1900 to 1914, they become to be more and more shocked by the fact that the Germans are doing things that are supposed to be ours. They're producing something that we're supposed to be in charge of. Actually, it's interesting, and I again describe this in the book. There's a famous document called The Crow C-R-O-W-E memorandum. So the King of England asks his foreign minister, he says, why is it that we're being so nasty about the Germans? This is my cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm. It literally his cousin. They go on vacation together.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Henry Kissinger. Okay. Sorry, that we need a new strategic concept. That's comprehensive enough that that we require cooperation over the other for our own survival. So this sounds like a contradiction it is, but we managed a version of that a little bit in the Cold War. This one's much more complicated because the Soviet Union was never really a serious economic rival. The time you got to a high cold or the Chinese case, Chinese. But is there something in that space I think there is?”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the other hand, he also has a businessman's view that it's possible to put people to be entangled in ways in which they can be fierce rivals and can also be somehow cooperating. So I've been stretching for silver linings because there's many, many, many things not to like about Troy. But I think it's conceivable if you look and see what he said after the summit when he tweeted. The first, he said it was great success for us on a 10-point scale. It was a 12. Actually, what he understood was he came up against somebody who's as strong and has as many cards as he does. So you have to find a way to cooperate with him. But if that's true, if the both of the parties are searching for ways to cooperate, could this be a stabilizer in what would otherwise be? I would say yes, it could. And could the decision?”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Possible that the US and China can actually both be involved in such a kind of economic relationship that it'll be beneficial to both parties. Now, partly that's because I think some of the people who are pessimistic about this have kind of given up on American competitiveness and thinking, you know, maybe we're not as competitive. Trump has a kind of a, I think, a romantic view that the US kind of win every race.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the Hague, where people can go and resolve disputes. So it's not going to be necessary to fight a war. I would say that's a grand delusion. It turned out not to be right. Now, what's right and wrong about it, interesting. So is it true that the US and China both financially and in terms of supply chains and in terms of economy are so entangled today that this should provide some counterbalance to the geopolitical and military impulses for confrontation? Absolutely right. And this is what you can see in Trump. And she at their recent summit. Of the people in the current foreign policy world, Trump is a far, far, far outlier in disrespect.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you asked Andrew Carnegie, who was the richest man of the time, in 1914 the Christmas 1913-14, he sent out Christmas cards to his favorite 4,000 people who included the kids of every state. And he said there's not going to be war anymore because now we have this, you know. Merry Christmas, no more war. Exactly. And he said, and I have built the peace palace.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So good to remember how the cycles go, and I think I remember that period since I've been teaching for a long time. The theory that somehow economic entanglement would prevent war was a famous theory in the beginning of the 20th century as well. So, the bigger, the best selling book in the decade before World War I was Norman Angel's book. I write about this actually in Destin for War called The Great Illusion. And he said, there's not going to be wars anymore because the cost of war will so greatly exceed the benefits that the winner will be a loser.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Builder of Singapore, and he was one of my mentors. I wrote a little book about it and he said about China this is going to be the biggest player in the history of the world. This is going to be very uncomfortable for Americans to get used to it, especially the idea that some smaller yellow, there's a racial element in the history and whatever. He said, but he believed that it was possible that the US and China could find a way if they were smart, to share the Pacific in the 21st century. And I would say that would be the good news hope.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they haven't been trying to take over territories of other parties other than just in their periphery. And they haven't had an aspiration. Inri actually has a good line about this. He said, you know, that the Americans and Chinese are very similar in that both of us have a superiority complex. But only one of us is a missionary. The other one doesn't think people are even good enough to be Chinese. They'd like for you to mimic their behavior, but they don't think you're ever going to become Chinese, and they don't want you to become Chinese. They don't want you to rule your country the way Chinese do. They want you to have respect. They want to be in their own domain. And I would say that's roughly right. Lee Kwan Yu was the best, most insightful China watcher, and she China watcher was Lee Kuan Yu. Lee Kanu was the founder and”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Called the Middle Kingdom, right? The middle country. And the middle kingdom was the meaning of it was the middle between the earth and heaven. So we are that, but not about the Soviet Union wanting to convert everyone.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Abs Obviously each of the country's story is different. If you look at Portugal and Spain, which is the first of these sixteen cases back at the time of Christopher Columbus, they both were Catholic, and there was a pope. And so when the conflict got to the edge of a conflict, the Pope said, I got a solution. Here's a line. I'm going to draw the line down here. This side is going to be Portuguese. This side is going to be Spanish. Then that's why people in Brazil speak Portuguese, because they got on the Portuguese side of the line. But you had a situation in which you had a kind of a ruling guru who could make a declaration. Unfortunately, there's no such person today to do that. But looking at the Chinese cases, as you say, China's history is been one in which historically it is wanted to be and thinks of itself as the sun around which everything else rotates.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we many Americans trying to tell our side of the story say, well, they're going to be sort of like the Soviet Union because They were communists and blah blah blah.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Example, to get out of an incident that could have otherwise. There was a great, great glob of grace and good fortune, I'd say, but also there was a rivalry that went on for long enough in which one of the parties, the Soviet Union, end up hollowing being hollowed out by the contradictions that were part of a Soviet command and control system turned out not to be competitive or the lower. So that's how one story ended successfully and that could be a possible analog for the current US-China rivalry in which Chinese would say we see in your divisions in your society and in your corrupt decadent whatever whatever maybe you'll be the one to do.