Jiang Xueqin: one formula, three predictions and a date you can check him against

An interview cost me just under two hours this week, and I watched it to the end by choice. Steven Bartlett had the geopolitical analyst Jiang Xueqin on The Diary Of A CEO. 108 minutes, uploaded on 14 September 2026, at 6.6 million views four days later. The title promises a second 9/11 against your bank account. What's inside is better than the title: one formula, three maps and three predictions you can check against a calendar.

I'm relaying what he says here. Whether he's right will show in the dates he names himself.

The formula everything hangs on for him

Jiang opens with an equation: technological progress equals specialization times globalization. More countries that do one thing really well, times free trade between them. If either factor drops, the product drops.

A war that forces states into their own supply chains lowers specialization. Nationalism lowers globalization. Both are happening right now, he says, so the peak of technological development has been reached. He doesn't call it a shift in power. He calls it collapse, over twenty years, and compares it to the Bronze Age collapse around 1200 BC, when a world built on copper and tin trade lost almost every major city in the eastern Mediterranean within fifty years.

His exhibit is on the table: a semiconductor. Silicon, gallium and germanium come from China at 60 to 70, 70 and 90 percent by his numbers. The chip design comes from California, the lithography machines from ASML in the Netherlands, 400 million dollars apiece. Manufacturing happens in Taiwan, assembly back in China. And the dependency runs the other way too: China needs helium for cooling, and about 90 percent of the high-purity quartz for silicon production comes from a place called Spruce Pine in North Carolina.

Look at this chip, he says, and you're not seeing a piece of metal and plastic, you're seeing the world converging. Cut off one part and the rest stops.

How the petrodollar was built

The second part is history, in five steps.

In 1945 the United States is the dominant power and supplies a destroyed Europe and Japan. It lends dollars to buy those goods, repayable in gold. In 1971 Nixon takes the dollar off gold, because the US has gone from creditor to debtor. From then on, demand for the dollar has to be manufactured. Saudi Arabia sells oil only for dollars. In the late seventies China demands dollars for its factory goods. In the mid-eighties Japan parks its savings in US Treasuries.

That becomes a loop: Gulf oil flows to Asia, Asia turns it into consumer goods, settled in dollars, and the surpluses from China, Japan and the Gulf states flow back into the US as bond purchases. The money funds America's specialization in innovation and in financial centers like New York. Jiang also names those three as the biggest financiers of the current AI bubble.

The loop is carried by the US Navy's control of the seas. And, this is his finer point, by the image of that control. The system rests on the dollar as reserve currency and on the aura of invincibility. If the US looks beatable, the second pillar is damaged without a single battle being lost.

Three maps he pulls up on screen

The first shows water scarcity. For Jiang, that's the map of the coming wars: the fight over the Colorado River between Colorado, California and Arizona, the Middle East, India against China, Northeast Asia. The second shows birth rates, highest in Africa and the Middle East, which is where the conflicts are. The third shows aging, fastest in Japan, Europe and North America.

His conclusion: the old countries need immigration for elder care, and that's exactly what puts them in conflict with their own populations. Bartlett pushes back, the West is voting right and closing its borders. Jiang's answer: that doesn't solve aging. And robots as a way out fail on the same supply chain break, copper from Chile and Peru, lithium from South America, silicon from China. His line on it, word for word: "People are much cheaper and much more expendable than robots."

Why this war is different from Iraq in 2003 for him

In 2003 the US Army hit an unpopular central government, and shock and awe handled it. Today four groups stand spread out and coordinated: the Revolutionary Guards in Iran, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shia militias in Iraq. They sit on three chokepoints, Hormuz, Bab al-Mandab and the Suez Canal.

And then comes the thought that stuck with me. Iran's strongest move isn't one big strike but random small attacks across the region. Not because of the damage. Because of the insurers. World trade runs on confidence, confidence is carried by marine insurance, and when no insurer will cover a ship, no ship sails, with no blockade at all.

On his own Iran prediction he then turns noticeably careful. He doesn't know the factions in Tehran. Word for word: "My prediction is this will only escalate. How it will escalate, I don't know."

Three predictions, each with a date or a condition

He hangs them on the anniversary of 9/11 and calls them "fun but horrifying" himself.

First, a siege of New York City, 2028 at the earliest. The condition is a third Trump term, either through a national emergency or through a run as vice president behind Don Jr., who resigns after the election. Then tax refusal by Democratic cities, no access for ICE, and in the end federal forces outside the city. Bartlett and Jiang bet $100 in the studio. Jiang says: on 21 January 2029, Trump is still in the White House.

Second, a second 9/11 against financial infrastructure instead of buildings. His logic runs through the effect. Planes into towers wouldn't hit anyone today the way they did in 2001, the image is used up. What would work is the morning you want to pay for your coffee, the account is empty, and nobody can say when the money comes back.

Third, Lionel Messi becomes president of Argentina. The chain behind it: Argentina's closeness to the US and Israel under Milei, Trump's support for Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands, and the expectation that secular Israelis emigrate and Argentina becomes the destination. For the population to accept that, it takes Messi's popularity.

Where the beginning lies for him

Asked what could have changed the course, Jiang goes back to 1996 and the Clean Break memo, a strategy paper for Netanyahu written by American strategists around Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, who later helped plan the Iraq war at the Pentagon. Three pillars, which Bartlett reads out in the studio: no land for peace, regional dominance instead of a two-state solution, preemptive strikes instead of containment. The counter-world to that was the Washington Consensus of 1995, trade as a peace machine. The US should have forced Israel into peace with the Arab states, he says. Now it's too late: "You can't put the gene back in the bottle."

His advice to the individual, after two hours of supply chains: believe in God, focus on your family, speak the truth. No protests, no elections. That's the part that belongs on this page, and the reason the interview sits here and not under Insights.

What I take from it

The formula as a testing tool. Every computer I work on, every model I talk to, runs on exactly the chain Jiang describes: design in California, machines from the Netherlands, manufacturing in Taiwan, raw materials from China. I had never seen that chain. I use it every day. His semiconductor on the table reminded me that my tools aren't software, they're geography.

Trust is infrastructure. The insurance idea is the part I didn't know. A system doesn't tip when something breaks. It tips when nobody will cover the next risk anymore. That holds for ships. It holds for smaller systems too.

Predictions with dates are a gift. This page says I don't believe things, I test them. Most people who announce the end name no date. Jiang names two: 2028 and 21 January 2029. Plus a $100 bet on camera. That's checkable, and that's exactly why it's here. I'm taking 21 January 2029 as my check date. Until then it stays what it is: the statement of a man explaining a world map with a semiconductor in his hand.

Source

The Man Who Predicted The Iran War: The Next 9/11 Will Target Your Bank Account!, The Diary Of A CEO with Jiang Xueqin, 1:48:02, uploaded on 14 September 2026. The chapter markers in the video description lead straight to the three predictions (49:46, 58:11, 1:09:45) and to the Clean Break memo (1:29:02).

All numbers in this text come from the interview. I haven't verified them independently, and that's deliberate: collect first, check later.