I have, for a long time, enjoyed Professor Galloway’s perspective. Always a good blend of humor, data and salient points to remember. I would love to see some articles in the future that are not so tied to Trump. Articles from years past, like the one on choosing a college (certificate, education, and experience) were so enjoyable. Hoping future writings can get away from the drama and obsession with the current administration. Articles on this administration, the flaws and peculiarities are a dime a dozen and not that edifying. I look forward to future creativity.
I grew up under apartheid in South Africa and emigrated to Canada in 1978. So when I watch what is happening in the United States right now, I am not watching abstract political drama. I am watching something I have seen before.
The same normalization of brutality. The same silencing of dissent--arrests, smears, terminations for anyone who speaks against the administration. The same machinery of fear dressed up as strength. South Africa did all of this, and the world looked away for decades.
I hear your fatigue, Leif. But Scott isn't writing about Trump because he's obsessed. He's writing because someone has to keep prodding. The No Kings protests drew perhaps 8 million Americans. Out of 133 million voters, that is not a number that forces anyone's hand.
The people who threw the tea into Boston Harbour had something that seems to be in short supply right now. I keep looking south, trying to identify what it was.
I wrote a novel about the parallel between apartheid South Africa and contemporary America. It's called 'The Kingdom of America,' to be published July 4th, 2026. Not because I want to sell books, but because the only thing I felt I could do with this horror was write it down.
Wouldn't we all? I'm glad Scott is looping in the guy that's responsible for so much of this shitshow. A lot of Americans are trying their best to look away. Eff em, they're are a lot of people being harmed.
At this time in history when we face challenges never before seen by humanity, I half agree but at the same time the trump ingredient is one of its major ingredients, thus I welcome his focus on trump, his greedy family, his gang of political thieves and his widening bed of placating plutocrats.
I welcome the focus on our current slide into corruption and dysfunction. But I I'm tired of reading about Trump's transgressions. I want to read about a proactive response. We desperately need leadership and bold ideas from patriotic Maga opponents. Scott has put some good ideas on the table. I want to hear more about national service, term limits, aggressive changes to the supreme Court. I want to hear how the Dems can steal the immigration narrative and run with it. How we can upgrade our military with high-tech drone technology. Etc etc. I listen to a lot of podcasts from smart people like Scott and everyday I ask who's really bending the conversation towards action and agency. Scott is better than most but we need more.
Hardly a liberal, I at the tender age of 18, switched to GOP in 1980 to vote for Reagan-Bush - ended up breaking my mother's heart. No longer view myself as a Republican given the cult this party has become. Only those who don't see the reality of all Trump brings if only the blatant corruption & insanity we witness daily, are suffering from a derangement syndrome.
Well there’s the sewers. It was but nasty around here before those.
Revolutionary:
Ok yes the sewers.
Others:
And the roads. And then there’s the fresh water.
Revolutionary:
Ok yes, the water, the roads, the sewers.
But what have the Romans ever done for us!
Nothing!
All; Nothing!
What have the Democrats ever done for us?
The weekend, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, voting rights, the infrastructure act, the chips act, rational governance. The list could go on.
What has been blocked by Republicans? Comprehensive immigration reform, deficit reduction, more fair taxes, this list could go on.
Republicans view Orbáns corrupt kleptocracy and Putin’s oligarchy dictatorship as aspirational. Jim Crow is their desire across the nation.
Whether you're left, right, or somewhere in between, one thing is clear: we've spent 30+ years watching bloated, ineffective politicians grow government, explode deficits, and squeeze the productive middle class while delivering increasingly mediocre results.
And while Scott Galloway loves to focus on Trump, he seems remarkably blind to decades of institutional failure. That's easy to do when you're worth well over $100 million. For those of us actually paying the bills, California has become a masterclass in how not to govern: soaring budgets, endless bureaucracy, crumbling infrastructure, and taxpayers constantly asked for more.
Taiwan is one of the most important geopolitical stories of our generation. Watch it. The stakes are far bigger than partisan talking points.
The comments reveal a decent number of Trumpies or at least Trumpy bots reading this newsletter. I guess that's a good thing. Diversifying their analysis diet can only help point them toward the light.
It is human nature to attribute our own moral qualities to others. Trump, utterly amoral and soulless, has benefited from this trait for his entire life.
Trump will sell out Taiwan. It's just a matter of price. As Scott points out, China may take possession of Taiwan without firing a shot.
