David Austin: Thomas Friedman, noted author and foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, believes the world is being reshaped today by three simultaneous accelerations: in technology, globalisation and climate change. He likes to call the accelerations hockey sticks, referring to the steep angle they represent on a graph.
Friedman travelled to Singapore recently to take part in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy's Festival of Ideas, 2019. He presented his ideas in a panel called "How to Thrive in the Age of Acceleration." He gave his take on how to adapt to all three accelerations at once, then sat down for a discussion with Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute. Later, Global-is-Asian sat down with both of them for this podcast interview. Here's Thomas Friedman speaking at the event:
Thomas Friedman: Our world isn't just changing. It is being reshaped by three giant accelerations all happening at the same time.
So first word, acceleration, what I call Mother Nature. Mother Nature is climate change, biodiversity loss and population growth in the developing world. The market for me is globalisation, but not your grandfather's globalisation. That was containers on ships and planes.
What's actually globalising the world today, knitting it together is digital globalisation. Everything's being digitised and globalised through Facebook and PayPal and MOOCs, etc. Put digital globalisation on a graph and it looks like another set of hockey sticks – total data consumption per month, or mobile cellular subscriptions in the United States or Singapore or Cambodia or Venezuela – they all look like a hockey stick. Global internet users, another hockey stick, put digital globalisation on any graph you want, and it's a series of accelerating hockey sticks.
And lastly, is Moore's Law, coined in 1965 by Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, who posited that the speed and power of microchips would double every two years and the price would stay roughly the same. Put Moore's Law on a graph and it looks like one giant hockey stick.
I'm a big believer that whatever can be done will be done. The only question is, will it be done by you or to you by a bad guy or a competitor?
David Austin: Given everything that you've said about the three accelerations and speaking of technology, I'm curious to ask both of you, how are you personally adapting to this technology change professionally and personally? How are you keeping up and managing it all?
Thomas Friedman: So I'm a big believer that the faster the world gets, more everything old and slow matters more than ever. All the stuff you cannot download. All this stuff. You have to upload the old fashioned way, a face to face, person to person. So I talk the talk of technology. I study the world of technology, but I barely walk the walk.
I use Twitter as a broadcast platform, but I'm not on Twitter. I'm not following anyone, certainly not following myself. And I'm not on Facebook. I believe if you don't go, you don't know. So I came to Singapore to learn about Singapore, and as much as I love data, I think talking to another human being is also data.
So I'm actually in my own life, try to keep it as real, as connected, and as analog as possible.
David Austin: Okay. And Kishore, how about yourself?
Kishore Mahbubani: I try to practice what Tom has spoken about a lot, which is lifelong learning. And I have had the great fortune of having finished two different careers, one in diplomacy and the other in academia. And now I want to start a whole new career. So to have three careers in one life, I guess is an example of lifelong learning.
Thomas Friedman: Now another way I like to describe what we're going through is, we're actually going through three climate changes at once. We're going through a change in the climate of the climate. We're going from what I call "Later" to "Now". So when I was growing up in Minnesota in 1950s, "Later" was when I could clean that river, purify that lake, rescue that Orangutan – I can do an hour, I can do it later. Today, "Later" is officially over.
Whatever you're going to save, please save it now because "Later" will be too late. Later is over. That is a climate change. We're going through a change in the climate of globalisation. We're going from a world that was interconnected to a world that's interdependent.
So what do you want when the climate changes? You want two things. First of all, you want resilience. You're going to be able to take a blow cause stuff happens when the climate changes. But the second thing you want is propulsion.
I said, "Mother Nature, how do you produce resilience and propulsion when the climate changes?" She said, "Well, Tom, I have to tell you everything I do, I do unconsciously, but these are my strategies." She said, "First, I am incredibly adaptive – in my world it's not the smartest that survive.
It's not the strongest that survive. It's actually the most adaptive that survive. And I teach that lesson through a process I call natural selection. You may have heard of it."
