Transcript of the above video: 

Oddly enough, I never thought in a million years I'd be making a video about what a French Admiral has to say about Southeast Asia but here I am. I thought of making this video after reading a recent tweet from Sebastian Falletti of Le Figaro on X under the title: French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier heads to the Pacific. I urge those who are watching this, we will put that up on screen, you can go check that out for yourselves but this quote was important. So basically, the French they are sending their nuclear-powered aircraft carrier over here which my first question is why? Is France in Southeast Asia or East Asia but where is Tahiti at? isn't that down in the Pacific somewhere maybe that's what they're out here for, but okay, whatever, they're coming. 

In any event, I thought of this making this video because of the quote in here and they are actually quoting the Rear Admiral if you go in there, that is leading this. Quoting directly: "The five-month mission is about "protecting the status quo" and "freedom of navigation" in a region that will become the" - and this I thought was an interesting turn of phrase, and a very insightful one - "barycenter of the world," Rear Admiral Jacques Millard, Commander of the carrier strike group told me. The word China is never mentioned - but it's the elephant on the deck." Well you know, whatever, who knows? 

In any event though, "barycenter" of the world, so I want to look that up, I was like ‘what does barycenter mean’? and I went and looked that up; I went over to Wikipedia, I'll throw this up on screen too. In astronomy, the barycenter (or barycentre, from Ancient Greek, (barus) 'heavy' and (kentron) 'center') is the center of mass of two or more bodies that orbit one another and is the point about which the bodies orbit. A barycenter is a dynamical point not a physical object." - I thought that was interesting. - "It is an important concept in fields such as astronomy and astrophysics. The distance from a body's center of mass to the barycenter can be calculated as a two-body problem." Yeah I thought that was really interesting. It's like this is sort of a force, it's not an object. It's the point at which the gravitational pull of the two objects are operating against each other, sort of the point of which if you turn two magnets on each other that are charged the same, they push against each other, it's that point that there's nothing physical there in the magnet analogy, but something is pushing back. With regard to this, it's the same thing, only it's the gravitational force.

And I think that's a great insight by this Admiral and again not so much from a geopolitical standpoint in terms of where we are sending aircraft carriers and things - frankly I think a lot of this stuff in the era of all this space, space tech -a lot of the stuff it's like moving trebuchets around in Vietnam. I mean it's kind of absurd on a certain level. But that observation is key, or is very, very insightful and it hits on a very discreet point and that is the economies if you will of the West, the gravitational force of those economies, are now rubbing up against each other almost like tectonically out here in Southeast Asia. And again, I think it's worth pointing out that this is a force, it's not an object. So when a lot of people look in on Southeast Asian and they say things about Taiwan or Hong Kong or down here in Southeast Asia - Thailand or Cambodia or Vietnam or any place, Philippines, this, that and the other thing - they are not really looking at, it's not so much a given country you need to be looking at, it's how they all interact and the various barycenters if you will of those interactions, that's what you need to be looking at. 

And again rolling back, as we have discussed in other videos, mBridge rolling out down here in Southeast Asia as the nodal points along the World Island or the Outer Rim if you will of what Halford Mackinder described as the World Island, you have got nodal points along Hong Kong, Bangkok and then over in UAE, that are going to be sort of the points of entry in my opinion for capital inflow and outflow if you will, entrepots of trade if you will. Now you are seeing mBridge rolled out, as we have discussed in other videos, BIS the Bank for International Settlements stepped back from that and it's effectively it looks like that particular little monetary carousel is now kind of running on its own. And again, it brings to the forefront the idea of this notion of a barycenter out here in East or Southeast Asia in terms of economic and geopolitical interaction and I think that this phenomenon is only going to increase. I've done videos in the past where I talked about there being a YUASA shift into East Asia where basically the momentum of technological innovation moves. It basically has kept moving West for some years and America has been, or the USA has been the primary beneficiary of that. My opinion, that thing has jumped and we have now seen that move over - well maybe not move over to East Asia per se - but I would say perhaps the barycenter if you will of the YUASA phenomenon is now definitely the Asia Pacific and I think there is a very heavy amount of influence if you will of this barycenter down here in Southeast Asia particularly. Long story short, I think the main places you're going to see a lot of economic dynamism, economic growth moving forward are going to be East and Southeast Asia.