Central and Eastern Europe

He wanted us to sign a promise never to enlarge NATO.

He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe.

We should remove NATO from that part of our alliance.

Introducing some kind of second-class membership.

These are three white Australian guys who now live all across Southeast Asia.

The majority of their workforce is people living in Southeast Asia or Central Eastern Europe, a lot of non-English speakers.

And talking to this one young woman in particular who you know, she was crying as she talked about the experience of being laid off and how she was so excited to get this writing job or she was like, she didn't always love what she was writing, but she was really excited to be like break into the writing industry.

Um, and her layoff was so brutal and she's had a really hard time just like in this industry ever since, because right now, like the landscape, for work for her is just another version of brown brothers media and there's also yeah yeah these are very much like passport bros they would probably call themselves digital nomads who you know live all throughout um these countries and after like yes and meanwhile the uh many of the fake writers that they used to replace all of these human writers um the majority of them were white and or you know based in western countries with these illustrious degrees and these jobs like it was just really

It was with a company where at the time was up and coming.

which was Facebook, and I think you joined them as head of Central Eastern Europe.

I mean, what was the thinking back then of joining Facebook and did people ask if you were crazy to join them? I

must say I had a few sleepless nights before making the call because this was the moment where Facebook was a private company.

And I think we still need to do that and we still need to come back.

Obviously, we've had some great success in Central East Europe.

The Baltics are a success story in many, many ways.

Ukraine and Georgia, partly because of the Russian pushback, are still in the process, in the works, and we need to do everything we can to support them.

So it's not all unsuccessful.

But then when you start looking at a European Green Deal, which is a very popular topic to be annoyed about, at least in Central Eastern Europe, that is a lot more regional and then has much more political, practical implications for business and finance.

But when you're trying to change policy and systems, It never happens overnight.

So in some ways, from somebody who reads the daily newspapers and watches news, not very much has happened.

Latin America joined a bit later, so we didn't get to hang out with them as much.

I think one way or another, it's a very interesting experience to see how these leadership networks develop.

And I think one thing that needs to happen, we need to build many more of these networks also in Central Eastern Europe.

There are a couple of dominant ones, so I think we need a little bit more diversity.

Um, it, uh, was unveiled in Paris in July by, uh, Emmanuel Macron with, uh, Volodymyr, uh, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Uh, and, uh, uh, at that time, when it was unveiled, uh, the, uh, countries that, uh, signed up to it, you know, some of the big, uh, powers in, in Western Europe and a few in, in, in Central Eastern Europe, uh, the Czech Republic was not among them because Andrej Babiš, uh, declined, uh, to get involved.

Now he's standing up and saying, "Uh, no, we need to develop such a shield.

I think it should be called Euro-Patriot," uh, a nod either to the existing, um, American system against, uh, missiles, um, or perhaps a nod to Mr. Babiš's own political grouping, the Patriots, the far-right grouping in the European Parliament.

And, you know, one of the companies I worked in the past, for example, was eAgronom.

It was a leading climate tech in Central Eastern Europe.

We raised 30 million and I was the CTO there.

At one point, we had 70 people over there.

And so as nations start to build the ability to do this, there are considerations that have to be, um, uh, thought of, and, and we're gonna get, uh, Professor Jiang's opinion on that, um, because he's an expert on that.

Um, before we move into that, w- another interesting thing about yourself is you're a very accomplished piano player and, uh, and performer, um, uh, which resonates with me because I grew up with a mother who was a, uh, Central Eastern European piano teacher having a piano school in the basement, so I can empathize with you, what, what it takes.

And, and, uh, you recently had a, a very beautiful performance at Carnegie Hall for your 30th birthday party.

Uh, a little bit of controversy as to how it was covered by some of the media, which was not, not fair.