Secondly, she said, "I'm incredibly entrepreneurial. Wherever I see a blank space in nature, I fill it with a plant or animal perfectly adapted to that niche. I mean, incredibly entrepreneurial." Third, she said, "I'm incredibly pluralistic. I'm the most pluralistic, diverse person you've ever met. I tried 20 different species of everything, I see who wins." And she told me something interesting. She told me she noticed that her most diverse ecosystems, are often her most resilient and propulsive ecosystems.
"Oh, Tom," she said, "I love diversity. Fourth," she said, "I'm incredibly hybrid and heterodox in my thinking. Nothing dogmatic about me. I'll try any trees with any soils, any bees, with any flowers. I'm incredibly practical, pragmatic in my thinking. "Fifth," she said, "I'm completely open source. I let anybody fork off anywhere they want where they can find energy and opportunity. Six," she said, "My healthiest ecosystems, I noticed, they actually all network together into complex adaptive networks where the networking maximises their resilience and propulsion. Seventh or eighth, I've lost track." She said, "I'm a lifelong learner, and I turned all my new learning into DNA." And last she did say, "Tom, I do believe in the laws of bankruptcy. I kill all my failures. I returned them to the great manufacturer in the sky, and I take their energy to nourish my success."
So my argument actually is that the university, the company, the country, the city state that most closely mirrors Mother Nature's strategies for building resilience and propulsion when the climate changes, is the one that will thrive in this age of acceleration?
David Austin: I heard you just say, talking about the earth race, you know, mimicking Kennedy space race. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, do you see that as a way to mobilise America in the world?
Thomas Friedman: Yeah. I mean, I coined the term the earth race back in 2008, in Hot, Flat and Crowded. I also coined the term "green new deal" actually. Cause the idea is that, just as Kennedy said, the biggest challenge for us to explore new frontiers, and land a man on the moon, back in the 1960s. I think the great challenge we face today is how to ensure that the earth is habitable for all men and women here now and in the future. And for me that means, trying to shape the market, to incentivise everyone in every country to develop, green, clean, efficient technologies and create a global race around that – who can win that race, so men and women can stay here sustainably and healthily on earth.
David Austin: And then you were also speaking a lot about high density fossil fuels. Is it an imperative that we move away from high density fossil fuels as part of this?
Thomas Friedman: Yeah, it is an imperative. It's not going to happen overnight, we know that. But I believe in the method that California has adopted in its law, SB 100 recently. That simply said, by 2045, every California power generating company will be zero carbon, have zero emissions. Then set a pathway of steps – 2025, 2030, 2040 – to get there and then basically say to the market, get there any way you want.
Clean coal, if that's what you think is possible. A sequestered coal, nuclear, efficiency, but we're going to have these targets and we're going to stick to them. And you create what I call races to the top, races to the top around innovation, around clean energy.
I think if we did that – if China did it, India did it, Europe did it, Brazil did it – if we were all involved in that race, that will ensure that men and women can stay here on earth.
David Austin: And Kishore, I'd like to ask you, what role could a smaller state like Singapore play in an earth race like that? And how can Singapore help the entire Asian region convert its economy away from fossil fuels?
Kishore Mahbubani: Well, I think, the big, the most useful role that Singapore plays is that it demonstrates to the world that good public policies make a difference. You know, for example, there's a water shortage theoretically in the world, but as one of the professors at the Lee Kuan Yew School said, there's never a scarcity of water. There's only a scarcity of good public policies on water.
So if you have good public policies, you have no scarcity. And if you have good public policies, you can manage climate change. So that I think will be a special contribution that Singapore will make because it is bold enough to try things that most other countries will not dare to try.
David Austin: Well, that brings me to another thing I wanted to ask you. You talked about, we're at a moment now in history where we need this global governance, but we don't have a global government. And when it comes to things like regulating climate change and working together, where's the leadership going to come from? And what mechanisms can be employed to solve that problem?
