00:00:00
So there are five scenarios in which the war could end because Trump is stupid enough to take on what Israel wanted to
00:00:06
do, which was destroy Iran, but they've bitten off far more than they can chew.
00:00:10
So scenario one is Iran destroys the Gulf power infrastructure. I think that's highly likely. And if that
00:00:15
happens, then Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai, they'll become uninhabitable. And then scenario two, Iran disables
00:00:22
Israel's nukes. I hope that happens, but there's this one. And it scares the
00:00:27
out of me. Professor Steve, I have so many questions. What is going on? >> So, this war is threatening everybody on
00:00:32
the planet. And what Trump is doing at the moment is a pump and dump scheme. He's trying to drive up the oil price
00:00:36
and exploiting it for his friends and for his own wealth in the process. So, people are focusing upon the price of
00:00:42
this. But the really important point is this, the straight of Ham. So, oil, fertilizer, helium all have to pass
00:00:48
through the straight of Ham >> and Iran have blocked that gap. >> So, they can say you do or do not pass
00:00:53
depending on your country's attitude towards our country. And that's quite
00:00:57
terrifying because 20 to 30% of our fertilizer comes through at this point. But if this is not available, the globe
00:01:02
has a famine. >> Do you think he will send ground troops in? >> Yes, I do. But I'd hate to be one of
00:01:06
those troops because it's a suicide mission. They've got underground military units of weapons and troops,
00:01:11
but we have no idea of the scale. >> Trump keeps saying that the war has been
00:01:14
won. >> Yeah. >> What's going on there in your view? >> I think he's been fed propaganda to tell
00:01:19
him that he's winning the war by his immediate advisers because you cannot tell a person like that that they've
00:01:24
made a mistake. We'll talk about that as well. But you developed a bit of a reputation because you're very good at
00:01:28
predicting things. So, which of these five outcomes do you think is most probable to happen?
00:01:34
>> Oh god, >> this is super interesting to me. My team given me this report to show me how many
00:01:40
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00:01:45
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00:01:50
if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark
00:01:54
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00:02:00
team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to
00:02:06
hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll
00:02:09
ever ask of you, do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do.
00:02:13
I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder
00:02:16
and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed true to that
00:02:20
promise since the very beginning of the D ofio and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it.
00:02:26
Let's get on with the show. >> Professor Steven, who who are you? If you had to sort of distill it down to
00:02:39
three areas of specialism, what would those be? history of economic thought, financial instability, so the what
00:02:46
causes volatility in the in the economy and the dynamics of money and ironically
00:02:53
it makes me a minority in economics because most economists ignore money completely.
00:02:58
>> It's a strange thing to you. >> It's ridiculous but it's true.
00:03:01
>> We'll talk about that as well today. I really want to focus on what's going on
00:03:04
in the world right now because there's so many questions. It's it's all quite
00:03:08
confusing >> extremely >> and understanding the layers of motivation that you know Trump has, Iran
00:03:13
have, Israel have is um it's a difficult jigsaw puzzle to put together. >> I guess the the question that I keep
00:03:21
asking myself is like what is going on? >> You can't get away from the fact that
00:03:25
we've basically elected a mafia dawn to president of the United States. You've
00:03:30
got a guy who admires the mafia who's running the country. So what we're
00:03:37
getting in some ways is a shakeddown rather than anything driven by any sense of political necessity. Okay. So that's
00:03:44
that's a crazy element to begin with. And the American deep state as it's
00:03:50
called has been anti-Iran for 40 or 50 years. Israel has wanted to defeat Iran for that length of time. Trump is stupid
00:03:58
enough but also cunning enough. It's a combination of the two to take on what
00:04:04
Israel wanted to do, which was destroy Iran. They're now trying to do it and
00:04:08
they're finding that they've they've bitten off far more than they can chew.
00:04:12
>> Trump is someone who cares a lot about people's opinions of him and he must
00:04:17
have known that this would be politically unpopular to target around at this moment in time.
00:04:22
>> I don't think so. I had a relationship with somebody with narcissistic
00:04:25
personality disorder. So that's something over and above what I learned academically that I when I think about
00:04:31
his behavior and somebody like that, they want to be the center of attention at all times. They can't stand it when
00:04:38
somebody else is being spoken about. It's ridiculous, but it's it's a
00:04:41
pathology. So he's interested in people's opinions so long as they're
00:04:45
positive and they're about him. >> So you are you saying that he attacked
00:04:49
Iran and started this war in part because he wanted attention? >> That's always something with somebody
00:04:54
who's got that disorder. Yeah. >> I mean, what do you think about his rational? He's saying that he attacked
00:04:59
Iran because they had nuclear weapons and they were there was an imminent threat.
00:05:03
>> We still don't know whether Iran has nuclear weapons. Okay. We know that
00:05:07
Israel has. If you're going to attack a country with you, you should attack Israel, not Iran.
00:05:12
>> But you can't attack attack Israel, can you? Cuz >> I cannot make sense of what politicians
00:05:16
all over the planet are doing these days. There's a huge gap between what politicians are saying about global
00:05:22
politics and what people in the street are saying about it. So people on the street have seen the Gaza genocide.
00:05:28
They've seen all the conflicts Israel has started there. And I think the general sentiment in most countries in
00:05:34
the world today is anti-Israel because of the way it's treating the Palestinians. And that's what people are
00:05:40
thinking about. the top echelons like in this country as you know if I if I say free Palestine I say that outside on the
00:05:47
street I can be arrested it's crazy what there's a huge divorce between what
00:05:54
people are thinking and what the politicians are saying and I can't give any explanation for that divorce apart
00:06:02
from believing that Israel has something over our political leaders >> what do you mean you think they have
00:06:08
something over our political leaders >> I think there We know about the whole Epstein. The the
00:06:12
way that the Iranians refer to what's happening is they say they're fighting
00:06:15
the Epstein class and there's belief that there's something where Epstein
00:06:20
has been working for with the Israeli intelligence service and has blackmailed worthy material on a huge range of
00:06:27
politicians. And that's the only way that I can explain the the sort of things that politicians are supporting
00:06:33
when their populace is angry about those same policies. So you get demonstrations
00:06:38
here, you know, free Palestine demonstrations, 80-year-old female vicers being arrested for saying this
00:06:45
sort of stuff. You go back 40 years ago, there was a a a belief in the public and
00:06:50
a belief amongst politicians that Israel had a right to exist and it was all pro-Israel. And now after 40 years, the
00:06:58
type of abuses that have happened in Palestine have hit individual ordinary people's attitudes to Israel. So
00:07:06
ordinary people are saying Israel's the aggressor. Israel's making the mistakes.
00:07:10
But the politicians are all saying it's a it's it's anti- um Seemitic to
00:07:15
criticize Israel. >> If you had to give a a one-s sentence answer as to why this war started
00:07:23
because we sort of hypothesized a few things there. What would that one sentence answer be?
00:07:31
>> Again, this is trying to make sense of the senseless. I just think Israel
00:07:35
wanted to destroy Iran. They thought they could do it and they thought they had an American president who would help
00:07:40
them do it and they I drastically underestimated how prepared Iran was for that conflict.
00:07:46
>> Why would Israel want to destroy Iran? What's the context there? >> This goes back to religious elements.
00:07:52
The Zionist state had the right to that whole region and there's an expansionist
00:07:57
element to Israel's behavior for the last 40 years. And the major rival they
00:08:02
saw themselves as having in that sense was Iran. They can invade Jordan. They could attack Lebanon. Uh they could do
00:08:10
all these things. Of course they the 67 war. Uh they wiped out the is Arab invading Arabian armies in six days.
00:08:18
They have this past history of being militarily dominant in the area and they they knew that Iran was too big for them
00:08:26
to take on on their own. They thought they could get the Americans in there and I think they drastically
00:08:30
underestimated how prepared Iran was for this situation. >> When you say Iran were prepared for this
00:08:36
situation and it somewhat surprised Israel and the US. What is that preparedness you're speaking about?
00:08:41
Well, it's for a start the the fact that Iran witnessed that there were um decapitation attacks on other countries
00:08:49
in the region going way way back not just the last 10 years but the last 40 or 50 years decapitation
00:08:56
>> you take off the leader you kill the leaders and then with the leaders killed
00:08:59
the armies in disarray and you can come in and invade and take over. So getting rid of Saddam Hussein that sort of thing
00:09:05
you know wipe out Saddam Hussein's power base and then the whole system collapses. That was the Iraq story. But
00:09:11
the Iranians observed that and they have broken their military into 31 divisions.
00:09:17
There are 31 provinces like 31 states in that sense inside Iran. Their military has broken into those 31 units. They've
00:09:25
got their own fail safe system running in the background. They've got their own
00:09:29
resources, their own missiles, production systems, all that sort of stuff. So you've got to take out the
00:09:35
whole 31 and then they'd have that sub area. So the only way you can beat the
00:09:39
country is by literally bombing it to back to the stone age >> which is appears to be what they've been
00:09:45
trying to do >> trying to do. But the thing is it's a huge country. I mean look at you know
00:09:48
the scale of around the map's always distort how large. So that is larger. That's more than half the size of
00:09:53
Western Europe. It's got a population of 90 million about 1/3 or one quarter the
00:09:58
population of Europe far more than Iraq. >> I mean it looks like it's double the
00:10:02
size of the UK or more >> or more than double. I mean you know one thing about the MA projection.
00:10:07
>> No. What's that? >> Okay. It's that it's it makes the the
00:10:10
northern hemisphere is twice as large as the southern and arounds in the northern
00:10:14
hemisphere but not as far north as England. So the distortion gets amplified the further north you go. So
00:10:19
it's bigger than France and Germany and Italy and Spain >> and possibly Poland in terms of area.
00:10:26
And then if you even see just looking on the map itself you can see the corrugations there versus what you can
00:10:31
see corrugation >> the what representing mountains. Okay. >> Okay. There's more mountains inside
00:10:36
there. It's a hor it's a horrendous terrain to fight a war on. I think what
00:10:40
Trump is doing at the moment is a pump and dump scheme. He's trying to drive up
00:10:44
the oil price, tell friends beforehand that he's about to make his announcement
00:10:49
which will cause the price to fall and he's just oscillating this way up and
00:10:53
down and exploiting it for his friends and for his own wealth in the process. >> Do you actually think that's the case?
