Peter Zeihan

By sourcing ship identities, transponder data, routes, and ports from these companies, Ukraine can strike unidentified vessels with high confidence. Full Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4cs4P09 #shadowfleet #geopolitics https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/status/2097277573768094083/photo/1 🐦

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was created in the 70s as a safeguard against major disruptions in oil imports. Well, those 700 million barrels were never used for its intended purpose. Full Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4AbUQGC https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/status/2096915186686754943/photo/1 🐦

Over the course of a couple of centuries, Istanbul and the Italian city-states went from being the wealthiest parts of the world to suddenly being completely cut off from what, until then, had been one of their primary sources of funds. Why is this relevant today? Well, the technologies of globalization are failing, and the system that has allowed the whole world to go wherever it wants and access any particle is breaking down. In a world of deglobalization, we're going to have to go back to kind of sequestered trade. The Adriatic spice trade model is probably the best example we have to understand what's coming. Deepwater navigation isn't going away, but everybody who has ships has access to the wider world. The question is whether they can protect their sea lanes. I would argue that there is not a single country on the planet that can do so on a global basis. We have several countries, with the U.S. being the most powerful, that can intervene in those trade routes on a global basis, but none can protect them. This means that most trade is going to become much more regionalized or even localized, and we're going to have to militarize a lot of it. #spice #trade #geopolitics 🐦

While oil is still moving through the Strait of Hormuz, flows remain a fraction of pre-war levels. Full Newsletter: #iranwar #crudeoil #geopolitics https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/status/2095828022527930791/photo/1 🐦

The oil and natural gas that the Russians have is, for the most part, in the wrong place. It's almost all in northwestern Siberia, which is farther from China than European Russia. So, it's easier to do, say, a rail line going to China than it is a pipeline. Whenever Putin and Xi get together, the conversation is always, hey, let's do a pipeline. And they both always say, yeah, that sounds great. Then they both point at the other one and say, you pay for it. The Chinese see no reason to pay for infrastructure that is going to cost so much to operate, and the Russians see no point in paying for infrastructure that will benefit the Chinese. This is how it's been going for the better part of the last 30 years. Now, if you change the circumstances and remove maritime transport altogether, then suddenly we're having a different conversation. But that doesn't make the project any cheaper. So, you're still talking about tens of billions of dollars to get the infrastructure in the ground, and then transit costs that are about the same as oil prices are right now. #china #russia #crudeoil #geopolitics 🐦

You know what happens when you do exactly what the Chinese government tells you to do? You get sentenced to life in prison. That just happened to Evergrande's former chairman, and it tells you everything you need to know about China's failing real estate system. Full Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4c8Jhpi 🐦

If Moscow is this vulnerable, it gives you an idea of just how bad things are throughout the rest of Russia. #ukrainewar #kremlin #geopolitics https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/status/2095240346372550811/video/1 🐦

A leaked Moscow memo stated that Russian air defenses are being concentrated around the Kremlin. This leaves the broader Moscow region, including refineries and key infrastructure, vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks. Full Newsletter: https://bit.ly/4cJ7y5m https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/status/2095103242887635033/photo/1 🐦

The delicate, papery petals of the Papaver somniferum, or opium poppy, belie the powerful impact the flowers have had on history. From the British sale of opium to China to the medicinal and social impacts morphine and various opiate drugs have had on societies for centuries, the sticky sap of the opium seed pod has fueled empires, wars, and most recently health epidemics. Opium fields like those in western Turkey were a major source of income for the Ottomans, and today the region is one of the largest sources of medicinal opium grown in the world. But poppy fields in other parts of the world, from Iran to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Myanmar are sold and thus fuel armed insurgencies and drug crises. The issue is “simply” that narcotics’ value-to-weight ratio is so high that they ignore the normal issues of transport costs and can be smuggled by anything from a drug mule to a literal mule and still generate massive profits. And poppies are no longer limited to the Eastern Hemisphere. Following rising use of prescription painkillers in the United States, Mexican drug cartels started taking advantage of the dry, warm microclimates in the country’s northwestern mountains to produce opium poppies and drugs like black-tar heroin, which is then inserted into counterfeit opioid pills. America’s opioid epidemic may be homegrown, but it took these doctored products to make it truly lethal, claiming more than 44,564 lives in 2025 alone. #warondrugs #opium #geopolitics 🐦

Crippling one of the world's most deeply integrated manufacturing systems probably isn't a great idea, but here we are again. Full Newsletter: https://bit.ly/3UYvZ8M #canada #geopolitics https://twitter.com/PeterZeihan/status/2094740859300257802/photo/1 🐦