It's the Brian Laird Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone.

Today on the show, if the world's situation seems complicated right now, David Sanger from the New York Times has a way to explain it.

His new book is called New Cold Wars, and it's his take on how he got from the end of the old

Cold War around 1990 to where we are today. In 1990, if you've lived long enough, you know,

most Western leaders thought the future would be global democracy and global economic growth.

They thought Russia was done with empire building when the Soviet Union collapsed,

that China mostly wanted to integrate with the West through free trade that would lift all boats,

that the emerging new thing called the Internet would democratize information and therefore

make authoritarianism harder to maintain, and that even the Israelis and Palestinians would

realize that there forever war was benefiting neither of them and figure out a way to coexist.

But where are we today? Information and disinformation chaos online, right? The resurgence of nationalism and authoritarianism on every continent.

Global trade seen as a failure for the middle class, at least in this country, and a growing alliance between Putin, Xi Jinping, and the leaders of Iran.

The old Cold War is over, but the New World

Order that the West thought would emerge is instead giving way to what David Sanger calls

new Cold Wars. And the 21st century version of the question, how much will leaders everywhere

have the wisdom and restraint to keep them from getting

nuclear hot? David Sanger coming up with that big think analysis and to take your calls later in

the show. Also, your calls on who you track on your phone and who tracks you, right? Parents and

teenagers, spouses and lovers, old college

roommates, maybe even work colleagues, this is for you. Where's the line between safety and

surveillance? When does closeness become creepiness when you can always see exactly where the people

in your life are or when they can see you.

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