00:10:59
Because this must be make sense of this stuff. this must be hurting his friends economically because the this, you know,
00:11:05
the stock market's going to take a dip if he's not careful and his friends are
00:11:08
all shareholders in different big companies. So, you know, also if you know like the one of Kane's great lines
00:11:14
was that there's no point in buying a stock which you think is going to increase in value over time if you think
00:11:20
it's going to slump in the immediate future. So, he's making an announcement
00:11:24
which causes oil markets to panic. So, the price goes up. We've given him control of the most powerful country on
00:11:30
the planet. He knows if you make an announcement, it moves markets. He has no compunction whatsoever in exploiting
00:11:37
that to cause rises and falls in prices and try to exploit them himself and with
00:11:42
his friends. >> I did. I mean, I did see that. I've got the data here on on the floor showing
00:11:46
those graphs. I I generally looked at that and thought, yeah, you know, maybe, but it's also conceivable that Trump is
00:11:52
quite a predictable character and he tweets at the same time every day. And it's also I think me and you both know
00:11:57
that before the markets open on a Monday morning, he's going to want to say something really positive.
00:12:02
>> He has a track record of doing that. So is it conceivable that they knew he was
00:12:06
flying because it was tracked that he was going to be on this plane journey. There's going to be a press gaggle. We
00:12:11
know he's going to give an interview. I actually think that was quite predictable. If I was a betting man, I
00:12:14
would have gone Sunday night or Monday morning. I would have put a bet on oil prices coming down, the stock market
00:12:20
going up. >> Yeah. And like for example that one of the things he said most recently he
00:12:24
talked about getting a present from Iran >> and then he finally let slip what the
00:12:27
present was and was letting eight ships through the straight of Hmas. >> Oh
00:12:32
those eight ships were not American. They were other allies. I think what he's thinking is these um that's going
00:12:39
to mean the oil market gets calmed down. That means the price is going to fall. Uh so I can then do another pump and
00:12:46
dump. >> Let's explain the straight of hormones. >> Oh god. Yeah. is if we had to explain it
00:12:51
for 16 year olds because there's been lots of coverage on it and I think some
00:12:54
people have kind of skipped past the importance of the region. What is the straight of hormones and why does it
00:12:59
matter? >> Well, it's the choke point in the Persian Gulf to get through. You've got
00:13:04
like 21 km. Okay, that's an incredibly narrow gap for ships to pass through and
00:13:09
that means that all the countries that pump not just oil but fertilizer, uh, helium, all these critical elements for
00:13:16
the production system all have to pass through this point. And obviously that's
00:13:20
well within reach of any weapons from Iran. So they can say you do or do not pass depending on whether we approve or
00:13:26
don't approve of your political your country's attitude towards our country.
00:13:30
>> You said fertilizer. >> Yeah. >> Oil and helium. >> Yeah. Helium.
00:13:35
>> Where are they coming from? >> They're mainly coming from I think for
00:13:38
mainly from the Saudi Arabian side. Saudi Arabia and like Iran will have the same things but Iran would keep it keep
00:13:44
those for themselves but Saudi Arabia is the main source of gases and oils which
00:13:50
are refined and as byproducts we get sulfur dioxide and we get helium. This is the helium.
00:13:56
>> Yeah. >> Okay. That's you know a couple of kilos of helium. But helium it's an element
00:14:02
which there's no substitute. >> So helium is inert. >> What does that mean? It means it doesn't
00:14:08
interact with other chemicals. You want to give it a try? >> I've never done it.
00:14:12
>> I don't think there's any in here. >> Oh, what a pity. Okay. What I would have
00:14:14
done to give it a try. You got any real helium? >> Oh, bloody hell. Helium balloon.
00:14:20
>> Okay. >> Does it change your voice? >> I don't know. Has my voice changed?
00:14:27
>> It did. I'll give my voice a try. Okay. >> Um Okay. I've never done this before,
00:14:33
but I've heard it at parties. >> Okay. And now I think my voice has changed somewhat from
00:14:42
the fact you can do it. Oh my god. That is a riot. Okay. >> Where is helium coming from?
00:14:51
>> It's coming from a gas field. So about 30% of the world's helium comes from a
00:14:55
gas field which spans both Saudi Arabia and Iran. If you don't trap helium physically somehow it goes to outer
00:15:03
space. That's the ultimate destination of the stuff. So it's trapped in the
00:15:07
same things that trap oil. And then when you drill for oil, you also get helium coming out. And then helium is
00:15:13
absolutely critical for the semiconductor industry. It didn't matter 100 years ago.
00:15:18
>> And semiconductors are important for what? >> Everything. I mean you you know your you
00:15:22
take the semiconductors out of that, you've got a brick. Okay. The the the processors, the CPUs, the memory chips,
00:15:29
they're all made. Helium is an essential element to make them >> for our iPhones, our tablets,
00:15:34
>> everything. Everything electronic. If you need semiconductors, you need
00:15:37
helium. So if you cut off 30% of the world's helium supply, you cut off the capacity to produce 30% of the world's
00:15:44
semiconductors. >> And Iran have blocked that gap. >> And that means that we've suddenly lost
00:15:49
30% of the world's helium. >> I've got a quote from March 2026 from
00:15:52
leading helium expert Phil Cornblutch. >> He said, "We're looking at a minimum 2
00:15:57
to 3 months shutdown of helium production with up to 6 months before supply gets back to normal." and he
00:16:04
explained you can't stockpile helium because it leaks through containers. >> Y
00:16:08
>> so once supply is cut off semiconductor production will stop entirely. South
00:16:13
Korea gets 65% of its helium from Qatar in that region and makes 2/3 of the world's memory chips. Their government
00:16:20
has launched an emergency investigation into the shortage. Nobody's talking about this.
00:16:24
>> I know. And this this is one reason it's quite terrifying about the scale of what
00:16:28
we're going through cuz people just thinking it's going to be oil's going to
00:16:31
be more expensive. That's the sort of mindset we have. But in fact, critical
00:16:36
elements of the production system are being terminated by this conflict. You can't produce chips anymore. And you
00:16:42
can't Well, you got hang on. You can't produce these chips either because the
00:16:46
fertilizer is disappearing. >> So, you're holding a potato in your hand.
00:16:49
>> Yeah. >> How are potato chips going to be impacted by the water? >> Because the fertilizer. If we don't have
00:16:55
the fertilizer, we can't grow the potatoes. And it's not just potatoes. It's a whole range of crops. We eat
00:17:00
food, okay? We eat this green stuff. It actually starts as brown stuff because the fertilizer is an essential part of
00:17:07
growing all the food we eat. And the fertilizer is produced by a process called the habber bosch process which
00:17:13
takes petroleum and nitrogen and fixes them in such a way that you can put this on the on the field and your plants will
00:17:20
grow courtesy of the fertilizer. If we didn't have fertilizer at all, guess how
00:17:25
many billion people the planet could actually support? >> I don't know.
00:17:29
>> Between one and two. And fertilizer comes from this region. >> Again, 20 to 30% of our fertilizer comes
00:17:34
from that region. >> Through the straight of >> through the straight of Hamos.
00:17:37
>> Where is it coming from? >> It's coming again from the the same gas
00:17:41
field that's producing the helium produces a side effect of fertilizer. And you need you need I'm not a chemist,
00:17:48
okay? So I can get these things wrong, but you need sulfur. You need sulfuric acid as well as part of these production
00:17:53
processes. 20% of the world's fertilizer, helium, sulfuric acid, all pass through that straight. And if you
00:18:01
take them away, then you can't make microchips, which is what Korea is suffering from. You can't make
00:18:07
fertilizer, which which everybody will suffer from. If we lost 20% of the world's fertilizer, we'd lose roughly
00:18:14
20% of the world's food. And it cause a global famine. We've never had this
00:18:17
experience before. We've had localized famines. You know, countries like India
00:18:21
have had famines in parts of Africa and so on. But if this is not available, the
00:18:25
globe has a famine. >> And what's the last uh tanker you've got down there? There's one more on the
00:18:29
floor. >> Oh my god. Okay. Hey, that's pretty good. It was accidental, but that's that's petroleum.
00:18:35
Okay. A petroleum tank. Obviously empty. 20 L. >> So that's oil. >> That's oil.
00:18:40
>> Oil. Okay. And so if that that's what we're losing right now and people are
00:18:44
focusing upon the price of this but the really important point and I can bring up one of my own charts here is the role
00:18:51
of energy in production because if we don't have energy we can't produce goods
00:18:56
and services and the link is incredibly tight. This is looking at change in energy and change in gross world product
00:19:04
over the last 40 years. I'll throw this graph on the screen for people that are
00:19:07
watching. >> Okay. So, what what you've got here is the annual percentage change in gross
00:19:11
world product and the annual percentage change in gross energy consumption. And they're virtually lock step and they're
00:19:17
the same magnitude. >> So, when energy goes up, GDP goes up. >> And when energy goes down, GDP goes
00:19:22
down. Now, we're losing 20% of the world's liquefied natural gas, a substantial proportion of its oil as
00:19:29
well. We could see a 5 or 10% fall in energy. we will certainly see a 5 or 10% fall in global world gross world
00:19:37
product. >> So explain that to me. So where is the oil in this region? >> It's everywhere.
00:19:41
>> Okay. >> I mean this this is one of the accidents of history that the oil is a large part
00:19:46
is concentrated here and a large part over here and a bit in Russia. >> So over here for people that can't see
00:19:51
you're pointing at Iran, Saudi Arabia, >> Saudi Arabia, >> Iraq and then there's a lot in the
00:19:57
United States and there's a lot >> you've got some in Russia as well. There
00:20:00
was a small amount like the North Sea had a substantial amount of oil as well at one stage.
00:20:05
>> And the type of oil in this region I hear is quite important. >> It's very I mean oil there's no such
00:20:11
thing as a homogeneous product. >> What does homogeneous mean? >> Me everything is the same everywhere.
