War With Iran Is Rewriting Global Markets | Prof G Markets

Scott Galloway argues that America's relative resilience in the face of the Iran war is not a product of superior strategy or leadership — it is an accident of geography and geology. The U.S. has two oceans as moats, friendly neighbors, energy independence, and food surplus. Europe, by contrast, depends heavily on Middle Eastern oil, and Asian nations like Japan and South Korea get 70% of their energy through the Strait of Hormuz. When that strait becomes a war zone, their economies convulse.

But Galloway warns that this insulation breeds dangerous arrogance. «In the US, we don't realize a lot of our success is not our fault,» he says. America's tech CEOs and political leaders assume dominance is earned, not inherited. The result is reckless unilateralism — launching wars without consulting allies, breaking treaties, and assuming capital will always flow to the U.S. because it has nowhere else to go. That assumption, Galloway suggests, is about to be tested.

The real vulnerabilities are not military but financial and social. Smaller nations with dollar-denominated debt — Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines — are seeing their currencies collapse, making their obligations unpayable. If those defaults cascade into European banks, the contagion could reach American markets. And reputationally, the U.S. is squandering decades of trust. «The cooperation or the feeling of benign big brother — that going away is going to have all sorts of unintended consequences,» Galloway warns. America may survive this war economically, but it will emerge lonelier, less trusted, and more fragile than it realizes.

Galloway's most urgent warning has nothing to do with rogue algorithms or killer robots. It is about loneliness. «The biggest threat of AI is that we are producing a new species of asocial, asexual males,» he says. Young men aged 20–30 now spend less time outdoors than prison inmates. The number of high schoolers who see friends daily has been cut in half in 20 years. AI is accelerating this: Reddit and Discord replace friendship, Coinbase and Robinhood replace work, and increasingly lifelike porn replaces the messy, humiliating, rewarding process of learning to connect with women.

«Throughout history, the darkest moments have all had a preponderance of lonely young men with a lack of economic and romantic opportunities,» Galloway says. A man with no job and no romantic prospects becomes dangerous — and can be weaponized by a strongman. America's core advantage has been the middle class: a large cohort of economically viable men whom women found attractive. That equilibrium is breaking. The top 10% of men now control 50% of mating opportunities, Galloway argues, while the bottom half are shut out entirely. AI is giving them a simulacrum of life — enough to prevent revolt, but not enough to prevent radicalization.

Galloway's prescription: regulate AI like alcohol. Age-gate it. Remove Section 230 protections when platforms can detect suicidal ideation or psychosis. Hold companies liable when they keep serving content to users in crisis, just as bars are liable for serving drunk drivers. «If I go to a bar and they see I'm ridiculously [ __ ] up and I get on the road and kill someone, the bar is liable,» he says. «Why on earth would AI not be liable when they can sense someone is going through psychosis?» He cites the case of a Canadian teen who was casing a school while chatting with a Character.AI bot, and a U.S. teen who killed himself to «be with Daenerys» in the afterlife after the bot said, «I am waiting for you, my love.» These are not edge cases. They are the new normal — unless we act.

Galloway offers a heretical investment thesis: GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy will be more transformative than AI — both economically and socially. «Talk to someone who uses AI every day in their job, and talk to someone who's on a GLP-1 drug, and ask them what's having a bigger impact on your life,» he says. The drugs reduce weight, blood pressure, addiction, and inflammation. Every new discovery about GLP-1 is positive; every new AI revelation is alarming.

He recounts attending a South by Southwest dinner and noticing that Michael Dell and Mark Cuban look like «a version of themselves that the old version could eat.» When he asks which GLP-1 they're using, they claim it's just pickleball. «Right,» Galloway deadpans. «Michael Dell, you lost 70 pounds playing pickleball.» His investment strategy: go long Eli Lilly. He acknowledges most people with an IQ over 90 disagree with him, but he's sticking to it. AI is overvalued and over-hyped; GLP-1 is underappreciated and underpriced.