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thinking about the choices that he's making, he thought there was between a one in three and even chance this would end in a nuclear war. But it ended in a nuclear war. We would have had a couple hundred million people killed. We wouldn't be doing this interview. So it could have happened in that instance, but it didn't. Now, how not to happen? First, there was some brilliant statecraft.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the so in the 16 cases, 12 end in war. If you want a model for war, think World War I. But four end in no war. So that's good news, one of which is called Cold War. So it's called war, but it's not war. It's war on every form but bombs and bullets. So in the Cold War, we had several very, very close calls. For example, the Cuban Missile Crisis, about which I wrote about, and that, if you look at that little chart over there on the wall, that's Kennedy's doodles during the Cuban missile crisis. Oh, that's amazing.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, Thucydides was very thoughtful about this. He didn't say that there was a specific moment or point in the story. In the book that I wrote called Destined for War in the US and China Escape Thucydides Trap, I look at the last 500 years and find 16 incidents or 16 cases in which a rising power seriously threatens a ruling power, the World War I being one interesting and dramatic example. So in these sometimes before the rising power has actually overtaken the ruling power, something happens, sometimes after, so it's not, Thucydides is not about some specific moment in time. It's about a dynamic that then when something happens, something happens. So if you look, for example, at the Cold War, which is...”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Miscalculations multiply and the impact of third party incidents or accidents amplified, so things that would otherwise be manageable, hey, this is just nonsense. Let's deal with this problem. All of a sudden, I see it as you doing something. And then when I see that, you see something. One thing leads to the other. So if you look in the case of Athens and Sparta, Corinth, a city-state that neither of them cared much for, and in particular trusted at all, gets involved with Coursera, which is now Corfu. And there's a fear that they're going to have a navy that will be able to challenge Athens so that the Athenians get more excited. So one thing leads to the other, you get kind of a vicious cycle of misperceptions and miscalculations that then all of a sudden happens. And once something happens,”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something happens in Taiwan, something happens here, something happens here. And because as the As this seesaw is shifting as the rising and ruling the tectonics are moving, the misperceptions or magnifying.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With throwing a layer of misperceptions and miscalculations, and you get there wonderful, I think the one that's closest to what we're now seeing is the period from 1900 to 1914 that led to World War I. So if you ask yourself, how in the world could I assassination an archduke in Sarajevo, which was so inconsequential that it didn't even make the front page of the newspapers in New York? Within five weeks all of Europe was caught up in a war. And when you looked afterwards, people said, how did you guys let this happen? And as Bulo, the Chancellor for Germany, he said, ah, if we only knew.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, what happened, I mean, it's getting a little more complicated than that, but yes, basically as of the discombobulation was occurring and Athens became more and more full of itself. The rising power always does darn it. And the ruling power become more and more fearful, then it turns out that some third-party activity in Coursera That wouldn't have mattered to the two parties otherwise. So something that's otherwise incidental.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Used to be the biggest economy. Now, I have an economy. I used to be the main trading partner of everybody. Now I used to be everything that was made was made by us. So as this happens, historically we've seen over and over this discombobulation that leads into lots of misperceptions, miscalculations, misjudgments. And unfortunately, in about three quarters of the cases, this ends up in more often a catastrophic war. Sorry, that's a long version. No, no, that's perfect.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, this concretes discombobulation for both parties. The ruling party thinks, hey, wait a minute, what's happening here? I used to look down on you. Now you're looking me straight on and maybe even, so my perspective, I used to be able to push a button and things would happen, and now I push the button and the things don't happen because my relative power has changed psychologically. I'm accustomed to being at the top of every pecking order. Americans, my wife says about Mate, Osha Cosmetics off my chest and it says USA is number one. Number one is who we're identity. If you do that at television, they scan, you know, whatever people hold up their number one for their team, whatever, whatever. So the idea that somehow somebody is challenging my position as”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She gets a little bigger and a little bigger. Pretty soon I'm feeling wait a minute. Maybe I have only one foot on the ground. Maybe I'm feeling less. So when you see this tilt of the seesaw and the tectonic self-power,”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Period of time. In fact, I just have a piece. They'll be in foreign affairs next week on the longest piece. This is the longest period without great power war. 80 years we celebrated in September without great power were historically every generation or two for the last few thousand years there's been great power wars so amazing colossal ruling power who's not only been good for itself but actually good for an international peace so Thucydides when he was trying to understand what the hell was going on in ancient Greece wrote about what he called the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war virtually inevitable so think about a seesaw on a kid's playground and one heavy is on the one end and one light is on the other and the heavy is kind of in control I can jiggle you if I want to blah blah blah now all of a sudden the light starts heavy starts gaining weight gaining weight and”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every day and every way, somehow or another there's a story about China threat, China competition, China and China. I said in a word, if you're trying to capture this or in a phrase, this is a classic lucidity and rivalry. So China is a meteoric rising power. Never before in history has a nation risen so far so fast on so many different dimensions. A country that we couldn't even find in our rearview mirror at the beginning of the century because it was so far beyond us is very hard to find in our rearview mirror today because it's either beside us or ahead of us if you think of a Vivo. So a meteoric rising power. The US is a colossal ruling power. Never since Rome has a country been so powerful in so many different dimensions for such an amazing”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So thank you. And the answer is yes. I think I had actually Speaker Kevin McCarthy here in a forum event a couple of nights ago and he was reminding me that when he was trying to figure out what was happening with China, he called me up and said, would you give me a tutorial? I said, of course, I'd be under two. We started this conversation. And his first question when we began was, what the hell is going on here? That should have been my first question. Good question.”
2025-11-27 · Odd Lots · Graham Allison on the Risks of a US-China War · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source