May 18, 2023 • 26 mins
What is power, and what makes someone powerful? University of Pennsylvania Law professor William Burke-White defines power and ranks the people who possess it for his list, “The Most Powerful People in the World.” He shares this year’s rankings with host Steven Schragis.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
If I deserve one bit of credit for the prescience
of my powerful People list over time. I actually put
Elon Musk on my list seven or eight years ago,
before he became as famous as he has become.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to One Day University talks with the world's most
engaging and inspiring professors discussing their most popular courses. This
podcast is your chance to discover some of our top
rated lectures on your own schedule. I'm Steven Shregis. You
can easily look up the richest people in the world,
but where's the list of the most powerful? That's a
(00:46):
little harder to define. Does being President of the United
States automatically make you the most powerful person in the world?
What about having lots of money or influence? Does social
media give you power? Professor William Burke White came up
with a set of criteria to create his list of
the world's most powerful people. He updates it every year,
(01:09):
and he has given multiple lectures on this list for
One Day University. William is an international lawyer and political scientist,
and he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. He also
served in the Obama administration. William says one of the
lessons he's learned through this process is that keeping power
(01:30):
is harder than getting it.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I think this started back in about two thousand and nine,
maybe twenty ten, and it's been fun to think about
who's powerful and how that changes over time. So every
year or every six months, we end up updating the list,
and I think it actually, as you look back over
that ten year period, really helps us see both how
(01:59):
power is changed and how the world in which we
live has been reshaped by power.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I'm going to ask you expand on that a little
because I've seen you left your a number of times
on this. There's different types of power.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, Stephen, So what is power? You know, we talk
about power all the time, and we often have a
sense of what we think we mean by that. You know,
the vision of power that we most often probably think
of as military power.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It is.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
The war in Ukraine today is a version of military power,
with missiles and tanks and drones on both sides. But
that is not the only way to think about power.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Another way to think about power is economic power. How
much money does someone have or does a country have.
That's another form of coercive power, but it's not about
coercion with a gun or a bomb, but coercion with
either the promise of economic wealth or the threat of
economic poverty. When we think about power economically, people lie
(03:00):
Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos start to look really powerful.
But that's not it'steven. There's a third way to look
at power, and let's call that a softer version of power.
It's about power that comes from others wanting to follow us.
It's not about coercion. It's not about guns or bombs
or either economic sanctions or economic wealth. And when we
(03:22):
think about power in terms of soft power, then you
know people like Oprah Winfrey, people who have lots of
Twitter followers or lots of TikTok followers. These are the
people who can shape an agenda or can get us
to read a book just because Oprah says it's a
good book.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So we now know all the different types of power.
But how would you define it?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I would say power is to get others to do
something for our purpose, for whatever it is we bring
to that equation. Sometimes we get them to do it
through economic power, sometimes through military power, sometimes through soft power.
But when you put all these three together that you
get this ability to convince others to do something that
(04:05):
you want them to do, and ultimately, that to me
is power.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Thanks for the explanation. I'm going to ask you about
six people, in no particular order. These are not ranked
in any way, but there are six people that clearly
would be on a list of powerful people as we're
having this discussion right now in early twenty twenty three.
And the first one is Vladimir Putin. Tell me about
(04:32):
Vladimir Putin and why he belongs on a powerful list,
maybe even at the top of a powerful list or not.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, gosh, I wish we didn't have to put Putin
on our list. And you're right, Stephen. You've said before
this list changes over time, and it does. But I
think in today's moment, in the context of a war
in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is hard not to have on
the list. So who is he? Right? He is the
President of Russia. Interestingly, he has been the president of
(05:01):
Russia for a long time now. And part of our
story of powerful people is there often people who have
figured out how to get rid of constraints, and Putin
has done this brilliantly. You know, when Putin became president,
he was really constrained. He was constrained by a decrepit
economy after the end of the Cold War, he was
(05:22):
constrained by the oligarchs, these Russian businessmen who held a
lot of power in Russia. And systematically, for the last
twenty something years, Vladimir Putin has undercut every one of
these constraints. He has built Russia's economy, usually using the
leverage of energy warfare and energy coercion. Russia has some
(05:42):
of the world's largest natural gas reserves and some of
the largest oil reserves, and he used that to make
Russia rich. And then from there he used that wealth
to make Russia at least appear militarily strong, and Russia built,
you know, one of the largest militaries in the world world.
It's why we see talk of Russia's nuclear arsenal or
(06:03):
of its hypersonic missiles. And then Putin again undercut constraints.
He overrode the Russian Constitution, getting amendments to the constitution
to let him stay in power forever. And then he
undercut all of the power of democracy in Russia, getting
rid of the opposition leader, murdering essentially one of the
opposition leaders in red square, so there's no one to
(06:26):
stop him, and not surprisingly, then in February twenty twenty two,
what does Putin do? He invades Ukraine? And Putin's ability
to be powerful is in part because he is willing.