China now controls 90% of the world's rare earth mineral refining capacity. Taiwan controls 90% of AI chip production capacity. When China controls both, they will have a strangle hold on future technology. And what are we doing about that? Not much. Trump would rather stuff his pockets than develop domestic capacity to refine rare earths and produce AI chips.
The rare earth chokehold assumes those inputs stay irreplaceable. Physicists just got https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-common-crystal, because the crystal structure was doing the work all along. A 90% grip on a scarce resource mostly funds the hunt for a common one that does the same job.
The challenge for rare earths was never the difficulty in finding it, or technology / knowhow to mine and process them. This is century old technology.
The challenge is how little is actually needed and how cheap China could do it with the environmental issues. Global rare earth mining is only $4 billion & processing $5 billon annually, is tiny industry - yet hiring lots of people & investments.
So while many companies want to high tech, rare earths are like salt in restaurants. So no one really wants to do it because the profit margins are really really very low.
Hey Doc, you're the professor here. How 'bout a relative analysis of what Trump and family have done, along with Nancy Pelosi, and the Biden Family. Toss in the outrageously large fraud going in Minnesota, Ohio, California. Are you afraid that your constituents don't want you to write about "Learing" Centers and all of that fraud because of what that money funded. I suggest you stop picking sides, analyze objectively.
Scott usually has at least some sense of balance, but Scott keeps going off the rails with more TDS garbage. Quoting Chinese newspapers? Really? As if China’s media isn’t state run. I really wish he would just focus more on fixing higher education instead of the political indoctrination for liberalism that we have today.
Just scary how a single person — the president of what’s supposed to be one of the strongest nations on earth — can lead all of us to the edge and make the world look straight into the abyss. That’s exactly how it feels right now. I really hope the American people come to their senses, and that next time we see some return to normality. I’m not a religious guy, but honestly… help us, God.
Sorry, but got to really understand the China-Taiwan relationship, where China sees Taiwan as the "rebellious child" that's elder son or by wife & not concubines, if taking from Chinese culture. China & Taiwan has very intimate relations, like USA-Canada or Australia-New Zealand. Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese work on mainland, and mainland Chinese on Taiwan, with many cross-straits marriage. Taiwanese Foxconn that builds Apple products, like many Taiwanese firms, hires thousands on the mainland. There are 500 weekly round trips between Taiwan & China. In fact some Taiwan islands get their fresh water from the mainland. Taiwan's Palace museum holds the top Chinese imperial treasures hidden from the Japs during WWII.
And few week ago Taiwan's KMT Chairwoman even met with Xi in Beijing. The relationship is very complex and no one serious thinks China will invade Taiwan militarily, not even Taiwan since they cannot invest more in military, money and time.
On TSMC, is that really that critical? We are already building similar in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Germany and of course in America too. And if the TSMC factories in Taiwan are destroyed, there is very little impact to world's economy, maybe going back to older models of some electronics, iPhones. Set back 12-18 months at most.
From the outside looking in, it seems dumb to just blame Trump. This train has been heading down this track for decades - with blame all around. More like Chris Hedges describes: this latest dude is just a symptom of the long-standing systemic rot.....like it's somehow more acceptable that Nancy Pelosi made hundreds of millions on some kind of "softer" insider training? Obama, Biden, Reagan, Bush one and two....all marching to the MIC and continuing to screw the people.
I can't help but think a revolution fixes things. Hopefully a bloodless one.
My intuition was that trump had certainly made a deal to look the other way on Taiwan. It just seemed obvious - with no specific knowledge on my part - except repetitive observation shows trump will always do what he thinks will pay him best in a transaction, consequences be damned. I’m glad you wrote about it because I saw nothing about it in general news, and it seems important. China doesn’t want to kill the golden goose in Taiwan. They will move slowly and would rather ooze in, make a deal, rather than lose the business/materials/structures that produce the golden eggs. They don’t want to risk setting off self destruct mechanisms, or the inevitable broad destruction of war. But they will keep the pressure up for a deal. Taiwan looks at the devolution of Hong Kong and thinks - no way. So I wonder if the outcome might someday be an autonomous country/state of Taiwan - more like Mongolia.
Taiwan would be clever if it adopted a Themopalaye strategy. Consider what happens to the global economy if they "auto-destruct" the industries they dominate? Tell the world that an invasion would result in the utter destruction of everything industrial China desires. Do you agree that the global response to China would be impossible to ignore?
