Episode Info
- Season7
- Episode6
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Episode Summary
Sanctions have made it increasingly hard for Western firms to do business in Putin's Russia. But the Kremlin has warned companies from so-called “unfriendly states” may see their assets expropriated and nationalized, if they chose to cease operations. McDonalds, Shell, Mercedes, Koch Industries are among those grappling with their Russian operations. The former head of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove weighs in on why this may leave the former KGB officer in an even tougher spot economically and uncharacteristically shares how long he thinks the Russian leader can hang on to power.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Lockwood: Welcome back to One Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices made that have triggered global consequences. My cohost, the former chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, and I look at some of the decisions made by leaders and influencers, why they made the choices they did, what comes next, and what does their decision mean for all of us. This week, more news of international firms pulling out of Russia due to Putin's ongoing war against Ukraine. In many cases, companies initially hesitant to leave are now doing just that. Mercedes-Benz, one of the biggest businesses in Russia, is now packing up, and it's got more than $2,000,000,000 worth of assets still in the country. That matters because recently, the Kremlin announced hostile measures against companies who were boycotting the country, warning that it reserved the right to expropriate their assets left behind. Troubling times now for Koch Industries, one of the biggest private firms in America. Having faced weeks of public pressure and disapproval for continuing to do business in Russia, they finally announced intentions to exit the country. Having previously said they wanted to avoid their factories falling into the hands of the Russian government who would eventually profit from them, it appears now that that's exactly what Koch Industries is facing as it prepares to close its manufacturing plants. Well, we reached out to 14 global firms involved in this development. All have released brief statements to the press announcing they've decided to pull out of Russia, but none were prepared to join us on the podcast to talk about why and what comes next. Our resident expert, Sir Richard Dearlove, sits on the boards of global businesses. And in his past life as chief of British intelligence, he dealt many a time with a difficult Russian government. But the latest moves by the Kremlin from the Ukraine invasion to further lashing out against the international community has taken even him by surprise.
ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
Lockwood: Right. So, Richard, we've got lots to talk about today and particularly about the situation in Russia with businesses. So let's signpost where we are at the moment. Russia has been under crippling US and Western sanctions for nearly three months. They were implemented just two days after Putin sent troops over the border into Ukraine back in late February on the twenty fourth. By the twenty sixth, there were already sanctions on Putin and Sergei Lavrov. The EU announced this week that they would ban Russian oil imports by the end of the year. The UK is barring Russian banks from the British financial system. That goes on top, of course, of the disconnecting of Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system. All of this is having a cataclysmic effect on the Russian economy. But what is particularly interesting that we're gonna look at today is that around all this state sanctioned action, there is movement in the corporate world as well. And with this invasion, Russia has really turned itself into a pariah state that absolutely nobody seems to want to be seen to be doing business with, which is quite a feat really. When you have a lot of international firms still doing business in places like Saudi Arabia and China, it seems like the invasion was one step too far. And so we're seeing companies taking actions of their own. We have the US carmaker Ford temporarily shutting down its factories in Russia, BP, the British energy company promising to exit the country. That company has very deep ties with Rosneft, the Russian state oil company. So Richard, I wanted to ask, first of all, what is it about this invasion that was one step too far for the international community? I mean, there's conflict all over the world. There's atrocious human rights violations committed by regimes that we continue to call our friends and allies. So why is Putin's invasion of Ukraine too much for us to stomach? You know, we didn't see this in Georgia. We didn't see this with Crimea.
Dearlove: Well, I think probably it's an issue of scale rather than an issue of principle, because you're right to bring up many other smaller examples. But when you carry out an unprovoked military invasion of a neighboring country with whom you have had the closest historical connections, with an army of 130,000 backed by even more military hardware and power. And of course, the country concerned is historically in a way a hinge between Eastern and Western Europe. I think it's a question of the seriousness and scale and the sort of shock at the unprovoked aggression. All that Ukraine really was doing was moving its political system towards a more western parliamentary democracy. Not that it had maybe traveled the whole distance. I mean, there were still massive internal problems in Ukrainian politics, but I think the world suddenly realized that to have a fully developed European democracy sitting in what traditionally many Russians would consider half of Russia, was just too much ideologically and conceptually for the current Russian leadership, which, let's face it, is a pretty bizarre and violent bunch of people as they've proved themselves to be. So I think it's about the geopolitics where it happened, it's about the scale, it's about the lack of provocation, and I think it's the sort of shock to the geopolitical system that Russia could actually act like this. I don't think I can offer a better explanation than that. And of course, as we've just been discussing, Russia has this historical track record, and if we just take the recent twentieth century, you've got Hungary in '56, you've got Czechoslovakia in '68, you've got their interference in Poland when Poland went more democratic, and you've got Georgia, you've got all of these examples piling up. And this, probably the last one, is the very worst of all. So I think that explains it for me anyway.