Thomas Friedman: Well, the leadership used to come from the United States. We're now out of that business in the Trump administration. One hopes that, the Trump administration will be gone in a year and that we'll be back in that business, because I don't think there's any country that can catalyse the world the way the United States has been able to historically. I think China and India, they're both important, Europe, but if you take America out of the game, you know, we're really the straw that still stirs the drink.
David Austin: We call this podcast the Foreseeable podcast. So if I could ask you to look into the future a bit, I know you gave kind of a bleak – I was going to say dark look, but what do you see happening, let's just say in the next five to 10 years?
Thomas Friedman: I will repeat what I said, which is that I think so much happens, so much depends on who is the President of the United States. Four more years of Donald Trump and the United States will be a freak show. If Trump loses and is replaced by a sane Democrat, and I think any Democrat in the race now would fit that bill, we'll have a different world. But I think a lot depends on that, and so I take this moment really seriously.
David Austin: And Kishore, what are your views?
Kishore Mahbubani: I think, it's the good news, and we need some good news, is that in 1945, the people who created this foundations for the rules-based order, institutions like the United Nations, IMF, World Bank actually laid down both strong institutions and strong principles, for global governance. They have been bypassed, they have been side-lined in recent decades, but you can rejuvenate them and reinvent them. So you don't have to start from, if you have to start from scratch and write a UN charter today, it's impossible to get such a beautiful document.
But if you can build on it, then you can create a better world.
Thomas Friedman: My view is that Donald Trump is not the American president America deserves, but he is the American president China deserves. Let me explain why. I believe China grew from poverty to middle income over the last 30 years. Remarkably, something good for China and good for the world, in aggregate. By using a kind of three silo strategy, the first silo, the most important, my view was hard work, delayed gratification, national pulling together, smart investments in infrastructure and smart investments in education – silo number one. And my hat is off to them. Silo number two was stealing other people's intellectual property, forced technology transfer, non-compliance with WTO rules, and the like. Silo number three was the US Pacific fleet. China should have been paying for the US Pacific fleet because it was the presence of the US Pacific fleet which allowed China to economically dominate all its neighbours without them worrying that they would be geopolitically dominated.
And that really allowed China to extend its influence. So that's the context in my view, how China grew. It didn't just grow by hard work. And so my view is now trying to use that strategy to get rich, basically making toys, tee shirts and tennis shoes, solar panels and the like. Now they rightly and understandably and capably want to get rich on a different strategy – microchips, artificial intelligence, super computers, software. All the 21st century, 2025 industries that Xi Jinping has identified, if we America and we the world, let China use that same three silo strategy, that it used to get from poverty to middle income to get from middle income to high income, we would be out of our minds, in my view. And that's why Donald Trump did not come from outer space on this issue. He is acting on a very rational interest. Where I disagree with Trump is the strategy that he used.
Had I been designing the strategy, I would have number one, signed the Trans-Pacific trade agreement, and brought 40% of global GDP together around 21st century trade and trading values, that were very much written, made in America. Number two, I would have gone to the Europeans and said, you guys have the same problem we have with China, come join us as well. Then I would have called Xi Jinping and said, you send your four top trade negotiators to Hainan Island. I'm going to send my four, I'm going to have 70% of global GDP on my side, my European brothers and sisters and my Pacific economy brothers and sisters, and we're going to do all this in private.
Nobody's going to lose face. Everyone's going to be a winner, but in private, I'm going to nail you so bad you're not going to know what hits you. But we're going to come out and say everybody was a winner. What did Trump do instead? He tore up TPP without reading it. He puts steel and aluminium tariffs on the Europeans, completely alienated them and then said to Xi, let's you and I get into a trade war over who's got the biggest tariff, and made it entirely a personal thing between the two of them.