Why do you keep saying they have only enriched themselves by $4 billion? Are you really so naive that you don’t know that he and his kids and the Witkoffs owned 95% of the free trading of the SPAC they merged Truth Social into (DJT) and that POS traded 55 million shares the first day between $70 and $75 a share and it traded heavily for the next week. They pocketed the majority of that. They made more than $4 billion just on that in a few days Are you not counting it because it happened before he took office?
Scott, this is a chillingly accurate diagnosis of a transactional foreign policy failure.
Framing geopolitical defense as an asset class to be traded away or "sold out" overlooks a brutal reality: Taiwan isn’t just a democratic island; it is the physical crown jewel of the global computing supply chain.
When a superpower operates purely on short-term corporate transaction metrics rather than long-term strategic integrity, it invites what you accurately call an "oozing" invasion. China doesn't need to rain missiles on Taipei and risk destroying the very semiconductor fabs it wants to control. They just need to wait for the U.S. security umbrella to flicker, tighten their economic and resource noose, and force a corporate-style takeover by exhaustion.
But there is a massive lesson here for the tech and energy sectors:
The "Onshoring" Pipe Dream is Too Slow: Relying on a 5-to-10-year timeline to replicate advanced chip fabs in Arizona or Europe leaves a massive vulnerability gap right now.
Physical Security is Infrastructure Security: You cannot separate sovereign independence from physical data, energy, and supply chain control. The moment a nation relies on an adversary for its core technology substrate, the "sellout" has already occurred—the rest is just negotiating the price.
If the West treats alliance commitments as line items to be cut during a market correction, China will gladly assume the lease. The "Art of the Sellout" always ends with the seller realizes they traded their permanent sovereignty for temporary liquidity.
The meme coin angle is what keeps nagging at me. Not because it's corrupt. Corruption has always been baked into the operating system. Because it's so cheap.
A few hundred million in token purchases to neutralise a superpower's Taiwan commitment. That's not bribery. That's a clearance sale on imperial credibility.
The old version of this took decades of diplomatic leverage and military positioning. Now it fits in a wallet address.
Your line about auctioning off the gates is dead on, but I think it undersells it. An auction implies competitive bidding. This looks more like a liquidation.
The article “Art of the Sellout” mistakes cynicism for sophistication and speculation for insight. Beneath the polished prose, theatrical outrage, and carefully curated indignation lies something far less impressive: a deeply speculative political rant masquerading as geopolitical analysis.
Scott Galloway writes with the confidence of a man unveiling classified intelligence when, in reality, much of the essay amounts to an Ivy League version of “trust me, bro.”
Its central thesis is painfully simplistic:
Trump is corrupt.
China is strategic.
America is collapsing.
Taiwan is doomed.
Cue dramatic music and ominous cello music for the Netflix adaptation.
That may play well in Manhattan wine bars, Davos cocktail circles, and university faculty lounges where sarcasm is mistaken for wisdom, but serious geopolitical analysis requires more than emotional projection wrapped in clever phrasing.
Let’s begin with the essay’s biggest flaw: speculation presented as fact.
Galloway essentially accuses a sitting president of informally trading Taiwan for personal enrichment while providing exactly zero direct evidence of such an arrangement. Instead, he strings together unrelated events, sprinkles in insinuation, adds a layer of rhetorical smugness, and allows readers to emotionally connect dots he never actually proves exist.
“I believe Xi made a deal with Trump” is not analysis.
It is conjecture wearing cufflinks.
This is the modern pundit formula:
imply corruption,
repeat implication confidently,
surround it with emotional certainty,
let politically primed readers fill in the blanks themselves.
By that standard, half of social media deserves a Pulitzer Prize.
And while Galloway portrays Trump as some naive casino operator wandering through geopolitics with a cheeseburger in one hand and a meme coin in the other, he simultaneously frames China as an almost mystical civilization of patient grandmasters silently executing a flawless 5,000-year chess strategy.
The imbalance is glaring.
China is not a gentle philosopher-state practicing “soft invasion” through tea ceremonies, trade seminars, and economic acupuncture. The Chinese Communist Party is conducting one of the largest military expansions on Earth:
rapidly expanding its blue-water navy,
building hypersonic missile systems,
militarizing the South China Sea,
constructing artificial island fortresses,
rehearsing blockade scenarios around Taiwan,
conducting near-daily military air incursions,
increasing cyberwarfare operations,
and deploying maritime militia fleets disguised as civilian fishing vessels for surveillance and strategic positioning.
That is not “soft power.”
That is coercive hard power wearing loafers.
Calling China’s posture toward Taiwan “soft” is like calling a python “hug-oriented.”