Lockwood: Right, and the next question I was gonna ask you was, is it more about Putin or is it about Russia? You give this long example of similar acts of aggression by Russia against its neighbors, against nearby countries. You were based in Prague, you were dealing with hostile Russia many years ago. You're still dealing with a hostile Russia now. I mean, are we always going to be locked in conflict with Russia? Is it ever going to be a country that will be able to interact with the international community on a non hostile basis?
Dearlove: A very, very good question. And I think the historical evidence suggests that it isn't just Putin, although the leadership must take some responsibility. It looks like a characteristic of the Russian state. And I'm not talking about the Soviet Union, I'm talking about the Russian state historically. Sometimes you get a good leader like Peter the Great, or you get an Ivan the Terrible, or you get a Catherine the Great, or you get Nicholas II. Interestingly, I've just been in the Czech Republic, and I was talking to people there who I know very well who take a huge interest in geopolitics in their governmental community, and they were basically saying or predicting that we're near the end of another period in Russian history, like the end of the reign of the czars before the Russian revolution. We've had Putin for the best part of twenty years, and this regime is going to end in some manner that we do not know, and it will be violent and it will be disruptive, and it will be hugely disruptive as it's proving to be already for Europe. And I think that's a very interesting perspective, given the experience that the Czechs themselves went through post '68, and I was there, living there in that period, which was sort of called by the Russians and the Czech communist leadership at the time normalization. I mean, that was the phrase that they used, normalizace in Czech, to describe their reassertion of power over the country after the events of 1968. And in a way, I think it's fascinating. Normalization for the Czech Republic, well it was Czechoslovakia then, and of course denazification now for Ukraine. And you have to say, well hang on, there's a theme, there's a commonality here between these concepts.
Lockwood: It struck me as you were listing, you know, Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible. I wonder if we should start calling him perhaps not Vlad the Impaler, but Vlad the Invader to refer to Putin.
Dearlove: I think that's a clever phrase and that being characteristic of his regime. And of course, what's happening in the last few days is, it looks as though they're facing a military failure. The Ukrainians apparently, around Kharkiv, got back to the Russian border and have driven them away from that other principal city. And what's going to happen now down in the Donbas? The trouble is the worse it goes for Russia, the more potentially violent I think the Russians become to try to recover some of their national pride.
Lockwood: But it's also, besides the latest developments on the field, there is also an important economic dimension to this conflict. And I want to talk to you about this bill that was issued back in March. The Kremlin issued Decree 299, and that will now allow firms which are more than 25% held by foreigners from, quote, hostile states, guess who belongs to that club, to be put into external administration. So what's gonna happen according to this bill is that administrators will be appointed by Russian courts for companies that have announced that they are leaving Russia because of the war in Ukraine. And after three months, the companies would either be liquidated or their shares put up for auction. Now the companies that this could affect include dozens of really well known firms, a lot of car companies that have announced that they are quitting Russia. You've got Apple, you've got IKEA, Microsoft, IBM, Shell, and then these car companies like Volkswagen, Porsche, Toyota and others. One of the biggest, Mercedes-Benz, I think they stand to lose potentially more than $2,000,000,000 of assets held by their Russian subsidiaries that could be expropriated by the Russian state. Richard, I guess the Russians are at liberty to do what they want with assets on their land. I mean, you make your own rules when you are a sovereign country such as Russia, but this seems to me like it's theft. Right? I mean, it's not precisely a license to steal, but this decree, from what I have read, it forces companies to grant compulsory license to Russian companies or individuals in exchange for zero compensation. I mean, that is essentially stealing, is it not?
