(loud explosions) - The big ship is not stuck
anymore, which is kinda cool. There was this big cargo ship
is like a quarter mile long and it was stuck in the Suez Canal, created this huge traffic jam. - [News Reporter] Blocking
one of the world's most important shipping lines. - They spent days trying to dig it out. It was costing like $400 million an hour for the global economy,
and now it's not stuck. But I can't stop thinking
about it because this ship and it being stuck for a few days reminds us just what the global economy is and how important one
little strip of water can be both for the economy, but also for countries who want power. So, I'm gonna tell you an
insane story about this canal. It was the 1960s and the US government was thinking about using 520 nuclear bombs to make a new canal for themselves right here next to the Suez Canal. We're talking over a hundred
kilometers of a new canal to connect the Mediterranean to the Red Sea using nuclear bombs. Wait, what? Oh my gosh, it's so insane. Like it's so insane. This was gonna cost like $5
billion in today's terms. And the idea here was to create a strategically valuable alternate to the present day Suez Canal. To understand why the US would even consider blowing up 520 nukes in the Israeli desert. You have to understand
this little strip of water and why it has been so vital to so many powerful
countries over the years. First, let's look at a map. This is an amazing
project from shipmap.org, where each dot represents a cargo ship, similar size to the Empire State Building. Each of these ships is carrying around 1,000 containers. It's like 25,000 tons of stuff. (upbeat music) These ships fuel our lifestyles. A good example is iPhone if you have one. Before you ever see your iPhone, there's an amazing
journey that it goes on. Every individual part of your iPhone has its own little story. They're sourced from
43 different countries on all six continents. There's no way I could go
into every single component, but let's just take one
thing, the processor, the sort of brain of your iPhone. The processor starts as raw
materials, tons of raw materials like boron from Turkey
or copper from Chile or tantalum from Rwanda and way, way more that are mined in different countries and shipped to a factory in
Taiwan where it is manufactured and then shipped to the Philippines to be tested and packaged before
it is then shipped to China to be integrated into your phone. And that is just for the little
processor in your iPhone, not to mention the screen and
the casing and the camera. Each one of these has components that are sourced from all around world. They go through this complex journey to then be assembled and then get put back
onto a shipping container to be shipped to your
country where you can buy it. No matter how I put it, saying it's a complex global supply chain, there's no way we can even fathom just how big and massive
these operations are. The amount of space of ocean that these products pass through to eventually make it into our hands. And this is everything, my clothing, my computer,
my camera equipment, everything around me
passes through this system. To add another layer of weird complexity, the ships themselves
like the physical ships are also mind bendingly complex. So let's take the ever given, this ship that was stuck
in the Suez Canal recently. This ship is chartered
by a Taiwanese company. But it is registered in Panama. I've talked about ship registration in a different video by the way, and why ships wanna be registered
in different countries. Anyway, it is registered in Panama charted by a Taiwanese company, but the ship itself, the physical ship is owned by a Japanese company which is owned by a bigger
conglomerate of ship builders. Oh, and the technical manager on board is actually a German guy, and the crew are a punch
of Indian nationals. I mean, this ship itself is just a symbol of how big and convoluted and multilayered this huge global system is. Okay, so that's the global economy. Let's get back to the Suez Canal. Take a look at this canal
for like five seconds and you realize that it's not natural, way to straight of lines. But back before it was built, if you wanted to get from Europe to Asia, you had to sort of do this. (upbeat music) Back then the British controlled this little port in South Africa which gave them a very
nice strategic advantage because everyone who was doing world trade or domination had to pass through them. The British were loving this monopoly over the trade route
until like the mid 1800s when the French went to the Egyptians and they said, "Hey, is there any way we
could like dig out a canal right here on this land bridge that connects Africa with Asia? It's almost 200 kilometers long, but if we could just dig out a canal here, we would save thousands of
kilometers on each trip to Asia." Reminder, this is like the 1860s and like, they don't have loads of fancy equipment to do