Taiwan is not being absorbed through vibes, TED Talks, and trade agreements. It is being surrounded — militarily, economically, digitally, psychologically, and strategically.
And the timing matters.
The essay conveniently ignores that China studies every modern conflict as a live military laboratory:
Ukraine,
Gaza,
Iran,
Red Sea shipping disruptions,
drone warfare,
cyberattacks,
missile defense systems,
infrastructure sabotage,
supply chain vulnerabilities.
Beijing watches all of it.
The Iran conflict especially demonstrates how modern powers test military assumptions indirectly. Every intercepted missile, every drone swarm, every naval deployment, every cyber intrusion becomes strategic data collection. Proxy wars are no longer isolated regional conflicts; they are beta tests for future global confrontation.
To pretend Beijing has become hesitant about military pressure because invasion is “expensive” fundamentally misunderstands modern warfare. China understands something many Western commentators do not: conflict begins long before the first amphibious landing craft touches a beach.
Economic dependency is warfare.
Cyber penetration is warfare.
Infrastructure leverage is warfare.
Disinformation is warfare.
Maritime intimidation is warfare.
Sun Tzu would recognize this immediately.
Apparently Scott Galloway would not.
Then there is the essay’s emotional architecture — and this is where it stops being analysis altogether and becomes performance art.
Nearly every paragraph drips with theatrical outrage:
“superpower suicide,”
“auctioning off the gates,”
“sellout,”
“shame on Trump.”
At some point, analysis stops and therapy begins.
The piece reads less like a strategic briefing and more like a man doom-scrolling cable news at 1:30 in the morning while rage-texting democracy from a leather chair in Manhattan.
Galloway is not calmly evaluating geopolitical realities. He is emotionally processing political disgust. That distinction matters because once emotion becomes the engine of analysis, facts stop being examined and start being recruited.
Trump, in his framing, is not merely flawed — he is portrayed as intellectually unserious, strategically incapable, uniquely corruptible, and hopelessly naive.
Yet history is inconvenient for that narrative.
Trump is not Bill Clinton — and that may precisely be the point.
Clinton represented the polished post-Cold War consensus era that believed globalization and diplomacy alone would permanently civilize geopolitics. This was the same era that produced failed peace frameworks with Yasser Arafat, growing Western dependence on Chinese manufacturing, NATO ambiguity, and the fantasy that economic integration would magically neutralize authoritarian ambition.
Trump’s approach is the opposite:
blunt,
transactional,
disruptive,
often inelegant,
but not necessarily ineffective.
Critics mock his style because he negotiates like a developer from Queens instead of a graduate seminar moderator from Columbia University. Yet under Trump, the Abraham Accords achieved what decades of polished diplomatic choreography failed to produce:
United Arab Emirates normalized relations with Israel,
Bahrain followed,
then Morocco,
and Sudan.
For decades, “experts” insisted this could not happen without first solving the Palestinian issue comprehensively. Trump bulldozed that assumption.
Turns out countries sometimes prioritize economics, security, technology, intelligence sharing, and survival over academic talking points and diplomatic interpretive dance.
Imagine that.
And finally, Galloway lectures America about defending the global order while barely acknowledging Europe’s own strategic contradictions. Europe depends heavily on Middle Eastern energy flows while routinely expecting the United States to underwrite global naval security, intelligence infrastructure, deterrence posture, and regional stabilization.
When tensions rise in the Middle East, Washington mobilizes carrier strike groups while European leaders organize emergency summits to discuss strongly worded concern over espresso and carbon neutrality targets.
If Europe’s energy security is existential, where exactly is Europe’s proportional strategic commitment?
That question rarely appears in essays like this because it disrupts the preferred morality play:
America bad.
Trump worse.
China clever.
Europe enlightened.
Reality is uglier and far more complicated.
China is not soft.
Trump is not simplistic.
Taiwan is not symbolic.
Europe is not innocent.
And geopolitics is not a Marvel movie where every villain conveniently announces himself in the first act.
The greatest weakness of essays like “Art of the Sellout” is not that they criticize Trump. Criticism is healthy in a democracy.
The real weakness is that they confuse contempt with clarity.
And ideology — unlike strategy — rarely survives first contact with reality.
I have, for a long time, enjoyed Professor Galloway’s perspective. Always a good blend of humor, data and salient points to remember. I would love to see some articles in the future that are not so tied to Trump. Articles from years past, like the one on choosing a college (certificate, education, and experience) were so enjoyable. Hoping future writings can get away from the drama and obsession with the current administration. Articles on this administration, the flaws and peculiarities are a dime a dozen and not that edifying. I look forward to future creativity.