In fact, he is dead set on destabilizing the international system.
He is willing to break the rules that say you
can't invade your neighbor and invade Ukraine. He's willing to
(06:48):
break the rules that say you can't kill civilians in
war and simply indiscriminately bomb Ukraine. Before that, he was
willing to destabilize America's political system or electoral system back
in twenty sixteen when he interfered with the US election.
So Putin has a lot of military power, we might
question today how effective that is. He hasn't been able
(07:10):
to actually take over Ukraine. A lot of economic power
as the seventh largest economy in the world, and not
so much soft power. Today nobody looks at Russian and
says we want to follow you. But that economic power,
that political ability to undermine his opponents puts Putin on
the list.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
What about his Ukrainian counterpart, Zelenski? Did you even consider
him as one of the top people.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
You know, who would ever think that somebody who was
once a comedian, you know, started in a kind of
funny TV series, would become president of Ukraine, much less
become potentially one of the most powerful people in the world.
But you're right to say he could, in theory make
our list. Why because he has been able to galvanize
(07:55):
a global response to Russia's invasion. He has been able
to stop Vladimir Putin in his tracks and note Barack
Obama couldn't stop Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump couldn't stop Vladimir Putin.
Angela Merkel couldn't stop Vladimir Putin. But Zelensky has and
that is really impressive. I guess part of why I
(08:16):
don't think he actually makes the list is because, first
of all, his ability to influence is very narrow. He
is really only able to keep Ukraine from being invaded
or being overtaken. He's not shaping the rest of global discourse.
So I think he's worth thinking about. And I think
there might come a moment where he makes the list
(08:37):
and Putin falls off that list, But right now I'm
afraid to say it's still Putin who's on the list.
But Zelensky certainly gets the surprise entry category as somebody
to think about.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Then another counterpart, an obvious one, Joe Biden, President of
the United States. Some would say, well, that's the most
powerful person in the world day after day, year after year, year,
decade after decade. But you've made the point often that's
not really true. That's not the right way to look
at it. You want to explain that a bit.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yes, Stephen, you know American presidents come and go from
my list, and they often come and go at different
times during their presidency. But you're right, a lot of
people would say, oh, the US president ought to be
on the list no matter what. The US is the
world's largest economy, and that's true. The US has the
world's most powerful military. That's true too. The president may
(09:29):
be one of the very few people in the world
who has a nuclear football as they call it, next
to him at all times and could launch a nuclear
war that could destroy the world in an instant. And
so you're right, I think the US president should always
be a candidate for our list. But once we've established
that somebody has raw military or economic power, we have
to look at their ability to deploy and use that power,
(09:53):
and as I talked about with Vladimir Putin, he has
an ability to deploy his power because he's undercut all
of the police opposition in Russia. He has nearly absolute power.
And one of the frankly, in my opinion, very good
things about the US system is that our presidents rarely
have absolute power. Joe Biden has had an interesting presidency.
(10:15):
He controlled all three branches of government really, you know,
the House, the Senate, and the Executive for his first
two years, and for the beginning of his presidency he
didn't get much done. Sure, he got a COVID relief
package through, but he looked like a kind of embattled
and weak president. And in my view, Joe Biden got
onto the list in the last eight months or so
(10:36):
largely because three things happened. The first is that he
got a major legislative package through the US Congress on
the Inflation Reduction Act, among other things that I think
will have really long term impact. The second thing that
happened is he won the midterms, or at least didn't
lose the midterms, and showed that he was a political
(10:57):
force to be reckoned with in a way that many
people didn't think he was. And then third, Vladimir Putin
invaded Ukraine and Biden became the global figure of coordinated
response to that invasion. So each of those things, to
me adds up to say, not only is this a
man with real potential power the tanks, the money, and
(11:20):
so forth, but also the ability to deploy that power.
We'll have to see whether he stays on the list,
but today, given what he's done in Ukraine, and given
his ability to actually get things through the Senate, he
makes my list.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Let's change gears a little. I'm going to say the name,
and clearly this is someone much more in the news
than ever before. You probably have a different take than
you would have a few years ago. Tell me about
Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
You know, if I deserve one bit of credit for
the prescience of my Powerful People list over time, I
actually put Elon Musk on my list seven or eight
years ago, before he became as famous as he has become.