Dearlove: Well, I suppose the question is, can the state, the nation state, steal? I mean, of course it can in terms of the way that we conceive of the concept, but it's using lawfare instead of warfare, as it were. So it's using the law to legitimize its activities. I don't think any of this is particularly surprising given where we've got to. If you wish, this is the Russian response to sanctions. But the cost for Russia to do this internationally in terms of its reputation is probably higher than the benefits that they will gain. It's going to take Russia years to recover its reputation as a reliable trading or business partner. And many of us who are not businessmen have been warning businesses that heavy investment in Russia is susceptible to political intervention, political disruption. And I think the Russians have reached a point where they're just not willing. I wouldn't say they don't care. I mean there'll be a lot of individual Russians who are going to lose out badly because they've benefited enormously from their relationship with Western companies and Western investment in the Russian economy. There are all sorts of dimensions to this. One of the ones I'm familiar with are all these planes which were in Russia, which were leased to airlines, belonged to largely Irish leasing companies, and the Russians have just commandeered and confiscated these aircraft. And the question is, what's going to happen, who's going to pay the insurance claims? And the other thing is, if these planes are not flown and if they don't follow IATA regulations and they don't have proper log books, there becomes a sort of huge safety factor and you can't then use them even if the planes would be returned to the West, they'll have to be pretty much rebuilt. So there's huge complexity, and the people who are going to benefit from these measures largely are going to be the lawyers. The courts are going to be stuffed with court cases on all of these issues. Maybe there will be a regime change in Russia. I wouldn't say quickly. And maybe, in a period of time, some of these things would be reversed. But even if they are reversed, they're going to be compensation claims for the period of interruption. So it's hugely complicated.
Lockwood: It is. And I mean, we were talking a week ago to Clarissa Ward, who said that she has given up trying to predict the decisions of Vladimir Putin and trying to understand some of the recent thinking coming out of the Kremlin. But I have to ask, why is the Kremlin doing this? This is essentially them burning down the house, because if you are going to expropriate billions of dollars worth of factories, of plants, of property that belongs to foreign companies who have been hiring Russian nationals, who've been doing business in Russia, have been enriching the Russian economy by virtue of doing business. If you're going to suddenly expropriate a lot of this, you are essentially making it impossible for anyone once this conflict is over, and pretty much every conflict comes to an end, eventually. Palestinians and Israelis will probably claim otherwise, but I mean, there will be an end to this conflict at some point. And then who is going to want to do business with the Russians, given that this is what they are now starting to do?
Dearlove: Well, bear in mind, we're living in a period of, let's say, ESG related issues as far as Western capitalism is concerned in big companies, and they have to be pretty protective of their reputations. They have to behave responsibly because of their shareholders on environmental, social, and governance issues. So for many of these companies, I think that the current political situation really doesn't almost allow them to continue business in Russia, because they'll be condemned for being implicitly supporters of the Russian state or the Russian economy. So I don't think they've got a lot of choice. They're going to have to close down. And of course, if they then close down, the Russians are gonna respond and confiscate their assets.
Lockwood: Right. But the thinking behind the Kremlin doing this, a lot of these companies pulling out of Russia, they're ceasing operations. You say that a lot of this is fight back from these sanctions, but is the seizing of dozens of plants and factories enough to make up for the sanctions if they then, I don't know, flog these factories to the Chinese? Why would they not leave these factories empty and give these companies a route back into Russia when things return to normality, if they ever do?
Dearlove: Well, good question. But I think that the Russian leadership, I mean, this isn't the Russian people, this is the Russian leadership, feel that their best response is almost a vindictive response. And I think the other thing that one has to bear in mind, which came out very clearly when I was talking to people in Prague, one of them who has extensive experience working with big Russian businesses said that fundamental to Russia's problems at the moment, and I think this is probably reflected in the performance of the military, is the level of corruption. And he said, if you take any big Russian contracts, and he's familiar with Rosatom, the nuclear power part of the Russian state, the building of nuclear power stations. He said the amount of money that goes astray in contracts and into people's profits and then to banks in Cyprus and Malta and elsewhere, he said it's absolutely stunning. We have a regime which has a reputation for kleptocracy anyway. And in terms of the confiscation of these assets, maybe a lot of the immediate financial benefits go into the pockets of individuals. Certainly, they're not going to be able to operate efficiently. They'll be able to operate some of them, but some of these factories are just going to close down and the stuff will be sold off, and that'll be the end of it. And the Russian economy will go further backwards. But I think the other thing to bear in mind, maybe this is a dangerous comment for me to make, the Russian economy has never been integrated into the world trade system to the extent that the Chinese economy is integrated into the world trade system. And we're talking about sanctions on Russia, and they are tough, and the population is going to suffer over time. But the Russian economy is commodity dominated, and its dependence on selling energy is huge. So despite all these other measures, the money is still pouring in from the sale of gas and oil until those markets are closed down. And we now have a much clearer idea of the difficulties of countries like Germany. And okay, I'm gonna quote the Czech Republic again. 60% of their gas supply is Russian dependent.
