Zero Sum w/ Charles Hecker

 Charles Hecker (Zero Sum) and Bob Seely (The New Total War) discuss with Caroline Lang the unconventional methods Russia and other authoritarian states are using to challenge the West for global supremacy to undermine our beliefs, power and influence, from a financial and political perspective.

About the book

When the hammer and sickle came down in late 1991, Russia’s feverish new market opened for business. From banking to breweries, sectors emerged out of nowhere, in a country that had never had a functioning economy. For the next three turbulent decades, a wild, proto-capitalist free-for-all transformed Russian society.

Then, in 2022, Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The market started to collapse; Western firms fled Moscow’s skyscrapers. No country this large had ever remade itself so dizzyingly – now, just as dramatically, it was over. The intervening decades had seen phenomenal successes and crushing failures; the creation and destruction of enormous fortunes. How did it all happen?

Zero Sum brings to life the complex, vivid colour of one of the greatest experiments in the history of global commerce. What have businesses learnt—or failed to learn—from this adventure, both about Russia and about dynamics between countries and companies in the face of relentless change?

About the author

Charles Hecker has spent forty years travelling and working in the Soviet Union and Russia. He has worked as a journalist and a geopolitical risk consultant and has lived in Miami and Moscow. He currently resides in East London. A fluent Russian speaker, he holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University.