So things like "China is going to collapse" is a good hot take sound bite but he goes into way more depth in his book about population decline, how each country has a baby boomer population hitting retirement (at different paces), how those impact economics, the natural resources available in a region, etc.

Reading Zeihans latest book it feels like someone is giving you a play by play account of a game of Civilization, except its real. There is a lot of history in there about how we got to our current state with a lot of the predictions that are based on various factors. He's not saying things are certainties, more so that adding up a bunch of factors like above support his prediction.

Hot take/sound bites aren't a great source for any news, doesn't matter who its from.