Lockwood: And the EU are working on this. They announced that they will end Russian oil imports by the end of this year. So they are working on it.
Dearlove: Well, if they do, that'll be great, and it'll be a big step, an important step. And that really will, I think, be damaging to the Russian economy more so than sanctions, because that will start cutting hugely the royalties, the income that they're getting from selling energy, which is the most important part of their economic survival.
Lockwood: So I just want to pick up on something because you say that cutting Russia off from its revenue, from its trade with the international community is a way to properly punish it for what it's done in Ukraine. But earlier you said that if we had integrated Russia more into world trade, such as how we have done with China, perhaps this whole thing could have been avoided in the first place. And I want to ask you about something hot on the heels of McDonald's announcing that they are finally quitting Russia after thirty years in Russia. I want to ask you about this so called McDonald's peace theory, which is this idea that economic globalization makes war less likely. And it was originally something coined, I believe, by Thomas Friedman, who proposed that no two countries that have a McDonald's have ever fought a war against each other. Now it's pithy, but problematic. I mean, you have obviously places like Lebanon, Belgrade, Georgia and Ukraine, they all have McDonald's in them. But I think essentially what he's saying is, globalization has long been a strong deterrent against conflict. But then of course you do have this worrying example from history, which is all that burgeoning trade that was going on before the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated a hundred years ago. So Richard, I want to ask, given that McDonald's itself has now announced that it's packing and leaving, is that now symbolic more of Russia's isolation perhaps than other companies? And what do you make of this idea that in order to maintain peace, we have to be completely integrated with each other in the international community through trade?
Dearlove: Well, it's an attractive theory, and it probably has an element of truth in terms of human experience. And we have lived through these periods of globalization, and you're right, the nineteenth century, the latter part of the nineteenth century was one, and we've just lived through another. I mean I think what I would argue is that the banking crisis of 2008 really had a profound effect on globalization and made us look at the interrelationship between our economies in a different fashion. Because what happened was that the banking system was actually rescued by an extraordinary degree of governmental cooperation. It wasn't actually rescued by the bankers themselves. And the United States, given its sort of global economic reach, played a really important part. But the irony was that, I would argue, that to an extent the quants, the money men who had this view, were put out of business by this geopolitical crisis, and governments came back with a vengeance. And the banking system would have collapsed. And there's a very brilliant book by Adam Tooze that explains this. And I think that what we have seen since is a reassertion of the identity of the nation state, not in an entirely positive way. And that reassertion of the nation state has been prejudicial in some instances to the nature and the organization of international trade as expressed through organizations. Well, there was GATT, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and then replaced by WTO. And it's not now working so well. And I think these issues are pretty complex and difficult to decipher in the current crisis, but I think we're edging towards an understanding of what's happening, and there's no question that there is a breakdown in coordination and trade. And look at the problems that the EU is now facing. And I would see Brexit as part of that development where you have a trade organization which, in my view, had become autocratic and not sufficiently accountable in the way that it was making its decisions. The best example of this is the way that Europe allowed its dependence on Russian energy to grow almost unchecked without realizing or without evaluating the degree of political risk that it was exposing itself to.