And the story I used to tell about Elon Musk
back then was that Elon Musk had figured out how
(12:07):
to modernize hard power, the power of technology, what we
think of his military power, but that military power had
become something new because the real tensions in the world
were going to be about energy, and Elon Musk had
figured out how to capture energy. He had invented a
battery and built a capacity to deploy batteries better than
(12:29):
anybody ever in human history. And he'd also figured out
how to replace governments in driving the space race essentially,
and so in many ways, to me, Elon Musk looked
like a combination of two of the robber barons of
the nineteen hundreds, right, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller. One was the
oil baron and the other the railroad baron. And Musk
(12:51):
had figured out transportation, you know, through his rockets, and
energy through his batteries. He built Tesla into the world's
most valuable company for a while, and he became the
richest man in the world. So now he not only
had the hard power of those technology sources, but also
the power of wealth. And Elon Musk decided to both
(13:14):
get political and to buy Twitter. So there's one version
of this story that makes him even more powerful, makes
him the most powerful human being maybe in history, because
Twitter was in many ways the way we measured soft power.
That was where the conversation was taking place in its
best form. You know, it is the global town square,
(13:35):
and Elon Musk now owns that town square. And so
you combined in one person hard power, soft power, and
economic power, and Elon Musk ought to be at the
top of our list. But I'm not sure Elon Musk
has deployed his power all that smartly, and maybe as
a result, he ought to fall off the list. As
(13:56):
hard as that is to believe, Let's look at what's
happened in the last year or so. Right, he decides
to buy Twitter just at the moment that the economy
starts to soften. He overpays for it, and in the process,
the value of Tesla starts to collapse. And because he
decides to get sort of political, a lot of people
start to leave Twitter as the town square. Today again,
(14:19):
I think he's still on the list, But if I
had to put a trend line for Musk, it's on
the way down, not on the way up.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Today, after the break, China's power on the world stage
and Google's dominance in our everyday lives, come to ask
(14:49):
about another president, Gi the Chinese president, how does he
stack up?
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Jijinping is a pretty incredible example of power he is
the president of the country with the most people in
the world. She is also the leader of the country
with the world's second largest but fastest growing economy. Most
economists predict that the Chinese economy will surpass that of
(15:16):
the United States sometime in the twenty twenties. And she
has also, like Vladimir Putin, figured out how to get
rid of constraint on power. You know, five years ago,
he amended the Chinese constitution to allow him to stay
in power for a third term. Traditionally, Chinese leaders only
(15:37):
stay in power for a ten year period two to
five year terms. Jijinping started his third term as China's leader,
and he has consolidated authority in remarkable ways. We've seen
China become a somewhat destructive force in global economy, or
at least an influential force, whether that be on the
(15:57):
trade war with the United States, whether that be asserting
its rights in the South China Sea, building islands in
the middle of the ocean to be able to deploy
its power globally, or the desire to shape institutions and
exercise its veto, for example, at the United Nations. Jijinping
has also done some incredible things, brought more people out
(16:19):
of poverty than anyone in human history ever has. Because
the wealth that China has created in the last ten
twenty years is unwitnessed before in human history. China also
now has a very powerful military. I would today say
the second most powerful military in the world. After Russia
has depleted its military in the Ukraine, China is definitely
(16:41):
number two. So that's an incredible story of power. China
has also under Ji figured out how to harness technology
to have power and influence. The ability to use artificial
intelligence and facial recognition software, the ability during the coronavirus
pandemic to track people on their cell phones. China has
(17:04):
become a very scrutinized state where governmental power over individual
lives is quite remarkable. So all of that puts jesen
Ping on the list. Like Elon Musk, I think the
trend line on Jijinping today is in the downward direction,
not the upward direction. And here's why Stephen I think
(17:27):
she went too far in the closures and lockdowns after
the pandemic. He went too far because the Chinese economy
has really been in a bit of a tailspin from
years of lockdown. Chinese growth has slowed. Individuals are no
longer feeling like they have a lot of opportunity economically.
G's inevitability has been cracked. You know, for many years,
(17:49):
much of the last decade, every Chinese citizen has thought
Jijenping was the answer. And what they're starting to realize
is he may not be, and China's economy may not
be as able to continue to sustain the kind of
growth it's scene in the slowdown that we're seeing there today.
So she's on the list, But my trend line on
(18:10):
Gi is it looked better for him a few years
ago than it does today.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Okay, let's let's take another big turn to someone else.
I'm going to ask you about a twenty year old
young woman who has redefined how millions of people think
about climate change.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I'm guessing, Stephen, you're talking about Gretit Thunberg. Many of
our listeners may have heard of her, some might not have.
She is a twenty year old climate activist from Sweden
who some six years ago was frustrated by climate change,
frustrated by the unwillingness of governments and institutions and power
to do anything about it. So she painted a little
(18:51):
sign on a piece of cardboard that said school strike
for Climate in Swedish school strike, and she sat in
front of her school and didn't go to class. Greta
does not have a tank. Greta does not have a gun.
Greta does not have much of a nickel to her name.
Greta would not appear powerful by most of our traditional measures.
(19:15):
But Greta, I think, really has reshaped how the public
is thinking about and engaging on the biggest threat the
world faces today, and that's climate change. And before you
knew it, the one point eight billion people in this
world who are under the age of eighteen were with Greta,
(19:37):
with strikes of their own in Berlin, in Paris, and
Akragana in Pretoria, South Africa, in Washington, d C. In
parts of Asia. But you know, Stephen, the thing to
me that was most remarkable is I've met with Greta
a few times. I've seen her marching in Madrid, Spain
during a climate conference with young people from around the
(19:58):
world following her. But I also watched one year when
she was with us in Davos at the Big Davos Conference.
A few years before the pandemic, and she started one
of her strikes, a march down bon Hofstrasse and Davos, Switzerland.
And at first it was just Greta, and within a
few blocks Greta was leading a march of some of
(20:18):
the world's biggest capitalists and the world's most powerful political
leaders who couldn't resist her call to act on climate
And if you can reshape political debate, if you can
get governments to act, if you can have the soft
power to influence one point eight billion young people, you
ought to be on our list. And so Greta is
(20:41):
on mine.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
The last spot on the list is actually two people
Bill tell us about the Google.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Boys, Sergei Brinn and Larry Page. Yeah. So the Google
Boys have been on my list for a long time
because they invented a version of soft power that none
of us had ever really even thought of beforehand, and
today has redefined soft power. And that is the power
(21:08):
of Google. You know how many of our listeners today
have googled something. Maybe they had a product they thought
of buying, or wanted a restaurant review, or even to
find this podcast, and Google sent them there. Well, what
the Google Boys invented in their algorithm and built in
their company, and admittedly their company is one of the
(21:29):
biggest richest companies in the world. But what they invented
was the ability to shape the agenda, to set our preferences,
to determine what we want, and they did so in
a way that makes them money. You know, I talked
about soft power earlier as an ability to shape the agenda,
and usually that means somebody like Oprah tells us this
(21:51):
is a great book, go buy it, and we say, oh,
if Oprah likes the book, maybe we should go buy
it too, and so we go and buy it. But
what the Google boys did is figured out how to
do that on a scale never before seen. Because anytime
we want something or have a question about something, we
turned to Google and Google answers it. But when Google
answers that question, it shapes our preferences. I'm not sure
(22:12):
where I want to go to dinner tonight. I go
to Google. I put in good restaurants in Philadelphia and
they give me three to choose from. They shaped my preferences,
and each of those restaurants probably paid them to do so.
That's brilliant. It's made them very, very rich, but it's
also about soft power. Google decided to start trying to
(22:34):
deploy the Internet in places that previously it had been
restricted or technologically impossible. They launched these special hot air
balloons into the stratosphere and they beam the Internet down
so that they could overcome government censorship and that they
could get the Internet to places it had never been before. This, again,
(22:55):
is the story of breaking down restraints on you. Ultimately
in ways, I think what Google is trying to do
is put a little Google Search engine in each of
our brains. They've shaped our preferences, They've told us what
we want, they have set the global agenda.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Final question, then, is there anyone you have a hunch
just might make the list a couple of years from
now that really you're pulling out of nowhere and is
going to surprise us.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
So, hey, if I had a name, maybe I'd put
them on the list presciently, But I have some places
that I'm looking. India is soon to be the world's
most populous country, and I don't think it's Mody, the
President of India that makes the list. Maybe it's one
of the Indian business people, but it's whoever figures out
how to deploy the one point six billion people that
(23:45):
India is soon going to have, and so I'd be
keeping my eye on India as a piece of the world.
I think whoever figures out what comes next in China,
what comes next after Jijinping, is going to be on
our list because of the power of China. So that's
a place I would look. There's some technologies. Whoever figures
(24:06):
out how to actually solve energy transition, whether that means
you know, nuclear fission, whether that means you know, some
new way of capturing and deploying renewable energy. Energy is
the biggest unknown in terms of where human existence is gonna,
you know, get its power from. And whoever figures that
(24:28):
out I think makes my list as well.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Bill, thank you again. Every year this lecture changes and
just gets more and more fascinating. So thanks again for
coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Thanks for joining us here at One Day University. Sign
up on our website one dayu dot com to become
a member and access over seven hundred full length video
lectures from the world's finest professors. You can also download
our app there. You can learn more about today's episode
and watch University of Pennsylvania Professor William Burt White's lecture
(25:06):
on the Most Powerful People in the World, as well
as his talks on shifting world policy, US foreign policy,
and more. Join us next time when we take a
journey into the human brain.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I think it's much more helpful to understand the memory
system as a system that really evolved more to help
us figure out how to problem solve in the future
than it did to accurately reflect the past. When it
gets into the real world memories of people's pasts, they're
not at all accurate.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
One Day University is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
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true crime, and more. School of Humans
If I deserve one bit of credit for the prescience
of my powerful People list over time. I actually put
Elon Musk on my list seven or eight years ago,
before he became as famous as he has become.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to One Day University talks with the world's most
engaging and inspiring professors discussing their most popular courses. This
podcast is your chance to discover some of our top
rated lectures on your own schedule. I'm Steven Shregis. You
can easily look up the richest people in the world,
but where's the list of the most powerful? That's a
(00:46):
little harder to define. Does being President of the United
States automatically make you the most powerful person in the world?
What about having lots of money or influence? Does social
media give you power? Professor William Burke White came up
with a set of criteria to create his list of
the world's most powerful people. He updates it every year,
(01:09):
and he has given multiple lectures on this list for
One Day University. William is an international lawyer and political scientist,
and he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. He also
served in the Obama administration. William says one of the
lessons he's learned through this process is that keeping power
(01:30):
is harder than getting it.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I think this started back in about two thousand and nine,
maybe twenty ten, and it's been fun to think about
who's powerful and how that changes over time. So every
year or every six months, we end up updating the list,
and I think it actually, as you look back over
that ten year period, really helps us see both how
(01:59):
power is changed and how the world in which we
live has been reshaped by power.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I'm going to ask you expand on that a little
because I've seen you left your a number of times
on this. There's different types of power.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, Stephen, So what is power? You know, we talk
about power all the time, and we often have a
sense of what we think we mean by that. You know,
the vision of power that we most often probably think
of as military power.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
It is.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
The war in Ukraine today is a version of military power,
with missiles and tanks and drones on both sides. But
that is not the only way to think about power.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
You know.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Another way to think about power is economic power. How
much money does someone have or does a country have.
That's another form of coercive power, but it's not about
coercion with a gun or a bomb, but coercion with
either the promise of economic wealth or the threat of
economic poverty. When we think about power economically, people lie
(03:00):
Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos start to look really powerful.
But that's not it'steven. There's a third way to look
at power, and let's call that a softer version of power.
It's about power that comes from others wanting to follow us.
It's not about coercion. It's not about guns or bombs
or either economic sanctions or economic wealth. And when we
(03:22):
think about power in terms of soft power, then you
know people like Oprah Winfrey, people who have lots of
Twitter followers or lots of TikTok followers. These are the
people who can shape an agenda or can get us
to read a book just because Oprah says it's a
good book.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
So we now know all the different types of power.
But how would you define it?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I would say power is to get others to do
something for our purpose, for whatever it is we bring
to that equation. Sometimes we get them to do it
through economic power, sometimes through military power, sometimes through soft power.
But when you put all these three together that you
get this ability to convince others to do something that
(04:05):
you want them to do, and ultimately, that to me
is power.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Thanks for the explanation. I'm going to ask you about
six people, in no particular order. These are not ranked
in any way, but there are six people that clearly
would be on a list of powerful people as we're
having this discussion right now in early twenty twenty three.
And the first one is Vladimir Putin. Tell me about
(04:32):
Vladimir Putin and why he belongs on a powerful list,
maybe even at the top of a powerful list or not.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Yeah, gosh, I wish we didn't have to put Putin
on our list. And you're right, Stephen. You've said before
this list changes over time, and it does. But I
think in today's moment, in the context of a war
in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is hard not to have on
the list. So who is he? Right? He is the
President of Russia. Interestingly, he has been the president of
(05:01):
Russia for a long time now. And part of our
story of powerful people is there often people who have
figured out how to get rid of constraints, and Putin
has done this brilliantly. You know, when Putin became president,
he was really constrained. He was constrained by a decrepit
economy after the end of the Cold War, he was
(05:22):
constrained by the oligarchs, these Russian businessmen who held a
lot of power in Russia. And systematically, for the last
twenty something years, Vladimir Putin has undercut every one of
these constraints. He has built Russia's economy, usually using the
leverage of energy warfare and energy coercion. Russia has some
(05:42):
of the world's largest natural gas reserves and some of
the largest oil reserves, and he used that to make
Russia rich. And then from there he used that wealth
to make Russia at least appear militarily strong, and Russia built,
you know, one of the largest militaries in the world world.
It's why we see talk of Russia's nuclear arsenal or
(06:03):
of its hypersonic missiles. And then Putin again undercut constraints.
He overrode the Russian Constitution, getting amendments to the constitution
to let him stay in power forever. And then he
undercut all of the power of democracy in Russia, getting
rid of the opposition leader, murdering essentially one of the
opposition leaders in red square, so there's no one to
(06:26):
stop him, and not surprisingly, then in February twenty twenty two,
what does Putin do? He invades Ukraine? And Putin's ability
to be powerful is in part because he is willing.
In fact, he is dead set on destabilizing the international system.
He is willing to break the rules that say you
can't invade your neighbor and invade Ukraine. He's willing to
(06:48):
break the rules that say you can't kill civilians in
war and simply indiscriminately bomb Ukraine. Before that, he was
willing to destabilize America's political system or electoral system back
in twenty sixteen when he interfered with the US election.
So Putin has a lot of military power, we might
question today how effective that is. He hasn't been able
(07:10):
to actually take over Ukraine. A lot of economic power
as the seventh largest economy in the world, and not
so much soft power. Today nobody looks at Russian and
says we want to follow you. But that economic power,
that political ability to undermine his opponents puts Putin on
the list.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
What about his Ukrainian counterpart, Zelenski? Did you even consider
him as one of the top people.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
You know, who would ever think that somebody who was
once a comedian, you know, started in a kind of
funny TV series, would become president of Ukraine, much less
become potentially one of the most powerful people in the world.
But you're right to say he could, in theory make
our list. Why because he has been able to galvanize
(07:55):
a global response to Russia's invasion. He has been able
to stop Vladimir Putin in his tracks and note Barack
Obama couldn't stop Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump couldn't stop Vladimir Putin.
Angela Merkel couldn't stop Vladimir Putin. But Zelensky has and
that is really impressive. I guess part of why I
(08:16):
don't think he actually makes the list is because, first
of all, his ability to influence is very narrow. He
is really only able to keep Ukraine from being invaded
or being overtaken. He's not shaping the rest of global discourse.
So I think he's worth thinking about. And I think
there might come a moment where he makes the list
(08:37):
and Putin falls off that list, But right now I'm
afraid to say it's still Putin who's on the list.
But Zelensky certainly gets the surprise entry category as somebody
to think about.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Then another counterpart, an obvious one, Joe Biden, President of
the United States. Some would say, well, that's the most
powerful person in the world day after day, year after year, year,
decade after decade. But you've made the point often that's
not really true. That's not the right way to look
at it. You want to explain that a bit.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yes, Stephen, you know American presidents come and go from
my list, and they often come and go at different
times during their presidency. But you're right, a lot of
people would say, oh, the US president ought to be
on the list no matter what. The US is the
world's largest economy, and that's true. The US has the
world's most powerful military. That's true too. The president may
(09:29):
be one of the very few people in the world
who has a nuclear football as they call it, next
to him at all times and could launch a nuclear
war that could destroy the world in an instant. And
so you're right, I think the US president should always
be a candidate for our list. But once we've established
that somebody has raw military or economic power, we have
to look at their ability to deploy and use that power,
(09:53):
and as I talked about with Vladimir Putin, he has
an ability to deploy his power because he's undercut all
of the police opposition in Russia. He has nearly absolute power.
And one of the frankly, in my opinion, very good
things about the US system is that our presidents rarely
have absolute power. Joe Biden has had an interesting presidency.
(10:15):
He controlled all three branches of government really, you know,
the House, the Senate, and the Executive for his first
two years, and for the beginning of his presidency he
didn't get much done. Sure, he got a COVID relief
package through, but he looked like a kind of embattled
and weak president. And in my view, Joe Biden got
onto the list in the last eight months or so
(10:36):
largely because three things happened. The first is that he
got a major legislative package through the US Congress on
the Inflation Reduction Act, among other things that I think
will have really long term impact. The second thing that
happened is he won the midterms, or at least didn't
lose the midterms, and showed that he was a political
(10:57):
force to be reckoned with in a way that many
people didn't think he was. And then third, Vladimir Putin
invaded Ukraine and Biden became the global figure of coordinated
response to that invasion. So each of those things, to
me adds up to say, not only is this a
man with real potential power the tanks, the money, and
(11:20):
so forth, but also the ability to deploy that power.
We'll have to see whether he stays on the list,
but today, given what he's done in Ukraine, and given
his ability to actually get things through the Senate, he
makes my list.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Let's change gears a little. I'm going to say the name,
and clearly this is someone much more in the news
than ever before. You probably have a different take than
you would have a few years ago. Tell me about
Elon Musk.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
You know, if I deserve one bit of credit for
the prescience of my Powerful People list over time, I
actually put Elon Musk on my list seven or eight
years ago, before he became as famous as he has become.
And the story I used to tell about Elon Musk
back then was that Elon Musk had figured out how
(12:07):
to modernize hard power, the power of technology, what we
think of his military power, but that military power had
become something new because the real tensions in the world
were going to be about energy, and Elon Musk had
figured out how to capture energy. He had invented a
battery and built a capacity to deploy batteries better than
(12:29):
anybody ever in human history. And he'd also figured out
how to replace governments in driving the space race essentially,
and so in many ways, to me, Elon Musk looked
like a combination of two of the robber barons of
the nineteen hundreds, right, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller. One was the
oil baron and the other the railroad baron. And Musk
(12:51):
had figured out transportation, you know, through his rockets, and
energy through his batteries. He built Tesla into the world's
most valuable company for a while, and he became the
richest man in the world. So now he not only
had the hard power of those technology sources, but also
the power of wealth. And Elon Musk decided to both
(13:14):
get political and to buy Twitter. So there's one version
of this story that makes him even more powerful, makes
him the most powerful human being maybe in history, because
Twitter was in many ways the way we measured soft power.
That was where the conversation was taking place in its
best form. You know, it is the global town square,
(13:35):
and Elon Musk now owns that town square. And so
you combined in one person hard power, soft power, and
economic power, and Elon Musk ought to be at the
top of our list. But I'm not sure Elon Musk
has deployed his power all that smartly, and maybe as
a result, he ought to fall off the list. As
(13:56):
hard as that is to believe, Let's look at what's
happened in the last year or so. Right, he decides
to buy Twitter just at the moment that the economy
starts to soften. He overpays for it, and in the process,
the value of Tesla starts to collapse. And because he
decides to get sort of political, a lot of people
start to leave Twitter as the town square. Today again,
(14:19):
I think he's still on the list, But if I
had to put a trend line for Musk, it's on
the way down, not on the way up.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Today, after the break, China's power on the world stage
and Google's dominance in our everyday lives, come to ask
(14:49):
about another president, Gi the Chinese president, how does he
stack up?
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Jijinping is a pretty incredible example of power he is
the president of the country with the most people in
the world. She is also the leader of the country
with the world's second largest but fastest growing economy. Most
economists predict that the Chinese economy will surpass that of
(15:16):
the United States sometime in the twenty twenties. And she
has also, like Vladimir Putin, figured out how to get
rid of constraint on power. You know, five years ago,
he amended the Chinese constitution to allow him to stay
in power for a third term. Traditionally, Chinese leaders only
(15:37):
stay in power for a ten year period two to
five year terms. Jijinping started his third term as China's leader,
and he has consolidated authority in remarkable ways. We've seen
China become a somewhat destructive force in global economy, or
at least an influential force, whether that be on the
(15:57):
trade war with the United States, whether that be asserting
its rights in the South China Sea, building islands in
the middle of the ocean to be able to deploy
its power globally, or the desire to shape institutions and
exercise its veto, for example, at the United Nations. Jijinping
has also done some incredible things, brought more people out
(16:19):
of poverty than anyone in human history ever has. Because
the wealth that China has created in the last ten
twenty years is unwitnessed before in human history. China also
now has a very powerful military. I would today say
the second most powerful military in the world. After Russia
has depleted its military in the Ukraine, China is definitely
(16:41):
number two. So that's an incredible story of power. China
has also under Ji figured out how to harness technology
to have power and influence. The ability to use artificial
intelligence and facial recognition software, the ability during the coronavirus
pandemic to track people on their cell phones. China has
(17:04):
become a very scrutinized state where governmental power over individual
lives is quite remarkable. So all of that puts jesen
Ping on the list. Like Elon Musk, I think the
trend line on Jijinping today is in the downward direction,
not the upward direction. And here's why Stephen I think
(17:27):
she went too far in the closures and lockdowns after
the pandemic. He went too far because the Chinese economy
has really been in a bit of a tailspin from
years of lockdown. Chinese growth has slowed. Individuals are no
longer feeling like they have a lot of opportunity economically.
G's inevitability has been cracked. You know, for many years,
(17:49):
much of the last decade, every Chinese citizen has thought
Jijenping was the answer. And what they're starting to realize
is he may not be, and China's economy may not
be as able to continue to sustain the kind of
growth it's scene in the slowdown that we're seeing there today.
So she's on the list, But my trend line on
(18:10):
Gi is it looked better for him a few years
ago than it does today.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Okay, let's let's take another big turn to someone else.
I'm going to ask you about a twenty year old
young woman who has redefined how millions of people think
about climate change.
Speaker 1 (18:28):
I'm guessing, Stephen, you're talking about Gretit Thunberg. Many of
our listeners may have heard of her, some might not have.
She is a twenty year old climate activist from Sweden
who some six years ago was frustrated by climate change,
frustrated by the unwillingness of governments and institutions and power
to do anything about it. So she painted a little
(18:51):
sign on a piece of cardboard that said school strike
for Climate in Swedish school strike, and she sat in
front of her school and didn't go to class. Greta
does not have a tank. Greta does not have a gun.
Greta does not have much of a nickel to her name.
Greta would not appear powerful by most of our traditional measures.
(19:15):
But Greta, I think, really has reshaped how the public
is thinking about and engaging on the biggest threat the
world faces today, and that's climate change. And before you
knew it, the one point eight billion people in this
world who are under the age of eighteen were with Greta,
(19:37):
with strikes of their own in Berlin, in Paris, and
Akragana in Pretoria, South Africa, in Washington, d C. In
parts of Asia. But you know, Stephen, the thing to
me that was most remarkable is I've met with Greta
a few times. I've seen her marching in Madrid, Spain
during a climate conference with young people from around the
(19:58):
world following her. But I also watched one year when
she was with us in Davos at the Big Davos Conference.
A few years before the pandemic, and she started one
of her strikes, a march down bon Hofstrasse and Davos, Switzerland.
And at first it was just Greta, and within a
few blocks Greta was leading a march of some of
(20:18):
the world's biggest capitalists and the world's most powerful political
leaders who couldn't resist her call to act on climate
And if you can reshape political debate, if you can
get governments to act, if you can have the soft
power to influence one point eight billion young people, you
ought to be on our list. And so Greta is
(20:41):
on mine.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
The last spot on the list is actually two people
Bill tell us about the Google.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
Boys, Sergei Brinn and Larry Page. Yeah. So the Google
Boys have been on my list for a long time
because they invented a version of soft power that none
of us had ever really even thought of beforehand, and
today has redefined soft power. And that is the power
(21:08):
of Google. You know how many of our listeners today
have googled something. Maybe they had a product they thought
of buying, or wanted a restaurant review, or even to
find this podcast, and Google sent them there. Well, what
the Google Boys invented in their algorithm and built in
their company, and admittedly their company is one of the
(21:29):
biggest richest companies in the world. But what they invented
was the ability to shape the agenda, to set our preferences,
to determine what we want, and they did so in
a way that makes them money. You know, I talked
about soft power earlier as an ability to shape the agenda,
and usually that means somebody like Oprah tells us this
(21:51):
is a great book, go buy it, and we say, oh,
if Oprah likes the book, maybe we should go buy
it too, and so we go and buy it. But
what the Google boys did is figured out how to
do that on a scale never before seen. Because anytime
we want something or have a question about something, we
turned to Google and Google answers it. But when Google
answers that question, it shapes our preferences. I'm not sure
(22:12):
where I want to go to dinner tonight. I go
to Google. I put in good restaurants in Philadelphia and
they give me three to choose from. They shaped my preferences,
and each of those restaurants probably paid them to do so.
That's brilliant. It's made them very, very rich, but it's
also about soft power. Google decided to start trying to
(22:34):
deploy the Internet in places that previously it had been
restricted or technologically impossible. They launched these special hot air
balloons into the stratosphere and they beam the Internet down
so that they could overcome government censorship and that they
could get the Internet to places it had never been before. This, again,
(22:55):
is the story of breaking down restraints on you. Ultimately
in ways, I think what Google is trying to do
is put a little Google Search engine in each of
our brains. They've shaped our preferences, They've told us what
we want, they have set the global agenda.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Final question, then, is there anyone you have a hunch
just might make the list a couple of years from
now that really you're pulling out of nowhere and is
going to surprise us.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
So, hey, if I had a name, maybe I'd put
them on the list presciently, But I have some places
that I'm looking. India is soon to be the world's
most populous country, and I don't think it's Mody, the
President of India that makes the list. Maybe it's one
of the Indian business people, but it's whoever figures out
how to deploy the one point six billion people that
(23:45):
India is soon going to have, and so I'd be
keeping my eye on India as a piece of the world.
I think whoever figures out what comes next in China,
what comes next after Jijinping, is going to be on
our list because of the power of China. So that's
a place I would look. There's some technologies. Whoever figures
(24:06):
out how to actually solve energy transition, whether that means
you know, nuclear fission, whether that means you know, some
new way of capturing and deploying renewable energy. Energy is
the biggest unknown in terms of where human existence is gonna,
you know, get its power from. And whoever figures that
(24:28):
out I think makes my list as well.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Bill, thank you again. Every year this lecture changes and
just gets more and more fascinating. So thanks again for
coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Thanks for joining us here at One Day University. Sign
up on our website one dayu dot com to become
a member and access over seven hundred full length video
lectures from the world's finest professors. You can also download
our app there. You can learn more about today's episode
and watch University of Pennsylvania Professor William Burt White's lecture
(25:06):
on the Most Powerful People in the World, as well
as his talks on shifting world policy, US foreign policy,
and more. Join us next time when we take a
journey into the human brain.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
I think it's much more helpful to understand the memory
system as a system that really evolved more to help
us figure out how to problem solve in the future
than it did to accurately reflect the past. When it
gets into the real world memories of people's pasts, they're
not at all accurate.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
One Day University is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
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