Hidden Forces

In Episode 492 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with science fiction author, journalist, and digital rights activist Cory Doctorow—who coined the term "enshittification"—about why he believes the AI bubble will prove more damaging than the 2008 financial crisis and rival the equity sell-off of the 2020 Covid pandemic, the theory he has developed to explain why everything keeps getting worse, why the companies leading the AI boom are structurally unprofitable and existentially dependent on a runaway growth narrative, and where the value in AI may actually accrue once the bubble deflates or bursts entirely.
The first hour covers the central argument of Doctorow's book on enshittification, which goes beyond simply describing how things are getting worse—from the extractive nature of online relationships to the soul-sucking experience of dealing with burned-out call-center operators and mindless chatbots—to put forward a theory for why, based on what has happened to competition, regulation, interoperability, and the bargaining power of workers. From there, they compare the prevailing business models and unit economics of the early web companies and large platforms to those leading the charge in AI, and why Doctorow believes the latter are not only structurally unprofitable but existentially dependent on a growth narrative of runaway AI that will run out of capital before it ever delivers the promise and profits its investors are banking on.
The second hour continues the conversation about the AI boom—how retirement accounts and index-fund concentration have raised the stakes of an eventual bust, and how new forms of regulatory forbearance, including the mechanics of the recent SpaceX public listing, along with other more explicit government bailouts, will be needed to prop up otherwise unsustainable valuations. They close with the narrative gap between AI-driven job displacement and what the data actually tells us, and where the value in AI may accrue once the bubble deflates—from open-source models and cheap hardware to the skilled workers and infrastructure needed to capitalize on them.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 07/27/2026

In Episode 491 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with trade economist Chad Bown—a former chief economist at the U.S. State Department, host of the popular Trade Talks podcast, and co-author of the recently published How to Win a Trade War—about what international policymakers, companies, and individuals need to understand about America's ongoing trade war, what victory would look like for the various parties involved in the conflict, and most importantly, how to win.
The first hour lays the intellectual groundwork for understanding the modern trading system, examining the unique role played by the dollar and capital recycling in concentrating the gains from trade among the owners of capital, and stress-testing the theory of weaponized interdependence through the ongoing case studies of Russia's war against Ukraine and America's latest war with Iran.
The second hour turns from the motivations behind the current trade war and what's at stake to the players themselves, their incentives, and what it means to wage a trade war in the first place—the weapons at each nation's disposal, the defensive measures to be taken, the strategies to be deployed, and the various time horizons and end games to be considered when fighting one.
They close with an assessment of American industrial policy, including the CHIPS Act and the semiconductor export-control regime, Beijing's willingness to weaponize its dominance in rare earths and permanent magnets, and three scenarios for how this new and likely durable era of economic conflict could ultimately unfold.
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If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 07/23/2026

In Episode 490 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Patrick Boyle—founder of the quantitative hedge fund Palomar Capital Management, professor of finance at King's College London and Queen Mary University of London, and host of Patrick Boyle on Finance—about the SpaceX IPO and what it reveals about the integrity of America's financial markets, the cult of personality filling the vacuum left by the nation's collapsing institutions, the commercial and fiscal challenges facing Europe's largest economies, and the housing crisis and generational wealth divide driving the appeal of left-wing populism across the developed world.
The first hour opens with the recent SpaceX IPO—how the deal was priced and marketed, the mechanics and share-price consequences of its unusually rapid index inclusion, the small number of shares made available for trading, and the wave of bullish sell-side coverage that accompanied it—before broadening into a discussion of the integrity of America's financial markets and what happens to investor behavior and to the country's cost-of-capital advantage when the institutions tasked with regulating those markets can no longer be trusted to do so. From there the conversation turns to the cult of personality and the rise of powerful figures in industry and politics filling the vacuum left by collapsing institutions, and to the growing appeal of left-wing populists whose policies increasingly resonate with younger voters who feel priced out of the American dream.
The second hour examines the commercial and fiscal challenges facing Europe's largest economies: why the continent has produced no answer to America's large technology platforms, how regulation, energy costs, demographics, and labor rigidity weigh on its growth prospects, and what the flood of cheap Chinese goods, high-end machine tools, and electric vehicles means for European industry and for a Germany that cannot afford to miss yet another technological revolution. They discuss the European security picture, the war in Ukraine, and whether Russia is in any meaningful sense winning it given the human, economic, and demographic toll and its deepening dependence on China. The episode closes with a discussion of the housing crisis, the generational wealth divide, and the political incentives that keep home prices high across the United States, the United Kingdom, and beyond—returning at the end to the appeal of left-wing populism and the prospect of redistributive policies as an inevitable response by fiscally overburdened governments looking for someone to blame.
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If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
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Episode Recorded on 07/16/2026

In Episode 489 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with historian Mary Bridges, a senior fellow at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator and author of Dollars and Dominion, about the origins of America's financial empire, the rise of the dollar from a second-rate currency to the most decentralized form of international money in world history, and what could accelerate or inhibit its continued domination.
The first hour traces the origins of America's financial empire following the end of the Spanish-American War, when the dollar wasn't in the same league as the British pound and any American trader moving goods abroad had to go directly through London. Bridges walks us through the messy, often improvised story of how that transformation happened—beginning with the multinational expansion of the International Banking Corporation and its eventual absorption into National City Bank, the entanglement of profit-seeking enterprise with the pursuit of empire, and the central role that information, its creation, organization, and dissemination, played in laying the infrastructure for American financial hegemony.
The second hour traces the dollar's evolution into the most decentralized form of international money in world history, embedded in every aspect of global trade and commerce. It then turns to a discussion about the pressures and competition facing the dollar today and what could accelerate or inhibit its continued use as a medium of exchange and store of value internationally. The episode closes with a discussion of Bridges's work on American shipbuilding and maritime power, and her argument that rebuilding America's industrial base will require the kind of government–private sector partnership that has historically built the country's most strategically vital industries—the full public commitment the United States tends to muster only when it decides a sector is too important to leave behind.
Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io.
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas
Episode Recorded on 07/13/2026

In Episode 488 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with political scientist Jonathan Kirshner about the origins of the Peloponnesian War, the enduring misreading of Thucydides, and what the arc of the Athenian empire on the eve of the Sicilian expedition reveals about the trajectory of American power in the twenty-first century.
The first half traces the war's origins alongside Kirshner's central argument: that one of Thucydides' most frequently quoted passages has been enlisted to justify a worldview directly at odds with the lesson he meant to impart—that great powers are undone less by their rivals than by their own restlessness and hubris, and that prudence, not the gratuitous use of force, is the true mark of a durable empire. America's two long wars, the global financial crisis, and its latest campaign against Iran emerge as expressions, each in their own way, of an imperial hyperpower operating without constraint and with little consideration for the national interest.
The second half turns to the hollowing out of American domestic institutions and the growth of the unitary executive, the fate of the alliance networks and international institutions that have underwritten American imperial influence since the Second World War, and the sobering possibility that the forces shaping the trajectory of American empire reside less in any single administration than in the society that has produced it.
Subscribe to our premium content—including our premium feed, episode transcripts, and Intelligence Reports—by visiting HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you'd like to join the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius community—with benefits like Q&A calls with guests, exclusive research and analysis, in-person events, and dinners—you can also sign up on our subscriber page at HiddenForces.io/subscribe.
If you enjoyed today's episode of Hidden Forces, please support the show by:
Subscribing on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, CastBox, or via our RSS Feed

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou
Subscribe and support the podcast at https://hiddenforces.io.
Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod
Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas
Episode Recorded on 07/08/2026