Lockwood: I want to segue just given what you're saying about economic cooperation and how it is not a universal solution. But I do want to ask you about China because China joined the WTO however many years ago. And while we have a difficult relationship with China, hey, we haven't broken out into war just yet. And partly it's because China has a lot of vested interests in engaging with the West. And I want to ask because we're talking about the possibility of the Russians expropriating a lot of these foreign assets that are being left in the country in the wake of a lot of these Western companies packing up and leaving over the war in Ukraine. And there's a question as to whether the Chinese will benefit from the fire sale of this and whether China and Russia will be pushed closer together. But what's interesting is that China is sort of holding back. I mean, we're not seeing the Chinese rescuing Russia. They've been making some pretty savvy decisions lately. They've been snapping up bargain coal from Russia since Russia can hardly sell to the West anymore, and the Chinese have a huge demand for it. I believe that coal makes up half of China's energy consumption. And so they are profiting from the situation with Ukraine, but I don't personally buy this idea that the Chinese are going to be propping up the Russians and that they're the best of friends, and you know, analysts who are presenting this two headed hostile threat to the West. Because the reality is, I think, that they are really quite uneasy bedfellows. And the Chinese, I don't think, are as wedded to the Russians as a lot of people fear. The Chinese, they haven't condemned the invasion of Ukraine. Sure. But they have done things, I think, that speak louder than words. Their banks, they've restricted financing for the purchases of Russian commodities because they're concerned about falling into the wrong side of sanctions. Very recently, a large investment bank, which is backed by Beijing, announced that they were suspending all activity in Russia because of the war in Ukraine. And then of course, there was that really interesting press conference that we discussed after Xi and Putin's meeting during the Winter Games, where the foreign ministry corrected a lot of press statements after their meetings and said that China and Russia were partners, not allies. It was that whole sex, not love statement that puzzled us earlier in the year. And China's trade with Russia is just 2% of all of their trade with the world. And that's nothing compared to its trade with the EU and the US, both of which is more than 10% each. And China has its own domestic worries to deal with. It's got its COVID zero policy, which is really stymieing demand and production. All these factories are having to shut down because people are getting COVID. And then we've got, of course, the property market woes it's dealing with. All of these sort of factors, which I think means that we're not going to see Russia being able to survive these sanctions because the Chinese are going to come in and sweep in and rescue them. I mean, what's your take on all of this?
Dearlove: I think that the Chinese will be very cautious in the way that they try to, as it were, leverage the current situation to their advantage. So they're not going to jump into Russia's arms, but they're not going to be particularly hostile either. You made this very good point that Chinese trade with Russia is 2% of Chinese foreign trade. The other thing we have to remember when we're talking about Russia in this context is, what is it, thirteenth, fourteenth in the list of world GDP? It's way, way down the table, and it's sort of where Italy is, maybe just ahead of Italy, but certainly if you take away energy, God knows it drops even further down. Russia is not, except in one respect as a supplier of energy to Europe, which of course is geopolitical and strategic, but in the rest of its economy is not a big deal. And the closure of these factories and everything, most of the companies you're talking about can afford to do without the Russian market. Globalization allowed them to expand into this untapped market in Russia and it was very beneficial for them. But pulling out now is not going to be a disaster, and it's been a disaster for the Russian people. So I think that that's one aspect to it. The other issue as regards China is, our economies, and I'm talking about Europe including the UK and the United States, are entangled with the Chinese economy. So the whole issue of dealing with a badly behaved China will be much, much more challenging and much more difficult than behaving with a rogue Russia. So looking ahead, the Chinese understand this, and the two sides to the coin. I think that this current crisis is going to make the Chinese much, much more cautious. And I think we've discussed this before, there is a pretty strong view amongst scholars of China that in a period before the invasion of Ukraine, Xi Jinping to an extent was overplaying his hand in emphasizing Russian-Chinese power and Chinese expansion. And I think, well, you've now got the problem of COVID holding back the Chinese economy, but I think also strategically, China is treading much, much more carefully again, which would be characteristic of the way that it has treated its international relations. It did alarm the Trump administration, and I think you see evidence of it treading again more carefully, and this will certainly apply to how it deals with Russia. Okay, they will be pushed together to an extent by circumstance. Is China going to be Russia's lifeboat? I think not.
Lockwood: I completely agree. I just want to lastly ask you, I want to revisit with you because we've looked at this a few times as this conflict has progressed. And I just want to take us back to the view inside Russia. And I wanted to ask, are we starting to see public opinion perhaps beginning to splinter on the wisdom of Putin's decision to invade? There has been a segment on one of the biggest state talk shows in Russia discussing how the invasion was going with a retired colonel who gave us some pretty remarkable comments to the host, noting that, quote, the whole world is against us, and it is going to get worse for us. He talked about the high morale of the Ukrainian army, that they were motivated to defend their homeland, and how that in itself is an extremely strong component of battleground victories. He said that conscript armies could stand up to professional armies given motivation and willpower in play, which he seemed to be admitting that the Ukrainians have in droves. What did you make of that particular segment?
