Part 5/10:
Historically, the world's economic and political centers have shifted — from Eurasia's dominance for thousands of years to Europe's rise during the Industrial Revolution, and now back towards Asia since the end of the Cold War. The speaker argues that history is reversing, with power moving away from the centralized West to a more fragmented, decentralized global landscape.
He points to recent trends of disintegration within countries like the US, where political polarization has led to ideological fragmentation, and social media networks between opposing groups have become siloed. These trends mirror the conditions that historically led to the creation of new nations after empires dissolved, such as in the aftermath of the Soviet Union.