I grew up under apartheid in South Africa and emigrated to Canada in 1978. So when I watch what is happening in the United States right now, I am not watching abstract political drama. I am watching something I have seen before.
The same normalization of brutality. The same silencing of dissent--arrests, smears, terminations for anyone who speaks against the administration. The same machinery of fear dressed up as strength. South Africa did all of this, and the world looked away for decades.
I hear your fatigue, Leif. But Scott isn't writing about Trump because he's obsessed. He's writing because someone has to keep prodding. The No Kings protests drew perhaps 8 million Americans. Out of 133 million voters, that is not a number that forces anyone's hand.
The people who threw the tea into Boston Harbour had something that seems to be in short supply right now. I keep looking south, trying to identify what it was.
I wrote a novel about the parallel between apartheid South Africa and contemporary America. It's called 'The Kingdom of America,' to be published July 4th, 2026. Not because I want to sell books, but because the only thing I felt I could do with this horror was write it down.
thekingdomofamerica.com
Wouldn't we all? I'm glad Scott is looping in the guy that's responsible for so much of this shitshow. A lot of Americans are trying their best to look away. Eff em, they're are a lot of people being harmed.
At this time in history when we face challenges never before seen by humanity, I half agree but at the same time the trump ingredient is one of its major ingredients, thus I welcome his focus on trump, his greedy family, his gang of political thieves and his widening bed of placating plutocrats.
The Clarity Ledger
I welcome the focus on our current slide into corruption and dysfunction. But I I'm tired of reading about Trump's transgressions. I want to read about a proactive response. We desperately need leadership and bold ideas from patriotic Maga opponents. Scott has put some good ideas on the table. I want to hear more about national service, term limits, aggressive changes to the supreme Court. I want to hear how the Dems can steal the immigration narrative and run with it. How we can upgrade our military with high-tech drone technology. Etc etc. I listen to a lot of podcasts from smart people like Scott and everyday I ask who's really bending the conversation towards action and agency. Scott is better than most but we need more.
Unfortunately, modern liberals have no political identity outside of hating Trump.
Hardly a liberal, I at the tender age of 18, switched to GOP in 1980 to vote for Reagan-Bush - ended up breaking my mother's heart. No longer view myself as a Republican given the cult this party has become. Only those who don't see the reality of all Trump brings if only the blatant corruption & insanity we witness daily, are suffering from a derangement syndrome.
I love the Monty Python skit about the Romans.
Revolutionary leader:
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Other:
Well there’s the sewers. It was but nasty around here before those.
Revolutionary:
Ok yes the sewers.
Others:
And the roads. And then there’s the fresh water.
Revolutionary:
Ok yes, the water, the roads, the sewers.
But what have the Romans ever done for us!
Nothing!
All; Nothing!
What have the Democrats ever done for us?
The weekend, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, voting rights, the infrastructure act, the chips act, rational governance. The list could go on.
What has been blocked by Republicans? Comprehensive immigration reform, deficit reduction, more fair taxes, this list could go on.
Republicans view Orbáns corrupt kleptocracy and Putin’s oligarchy dictatorship as aspirational. Jim Crow is their desire across the nation.
Sad.
Everyone should watch this documentary on Taiwan.
Whether you're left, right, or somewhere in between, one thing is clear: we've spent 30+ years watching bloated, ineffective politicians grow government, explode deficits, and squeeze the productive middle class while delivering increasingly mediocre results.
And while Scott Galloway loves to focus on Trump, he seems remarkably blind to decades of institutional failure. That's easy to do when you're worth well over $100 million. For those of us actually paying the bills, California has become a masterclass in how not to govern: soaring budgets, endless bureaucracy, crumbling infrastructure, and taxpayers constantly asked for more.
Taiwan is one of the most important geopolitical stories of our generation. Watch it. The stakes are far bigger than partisan talking points.
https://www.pbs.org/video/invisible-nation-extended-cut-62kcrv/
The comments reveal a decent number of Trumpies or at least Trumpy bots reading this newsletter. I guess that's a good thing. Diversifying their analysis diet can only help point them toward the light.
It is human nature to attribute our own moral qualities to others. Trump, utterly amoral and soulless, has benefited from this trait for his entire life.
Trump will sell out Taiwan. It's just a matter of price. As Scott points out, China may take possession of Taiwan without firing a shot.
