Without risking a single hair on an American soldier's head, Biden has opened a family-sized can of whoop ass on Putin.
How woke capitalism and radical transparency are winning the war against Russia.
Welcome to The Experiment, where we will never not think it’s funny that Facebook is banned in Russia because they are publishing accurate information about that country. C-suite consultant Joe Householder makes his debut here with an analysis of Kelcy Warren’s defamation lawsuit against Beto O’Rourke, Frank A. Spring is back with the latest chapter of Regulator, and I take a look at the evolution of woke capitalism into a new frontline in the defense of Ukraine. Turns out late-stage capitalism makes for a helluva weapons system.
As always, we recommend things to do (get ready for swimsuit season with Noom — I lost 40 pounds with this app in 2021 and have kept it off), read (Mark Manson on the life cycle of outrage), watch (Adam McKay’s Showtime on HBO Max), and listen to. Folks, there is more good new music this week than I can remember including in a long time, and choosing one is hard, so let me play favorites and pick “Texas” by Fat Tony because I know him.
But first, you know what they say about war, right?
No, not what is it good for, nothing, huh, say it again. The saying I’m thinking of is the one that generals fight the last war, which is doubly true for armchair generals tweeting about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia thinks it’s fighting Nazis by invading a country with a Jewish president. Ukraine thinks it’s fighting the Infinity War and the allies should all show up like the Avengers and defeat Putin with a phalanx of determined jawlines. Amateur national security enthusiasts think we should declare a No-fly Zone like it means putting Vladimir Putin in time out so he can really think about what he’s done. Evangelicals look at the invasion and ponder whether Vladimir Putin is fulfilling biblical prophecies. Anti-nuke activists hear Putin’s rash threats and sound the well-worn alarm that—guys!—we’re not 100 seconds until midnight on the Doomsday Clock, for real guys—Are you looking at your phone, Gary? Really?
To see things as they are, unencumbered by expectations, is a challenge for anyone. How hard is it to look at our southern border and see not people trying to illegally immigrate but refugees fleeing violent homelands? We look at, but don’t really see, 13.5 million Syrian refugees and shrug, expecting that part of the world to be a bit messed up. Of course we see Russia invading Ukraine and force the nightly news into the History Channel box. This is a reboot of World War II, right? Steel Curtain, round two, electric boogaloo?
That’s why when we talk about this war we talk about things, namely things that go bang and pow and boom. We demand that these things be sent to Ukraine immédiatement so we can have a proper war where more things will go bang and pow and boom. That’s the war we keep looking for from Joe Biden, and either we’re calling him weak and tired because he’s not waging the bang-pow-boom war we’re looking for or excusing him for not doing so because he’s keeping us from a wider, perhaps nuclear war with Russia, which I should go on record here as saying would, and I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, completely suck.
What no one seems to be noticing is the war Biden is actually waging against Putin on a completely new front, and by the way, the United States is winning. It’s happening right out in the open, too. You’ve probably seen it yourself, and in fact I’m sure you have. You maybe just didn’t recognize it as the innovation that this invasion has given to the arsenal of warfare, that is, a completely new way to wage war, though I swear if you call it the Uberization of warfare I will call your mother and tell her the truth about you.
When we talk about this war we talk about things that go bang and pow and boom.
First, let us stipulate that Russia’s military is doing a good job of losing all on its own against Ukraine. The Russian military has lost more generals than Spinal Tap did drummers. They’ve already suffered nearly as many casualties since February 24 as the U.S. armed forces did in the entire wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. They could not control the skies despite a 10-to-1 advantage. Their invasion turned into a traffic jam while their greatest success came in attacking unarmed civilians and hospitals. The first mover advantage in warfare doesn’t count for much if you keep pooping your pants.
To anyone raised during the Cold War, seeing the Russian military exposed as an overhyped fraud is shocking. To anyone who lived in Russia after the Cold War, it is not. One day riding in a taxi in Moscow, my friend Billy and I were talking about how ramshackle, even comical it all seemed.
Biden doomscrolled Putin by putting all his business on the street.
“The Texas Rangers could take this place over in a month,” said Billy.
“The baseball team or the guys with badges?” I asked.
“Depends if Nolan Ryan’s pitching,” he said.
But far away from the urban battlefields in Ukraine is one in which Russia has already lost. Biden opened this attack as Russian forces amassed on the border by taking a lead from his predecessor’s favorite plaything: Twitter. Biden doomscrolled Putin by putting all his business on the street. As soon as the U.S. learned something, he put it out there openly, and with our name on it.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration has detailed the movement of Russian special operation forces to Ukraine’s borders, exposed a Russian plan to create a video of a faked atrocity as a pretext for an invasion, outlined Moscow’s war plans, warned that an invasion would result in possibly thousands of deaths and hinted that Russian officers had doubts about Mr. Putin.
Then, on Friday, Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters at the White House that the United States was seeing signs of Russian escalation and that there was a “credible prospect” of immediate military action. Other officials said the announcement was prompted by new intelligence that signaled an invasion could begin as soon as Wednesday.