00:20:15
You can if you don't get it here you can substitute for something over here.
00:20:19
That's a myth that economists actually unfortunately believe. They basically
00:20:23
could persuade people to think that everything is homogeneous. In fact oil from Venezuela is almost like tar. oil
00:20:29
from here is flows like water comparatively. You need different processing systems to to extract that
00:20:35
oil than you need over here. Uh if we lose this, we can't replace it with something from over here. So once that
00:20:42
goes then the production system of the planet is damaged. Uh this has been the shocking thing for me as a citizen has
00:20:51
been the fact that a war with one country could decapitate what 20 to 30% >> of global production
00:20:58
>> global production of oil. >> Yeah. And food. >> That's a vulnerability if I've ever
00:21:02
heard one. >> I know. And this is like one reason I'm a critic of mainstream economics is they
00:21:07
trivialize all this stuff. They don't teach their students how critical this
00:21:11
is. So most people are like you, even people who've done a PhD in economics,
00:21:15
even worse in that sense than other people, they don't understand how critical and how fragile our production
00:21:21
systems are. So people can talk about a war in Iraq and think, "Oh, that's a war
00:21:24
in Iran and that's going to cut off our oil supply." No, it's going to cut off
00:21:28
your food supply. >> And for the average person listening now, what will they start to experience
00:21:32
if this war doesn't immediately end? 2 or 3 months India is going to run out of
00:21:38
fertilizer and so there'll be a famine in India. Food production on the planet
00:21:43
could fall 10 25%. And therefore the there simply won't be enough food for everyone on the planet and then it's a
00:21:51
question of who's going to starve. Now you'd think the wealthy countries are
00:21:55
going to be safe there. Look for Australia, my old home country has about 30 days oil supply. When it runs out it
00:22:02
can't get food from the farm to the city anymore. So Australia is incredibly
00:22:07
vulnerable. We're all far more vulnerable than we realize and this war is threatening everybody on the planet.
00:22:13
>> I got in an Uber yesterday and I was with a a wonderful guy who was actually
00:22:17
weirdly I sat to the Uber at 2 a.m. and I looked up on the screen and he was listening to the D of Sierra and then he
00:22:22
clocked he clocked me in the back of the car. We had a great chat and he was saying to me, listen this isn't actually
00:22:26
my main job. It's my third job. I do this because of the cost of living and it really stayed with me.
00:22:32
>> He's doing three jobs which I love. Yeah. three jobs and he picked me up at
00:22:35
2:00 a.m. He's got a family >> and he's working his butt off to keep
00:22:39
the family alive. >> Yes. And you know, I'm going to say something which I probably um I don't
00:22:44
say a lot which which came to mind which is um in the position I'm in now. I
00:22:50
think it it it was a real reminder of my own personal privilege that I think is really important for someone like me
00:22:55
that doesn't has an interview show because you've got to be like intellectually honest with yourself or
00:23:00
just like honest with yourself generally that like as a as someone in my position
00:23:04
who has been fortunate enough to be able to make significant money. I can understand from having that conversation
00:23:10
how detached >> you are >> I am >> from the world around you. >> Yes.
00:23:18
You're you're a very unique soul because you I know like read a bit of your
00:23:22
history of course and you've had that terrible period where you were you know
00:23:25
unemployed and what the hell do I do >> shoplifting food and stuff and >> you were ambitious but you okay if you
00:23:31
don't experience poverty you don't know what it's like >> yeah but even if you have
00:23:35
>> you can forget it >> you can forget it >> but you haven't yet
00:23:38
>> well this is why it's so important for me to have those conversations because
00:23:41
him saying I'm working three jobs and this is and picking me up at 2 a.m. in
00:23:44
his Uber and him telling me he's doing that because of cost of living because
00:23:48
he needs to pay the bills immediately made me think of ahead of this conversation today like oh my god if the
00:23:54
prices go up 20% for people >> he's out he's he can't work 24 hours a
00:23:58
day >> can't work another he can't work more hours in the day and it was just one of
00:24:00
those moments where you go hell Steve like man you need to stay close to the plight of uh of people that are
00:24:07
>> on the bread line and so many people are these days in advanced countries not
00:24:11
just third world countries but certainly like in America and the UK there are huge numbers of people who are basically
00:24:18
living from hand to mouth at the current system. So if we have a breakdown they can't afford it and in that situation
00:24:26
you can no longer use money as your way of deciding whether you can eat food or not.
00:24:31
>> I wonder if politicians know this cuz part of the reason I say this is because
00:24:34
you know Trump is a very wealthy man multi-billionaire reportedly >> and if the prices go up 20% at the pump
00:24:41
>> he makes profit. I mean he actually when he said he said he said in favor of the
00:24:44
rising oil price we'll make a lot of money out of it. His immediate association rising price of something
00:24:50
that I'm indirectly selling that's good. He doesn't say what about people buying
00:24:54
it. The people who buy it can no longer afford it. >> You've got um some food there on the
00:24:59
table which shows how these conflicts and the pressure they put on some of these scarce resources can impact our
00:25:08
ability to go and buy food. I think you've got two bowls of potatoes. >> Well, let's actually make it fairer
00:25:14
right now. Let's get the actual distribution correct initially. So, you are talking about someone who in your
00:25:21
situation, you've got that local Uber's got this, and now you're taking away the oil price. That's going
00:25:28
to make Trump better off, but he's down to the stage where, you know, he's not
00:25:32
too far from that happening. And that's what we've pushed ourselves into with
00:25:36
this war. Do do wars typically make inequality worse? >> Very good question. I think wars are
00:25:47
created when inequality is bad. If you go back to the Great Depression and see what caused World War II, it was largely
00:25:54
the collapse of the German economy. Uh when they repaid their debt, their private debt to America or government
00:26:01
private government debt to America that led to the rise of Hitler. Everybody thinks Hitler rose because of the VHimar
00:26:06
inflation. That's what people normally think. In fact, the when when Hitler came to power in Germany, the rate of
00:26:13
inflation was minus 10%. It was deflation. Prices were falling. Unemployment rose from very low to 25%
00:26:21
of the population. In that situation, people supported Hitler. He revived the economy. I'm happy to talk about how he
00:26:28
did that later. But inequality leads to people being willing to elect demagogues
00:26:34
to say we can save you. And then you get war coming out of it. What happened after the World War II is
00:26:41
politicians realized that people had been through the Great Depression, which was horrific, and they'd been through
00:26:46
World War II, which was horrific. And in that period, people in America were talking about either a fascist world or
00:26:54
a communist world. So the Americans realized they had to improve the living standards of the average American
00:27:00
substantially to get away from that. And if you look at, you know, in 1950s and60s, that's what is called the golden
00:27:07
age of capitalism because at that stage, you could be a single male supporting a
00:27:12
wife and four kids and have a comfortable lifestyle at the time. That was where we started from. So the
00:27:19
the war itself led to a focus upon equality, a focus upon fairness and getting as much as you can to the
00:27:26
poorest in society. And then we've forgotten that over the last 80 years. And we've now got back to massive
00:27:33
inequality once more. So I think inequality causes wars. Wars in the aftermath make people focus on equality
00:27:41
not to allow that horror to happen once more. And then we forget and do the whole damn thing again.
00:27:45
>> One of the um surprising things I learned the other day was that the country that is estimated to have the
00:27:52
biggest reserve of oil is Venezuela. >> Yep. The third country on this list that
00:27:59
is estimated to have the biggest reserve of oil is Iran. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Now, it doesn't take a genius. Funny
00:28:06
enough, >> of two countries have added. Yeah. The second country being America.
00:28:11
>> Well, it says Saudi Arabia. >> Saudi Arabia. Well, that's already an
00:28:14
American vessel. Yeah. >> Yeah. That's already basically they're basically partners with America already.
00:28:18
>> And funnily enough, the fourth one is Canada. And if you if you're listening a
00:28:22
lot to Trump's rhetoric, he said he was going to take Canada and make it the
00:28:25
51st state or something. it doesn't feel that the countries that the US are invading their leaders are the country
00:28:33
that have the biggest supplies. And Trump has already said, you know, immediately he said after taking out
00:28:39
Maduro in Venezuela, >> pulling him out of his bed with his wife and flying him back to the US,
00:28:44
>> he already said that the oil's on the way back to America. >> Yeah. One might assume that much of the
00:28:49
motivation here with Iran is when they were in negotiations with them, maybe they weren't playing boy ball with the
00:28:56
oil. Maybe they were threatening something with the oil and maybe it's such an economic waste.
00:29:02
>> Well, maybe most of Trump's friends, if he has them, are oil executives and they
00:29:07
can see the benefit for them in controlling global oil and the one part they can't control is Iran.
00:29:11
>> But I mean, it would it's backfired pretty horrifically. I think one of the
00:29:14
great sayings in humanity is it's looked like a good idea at the time, then you
00:29:19
do it and you realize you underestimated your opponent. You have you don't realize how difficult it is. Like you
00:29:25
mentioned, you know, talking about how being wealthy can make you dissociate from the problems that ordinary people
00:29:31
have. It can also make you dissociate from reality in general. You don't realize how difficult it is to something
00:29:37
do something you want to have done. So all these oil executives and people who Trump socializes with could have
00:29:43
thought, take out Iran, America dominates the global oil thing. We're all going to be rich. Okay? But they
00:29:49
don't realize that Iran's been aware of this possibility for 40 years. And
00:29:53
they're prepared. They're far better prepared than the Americans and the
00:29:56
Israelis thought. >> So you've got five scenarios laid out on these cards in front of you here that
00:30:02
you think could happen next. I'm going to ask you to explain to me what the five scenarios are and then tell me
00:30:07
which one you think is most likely to occur. >> So, scenario one, which is the one that
00:30:12
I think Trump is I think Israel wants this one, Iran has destroyed. Okay, if that happens, we're all gone because to
00:30:20
destroy Iran, you're going to have to use nuclear weapons. Okay, you can't
00:30:24
destroy it without obliterating it as nuclear weapons do. And that's the scariest. I don't think it's going to
00:30:30
happen. My main hope here is that Iran realizes that possibility and they've
00:30:36
got a way to neutralize not America's nuclear weapons, but Israel's. >> You think it's a possibility?
00:30:42
>> It's a possibility and it's what scares the out of me because if this
00:30:45
happens, then we're all dead. Obviously, a nuclear bomb doesn't just blow up an
00:30:50
individual target. It everything within reach gets exploded into the atmosphere.
00:30:54
That's what led people to realize that you couldn't have a nuclear war back in
00:30:58
the days when we had mutually assured destruction as the as the policy. If you attack a country, then you will also
00:31:05
die. >> But can't they use narrow nuclear weapons? Is that not a thing?
00:31:08
>> Well, um >> smaller nuclear weapons. >> Well, again, if the country is smaller,
00:31:13
you're talking about destroying Europe. The weapons you'd need to make sure you
00:31:18
got every last potential element of Iran neutralized. You're talking about bombing something which is, you know,
00:31:25
virtually the size of Western Europe. The amount of weapons you got to drop to do that
00:31:30
and you've got to if you if you don't get it right, then they're going to come at you with
00:31:35
what they've got left. >> The world has dropped nuclear weapons before and people survive. Other
00:31:39
neighboring countries survived >> only twice and only small weapons. The weapons we're talking about in Hiroshima
00:31:46
and Nagasaki, they're about equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. We're now talking
00:31:52
weapons to 20 million tons of TNT, the biggest nuclear weapons. And if you wanted to hit a country the size of Iran
00:32:00
and know you've neutralized it, so you destroy the whole thing, you're talking
00:32:04
hundreds of those weapons. >> If you had to give a percentage probability of that outcome occurring,
00:32:10
would it be less than 1%? If we didn't have a madman in Washington, yes, be less than 1%. Um, if
00:32:19
we didn't have madman in Israel, less than 1%, I think probably 5%. >> 5% probability that
00:32:25
>> that's a possibility. I mean, again, you know, this is trying to make sense of
00:32:28
the senseless. >> Okay. >> But I'd put it about less than 10% but
00:32:32
still scary as a possibility. >> If we end up there, we're all gone. I mean, you know, I know very little
00:32:40
about all these things, so that's the disclaimer. Um, I'd say that I don't
00:32:46
think Israel would intentionally wipe out the rest of the world or cause a nuclear winter because that would
00:32:52
obviously impact them as well. But I I I am quite scared of president's setting.
00:32:57
And what I mean by that is if we establish it being okay to drop nuclear weapons on people you don't like, the
00:33:03
sort of domino effect of that for people in Ukraine and other parts of the world
00:33:07
where there's conflict might then lead to, >> you know, mutually assured destruction.
00:33:12
>> Yeah. It's the it's the last possibility you want to have happen. The fact that
00:33:15
it's even possible to contemplate it is a terrifying prospect. >> Let us hope.
00:33:21
>> Yeah. So scenario two is Iran destroys the Gulf power infrastructure. I think that's highly
00:33:27
likely. >> Iran destroys Gulf power infrastructure. What does that mean? >> What it means is that Iran all the Gulf
00:33:34
states have got their own power systems mainly based on burning oil for obvious reasons. Uh if you take out their power
00:33:40
structure systems then those countries become uninhabitable. >> Is that what's happening already? Cuz I
00:33:46
know Iran have attacked a few sort of power facilities in the region. There have been a couple of well there was one
00:33:50
attack on a Saudi Arabian power systems and that took out two of the 14 units that are critical for creating liqufied
00:33:57
natural gas and apparently it'll take 5 years to rebuild them and there are only
00:34:02
five companies on the planet that can actually do that rebuilding. One quarter of the world's liquid natural gas comes
00:34:08
through the straight of Hamos. One tenth of that has been destroyed. It's like 2
00:34:13
and a half% of the world's energy supply is gone for the next 5 years until those
00:34:18
are rebuilt. If Iran destroys the Gulf power infrastructure, then Saudi Arabia, Qatar, uh Dubai, they all become
00:34:25
uninhabitable. >> And we're seeing that happen in parts. I mean, it sounds like this these attacks
00:34:30
have slowed down a little bit, but it was interesting that Iran's strategy was
00:34:33
to attack their neighboring sort of partners and specifically targeting a lot of their energy infrastructure. Is
00:34:38
that in part to apply pressure? >> Yeah. If I attack Dubai, the leaders of
00:34:43
Dubai are going to call Trump and say, "Listen, cut this out." >> Oh, yeah. I mean, the pressure coming
00:34:46
back from the Arabian states on America, I imagine, is quite immense right now, saying, "Don't do it." It's quite
00:34:52
possible Israel could do it, like attack Iran and then Iran does a retribution attack. Trump, if you would have seen
00:35:00
his tweet this morning, I think he's put it off to April the 6th before he says
00:35:03
he starts attacking power infrastructure. if he attacks power infrastructure in Iran. Iran has said we
00:35:08
will attack power infrastructure in the Gulf States. So we've got till you know
00:35:13
what 8 days. I think he's bluffing. I hope he's bluffing. But if he does do
00:35:18
the attack then Iran will respond by destroying either an equivalent component of the Gulf States or the
00:35:25
whole infrastructure. >> I don't think people quite realize how costly it is for regions like Dubai when
00:35:33
Iran attack them. I was looking at some of the data. >> Yeah. >> And according to current estimates and
00:35:38
historical risk assessments by Dubai officials, >> they lose a million per minute, which is
00:35:45
60 million per hour or 1.4 billion a day when there's an unplanned emergency
00:35:52
shutdown just of their airport. >> Their airports, let alone their power systems. Yeah.
00:35:57
>> As we probably saw on the news, Iran had flown it seemed like a couple of drones
00:36:01
into Dubai's airport, which meant that it had to shut down. Yeah, >> they're losing a billion a day because
00:36:06
that airport is closed. I think it's the biggest airport in the world. >> It is economic pressure
00:36:13
which will then trickle down to Trump and sort of force his hand. So, they've
00:36:16
got a clear incentive to cause chaos. >> Yeah. >> And that partly what Iran is saying.
00:36:22
It's it's like a game of bluff. You don't want to do this bluff. If that
00:36:25
bluff happens then the Saudi Arabian peninsula becomes uninhabitable and therefore all the I mean that if if
00:36:33
people have are forced out of there and most of the residents in those countries
00:36:36
are not Saudis. They're third world workers from India and Pakistan and the Philippines and so on. They're being
00:36:43
paid lousy wages to to work on all these systems. If they leave because the power
00:36:48
is not there to support them anymore. they try to leave then we lose the entire energy contribution that that
00:36:54
region makes to the global economy >> and and the figure screwed >> and that figure I cited includes not
00:37:00
just lost airport revenue but then the immediate impact on airlines cargo logistics and the missed opportunity
00:37:04
cost of thousands of highv value business travelers attending the region that Dubai's GDP is roughly 30%
00:37:10
dependent on the aviation and tourism sectors so when the airport closes it impacts tourism hospitality real estate
00:37:16
investing global supply chains and everything so it's Um, it's quite remarkable specifically with Dubai
00:37:22
>> because Dubai I think Dubai is a lovely place. I've been multiple times. I I I I
00:37:26
love going there. >> But it felt really safe and so a lot of people >> It's not safe. Yeah.
00:37:31
>> It's not safe. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. A lot of people had chosen to
00:37:34
uproot their lives and move there and you'd almost kind of forgotten you were
00:37:38
in the Middle East to some degree. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> But I think this is going to be a pretty
00:37:42
traumatic reminder for a lot of people there >> how fragile >> how fragile
00:37:45
>> this area is and like that's the lesson we're learning. It's the fragility of
00:37:49
the society we take for granted. >> So that was scenario number two. >> Okay. Scenario three. That's the one
00:37:55
that really scares me because that is the Samson doctrine. You know the story of Samson. Yeah. Okay. Samson is a
00:38:03
enormously strong individual who's strong because of his hair. And then he gets conned. This is an ancient story
00:38:10
from the Bible. And the woman who's conned him shaves his hair. So he's weakened. And then they put him in a
00:38:17
temple where he's standing between two pillars and his hair is gone. He's bald.
00:38:21
He can't do a thing. They forget the fact that his hair is starting to grow.
00:38:25
His hair gets to the stage where he's now got his strength back. He pushes those pillars and the whole thing
00:38:30
collapses and everybody dies. That's the Samson doctrine. And that involves Israel's nuclear weapons. If they
00:38:37
realize that they are going to lose this war and it becomes existential for them
00:38:42
then one of the things they have claimed that they do is unleash destruction on the rest of the world like Samson
00:38:49
pushing the towers and the whole thing comes collapsing down. >> This is I mean going back to the
00:38:53
situation with Iran and Israel. One of the things I was thinking a lot about from some commentary that I'd seen is
00:38:59
Israel really have a motive to get rid of Iran because Iran have repeatedly threatened Israel. It's also because I
00:39:08
mean Israel is trying to get rid of the Palestinians and in that sense Iran has been probably the major bulkwood
00:39:15
supporting the Palestinians say let the Palestinians survive. Let the Palestinian people continue existing.
00:39:22
And the Israelis have been pushing and pushing and pushing the Palestinians out. You know, it's a hornets's nest.
00:39:28
We've provoked a hornets's nest. Iran is responding right now, I think, in a very
00:39:32
judicious way. But if the Israelis realize they're facing an existential defeat, that scenario, it would again
00:39:40
mean uh civilization potentially gets destroyed. And just looking at some of the things that Iran have said about
00:39:46
Israel, historically, the Supreme Leader of Iran stated in 2015 that Israel would
00:39:51
not see the next 25 years. Other officials said things like, "The end is near." Um,
00:39:58
>> and in March 2026, Iran's tone shifted from ideological to purely retaliatory
00:40:06
with the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Muhammad, stating that Iran has officially declared that it
00:40:12
considers all Israel energy, water, and IT infrastructure legitimate targets for
00:40:17
irreversible destruction with zero restraint. If we think about this from a psychology
00:40:23
perspective, you've got two neighbors. They're both either implying implicitly
00:40:26
or explicitly that they want to wipe the other one out. >> Yeah. >> Trump is sort of this third party in in
00:40:31
the arrangement who's not in the region, so he might be a little bit safer. >> Those two parties that are against each
00:40:37
other, one of them has nuclear weapons and the other appears to be trying to make one. the neighbor that is Israel
00:40:45
presumably cannot let that happen because if it gets to a point where they both have nuclear weapons and they both
00:40:51
want to wipe each other out. >> No, I I actually think that the old days of mutually assured destruction were a
00:40:59
more stable time than what we're in now because if you realize that if you attack you also die, you don't attack.