Dearlove: Yeah. I watched it. It's extraordinary. I would say what we're dealing with here, you said public opinion. I don't think public opinion is really shifting yet in Russia, but I think expert opinion may be beginning to shift. And that was the main talk show on the main channel, and I don't think things like that happen entirely by accident in Russia. It may, as it were, indicate a change of thinking, a change of attitude. I was rather struck this morning when I also read in one of my newspapers online that Putin had said, as long as NATO didn't open military bases in Sweden and Finland, then joining NATO was not going to be a problem for Russia. And he actually made that statement yesterday, which, let's face it, was pretty, I mean, what he's saying is he's almost accepting it as a fait accompli, and as long as NATO doesn't stick forward basis into those countries.
Lockwood: I mean, that's a bit of a comedown. He was talking about pointing nuclear warheads in the direction of Finland just a week or so ago.
Dearlove: You know, we're gonna have all that sort of nuclear talk. I think that there might be the signs of a shift. I don't know. And there are some very strange shots of Putin. They just had this meeting yesterday or the day before of their six militarily allied countries. I'm not sure, but it's probably Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan.
Lockwood: Was he talking with the leader of Tajikistan or something, and he was tapping his leg? His legs were... and a lot of people were... All of that's really hard.
Dearlove: And I don't know, maybe. I think that what my Czech friend said to me is that we're reaching the end of this regime in Russia. Now, that doesn't mean it's going to disappear. What I'm saying is over the next year, eighteen months, maybe, something is going to break apart. There's no question that this Ukrainian venture is a catastrophe. You wouldn't get a commentator on a main show saying what he said unless the Russian elite have thoroughly understood just what a mess they are in. The economy's in a mess, the sanctions are really going to start biting over the next three to six months, they do take time, there will be very high inflation as well. And then over and above that, militarily, it's a complete fiasco. And at the moment, I think that it's worrying because the fragility of all of these elements will cause something to break apart and go wrong. So I think it's very accurate to focus on this interviewer significantly. I don't think it would have happened unless somewhere in the machine there's a change of mood. And it was interesting to watch the way the presenter was sort of rather weakly arguing and contesting what this guy was saying, but without much impact on his analysis.
Lockwood: And it's interesting because she said twice, do you think there's any chance we could stay friends in the middle? Which I thought was interesting.
Dearlove: I mean, look at all these. Does she have a house full of kids in London who got driven out of London? I mean, the number of kids that they've got in the English private education system. I think many of them are still here because the people didn't want to discriminate against the children. But who's paying the fees? How are they going to get the money out?
Lockwood: Sergei Lavrov's daughter, I believe, has a townhouse in Kensington.
Dearlove: Yeah she does. The other thing that my friends in Prague told me, half Russian, that a lot of the kids, and I mean grown up children, in their late teens, early twenties, they've all left. They've gone to Istanbul, Ankara, Georgia, Helsinki, they're all sitting there because they do not want to be called up if there's a general mobilization. And the parents that can afford to keep them out of Russia are saying, No, you can't come back yet because we've still got a problem. And a significant number of them are outside the country.
Lockwood: Okay. So I'm gonna end this by asking you to make a prediction. How much longer is Putin going to remain in power?
Dearlove: I'm really gonna stick my neck out. I think he'll be gone by 2023. Probably into the sanatorium from which he will not emerge as the leader of Russia. I'm not saying he won't emerge from the sanatorium, but he won't emerge from the sanatorium as the leader of Russia any longer.
Lockwood: I think you're right about the sanatorium, especially if it turns out he does have Parkinson's or whatever. That's a way to sort of move things on without a coup. I'm going to say eighteen months.
Dearlove: Okay. Well, I think that those two predictions are within a reasonable framework. Yeah, I think before the next US... but my Czech friend said to me, don't make any predictions on timing. It's going to happen, but we do not know.
Lockwood: Well, I like making predictions. If you can get over getting it wrong from time to time, I think what's good about predictions is you can revisit your assessment.
Dearlove: Maybe in time we'll get the chance to revisit this.
Lockwood: Exactly. Great. Richard, great to talk to you again.
Dearlove: Julia, wonderful. I really enjoyed it.
Lockwood: Okay. Me too. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode of One Decision. We'll have a new one for you every Thursday. From me and the team, see you next time.