this, but they try it anyway. With over 100,000 people, many of them forced the laborers working on this canal for over 10 years, they were able to dig this big canal that connected the Mediterranean
Sea to the Red Sea. The British were down here still like, "Wait, why is no one coming
through our Cape anymore?" And the French were up here, just laughing, feeling so
good about their new canal. (laughing) So over the years, quickly this becomes the epicenter of water
control and balance of power. Control over the canal is
mainly French and Egyptian for most of its time. But eventually the British, they couldn't help themselves, they needed in on this waterway. Fast forward a few years and all of the big powers get together and say like, "Whoa, whoa,
whoa we built this canal with a spirit of
cooperation and neutrality. All countries should be
able to use this canal even in times of war,
everything will be peaceful and wonderful and this will be one." No, no, no, no, no. They signed this treaty
about like neutrality and everyone can use it, but
let's just say it right now, that's not the way the world works. Soon, the globe descended into World War and it became clear that this canal would not be neutral anytime soon. Hitler wanted it, so him
and his Italian allies went down to try to take it
over, British fought back and they were able to keep it and there were British troops there. So the canal remained in British control until like the 1950s. When finally Egypt was like, "Okay listen, France,
Britain, this has been fun. This whole pretend that this is neutral, but it's not actually neutral and you're actually just using it for whatever you want thing. You're done, it is our
canal, get out of here." And he's like, "Oh, and
Israel you can't come here and use our waterway either. That's part of this." So France and Britain
aren't feeling super great. They just got kicked out of like their key strategic waterway. They decide to say no and they send in a bunch of
paratroopers to the Suez Canal, along with Israel's fighters to recapture the canal from Egypt and to overthrow the government
that just kicked them out. (upbeat music) And the US has seen all of this and they're like, "Guys,
it's not 1850 anymore. Times have changed. You can't just show up wherever you want and just take it over militarily. We don't do that anymore. That's so like old school empire." But the US says, "You
can still be an empire in these times, you just have to be a
little smoother about it." ♪ Go baby go ♪ - So, US sends in this Canadian guy to settle the conflict over the canal. And everyone's sort of like, "Okay, fine." And the canal goes back to peace with like some UN peacekeepers
to keep it at peace kind of. Well, no, this isn't going to last. So this is where the US gets it creative and it's like, "Ooh, what can we do to not have to fight over the canal, but like do our own thing." And that's when the nuclear bombs come up. Where they're like, "If we just plant 520 nuclear bombs here in the Israeli desert, we could just have our own canal and then we don't have
to fight over this one." (blasting sound) So, it's 1967 and Israel's like, "I'm not super into the idea
of you like nuking our desert, but we like nuclear weapons and we'll totally get on board with that." In the meantime, can we go
in and attack Egypt ourselves and get the canal and you can just sort of
back us from the sidelines. And the US is like, "Okay, fine." (upbeat music) So Israel goes in and
takes over all of this land all the way up to the Suez Canal. So it's Egypt on one
side Israel on the other. And for the next few years, this becomes a literal battle
ground for multiple wars. Like they were building
bridges across the canal to like bring in tanks and fight. And of course, during
these years of fighting from like the late 60s to the mid 70s, the canal was closed for obvious reasons. The problem is when they closed it, there were 15 ships that were like in process of moving through and those ships just got stuck there for literally eight years. So yeah, ever given, we know
that it was a hard few days who the world was super worried about you, $400 million a day. Imagine being one of
these guys, eight years. At least they had fun
during their time, I guess. Do you see where I'm going with this? What I'm trying to do here is not give you a history
lesson of the Suez Canal. I'm trying to explain
that this stretch of water has always been a magnet
for international conflict. ever since it's very, very conception. After that last war, the US is like, okay, broker our peace, they broke our piece. And then they bring in these
helicopters to the Suez Canal with like a water sled behind them and they drag them along the water because there was a bunch of like live explosives from the waters. And they were trying to like rid them all so that they could presume
like normal shipping lanes. They eventually did that. They got rid of all the explosives and reopened the canal in 1975. And the canal remained peaceful and under the control
of its rightful owner, the Egyptians, forevermore,