00:41:05
>> But what if you think of death as being a better thing than life? You you have to have a society
00:41:12
continuing after you die. If you're going to be a martyr, there has to be people who are going to mourn your
00:41:17
death. If you believe being a martyr means everybody else so so dies and you don't do it.
00:41:21
>> So, do you think if Iran had nuclear weapons, it would be a safer world?
00:41:24
>> I think it'd be safer because it would tell the Israelis, stop attacking your
00:41:27
neighbors. >> I sat with um a few nuclear experts and one of the things that was shocking that
00:41:33
I learned is >> if the United States wanted to launch a nuclear weapon today,
00:41:38
>> Yeah. It is one person's decision. >> I heard that. And that's what Trump can
00:41:42
actually just make that decision. >> He can make the decision on his own. He
00:41:45
doesn't need to consult Congress or anybody else. He has someone who walks around with a briefcase that has the
00:41:49
nuclear codes in at any moment. They call it Yeah. And when I think about the same in this region, actually, you don't
00:41:55
need a whole state to decide that they don't like their neighbor. All you need
00:41:59
is one supreme leader >> or Netanyahu to say, "Do you know what? I'm near the end of my life and these
00:42:06
people have really pissed me off." Yeah, that's right. And that's I mean I
00:42:10
thought there was at least some control. I saw I saw that segment with Annie Jacobson. Yeah.
00:42:14
>> I thought there was at least some control. He had to consult someone. >> But if and or they had to have
00:42:19
circumstances were justified not consulting someone. >> If he's got that right, then we it comes
00:42:24
down to what's the behavior of the person who carries the nuclear football. Does he let Trump get hold of it? And
00:42:31
like there there was another incident way way back I think in this 70s or 80s that the Russian early warning system
00:42:39
reported that there was a nuclear attack on the way to Russia and there was one submarine commander or one element of a
00:42:46
submarine command system and they had to have three people in the submarine who agreed to to launch an attack and this
00:42:52
particular person refused. If he'd agreed with the other nuclear war at it, even the Russian submarine had three
00:43:06
people who had to make that decision. So, we didn't have a nuclear war. Now,
00:43:10
we've got one maniac in this White House who could do it. I'll play Annie
00:43:14
Jacobson's clip now where she talks about the idea of sole authority which I
00:43:19
think is an important thing for people to understand because when we think about who we're electing to lead our
00:43:24
nuclear capable countries >> you have to think about who you want to give sole authority to
00:43:31
>> the United States president has sole presidential authority to launch a
00:43:35
nuclear war >> what does that mean >> it's exactly like it sounds what's so
00:43:40
interesting is a lot of this stuff this nomenclature that gets thrown at If you just break it down, it's sole
00:43:46
solo presidential. He's the pus authority. He doesn't have to ask anyone
00:43:52
for permission. Not the SEC staff, not the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, not the Congress. I love the
00:43:59
worried look on your face in this moment because it is once you know that you say well first you might Google is
00:44:08
it really true and you will get for example on Reddit like that's not really
00:44:13
true you'll get like hundreds of thousands of people you know coming in with their opinions about how that's not
00:44:20
really true well it is really true it's absolutely true and in fact during the
00:44:25
former President Trump administration Congress became so sort of I want to say motivated or alarmed by this issue
00:44:34
meaning they were being asked questions by the powers that be. Is this actually true that they released a report stating
00:44:43
specifically and I quote in the book yes it is true as commanderin-chief the president has this sole authority.
00:44:50
He doesn't need to ask anyone. >> So what is scenario four in your envelopes there? Iran disables Israel's
00:44:58
nukes. Nobody can know. But I do believe that Iran has not developed nuclear weapons.
00:45:03
>> So you're hoping Iran disables Israel's nuclear weapons? >> I am. I hope that happens because that
00:45:08
takes out the nuclear option. Okay. We won't see nuclear war as a result of this. If the only nuclear weapons that
00:45:13
we know exist in the Middle East are destroyed. >> But if Iran starts disabling Israel's
00:45:18
nukes and attacking Israel that effectively, there's going to be an even bigger problem. Well, not not if we're
00:45:25
talking conventional weapons. If it's conventional weapons and ground trips,
00:45:29
then you don't end up with nuclear winter and the death of everybody on the planet.
00:45:33
>> Wait, so you're saying you hope Iran invades Israel and takes out their
00:45:36
nuclear weapons? >> No, that's necessarily invasion. It could be the missiles they've got left.
00:45:40
Again, we don't know how capable their missiles are. The level of planning that
00:45:44
Iran has done in this war, I I had no idea of of the fact they had those 31 regions, for example, until the war
00:45:50
began. My special is economics, not global military politics. But once I learned that, I thought they have really
00:45:57
thought this through. They have wargamed what happens if they get attacked by America. And they've warmed it
00:46:04
comprehensively. Now, I hope they've also wargamed if we start defeating Israel and Israel realizes they're going
00:46:13
to be wiped out, then the possibility for the Samson doctrine comes in. We have to disable that before it happens.
00:46:19
How could they possib They They don't have a functioning military left in any
00:46:23
sort of typical sense. They don't have ships left. They don't have planes left.
00:46:27
>> They don't have ships. They don't have planes. But they have got missiles. And
00:46:30
we don't know how many missiles they've got. We don't know where the missiles
00:46:33
are. Certainly the Americans would have some intelligence. I think the word's
00:46:36
got to be used with inverted commas these days, but some intelligence over where they are located in Iran. But if
00:46:42
you listen to the Iranians talking about it, they say they've got hundreds of
00:46:46
these facilities buried hundreds of meters below the ground. If the with the weapons they've developed, the the um
00:46:54
advanced rocketry they've developed, they can evade RIL's Iron Dome, maybe
00:47:00
they can also get into and destroy Israel's launch capabilities. And if that happens, I think that's that would
00:47:06
be the best possible outcome because we have a a rogue state in the Middle East which has nuclear weapons which will
00:47:14
neither admit that it has or won't sign it. They're not part of the nuclear
00:47:18
nonpol proliferation treaty. They won't sign that treaty. We should never have
00:47:22
allowed that to happen. And if Iran gets rid of them, I think it's the world's a
00:47:26
safer place. >> Israel are just going to make more nuclear weapons. >> They have the resources. Uh, you need a
00:47:32
hell of a lot of technology and a hell of a lot of intelligent people to do that. You've already lost the war to
00:47:36
>> How could Israel lose the war? >> You've got 90 a population of 90 million
00:47:41
in Iran and a population of less than 10 million in Israel. >> But they've got it's a sort of
00:47:46
technological gulf. >> It's not as big as we thought it was. We're only realizing now the level of
00:47:52
technology that Iran has. I mean the things which Iran are doing in this war so far have surprised everybody who's
00:47:59
hasn't got the background of intelligence to tell them what's going on uh it's an educated sophisticated
00:48:06
culture far more so than the caricature we've got from the west has been about
00:48:10
it in the past so they >> they don't have near nearly the same level of resources and technology and uh
00:48:19
and I would say maybe sort of sophisticated yeah advanced systems from a war perspective that Israel do.
00:48:27
>> We think we don't know. We're assuming >> even the intelligence services, even
00:48:31
their like their planes and their missiles and their defense systems are like profoundly more advanced than
00:48:36
Iran's. >> If that was the case, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's 3 weeks
00:48:41
after the war began or 4 weeks. You know, the original belief that Trump has to be over in one day. That's proved
00:48:48
false. >> I think that's in part because of what you said because they've prepared for
00:48:52
decapitation. If I was the supreme leader of Iran, yeah, that's the sort of approach I would have taken, which is
00:48:58
you take me out and actually you've got a bigger problem because now you've got
00:49:01
to negotiate with 41 or 31 different sort of submillitaries and that's an impossible task.
00:49:07
>> Yeah. Yeah. And that's the Iranians were aware of that and they've got a, you
00:49:11
know, a huge army. They've got they can conscript far more people than Israel
00:49:15
has. Um it's to me if it gets down to an conventional military then it's possible
00:49:21
that you know Israel could lose that as well. >> On March 21 Trump threatened to
00:49:26
obliterate Iran's power plants if they did not fully reopen the straight of Hormos within 48 hours.
00:49:32
>> He then came out and said that he was pausing that because Iran were negotiating
00:49:37
>> um and he says he he thinks he's negotiating with the right person. As of
00:49:42
yesterday, Trump has announced a 10day pause until April 6th on destroying energy plants, claiming that indirect
00:49:50
talks are going very well and that Iran is begging to make a deal according to the Guardian. So, what's going on there
00:49:57
in your view? >> I think he's gaming the markets. I really think he's using it to cause the
00:50:03
OMI price to go up and down and gaming at either side. and somebody in his circle or people are making a fortune
00:50:10
playing that's the case. >> Yeah, I do. I mean >> because there's lots of ways to make
00:50:15
money that don't involve crashing the global economy, losing the midterms. >> Yeah, you'd think of that. You've got
00:50:21
you've got ethics, you've got empathy, you've got morals. Trump has none of
00:50:25
those things. >> Do you not think it's just it's just again if we look at Trump's pattern of
00:50:29
behavior over time, even with the tariffs? >> Yeah. The same pattern of behavior
00:50:32
occurred there where he would come out and say, "Every leader is calling me.
