Podcast Channels and Topics.
As the year comes to an end, here are some favourite Podcast channels and topics I have listened to this week, enjoyed and learned from. I hope you enjoy them, you learn from them and they give you an insight into the developing world.
Below are a few of my personal summaries on the podcasts. Enjoy.
How A.I could impact Geopolitics (Goldman Sachs Exchanges).
This listen is mostly not about nature, it’s about geopolitics. Geopolitics is the study of the earth’s geography on politics and international relations. The main focus of this particular listen was on the USA.
The rise of A.I could have profound implications for Geopolitics given the decisions about where AI infrastructure is going to get built. If AI software has to run on AI hardware, can the infrastructure be maintained to keep up with demand?
The issue is not whether there is enough funding to supply the demand for AI, it is that there is not enough space in data centres, the existing ones support cloud workloads - AI workloads are high density requiring a concentrated source of power-. There is a need for differentiated data centres. The required source of power has to be largely base-load ie Natural gas(short-term), Nuclear (long-term).
Nations are going to be the ones to decide where these data centres are going to be built.
It will therefore be important for countries to think about where they can build their data centres which will most likely involve foreign countries in the case of the US. To give an instance of this:
- Democratic countries do not have a track record of being able to do massive infrastructure at scale and very quickly.
- Optimise for places with cheap base-load power (Indonesia and Malaysia). The whole geopolitical thesis behind this is that the US wants to prevent China from getting AI capacity.
- Middle East ( Best Option).
- It has cheap base load power.
- Abundant land.
- They can build massive infrastructure at scale.
- They can build around a coastline which would be used for technology around liquid cooling.
- They have sovereign ambition.
- They have an enormous amount of capital they can deploy as flexibly as they see fit.
The biggest issue with the Middle East would be that they are geopolitical swing states. These are countries whose strategic choice have a significant impact on the international order due to their geopolitical influence, economic power and diplomatic capabilities. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE have things about their economies that differentiate them from the competition between the USA and China because they are in a position where both countries need them.
These countries have a lot of leverage that could be enticing for countries to set up shop independent of what they want from these countries.
Why Oil and Gold prices could keep rising (Goldman Sachs Exchanges).
Will the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine cause an impact on oil production and supply? Will there be actual physical disruption and reduction of oil? If so, which assets are hit? How much of production is offline and for how long? Will OPEC step in to offset the losses?
Will these disruptions cause a difficulty in accessing spare capacity?
An interesting point to note is that although the US has an excess of 6 million barrels per day of excess capacity of oil, they are in OPEC countries. The US is now the biggest producer and consumer of oil, roughly 20% of global supply is provided by the US.
Three countries UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait together drive about 80% of spare capacity and the key question is if we see escalation in the Middle East, will countries be able to bring their barrels to the market?
Central Banks has realised since the freezing of Gold reserves of Russia in. 2022 there is an importance of diversifying reserves from just the dollar. The structural value of gold is quite interesting. There is a sharp tripling in purchases of gold by the central banks.
If global interest rates on gold come down then the opportunity costs for investors to hold gold are lowered.
The benefits for gold are much broader. ETF holdings of Gold tend to rise gradually when the actual policy rates in the world come down.
Changing EU Policy and Energy Trading ( The HC Commodities).
A book I have also enjoyed has been: Prisoners of Geography; Tim Marshall.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS