Velina Tchakarova on China, Russia, and the Future of Geopolitics

Velina Tchakarova on China, Russia, and the Future of Geopolitics

Take our Listener Survey

You could try playing out the four-dimensional chess game of how the global order will shift in the next 10-15 years for yourself, or you could hire Velina Tchakarova. Founder of the consultancy FACE, Velina is a geopolitical strategist guiding businesses and organizations to anticipate the outcomes of global conflicts, shifting alliances, and bleeding edge technologies on the world stage.

In a globe-trotting conversation, Tyler and Velina start in the Balkans and then head to Russia, China, North Korea, and finally circle back to Putin's interest in the Baltics. She gives her take on whether the Balkan Wars still matter today, the future of Bulgarian nationalism, what predicts which Eastern European countries will remain closer to Russia, why China will not attack Taiwan, Putin's next move after Ukraine, where a nuclear weapon is most likely to be used next, how she sources intel, her unique approach to scenario-planning, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.

Recorded May 20th, 2024.

Other ways to connect

Episoder(283)

Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy

Harvey Mansfield on Machiavelli, Straussianism, and the Character of Liberal Democracy

Buy tickets for the live Conversations with Tyler recording with Craig Newmark at 92NY! Few living scholars can claim to have shaped how we read Machiavelli as decisively as Harvey Mansfield. His new ...

18 Mar 49min

Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English

Henry Oliver on Measure for Measure, Late Bloomers, and the Smartest Writers in English

Sign up for the Chicago CWT Listener Meetup. Henry Oliver is the preeminent literary critic for non-literary nerds. His Substack, The Common Reader, has thousands of subscribers drawn in by Henry's co...

4 Mar 59min

Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires

Joe Studwell on Africa, Asia, and What Development Actually Requires

When Tyler called Joe Studwell's How Asia Works "perhaps my favorite economics book of the year" back in 2013, he wasn't alone: it became one of the most influential treatments of industrial policy e...

18 Feb 53min

Andrew Ross Sorkin on Market Bubbles, Banking Rules, and the Real Lessons of 1929

Andrew Ross Sorkin on Market Bubbles, Banking Rules, and the Real Lessons of 1929

Andrew Ross Sorkin sees the crash of 1929 as a tale of excessive leverage and irrational speculation, but Tyler wonders: maybe those sky-high 1929 prices were actually justified given America's remark...

4 Feb 56min

Diarmaid MacCulloch on Christianity, Sex, and Unsettling Settled Facts

Diarmaid MacCulloch on Christianity, Sex, and Unsettling Settled Facts

Tyler considers Diarmaid MacCulloch one of those rare historians whose entire body of work rewards reading. This work includes his award-winning Cranmer biography, his sweeping histories of Christiani...

21 Jan 59min

Brendan Foody on Teaching AI and the Future of Knowledge Work

Brendan Foody on Teaching AI and the Future of Knowledge Work

At 22, Brendan Foody is both the youngest Conversations with Tyler guest ever and the youngest unicorn founder on record. His company Mercor hires the experts who train frontier AI models—from poets g...

7 Jan 1h 1min

Conversations with Tyler 2025 Retrospective

Conversations with Tyler 2025 Retrospective

Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today. On this special year-in-review episode, Tyler and producer Jeff Holmes look back on the past year on CWT and mo...

23 Des 202559min

Alison Gopnik on Childhood Learning, AI as a Cultural Technology, and Rethinking Nature vs. Nurture

Alison Gopnik on Childhood Learning, AI as a Cultural Technology, and Rethinking Nature vs. Nurture

Help us keep the conversations going in 2026. Donate to Conversations with Tyler today. Alison Gopnik is both a psychologist and philosopher at Berkeley, studying how children construct theories of t...

17 Des 20251h 1min

Populært innen Fakta

fastlegen
dine-penger-pengeradet
relasjonspodden-med-dora-thorhallsdottir-kjersti-idem
rss-strid-de-norske-borgerkrigene
foreldreradet
treningspodden
rss-sunn-okonomi
jakt-og-fiskepodden
takk-og-lov-med-anine-kierulf
sinnsyn
merry-quizmas
gravid-uke-for-uke
rss-kunsten-a-leve
rss-kull
hagespiren-podcast
hverdagspsyken
rss-var-forste-kaffe
fryktlos
rss-mann-i-krise-med-sagen
smart-forklart