Episode Details

In this episode, we explore the geopolitical battle for the panama canal. Every single time a modern cargo ship passes through the Panama Canal, it swallows 52 million gallons of fresh water, and it just flushes that water right out into the ocean, never to be used again. Yeah, it is entirely gone. Right. We tend to look at global supply chains as these hypermodern sterile systems, like satellite tracking, algorithms, frictionless trade. But the reality of how goods actually move around the planet is raw. It's physical, and it is deeply vulnerable. Absolutely. Welcome to today's Deep Dive. You are joining us because you're that inherently curious learner who wants the absolute meat of a subject without the fluff. Today, our sources are giving us a comprehensive 10 ,000 foot view of the Panama Canal. And our mission here is to look far beyond just the basic dates and the ship sizes. We are unpacking how a 50 mile stretch of The lobbyists for the ruined French company, specifically William Nelson Cromwell and Philippe Brunel -Varilla, go into full panic mode when they hear the U .S. is looking at Nicaragua. Because they lose their only buyer. Exactly. They desperately drop the asking price for their rusted French assets in Panama from $109 million down to a bargain basement $40 million just to entice the Americans. And Roosevelt takes the bait. He wants Panama. But Panama isn't an independent country at this point. It is a province of Colombia. Correct. So the U .S. drafts the He Heran Treaty in 1903 to lease the land, but the Colombian Senate unanimously rejects it. The U .S. was offering a relatively small sum and the treaty demanded control of a strip of Colombian land, quote, in perpetuity. Giving away a piece of your sovereign nation forever is a massive insult to any government.