Hell, Biden predicted the start of the invasion to within the hour. Because Russia was lying about why they were invading, telling the truth became an act of war. This didn’t stop Russia from invading, but Biden’s radical transparency did remove any illusions about Russia’s pretext.
Biden’s radical transparency removed illusions about Russia’s pretext.
Biden’s aggressive openness also had the effect of catalyzing and accelerating the next phase of the anti-Russian offensive, and that was isolating and immolating Russia economically. We’re all getting a kick out of western countries seizing oligarch’s yachts, but cutting off Russia’s access to the global financial system is one of the more swift and stunning acts of war I’ve ever heard of. While Russians trade rumors of ATMs that still have cash, shares on the London stock exchange of Russia’s largest bank went from about $14 to a penny. Wall Street has downgraded Russia to junk bond status, and the sanctions have left Russia unable to access about half of its hard currency reserves in western banks. Goldman Sachs says if this keeps up, Russia will suffer through a recession more than twice as bad as the one caused by COVID-19. That’s right. Joe Biden is twice as bad for Russia as the plague.
And here’s where it gets really weird. This would not be possible without a guy named Larry Fink. Fink is the CEO of BlackRock, one of the world’s largest asset managers, which is business-speak for This guy runs the company that invests in all the other companies. Some people think BlackRock, which has $8.7 trillion under management, is the world’s largest such company. If BlackRock were a country, it would have the third-largest economy in the world. Fink is probably the most powerful person you’ve never heard of, but that isn’t why he’s interesting.
Joe Biden is twice as bad for Russia as the plague.
The reason we’re talking about Fink now and not Anthony Blinken or John Kerry is that every January since 2012 Fink has been sending a letter to CEOs which Fortune calls “an agenda-setting exercise that signals what's top-of-mind for corporate leaders.” Considering that Fink is sending a letter to the CEOs of companies he has invested in, it’s more than that. Imagine getting a letter every year from your biggest investor. Now imagine that all your peers got the same letter. It’s not just a letter. It’s marching orders.
A few years ago, Fink suggested that shareholder capitalism—Milton Friedman’s idea that a corporation’s only duty is to maximize returns to shareholders, or investors—was dead. Instead, he proposed a new model called stakeholder capitalism in which a corporation had a duty to shareholders as well as other stakeholders, including its workers, suppliers, even the community in which it worked and the world in which it lived.
For most of us, when we think of woke capitalism we think of greenwashing or turning a logo rainbow during Pride. We think of Nike running a Colin Kaepernick ad after he kneeled or that truly odious Diet Pepsi commercial with Kendal Jenner. Out here among the hoi polloi, woke capitalism looks like nothing but boycotts and pressure campaigns, virtue signaling and Strongly. Worded. Statements.
Woke capitalism looks like nothing but boycotts and pressure campaigns, virtue signaling and Strongly. Worded. Statements.
But inside the boardrooms, stakeholder capitalism is about becoming more inclusive as the largest and most-diverse generation in human history enters the workforce. It’s about understanding that in a globally interconnected world, multinational corporations perform better financially when they don’t just mind the store but the storekeepers, not to mention their customers and the people in the neighborhood where the store is located. Fink finally got through to the lunkheads in the boardroom that their purpose in life isn’t just to extract profits from the world. They’ve figured out they live here, too.
This is how we got the rise of activist CEOs during the Trump administration. It used to be Ben & Jerry donating a portion of their profits to liberal causes or Patagonia getting big mad about global warming. Suddenly, we had eight CEOs quitting the President’s Manufacturing Council because of Trump’s response to Charlottesville and banks speaking out about global warming, too.
“Our jobs as CEOs now include driving what we think is right,” Bank of America’s CEO, Brian Moynihan, told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s not exactly political activism, but it is action on issues beyond business.”
To liberals, this looks like posey BS. To conservatives, including Sen. Marco Rubio, this was “the woke elites running corporate America” trying to impose a liberal worldview on society. (In fact, the term “woke capitalism” was coined in 2018 by Ross Douthat, which should tell you everything you need to know about that phrase.)
But inside corporate America, workers were demanding that their employers speak up and fight for the world as they wanted it to be. Corporations no longer had the safe space on the sidelines.
The Democratic Party doesn’t even advocate for paid time off to encourage employees to vote.
So you had the Business Roundtable, which is a group of America’s leading CEOs that used to just lobby for low taxes and freer trade, collectively redefining the role of a corporation to no longer being about maximizing shareholder return. “Americans deserve an economy that allows each person to succeed through hard work and creativity and to lead a life of meaning and dignity,” said the BRT in 2019. A year later, you had the BRT speaking up after the murders of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery. A year after that, the BRT was taking stands against the insurrection and for voting rights, even to the extent of advocating for paid time off to encourage employees to vote. The Democratic Party platform doesn’t even include that.
It’s actually the Republican Party that’s been engaging most directly with Fink’s stakeholder capitalism, but in a predictably silly way. One of Rick Scott’s 128 ideas in his “11 Point Plan to Rescue America” is the following: “We will stop investing federal retirement dollars with ‘woke’ fund managers and companies that put left-wing politics ahead of profits.”
