Geopolitics, Predictions, and Data Reading List

During a sabbatical in early 2022, I spent time on geopolitics, forecasting, and how data can play a role in that. It also allowed me to continue to think about data-driven questions and the science of forecasting, while stepping away from financial markets for a bit. 

Ahead of sharing my own conclusions, here is a sample of books I found worth reading more than once:

1. The Next 100 Years, George Friedman. An ambitious attempt to predict the next 100 years of geopolitical events from a 2009 standpoint. Highlights of the prediction include the irrelevance of China, the fall of Russia, the raise of a Polish block as a counterbalance to traditional EU powers, and the eventual adversarial positions of Mexico, Turkey, and Japan against the United States. 

2. How Asia Works, Joe Studwell. A developmental economics theory of how Asia became relatively rich in the 20th century, with good use of data. This was the best explanation of the growth of Japan and China (and lack of success of adjacent countries such as Malaysia). 

3. Superforecasters, Philip Tetlock. An approachable meta-analysis of what leads to good forecasts. Read in combination with Friedman’s book, consider if Friedman’s predictions are proving correct and his approach. Expert Political Judgment, by the same author, is a deeper but less approachable analysis. It was interesting comparing Tetlock’s finding against what I saw at hedge funds.

4. Putin, Philip Short. Reminiscent of Ezra Vogel’s biography of Deng Xiaopeng¹, this is the most comprehensive summary I read of Putin and the situation in Russia. 

5. The Power of Geography, Tim Marshall. A very timely (as of 2022) country by country analysis of current geopolitical struggles across the world, with a particular focus on natural resources and geographical considerations. 

1. Deng Xiaopeng and the Transformation of China