China now controls 90% of the world's rare earth mineral refining capacity. Taiwan controls 90% of AI chip production capacity. When China controls both, they will have a strangle hold on future technology. And what are we doing about that? Not much. Trump would rather stuff his pockets than develop domestic capacity to refine rare earths and produce AI chips.
The rare earth chokehold assumes those inputs stay irreplaceable. Physicists just got https://thesynthesisai.substack.com/p/the-common-crystal, because the crystal structure was doing the work all along. A 90% grip on a scarce resource mostly funds the hunt for a common one that does the same job.
The challenge for rare earths was never the difficulty in finding it, or technology / knowhow to mine and process them. This is century old technology.
The challenge is how little is actually needed and how cheap China could do it with the environmental issues. Global rare earth mining is only $4 billion & processing $5 billon annually, is tiny industry - yet hiring lots of people & investments.
So while many companies want to high tech, rare earths are like salt in restaurants. So no one really wants to do it because the profit margins are really really very low.
Hey Doc, you're the professor here. How 'bout a relative analysis of what Trump and family have done, along with Nancy Pelosi, and the Biden Family. Toss in the outrageously large fraud going in Minnesota, Ohio, California. Are you afraid that your constituents don't want you to write about "Learing" Centers and all of that fraud because of what that money funded. I suggest you stop picking sides, analyze objectively.
Great comment, MAGA choad
Scott usually has at least some sense of balance, but Scott keeps going off the rails with more TDS garbage. Quoting Chinese newspapers? Really? As if China’s media isn’t state run. I really wish he would just focus more on fixing higher education instead of the political indoctrination for liberalism that we have today.
Go find something else to read, MAGA boy
Just scary how a single person — the president of what’s supposed to be one of the strongest nations on earth — can lead all of us to the edge and make the world look straight into the abyss. That’s exactly how it feels right now. I really hope the American people come to their senses, and that next time we see some return to normality. I’m not a religious guy, but honestly… help us, God.
Sorry, but got to really understand the China-Taiwan relationship, where China sees Taiwan as the "rebellious child" that's elder son or by wife & not concubines, if taking from Chinese culture. China & Taiwan has very intimate relations, like USA-Canada or Australia-New Zealand. Hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese work on mainland, and mainland Chinese on Taiwan, with many cross-straits marriage. Taiwanese Foxconn that builds Apple products, like many Taiwanese firms, hires thousands on the mainland. There are 500 weekly round trips between Taiwan & China. In fact some Taiwan islands get their fresh water from the mainland. Taiwan's Palace museum holds the top Chinese imperial treasures hidden from the Japs during WWII.
And few week ago Taiwan's KMT Chairwoman even met with Xi in Beijing. The relationship is very complex and no one serious thinks China will invade Taiwan militarily, not even Taiwan since they cannot invest more in military, money and time.
On TSMC, is that really that critical? We are already building similar in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Germany and of course in America too. And if the TSMC factories in Taiwan are destroyed, there is very little impact to world's economy, maybe going back to older models of some electronics, iPhones. Set back 12-18 months at most.
From the outside looking in, it seems dumb to just blame Trump. This train has been heading down this track for decades - with blame all around. More like Chris Hedges describes: this latest dude is just a symptom of the long-standing systemic rot.....like it's somehow more acceptable that Nancy Pelosi made hundreds of millions on some kind of "softer" insider training? Obama, Biden, Reagan, Bush one and two....all marching to the MIC and continuing to screw the people.
I can't help but think a revolution fixes things. Hopefully a bloodless one.
My intuition was that trump had certainly made a deal to look the other way on Taiwan. It just seemed obvious - with no specific knowledge on my part - except repetitive observation shows trump will always do what he thinks will pay him best in a transaction, consequences be damned. I’m glad you wrote about it because I saw nothing about it in general news, and it seems important. China doesn’t want to kill the golden goose in Taiwan. They will move slowly and would rather ooze in, make a deal, rather than lose the business/materials/structures that produce the golden eggs. They don’t want to risk setting off self destruct mechanisms, or the inevitable broad destruction of war. But they will keep the pressure up for a deal. Taiwan looks at the devolution of Hong Kong and thinks - no way. So I wonder if the outcome might someday be an autonomous country/state of Taiwan - more like Mongolia.
Taiwan would be clever if it adopted a Themopalaye strategy. Consider what happens to the global economy if they "auto-destruct" the industries they dominate? Tell the world that an invasion would result in the utter destruction of everything industrial China desires. Do you agree that the global response to China would be impossible to ignore?
It'd certainly be entertaining to watch...
So well written. Thank you.