We had a chance to make this the world versus China, on what are the right trade norm standards and rules for the 21st century. Had we done that, we would have mobilised every reformer inside China because they would have been rooting for us as they did on WTO. Instead, by making it Trump versus Xi, we forced every reformer inside to wave the nationalist flag. Now, this strategy seems to be the Trump specialty because, Trump has basically decided, "I'm going to challenge two of the oldest civilizations on the planet at once, China and Persia, okay? And I'm going to use the same strategy with both. I'm going to use oil sanctions on Persia and trade sanctions on China."
But because he never builds it around international norm standards and values, in both cases, he forced our allies inside these countries who are rooting for these global standards to be imposed, to actually have to wave the nationalist flag. And that's why both strategies have failed.
Kishore Mahbubani: Yeah. But you said something very important, you said that, Trump is the president that China deserves. So the interesting question therefore, is with the elections coming up in 2020, would China like to see Trump re-elected or defeated?
Thomas Friedman: Very good question. My view is, both China and Russia will be voting Trump in 2020. And for a very simple reason, because as long as Trump is president, he will keep America in turmoil and he will be incapable of building any alliance against either party. He is incapable of galvanising a Pacific Alliance, and he's incapable of galvanising a Euro Atlantic Alliance, and he will keep America in turmoil. I have absolutely no doubt they will both be voting Trump in 2020.
David Austin: And then I wanted to ask something that other scholars here have talked about, which is the rise of China. And just the question of, can China become a benign or benevolent power in the world? What do you think?
Thomas Friedman: China become a benevolent power? I'm not sure that's the prediction I would associate myself with. I do think though, China can become a cooperative power, a collaborative power. Not on every issue, but on a lot of issues. We saw that around the Paris climate agreement. We've seen it around issues and trade.
It'll have to start obviously at the bilateral US-China, just by the nature of these two big powers. I think China has the potential to do that. It's demonstrated its ability to do it. It's also demonstrated its ability to act unilaterally and seize islands in the South China Sea. So, it depends which China, and I think how we relate to China will also shape that. I don't think that happens in a vacuum. But that's really, China and America is still, I think the core of the system. If we don't work together, there's no big problem in the world that can get fixed. If we do work together, there's no big problem in the world that can't be fixed.
David Austin: And what do you think China is waiting for? I think both of you said that US had no real strategy. Maybe they were in a sprint and China's in a marathon. What do you think China's looking for, waiting for? What are they going to base their decisions on going forward, in how they relate with the rest of the world?
Thomas Friedman: None of it exists in a vacuum. It depends if the world relates to them as an aggressive power that has to be contained and put down, you'll get one kind of China. If it relates to them as a power that is potentially aggressive but also potentially a collaborator and we nurture the collaborative side, I think you'll get a more collaborative China. And they themselves have to decide. Do they want to be an expansionist power, if not physically, but, geo-economically, you know, around this part of the world? You'll get one reaction. And if they want to be more of a collaborative power, you'll get another. If they want America out of Asia, you'll get a different kind of reaction in the region and from America. So there's going to be a dynamic relationship. It's how we relate to them, it's how they relate to us.
I think if I had one fervent wish today, it's that America and China would go on a weekend retreat together, with a facilitator, and really start to think through all of these issues in a serious way. Maybe we can enlist Kishore in that task.
David Austin: I think that'd be a great, great weekend. Well, thank you very much. Was there anything you'd like to say in closing?
Kishore Mahbubani: Just very quick, point, when you refer to, can China become a benevolent great power? Just going to say that the term "benevolent great power" is an oxymoron. All great powers will pursue their interests without fear. Only question is whether China will be a peaceful and great power and there actually, I'm reasonably optimistic, because even if you read Henry Kissinger's book on China, one of the things he points out is that the Chinese always believe that the best way to fight a war, best way to win a war is to not fight it and that their whole art of Chinese strategy is to win wars without fighting. So in that sense, China of course, exerts its weight, its influence, will try to get its way, but I think will try to avoid the military option. And so you could still have a China becoming powerful and yet remain peaceful.