00:50:36
They can't stop calling me. They all want to make a deal. I'm going to do a
00:50:39
tariff on you 10%. Wait, no, I'm not. Pause. Call me." >> Yeah. >> It's the same pattern of behavior. It's
00:50:44
you you make a threat system. Yeah. >> You then >> blackmail the person to try and
00:50:49
negotiate with you. when they don't, you hit them with the thing hard and eventually in the end of the day, you
00:50:55
don't really do any of the stuff you threaten to do >> because you've sort of
00:50:59
>> manipulated a person into getting your way. It's the same pattern of behavior.
00:51:03
We're going to smash you if you don't call me. >> Yeah, >> they do or don't call. He announces to
00:51:07
the world that they called. They're begging. Look, it says here, "They're
00:51:10
begging me for a deal. I'm going to give them 10 more days." >> To me, it sounds like he's trying to
00:51:15
build his golden bridge to get the out of there. What he's imagining is he's dealing with somebody like himself
00:51:20
in Iran. Okay? He's he's projecting what how he would react to these things. He's
00:51:26
obviously projecting his own behavior onto the system. And it's projection rather than understanding. So if you
00:51:32
decapitate, you know, if you took out Trump, the fear of being, you know, assassinated, yes, well bargain, what do
00:51:38
you want me to do? He thinks that works in Iran. It doesn't. >> You can look at his behavior and sort of
00:51:43
understand what he wants. He wants to win this war and he he want you know he wants to win the war and that's and get
00:51:48
out of there because that's what he's been saying. We've won. We won. We've
00:51:50
won every day. We've won. More missiles go in. We've won. So that's clearly what
00:51:54
he wants to happen. The problem is winning here doesn't seem like a straightforward thing.
00:51:57
>> No, it's not going to happen. >> No pun intended with a straight up. But
00:52:00
it really doesn't seem like a straightforward thing. >> So I it's my opinion now that they are a
00:52:05
little bit stuck because if you leave now you lose. >> Yeah. >> Iran start firing at Israel. Israel
00:52:11
don't stop even though you tell them to. Yeah, >> they start firing at each other. The
00:52:15
whole thing blows up. Oil, they keep the straight of Horos closed. Oil prices go
00:52:20
up. It looks terrible, terrible, terrible for Trump. We might get he might find himself in a Bush situation
00:52:25
where his legacy, and I think that's such an important word, a man that can't
00:52:29
be elected for a third term. His legacy is tarnished in the same way that Bush's
00:52:34
legacy was tarnished by going to war in the Middle East. M >> I think his greatest fear, Trump's
00:52:39
greatest fear, you think back through all of these moments over the last couple years where he talked about the
00:52:43
Nobel Prize, >> I think he's trying to put himself on the Mount Rushmore of presidents.
00:52:47
>> Yeah. >> In history's mind. >> And I think how this situation plays out
00:52:52
now, the sole thing he's thinking about is his legacy. And right now, being stuck in a war and contemplating putting
00:52:59
ground troops in is arguably the worst thing for one's legacy. Americans dead.
00:53:03
>> Yeah. And lots of Americans dead. These wars are like you think about Vietnam.
00:53:07
These wars are never really won. >> No. Well, they did. America hasn't won a
00:53:10
war since World War II and even World War II was won by the Russians more so than the Americans. So, we have this
00:53:16
picture of America as being this, you know, invincible military power. But it lost in Vietnam. It lost in Iraq. It
00:53:23
lost in Afghanistan. America's failed in all of these. This is another American
00:53:27
failure, but on a scale far beyond what happened in Afghanistan and Vietnam. >> Do you think he will send ground troops
00:53:33
in? Yes, I do. Uh, and like I've seen people talking about where the troops might land. And the only part of they
00:53:39
can land is is right towards this edge here with Pakistan, where they might land to between 2 and 10,000 troops. I'd
00:53:46
hate to be one of those troops because it's a suicide mission. again with those
00:53:49
31 provinces, the separated um military commands they've got, the weapons they've got hidden underground, the
00:53:56
troops themselves who if if you know that there are Americans landing and you're Iranian and a soldier, you are
00:54:03
going to attack them like nobody's business and not be afraid of your own death because you do think if you get
00:54:09
martyed, it's the remaining people that you're defending. There will be people
00:54:12
who recognize you as a martyr. It's it's horrific. If you had to give a sort of
00:54:17
percentage probability of them putting ground troops in, >> I would say more than 50%. We're going
00:54:22
to find out in the next couple of weeks. >> Much of the reason most people haven't
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Whisper Flow spelled w lw.ai/stephven. It will be a game changer for you. >> What is the best case scenario? The
00:56:34
Americans have to realize they've lost. They've not going to negotiate the terms
00:56:37
of reparation. And what Iran has proposed, when you look at Iran's terms, they're extremely reasonable. They're
00:56:43
saying America leaves the whole Asian. America no longer comes back in this region. No
00:56:49
military bases, no agreements. This becomes Iranian protectorate. That becomes an Arabian Empire or not Arabian
00:56:56
Iranian Empire because they're not they're not Arabs. They're Persians. Uh
00:57:00
so this becomes like a Muslim part of the world that's you can actually take
00:57:06
the whole region out to here it's all Muslim and what's been happening and
00:57:10
this is part of the weird religious elements here you've got the Sunni sect and the Shiite sect which is a bit like
00:57:15
the Protestants versus the Catholics go back 500 years and what we're seeing
00:57:20
here is like the 100red years war that occurred in Europe back in the days when it was Protestant birth as Catholic was
00:57:27
a serious thing. Um, so we're seeing a religious war being fought here and the
00:57:32
the Sunni majority about 90% of Muslims are Sunni. They have focused on their rivalry with the Shiites. And so what
00:57:39
they've done is they've sided with this mob to enable United States the states
00:57:44
to so they've sided with the Christians to strengthen their own Muslim sect which is the Sunni sect against the
00:57:51
Shiite sect which is Iran is predominantly Shiite. Now what's happening here is as soon as the war
00:57:56
started America the reason the the Arabs agreed to bases here military bases is they thought it
00:58:04
to protect them from Iran. As soon as the war starts those spaces are obliterated the Americans leave and they
00:58:10
realize that hasn't worked at all. So the deal the Sunnis made to side with the Christians has proved to be an
00:58:16
extremely bad deal. You're going to have to have change in who rules these countries to enable it to happen. But I
00:58:23
think the persuasive case coming out of this within the Muslim areas is Muslims stick together. Don't cooperate with the
00:58:30
Christians. >> Don't cooperate with the United States. >> I think that's what's going to happen.
00:58:34
>> You think that's going to happen? >> I hope so because that at least gives us
00:58:37
something which is relatively stable. This becomes a region that is Muslim. >> When you say this, you mean the Middle
00:58:42
East? >> I mean the whole Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan as well
00:58:46
because it's a Muslim country. Afghanistan. This region becomes Muslim dominated. Shiites and Sunnis start to I
00:58:53
mean the whole idea of of Catholics fighting Protestants that's completely dissipated. Um there's no level in in
00:59:01
the west anymore of large scale military type animosity between Catholics and and
00:59:07
Protestants. That's what's happening over here. The the conflicts those religious conflicts within the Cath
00:59:13
within the Christians disappeared largely speaking. They're still happening within the Muslim religion.
00:59:20
This could persuade them that that's got to end. >> So, we've got one more scenario.
00:59:24
Scenario five. >> Iran develops nuclear weapons. I'd rather four happen than five.
00:59:29
>> Which of these five outcomes do you think is most probable to happen? >> I think the most likely outcome is Iran
00:59:38
disables Israel's nuclear weapons. Because Iran has been so prepared for this conflict in a way that America has
00:59:44
not, in a way that Israel was not. I hope they're also prepared for the eventuality of having to neutralize
00:59:50
Israel's nuclear weapons. >> You think the highest probability is Iran disabling Israel's nukes?
00:59:56
>> Yeah, I hope I'm right. I mean, if Iran gets destroyed, then this leads not to
01:00:01
Iran developing nuclear weapons, but every potential rival for America on the planet developing nuclear weapons. We go
01:00:09
to a nuclear war dominated world. Do you not think it's more likely that Trump is
01:00:14
going to find himself a golden bridge to get out of this situation? He's going to
01:00:18
call Netanyahu in Israel and say, "Stand down, please. I'm going to announce that
01:00:23
we've won this war. I'm going to announce that we've done a deal. It's
01:00:26
all over." >> Well, without doubt, whatever happens, Trump is going to say he won. Okay,
01:00:32
that's again the narcissistic personality disorder thing. He simply couldn't bring himself to stand on a
01:00:38
stage and say, "I lost." I mean, think about the biggest insult that Trump ever
01:00:42
made in his apprenticeship show. You're a loser. Okay? Being a loser is the absolute worst possible thing that
01:00:48
anybody can be in his mind. If he has to say, "I'm a loser," then his life is
01:00:52
over in that sense. He's self his selfimage is over. So, whatever deal comes out, he's going to say he won. For
01:01:00
the for the average person that's listening now when they hear all this conflict going on on in the world from
01:01:05
an economic perspective, is there anything they can be doing to protect themselves against some of these
01:01:11
downstream consequences? >> Well, I think one thing is people we we've now got to the stage where you can
01:01:16
buy your own uh solar systems for your house. You need something which means you are not dependent upon oil anymore.
01:01:23
I I think we've trivialized the dangers of climate change for the last half century. We've done very little about it
01:01:29
to reverse it. This is telling people that if you relied upon oil, you've got
01:01:34
a fragile existence. Even if it cost you more to build solar, you've got to build
01:01:38
solar as your own alternative energy system. Cuz without energy, there's no civilization.
01:01:43
And that's what we're learning the hard way from this conflict. So I think
01:01:47
individual responses is going to be get some way to have your own power source and for most people that means having a
01:01:54
solar. One man that has done a lot for both solar and sustainable energy is Elon Musk.