Why do you keep saying they have only enriched themselves by $4 billion? Are you really so naive that you don’t know that he and his kids and the Witkoffs owned 95% of the free trading of the SPAC they merged Truth Social into (DJT) and that POS traded 55 million shares the first day between $70 and $75 a share and it traded heavily for the next week. They pocketed the majority of that. They made more than $4 billion just on that in a few days Are you not counting it because it happened before he took office?
Scott, this is a chillingly accurate diagnosis of a transactional foreign policy failure.
Framing geopolitical defense as an asset class to be traded away or "sold out" overlooks a brutal reality: Taiwan isn’t just a democratic island; it is the physical crown jewel of the global computing supply chain.
When a superpower operates purely on short-term corporate transaction metrics rather than long-term strategic integrity, it invites what you accurately call an "oozing" invasion. China doesn't need to rain missiles on Taipei and risk destroying the very semiconductor fabs it wants to control. They just need to wait for the U.S. security umbrella to flicker, tighten their economic and resource noose, and force a corporate-style takeover by exhaustion.
But there is a massive lesson here for the tech and energy sectors:
The "Onshoring" Pipe Dream is Too Slow: Relying on a 5-to-10-year timeline to replicate advanced chip fabs in Arizona or Europe leaves a massive vulnerability gap right now.
Physical Security is Infrastructure Security: You cannot separate sovereign independence from physical data, energy, and supply chain control. The moment a nation relies on an adversary for its core technology substrate, the "sellout" has already occurred—the rest is just negotiating the price.
If the West treats alliance commitments as line items to be cut during a market correction, China will gladly assume the lease. The "Art of the Sellout" always ends with the seller realizes they traded their permanent sovereignty for temporary liquidity.
Excellent, necessary wake-up call.
The meme coin angle is what keeps nagging at me. Not because it's corrupt. Corruption has always been baked into the operating system. Because it's so cheap.
A few hundred million in token purchases to neutralise a superpower's Taiwan commitment. That's not bribery. That's a clearance sale on imperial credibility.
The old version of this took decades of diplomatic leverage and military positioning. Now it fits in a wallet address.
Your line about auctioning off the gates is dead on, but I think it undersells it. An auction implies competitive bidding. This looks more like a liquidation.
The article “Art of the Sellout” mistakes cynicism for sophistication and speculation for insight. Beneath the polished prose, theatrical outrage, and carefully curated indignation lies something far less impressive: a deeply speculative political rant masquerading as geopolitical analysis.
Scott Galloway writes with the confidence of a man unveiling classified intelligence when, in reality, much of the essay amounts to an Ivy League version of “trust me, bro.”
Its central thesis is painfully simplistic:
Trump is corrupt.
China is strategic.
America is collapsing.
Taiwan is doomed.
Cue dramatic music and ominous cello music for the Netflix adaptation.
That may play well in Manhattan wine bars, Davos cocktail circles, and university faculty lounges where sarcasm is mistaken for wisdom, but serious geopolitical analysis requires more than emotional projection wrapped in clever phrasing.
Let’s begin with the essay’s biggest flaw: speculation presented as fact.
Galloway essentially accuses a sitting president of informally trading Taiwan for personal enrichment while providing exactly zero direct evidence of such an arrangement. Instead, he strings together unrelated events, sprinkles in insinuation, adds a layer of rhetorical smugness, and allows readers to emotionally connect dots he never actually proves exist.
“I believe Xi made a deal with Trump” is not analysis.
It is conjecture wearing cufflinks.
This is the modern pundit formula:
imply corruption,
repeat implication confidently,
surround it with emotional certainty,
let politically primed readers fill in the blanks themselves.
By that standard, half of social media deserves a Pulitzer Prize.
And while Galloway portrays Trump as some naive casino operator wandering through geopolitics with a cheeseburger in one hand and a meme coin in the other, he simultaneously frames China as an almost mystical civilization of patient grandmasters silently executing a flawless 5,000-year chess strategy.
The imbalance is glaring.
China is not a gentle philosopher-state practicing “soft invasion” through tea ceremonies, trade seminars, and economic acupuncture. The Chinese Communist Party is conducting one of the largest military expansions on Earth:
rapidly expanding its blue-water navy,
building hypersonic missile systems,
militarizing the South China Sea,
constructing artificial island fortresses,
rehearsing blockade scenarios around Taiwan,
conducting near-daily military air incursions,
increasing cyberwarfare operations,
and deploying maritime militia fleets disguised as civilian fishing vessels for surveillance and strategic positioning.