In his letter this January, Fink punched back at this criticism:
“Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics. It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not ‘woke.’ It is capitalism, driven by mutually beneficial relationships between you and the employees, customers, suppliers, and communities your company relies on to prosper.”
Corporations now know they have direct political power that doesn’t need to be exercised through politicians with donations, advocacy and lobbying but directly as actors with their own agency. And on this chessboard, they ain’t the pawns.
“Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics. It is not ‘woke.’ It is capitalism.
This is why Biden’s radical transparency of intelligence on Russia was so important. It gave corporations political cover to partner with governments in this new kind of warcraft. And when Russia invaded, the Business Roundtable did not let the sun set before condemning Russia.
“We welcome the Administration’s partnership with our allies to coordinate the most effective response to this attack and defend the rule of law,” read the statement in part, and soon their members started pulling billions of dollars of investment and commerce out of Russia, from Big Macs to Boeings to British Petroleum. These boycotts aren’t woke capitalism or a pre-emptive defensive move to avoid criticism. This is stakeholder capitalism as an act of war in “partnership with our allies to coordinate the most effective response to this attack and defend the rule of law.”
That’s how we end up with Putin having a sad face about his country’s economy, which was always too reliant on trade and oil and gas ever to survive for long going it alone. No, Vlad, you no can has cheezburger, or beeg mak.
There is much to admire about the west’s restrained response to Putin, or as Carl von Clausewitz put it, “the noiseless harmony of the whole action.” Without Fink and stakeholder capitalism, it’s unlikely that Biden’s gambit would have worked. BP and Boeing could have stood on the sidelines and left politics to the politicians and Ukrainians to their certain fate. But thanks to Fink, a core tenet of business is that we’re all in this together and we better start acting like it. If we’re not careful, Kendall Jenner’s going to make another Diet Pepsi ad.
Jason Stanford is the co-author of NYT-best selling Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth. His bylines have appeared in the Washington Post, Time, and Texas Monthly, among others. He works at the Austin Independent School District as Chief of Communications and Community Engagement, though he would want to point out that these are his personal opinions and his alone, but you already knew that. Follow him on Twitter @JasStanford.
Más
How we’re getting through this
Finding out which ex-Trump official we are
Thinking about Anthony Weiner one last time
Trying, and failing, to get through this without crying
What I’m reading
Thomas Friedman: “The Cancellation of Mother Russia Is Underway” - Clear insight on the martial innovations that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spurred
…shares in Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, “have collapsed more than 99 percent since mid-February, when its stock traded at around $14.” Last Wednesday in London trading, Barron’s noted, “the shares bottomed out at 1 cent.”
Michelle Goldberg: “The Middle-Aged Sadness Behind the Cancel Culture Panic” - Lots of quotable lines in here, including…
Many people I know over 40 — maybe 35 — resent new social mores that demand outsized sensitivity to causing harm. It has been jarring to go from an intellectual culture that prizes transgression to one that polices it. The shame of turning into the sort of old person repelled by the sensibilities of the young is a cause of real psychic pain.
Ryan Holiday: “A Leadership Lesson From Eisenhower’s Stoic Reversal at D-Day” - This is something I’ve come back to over and over again.
Striding into a hastily assembled conference room at the Malta headquarters, the American general made an announcement: He would have no more of this quivering timidity. “The present situation is to be regarded as opportunity for us and not disaster,” he said. “There will be only cheerful faces at this conference table.”
Eisenhower was able to see a tactical solution that had been there the entire time: The Nazi strategy carried its own destruction.
Mark Manson: “The Life Cycle of Outrage” - Smart analysis of how the attention economy corrupts our perceptions
If anything is true in the social media age, it’s that narratives will evolve in order to saturate as much attention as they can. This means that any take will eventually be taken to its extreme.
What I’m watching
If you like Adam McCay’s style of breaking the fourth wall—and if you like the entertainment business—you’ll love Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.
What I’m listening to
My favorite math rock band, Everything, Everything is dropping tracks from their upcoming album. “Bad Friday” is pretty cool.
I wish my entire life felt like this song sounds.
Orville Peck, the masked Canadian country crooner, has got new music, y’all!
Guys! Charley Crockett has a new album coming out next month. Here’s his first single, “I Feel for You.”
The New York Times wrote that Sunflower Bean “suggests what might have happened if psychedelia had emerged after punk and the Police rather than before.” I have no idea what that means, but I sure like “Baby Don’t Cry.” Also, I miss being young and feeling the Police’s music flow through me.
Just getting to know Fat Tony’s music (for reasons that will become clear in the coming months), and I love “Texas.” The song, and sometimes the state.
Hey, if you made it this far and haven’t subscribed yet, maybe you should.
Thanks to Noom, I lost 40 pounds over 2020-21 and have kept it off since then. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works. No, this isn’t an ad. Yes, I really lost all that weight with Noom.
We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment.
We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is some
Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House. Out in paperback this June!