01:02:00
>> He has. He's also helped get bloody Trump elected. So I think you've got to
01:02:04
score that against him as well. But yeah, his work on solar then and and and power and rocketry. I've absolutely
01:02:10
admired that and I see that as a critical positive contribution. But getting Trump elected, he played a major
01:02:16
role in that. He should learn from that mistake and get the out of politics. He has backed off politics
01:02:22
now, which is >> I think he's realized how poisonous it is. Yeah. >> Yeah. It sounds like he's realized you
01:02:26
can't really change the beast. No, >> he tried. >> Yeah. He should stick with the era where
01:02:30
he's mature, which is what he does with energy systems and what he does with
01:02:34
rocketry. He's really I mean, in terms of legacy, uh, he's tainted his legacy
01:02:38
by getting involved in politics. Go back to engineering. So you say that you think people should invest in solar for
01:02:45
their homes to get their own energy sources so they're a little bit insulated from these sort of
01:02:49
macroeconomics. Is there anything else they should be thinking about? You know, the average person the cost of living
01:02:54
crisis. What what happens next? What should they be doing now? >> The thing that I'm most worried about
01:02:58
this is the impact upon food. I'm the last person to talk about growing your
01:03:03
own food. I've never done it. I'm I've got brown thumbs, not green ones. But I
01:03:09
think if you can have any way to produce your own food, you've got a bit of insulation against what's happening at
01:03:14
the global level. The lesson that comes out of this is self-sufficiency. If we don't have self-sufficiency, then
01:03:21
these sorts of global chaotic things can destroy you completely with you having no recompense. If you have some degree
01:03:27
of self-sufficiency, you can survive. >> And how does one create self-sufficiency? Growing your own food
01:03:32
is quite expensive and slow, isn't it? >> Yeah, extremely. >> So, how does one develop
01:03:36
self-sufficiency in this these sort of economic climates? Is it saving money or is it um
01:03:41
>> I think it's having your own physical resources close to you that enable you.
01:03:45
Money doesn't matter if you can't buy the product in the first instance. The
01:03:49
product doesn't exist anymore. So, one thing that happened during World War II
01:03:53
is a large amount of food was grown in the UK by people turning their gardens into market gardens. I
01:03:59
>> I've heard you make a few predictions about the future of the economic
01:04:03
markets. You know, you're famous for predicting 2008 and the financial crash
01:04:07
that occurred then. I've heard you saying that you think because of AI there's going to be another financial
01:04:11
crash around the corner within one or two years. >> Yeah. What's happening with AI is a
01:04:16
classic economic boom and bust cycle overlaid on the fact that AI can also eliminate a huge amount of employment
01:04:24
which we've never seen that possibility in the past on that scale. But a common
01:04:30
pattern in capitalism is that some new technology will be developed like railways for example. Some people see
01:04:37
the potential profitability of railways. Everybody pours in creating railways. You get too many railways built. The 90%
01:04:45
of the companies that create the railways go bust. But then we all have these rail systems that we benefit from
01:04:51
afterwards. So that's the classic uh pattern of Joseph Schumpeda was the person who best described that of that
01:04:58
Austrian economist from the early uh early 20th century. So he said you'll get the the banks will finance a new
01:05:04
investment area that investment produces a new technology which causes a boom while you're building the technology but
01:05:11
when the technology comes online it undercuts existing businesses and causes a slump. So they boom and slump cycle
01:05:18
and AI is a natural example of that and what you get is massive overinvestment in the first instance because everybody
01:05:25
who invests in AI has the ambition of being the only AI provider on the planet. Therefore you get too many
01:05:31
companies investing there's too much money going into it. That's what causes
01:05:34
a boom. But then when the technology comes online because it undercuts existing technologies you have a slump.
01:05:41
And when you look at the investment taking place at the moment, the big tech companies, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft,
01:05:46
Alphabet, own Google, Oracle is on track to spend 720 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026 alone, which is
01:05:56
less than 20% of the revenue that they're making. We are seeing a 5:1 ratio of money being spent versus money
01:06:04
coming in. Yeah. >> Which is historically unsustainable. >> Yeah. And I think that's true. There
01:06:08
there has to be a slump coming out of this. And in in a sense, that's part of
01:06:12
the natural cyclical behavior of capitalism because if you want to make a profit, you've got to bring in
01:06:17
technology that undercuts everybody you're currently rivals with. So that's
01:06:21
the railways are a classic example there. You know, you had to get around by carriage instead. You undermine the
01:06:27
carriage companies by bringing in the railways. But the ultimate benefit, society benefits because now you got the
01:06:32
railways for transportation. So that's the same sort of thing that AI is doing
01:06:36
this time around. But companies 90% of those companies are going to fail. >> I mean this is kind of what we're seeing
01:06:41
already. So the failure rate of AI specific startups has hit 90% in 2026. >> Wow. That's luck.
01:06:46
>> Yeah, you you predicted that one correctly. Significantly higher than the
01:06:49
70% average for general technology. Roughly 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail to move into into production when they
01:06:56
incur massive cost. The other thing I think a lot about is um >> a lot of startups now are raising a lot
01:07:02
of money at crazy crazy valuations. I can think of one particular startup I know they're making like a couple of
01:07:07
million dollars a year. They've raised at a billion dollar valuation >> and because they've got the word AI on
01:07:13
them. And the thing is >> because everyone's so such in a frenzy at the moment about AI, they're probably
01:07:18
going to raise at a 2 billion valuation 6 months from now. >> When you think about what's going on
01:07:21
there, someone somewhere is putting their money in >> and they're going to lose it all.
01:07:25
>> And they're going to lose it all. And when when everybody starts losing all
01:07:28
their money very very quickly, you see this contraction. >> Yeah. where everybody realizes that
01:07:31
their paper gains, the gains they thought they had on paper because of valuation went up have just evaporated.
01:07:37
And when you see that, you have to quickly count your pennies. >> Yeah. >> And get frugal
01:07:41
>> and pull back in again. >> Pull back in again. Lay people off and
01:07:44
so on and so forth. So I I actually do personally believe that we're probably
01:07:48
within 24 months of a pretty severe contraction. And that won't just impact these tech oligarchs, it'll impact all
01:07:55
of us in different ways. >> Yeah, it's a Burman bus cycle. I mean the only thing which we've experienced
01:08:00
in our own lives which is similar would be the telecommunications bubble and then the internet bubble between 1990
01:08:06
and 2001 2002 um we don't get bubbles in the internet anymore because that's now a stable
01:08:13
technology in that sense uh but it wasn't a big one this is much bigger >> what do we do as entrepreneurs as team
01:08:21
members and companies what do we do at this moment if what you're saying is correct that there will be a
01:08:26
>> a boom and bust >> a boom and bust which which I think ab every smart person that I've spoken to
01:08:30
agrees that there will be a bust soon. >> Yeah. >> Their timelines vary.
01:08:35
>> Yeah. >> But what does one do right now in March, April 2026 to prepare for this?
01:08:42
>> Well, you put money aside if you can. You buy other assets you think are going
01:08:45
to survive the the Burman bus cycle. >> Like what? >> That's the trouble. I mean, gold's been
01:08:49
driven up. Gold's now been driven down. Uh people are buying Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is collapsing as well. uh in
01:08:55
some ways you you really you can't it's like saying what do I do during an
01:08:59
earthquake to not fall over in terms of insulating yourself I really can't see a
01:09:03
way of insulating yourself from the downturn but I don't I'm not wor as worried about that as long-term
01:09:08
consequences of AI because this is the first technology which implies you can actually virtually eliminate labor as
01:09:16
necessary for reducing output because you can use AI rather than clarks you can use I know this is a long way from
01:09:24
being feasible, but robots could replace process workers and then suddenly something which employs 70% of the
01:09:31
global population is no longer necessary. And then what do you do in that situation? What I've seen which I
01:09:38
respect coming out of the tech bros in America is they're talking in terms of
01:09:43
universal basic income. >> You think a universal basic income is a good idea? I we should probably explain
01:09:48
what that is. >> Yeah. Well, it's it's the state provides everybody with enough money to stay
01:09:54
alive. That's the basic idea. Rather than having to work for a living at the
01:09:58
minimum, you get paid an amount of money that means you can buy the goods and services that are necessary to stay
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alive. You don't necessarily prosper, but you get enough to survive. And so that's the idea of UBI. Now, at the
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moment, to survive, you got to have a job. And like that guy you mentioned is working at three three jobs right now.
01:10:16
if he got a UBI, he wouldn't have to work at those three jobs. He might work
01:10:20
at one or he might actually consider his own business possibilities in that situation. So, I think universal basic
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small steps. And we call this in our team the 1%. And actually this philosophy is highly responsible for
01:12:08
much of our success here. So what we've done so that you at home can accomplish
01:12:12
any big goal that you have is we've made these 1% diaries and we released these
01:12:17
last year and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back but also to
01:12:22
introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So now we have a better range for you. So, if
01:12:30
you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you
01:12:36
get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours at the diary.com.
01:12:42
And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. >> And you think up to 50% of working-class
01:12:48
jobs could be wiped out because of AI and robotics. >> Yeah. >> I mean, that's um that's been a
01:12:53
prediction from the leaders of some of the biggest companies in AI. I heard the the leader of Anthropic uh recently say
01:12:58
the same thing. thinks 50% of jobs could be wiped out. I think the shocking thing
01:13:02
that we've talked a lot about in the show is just, >> you know, there's been other sort of
01:13:05
economic or industrial revolutions in the past that have caused for job displacement.
01:13:10
>> Yeah. >> But none, I would argue at this speed. >> No. And none that can replace virtually
01:13:14
everything. I see one of there's a there's a classic story I read back when
01:13:18
I was uh talking about the global financial crisis uh came out of the New York Times article where they went to
01:13:25
interview workers in an air conditioning factory. And there was one woman they found there whose job it was to place a
01:13:31
thermouple inside the air conditioning units as they went past. So there's 3,000 of these going past her a day.