That is not “soft power.”
That is coercive hard power wearing loafers.
Calling China’s posture toward Taiwan “soft” is like calling a python “hug-oriented.”
Taiwan is not being absorbed through vibes, TED Talks, and trade agreements. It is being surrounded — militarily, economically, digitally, psychologically, and strategically.
And the timing matters.
The essay conveniently ignores that China studies every modern conflict as a live military laboratory:
Ukraine,
Gaza,
Iran,
Red Sea shipping disruptions,
drone warfare,
cyberattacks,
missile defense systems,
infrastructure sabotage,
supply chain vulnerabilities.
Beijing watches all of it.
The Iran conflict especially demonstrates how modern powers test military assumptions indirectly. Every intercepted missile, every drone swarm, every naval deployment, every cyber intrusion becomes strategic data collection. Proxy wars are no longer isolated regional conflicts; they are beta tests for future global confrontation.
To pretend Beijing has become hesitant about military pressure because invasion is “expensive” fundamentally misunderstands modern warfare. China understands something many Western commentators do not: conflict begins long before the first amphibious landing craft touches a beach.
Economic dependency is warfare.
Cyber penetration is warfare.
Infrastructure leverage is warfare.
Disinformation is warfare.
Maritime intimidation is warfare.
Sun Tzu would recognize this immediately.
Apparently Scott Galloway would not.
Then there is the essay’s emotional architecture — and this is where it stops being analysis altogether and becomes performance art.
Nearly every paragraph drips with theatrical outrage:
“superpower suicide,”
“auctioning off the gates,”
“sellout,”
“shame on Trump.”
At some point, analysis stops and therapy begins.
The piece reads less like a strategic briefing and more like a man doom-scrolling cable news at 1:30 in the morning while rage-texting democracy from a leather chair in Manhattan.
Galloway is not calmly evaluating geopolitical realities. He is emotionally processing political disgust. That distinction matters because once emotion becomes the engine of analysis, facts stop being examined and start being recruited.
Trump, in his framing, is not merely flawed — he is portrayed as intellectually unserious, strategically incapable, uniquely corruptible, and hopelessly naive.
Yet history is inconvenient for that narrative.
Trump is not Bill Clinton — and that may precisely be the point.
Clinton represented the polished post-Cold War consensus era that believed globalization and diplomacy alone would permanently civilize geopolitics. This was the same era that produced failed peace frameworks with Yasser Arafat, growing Western dependence on Chinese manufacturing, NATO ambiguity, and the fantasy that economic integration would magically neutralize authoritarian ambition.
Trump’s approach is the opposite:
blunt,
transactional,
disruptive,
often inelegant,
but not necessarily ineffective.
Critics mock his style because he negotiates like a developer from Queens instead of a graduate seminar moderator from Columbia University. Yet under Trump, the Abraham Accords achieved what decades of polished diplomatic choreography failed to produce:
United Arab Emirates normalized relations with Israel,
Bahrain followed,
then Morocco,
and Sudan.
For decades, “experts” insisted this could not happen without first solving the Palestinian issue comprehensively. Trump bulldozed that assumption.
Turns out countries sometimes prioritize economics, security, technology, intelligence sharing, and survival over academic talking points and diplomatic interpretive dance.
Imagine that.
And finally, Galloway lectures America about defending the global order while barely acknowledging Europe’s own strategic contradictions. Europe depends heavily on Middle Eastern energy flows while routinely expecting the United States to underwrite global naval security, intelligence infrastructure, deterrence posture, and regional stabilization.
When tensions rise in the Middle East, Washington mobilizes carrier strike groups while European leaders organize emergency summits to discuss strongly worded concern over espresso and carbon neutrality targets.
If Europe’s energy security is existential, where exactly is Europe’s proportional strategic commitment?
That question rarely appears in essays like this because it disrupts the preferred morality play:
America bad.
Trump worse.
China clever.
Europe enlightened.
Reality is uglier and far more complicated.
China is not soft.
Trump is not simplistic.
Taiwan is not symbolic.
Europe is not innocent.
And geopolitics is not a Marvel movie where every villain conveniently announces himself in the first act.
The greatest weakness of essays like “Art of the Sellout” is not that they criticize Trump. Criticism is healthy in a democracy.
The real weakness is that they confuse contempt with clarity.
And ideology — unlike strategy — rarely survives first contact with reality.
One of the pods I listen to regularly
https://rudajev.substack.com/p/episode-20-turn-down-the-noise-turn