and there was no more conflict or geopolitical scheming again. No, that isn't the way the world works. Yes, things have changed
in the way that we do it. But the fact is, when you
have a system like this and a large portion of that system which is money and control
and economics and energy runs through a choke point in that system, there will always be geostrategic value that is put on that system. Not just for economics, but for power. So do you think that the United States who's sort of the big boy
world policeman right now would sit here and let
Egypt control the choke hold where 12% of the world
economy passes through including loads of oil. No, that's not how it works. Despite the fact that Egypt
is a nondemocratic regime, but it's pretty terrible on all fronts including human rights. The US still provides $1.4
billion of military aid to Egypt every year. They are always considered a
key ally in the middle East. The Clinton administration
made it very clear that the reason we support Egypt is because they have the Suez Canal and we need them to owe favors. That continues today. Whenever a US military vessel
shows up to the Suez Canal, they get to cut in line and go through quicker
than everybody else. So, yeah, Egypt owns the canal, but really it's the us behind the scenes that is keeping everything in order. The canal is not neutral. It will never be neutral. There will always be geopolitical
importance placed on it. And as long as there's a superpower, that power will control the canal. (upbeat music) The last thing I'll say
is that we live in a world that is very strange
for how peaceful it is. We've had an enduring peace
for many, many decades. That piece allows us to
have a system like this. And that piece exists partly because we are so entangled with
one another economically that it doesn't make sense to go to war, but we have to remember
that that piece also exists because all the big powers
have really big weapons that are always pointed at each other. If something slips or
escalates a little too far, just to remember that the Suez Canal isn't the only choke point on earth where all of this system flows through and that while we take
peace for granted now, it would be naive not
to wonder what happens if that were to go away and we were faced with not just one ship
being stuck for a few days, but an entire region militarized and unavailable for this
type of shipping flow that we're so used to. And for years, I don't
wanna sound alarmist, but I do want us to be thinking about our reliance on the system and what it means for the
future of rising powers that may not want to cooperate
as well as they do today. So when I see ever given blown
off course for a few days and everyone freaking out about it, I don't just see one ship I see a vulnerable system and I see myself and how deeply connected I am to that system. (upbeat music) So, I'm listening to an audio book right
now called "Silence". Shusaku Endo is the author, and it's about like a
Catholic missionary in Japan, like in maybe the 15 or 1600s, maybe the 1700s, I don't
know, a long time ago. I'm listening to it on Audible which is the sponsor of today's video, which I can't really believe I'm saying because I've been subscribed to Audible since like 2011 or 2012, like
right when they first came out and it has changed my entire world. So the fact that they're
sponsoring this video and supporting my channel is
a very exciting thing for me and I still kind of giddy about it. Anyway, Audible is a giant
repository of audio books and podcasts and all
sorts of audio resources that have changed my life. I am always listening
to several audio books on Audible at any given time. Sometimes it is historical fiction, sometimes it is like fantasy stuff. Oftentimes I will be
listening to an audio book about some video I'm working on like Russia or American expansion. There is so much to learn on this app. So you can do a month of
Audible for free if you want. There's a link in my description, it is Audible.com/JohnnyHarris. You can also text Johnny
Harris to the number 500-500. Clicking that link helps
support this channel, but it also gets you a
month of free Audible. What I love about an Audible membership is that you get an audio book every month. You can choose whatever
audio book you want no matter how expensive it is, you get it for the one flat
fee that you pay per month. And then you get unlimited access to all of these original titles, like the original content
that they produce. There's tons of stuff. I use this stuff for like my kids too, and I get it for free because
I'm an Audible member. It's a very good deal. So, link in my description,
Audible.com/JohnnyHarris, or text my name to this number and you can get it on this deal. I just love Audible
because I love learning and it allows me to learn a lot more because I'm not very good at reading 'cause I'm dyslexic and
that's a whole nother story. Thank you all for being here. I will see in the next one. (upbeat music)
