Jamie Metzl is one of the world’s leading technology and healthcare futurists and strategists. Founder and Chair of the global social movement OneShared.World, a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, a faculty member of NextMed Health, and a Singularity University expert. He appears regularly on national and international media and his syndicated columns, podcasts, and interviews on AI, science, technology, and global affairs have reached hundreds of millions of people across the globe. Jamie is the author of six books, including the newly-released Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World, the international bestseller, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, and the sci-fi thrillers Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata. His new books, The AI Ten Commandments and Virtuosa, will both be released in 2026. In 2025, Jamie was appointed as a Commissioner of The Lancet Commission on Precision Medicine, which will over the next four years develop a definitive report on the future of technology-enhanced healthcare. Jamie previously served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with the United Nations in Cambodia, and on the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing. A former partner in a global private equity firm, he sits on advisory boards for multiple biotechnology and other companies and co-established the WisdomTree BioRevolution Exchange Traded Fund (ticker: WDNA). Jamie holds a Ph.D. from Oxford, a law degree from Harvard, and an undergraduate degree from Brown and is an avid ironman triathlete and ultramarathon runner.
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Episode 454
Jamie Metzl
Trump’s National Security Strategy: A Plan to Contain China or Carve Up the World? | Jamie Metzl
Jamie Metzl is one of the world’s leading technology and healthcare futurists and strategists. Founder and Chair of the global social movement OneShared.World, a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, a faculty member of NextMed Health, and a Singularity University expert. He appears regularly on national and international media and his syndicated columns, podcasts, and interviews on AI, science, technology, and global affairs have reached hundreds of millions of people across the globe. Jamie is the author of six books, including the newly-released Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World, the international bestseller, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, and the sci-fi thrillers Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata. His new books, The AI Ten Commandments and Virtuosa, will both be released in 2026. In 2025, Jamie was appointed as a Commissioner of The Lancet Commission on Precision Medicine, which will over the next four years develop a definitive report on the future of technology-enhanced healthcare. Jamie previously served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with the United Nations in Cambodia, and on the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing. A former partner in a global private equity firm, he sits on advisory boards for multiple biotechnology and other companies and co-established the WisdomTree BioRevolution Exchange Traded Fund (ticker: WDNA). Jamie holds a Ph.D. from Oxford, a law degree from Harvard, and an undergraduate degree from Brown and is an avid ironman triathlete and ultramarathon runner.
In Episode 454 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with author, futurist, and U.S. foreign policy expert Jamie Metzl about the aims and objectives of the 2025 National Security Strategy and its implications for American prosperity and power in the 21st century.
Jamie and Demetri spend the first hour of this conversation digging into the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy and the story that the administration is trying to tell to the American people and to itself about America’s place in the world, where it went astray, and what needs to be done on a strategic planning level in order to “Make America Great Again.”
From there, Metzl and Kofinas debate whether the strategy amounts to a “containment” of China or something closer to a 19th-century balance-of-power where the largest and most powerful countries—namely the United States, Russia, and China—will be granted the freedom to operate with impunity within their own spheres of influence, dealing a final death blow to the international rules-based liberal order that the United States sought to universalize after the fall of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.
The second hour is a wide-ranging tour through what this strategy might look like in practice, from the Western Hemisphere and Venezuela to Europe and Ukraine, and what “power politics” means when so much of modern conflict is fought through influence campaigns, institutional sabotage, and cyber operations rather than through the use of conventional arms and occupations.
The two also explore the dangerous vacuum created when a superpower can no longer clearly articulate what it stands for—at home or abroad—and how that confusion can lead to a cascade of unintended consequences that further destabilize the international system, resulting in a new form of total war.
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Jamie Metzl is one of the world’s leading technology and healthcare futurists and strategists. Founder and Chair of the global social movement OneShared.World, a Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, a faculty member of NextMed Health, and a Singularity University expert. He appears regularly on national and international media and his syndicated columns, podcasts, and interviews on AI, science, technology, and global affairs have reached hundreds of millions of people across the globe. Jamie is the author of six books, including the newly-released Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, Work, and World, the international bestseller, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, and the sci-fi thrillers Genesis Code and Eternal Sonata. His new books, The AI Ten Commandments and Virtuosa, will both be released in 2026. In 2025, Jamie was appointed as a Commissioner of The Lancet Commission on Precision Medicine, which will over the next four years develop a definitive report on the future of technology-enhanced healthcare. Jamie previously served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with the United Nations in Cambodia, and on the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing. A former partner in a global private equity firm, he sits on advisory boards for multiple biotechnology and other companies and co-established the WisdomTree BioRevolution Exchange Traded Fund (ticker: WDNA). Jamie holds a Ph.D. from Oxford, a law degree from Harvard, and an undergraduate degree from Brown and is an avid ironman triathlete and ultramarathon runner.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.
Demetri Kofinas is a media entrepreneur and financial analyst whose mission is to help uncover the hidden forces and pivotal patterns shaping our lives. His contrarian perspective and critical-thinking approach has helped hundreds of thousands of people make smarter, informed decisions. This same methodology has helped guide Demetri’s decision-making as an early-stage investor and as a creator of several innovative media properties and live events.