01:13:38
She's just placing one of these thermouples where it needs to go inside the circuitry of the air conditioning
01:13:44
unit. And she said, "You don't have to love your job as long as it pays you
01:13:48
money." It was totally boring job. That's all she's doing. The thing is the
01:13:52
reason she got that job was she couldn't make a machine to replace her because
01:13:55
the air conditioning units don't necessarily end up precisely at the same point. To make a machine that would do
01:14:01
that is really difficult. Now if you train a robot on it, the robot perception can ultimately get to the
01:14:07
point where the robot can place that piece inside there. That particular unskilled job disappears. So people who
01:14:13
work in jobs like that no longer have a possibility of getting a job. I think even, you know, Anthropic released a
01:14:18
report. Anthropic are the makers of Claude. They released a report saying that entry- level positions, they're
01:14:24
seeing a 13% decline already in people getting those entry- level jobs. And actually, as an employer, someone that
01:14:30
spends literally all last night, I was looking through our inbox, our recruitment inboxes at candidates and
01:14:34
talent. >> I have noticed myself changing. I've noticed that um people that I would have given roles to
01:14:43
maybe six months ago, >> yeah, >> I now have to think long and hard about
01:14:47
whether there's going to be technology that can do those exact roles instead.
01:14:52
And it's it was really shocking thing. I was saying to the team last night at
01:14:54
like 1:00 a.m. in the office, I was like, this is a prime example of a candidate. I was looking at this
01:14:58
particular candidate that 6 months ago I would have bitten their hand off but now
01:15:04
>> I have to pause because my innovation team in the corner of the office they're
01:15:08
they're able to do that now with these AI agents instead and so I am you know
01:15:13
you hear a lot about the theoretical impact of AI >> but you're actually making the decision
01:15:18
yourself >> and then it's theory it's theory it's this thing on my Twitter feed like blah
01:15:22
blah blah whatever you hear on a podcast you go blah blah blah whatever and then
01:15:26
you find yourself actually behaving that way. >> Your behavior is changing and you're
01:15:30
going, "Oh, it's very hard to know the types of people to hire into our
01:15:35
company." And I've kind of almost segmented them into these two groups where you've got people that have very
01:15:40
deep expertise. Yeah, >> I'd say it's three groups. People that have very, very deep expertise on a
01:15:44
particular thing, you know, like my CFO. Group number two, I'd say, are people
01:15:48
that are AI proficient, >> who can actually handle this stuff and be the people who manage the agents.
01:15:53
>> Yes. and they can redesign our workflows across every department in the company
01:15:57
to be agentic >> um the word about AI agents that's kind of like the word you use so agentic
01:16:03
workflows and then the third group of people are people who have skills that are highly beneficial human to human and
01:16:09
in in real life so like humanto human sales people that deal with relationships >> and are very good at it
01:16:14
>> and are very good at it because there are still a certain type of sale where
01:16:19
people want to meet the person shake their hand and say okay you're responsible for this deal
01:16:23
>> we're still in a situation where people don't want agents to do that. Those are
01:16:26
like the three groups. What I didn't say is young people who have >> just come out of university, maybe don't
01:16:32
know anything about agents. They don't have the deep expertise yet. >> Yeah.
01:16:36
>> And when you look at the data, we'll throw some of the data up on the screen.
01:16:39
It appears that these sort of entrylevel white collar jobs are the ones that are
01:16:45
right now suffering. Yeah. Some of these investment companies would hire like three or 400 analysts to look at um
01:16:51
companies and make decisions. That is one example of a of a role that's very
01:16:55
at risk now. We've got an investment fund. We need one analyst, Molly. 6 months ago, we were interviewing more
01:17:00
analysts. We now realize that we just need Molly, and we need to give Molly AI. >> Yeah.
01:17:04
>> And she can set up I think Molly said to me yesterday when I left the office at
01:17:07
when she left the office at midnight, she's now set up three agents, these error agents
01:17:12
>> as her team. Those would have been three people. >> Well, I I saw a demo of that. Like I've
01:17:16
developed a software package called Ravvel uh which I've got one programmer for and I I teach an online course as
01:17:22
well and I give Ravel as part of that online course and one of the members of the course said he's using an AI to
01:17:29
build RAL models and he's also using an AI to write code behind Ravvel and he
01:17:34
gave a demo this a couple of days ago and you know I watched it happen on screen as he built a model a simulation
01:17:41
system and it was messy on one stage but it produced the correct mathemat atics.
01:17:47
So he's showing you can actually he he's trying to tell me that we should get my
01:17:51
main programmer to learn to drive agents to do the whole thing. Now my main programmer has said look there's things
01:17:57
that I can do that an AI cannot do. He's one of your highly gifted people. And he
01:18:02
said it wouldn't be worth my while to have me telling an AI what to do because
01:18:06
what I lose in terms of my own initiative I can't I just sort of balance out. It's really a okay. But he
01:18:12
hires a junior programmer. than the junior programmer would be one who's trained to drive the AI.
01:18:16
>> I I do think programmers are fine. Actually, there was some stats that I
01:18:19
saw the other day that showed there's been this huge demand and people trying
01:18:22
to hire programmers. It's interesting because you hear stats from Spotify. Spotify saying, "We haven't written a
01:18:27
human line of code since December." >> And I'm very good friends with the guys
01:18:30
at Spotify. I was actually with the CEO the other day, a couple of weeks ago in in Austin. And you you hear that and I
01:18:34
did check that with them. That's true. >> So, you assume that that means we don't
01:18:38
need programmers anymore. But if you think about like Jeban's paradox, when something becomes, you know, Jeb's
01:18:43
paradox is the old analogy, >> cheaper, you use more of it. Yeah. >> Yeah. So like when coal became cheaper,
01:18:48
people were worried that maybe the coal industry was out of business or trains, whatever. But actually what ended up
01:18:53
happening is people just drove more trains and they used them for other things like transport. And the same
01:18:58
applies, I think, for AI. When >> creating technology becomes easier, every company starts using more
01:19:04
technology. So media companies, lawyers, you name the company, executive assistants, they all become coders. And
01:19:11
actually the demand for highly for really anyone who knows how to code or program it,
01:19:17
>> we're seeing it. It's exploding. >> Yeah. >> But I just think the job disruption in
01:19:22
the near for most people is going to be pretty >> Yeah. I mean there's ways in which AI
01:19:27
and robotics should be welcomed >> because it means the possibility exists
01:19:33
and it's only a possibility that we can no longer have to be exploited to get an
01:19:37
income because if you look at the Marxist attitude towards capitalism as a cap workers capitalists exploit the
01:19:44
workers. Okay. Um the real world is we've been exploiting energy >> mutually both labor and capital exploits
01:19:50
energy. We could have a future where we don't have to work for a living and therefore you could do what you want to
01:19:56
do for a living. That it's a Star Trek future. That's that's the possibility
01:20:00
that it promises. But at the same time, uh it could actually eliminate the jobs that people currently rely upon. And
01:20:08
what I fear is we have two possibilities. We have a future where Star Trek's high future where you have
01:20:14
replicators that make the goods and we consume and and we all live a energy abundant life. uh or the hunger games
01:20:22
where there's one little elite that gets has all the robots and lives extremely
01:20:26
well and we tolerate and oppress the vast majority and they end up you know hunger game entertainment those are the
01:20:34
two possibilities we face >> I do think the cost of goods and services will come down which is great
01:20:39
>> I think robotics you know if Elon is right and I often say with Elon like his
01:20:43
timelines are not always accurate but he does tend to deliver magic >> he ultimately delivers but it you know
01:20:49
he always overpromises and delivers later than he plans. >> And if he's right about when he says
01:20:55
there's going to be more humanoid robots, his Optimus robots, than humans, and he says also in his predictions that
01:21:02
there's going to be no need to study to be a surgeon because the robots are going to be so much more uh advanced and
01:21:07
better than any living surgeon, that would imply that surgery and other sort of medical diagnoses and procedures are
01:21:14
going to be incredibly cheap, incredibly quick. Great. >> How do you pay for them? That's the next
01:21:18
question. Yeah. So, yeah. How do you pay for them? And do people want to, you know,
01:21:23
>> it's also it's also the physical requirements. I mean, the amount of
01:21:26
copper inside a robot, you're talking, you know, several kilos per robot. Um,
01:21:32
do we have enough to produce 8 billion of them? >> And maybe, you know, surgeons do much
01:21:36
more than just operate. >> Yeah. >> There's a human element to the medical
01:21:40
profession, which I think is sometimes unappreciated. Like, I would I don't know if I'm quite ready to go talk to a
01:21:44
robot about my health yet. Maybe I'll adjust. I wanted to come back to something you actually said earlier. You
01:21:48
talked about Bitcoin briefly. I've heard you say that you think Bitcoin is going
01:21:51
to zero. >> Yeah. >> Okay. This is worrying. I think I have some Bitcoin.
01:21:56
>> You're an economist. You're saying that Bitcoin is going to zero. Why?
01:22:00
>> Because ultimately because of its reliance upon energy. I mean I you know
01:22:04
you Max you Max Kaiser and Stacy Herbert. Have you met them at all? No. They were sort of the original
01:22:08
proletizers for Bitcoin and they're now living in I think El Salvador um which
01:22:15
is adopted Bitcoin as a form of currency. When they told me about Bitcoin, I could have bought it for a
01:22:20
pound a bitcoin which would have been I would have been bloody would be wealthier than you if I'd done that. The
01:22:25
reason I didn't was they explained that the way that the public ledger is kept
01:22:29
safe is that it takes too much energy to break it. So each transaction requires 10 minutes of computer processing time
01:22:38
globally by the looks of it to actually create an extra bitcoin and that means it's too expensive for somebody to try
01:22:45
to break the ledger. That means it's got a huge requirement for energy use and I
01:22:52
believe knowing what I know from climate scientists that at some point we're
01:22:56
going to realize we're using far too much energy on the planet. We've got to
01:23:00
cut the energy consumption and the two easiest things to cut out to reduce energy consumption are cryptocurrencies
01:23:06
and international travel. >> But aren't you saying that, you know, nuclear energy is becoming vogue again?
01:23:12
And they're talking a lot, you know, about >> it's the amount of time it takes to
01:23:15
build that stuff. I mean, China is building nuclear power stations at a hell of a rate and much much cheaper,
01:23:22
more cheaply than America is doing. >> Solar has become a big topic of conversation.
01:23:26
>> Yeah. Again, there's a guy called Simon Machau, whom I recommend you get in
01:23:30
touch with as well. And Simon is an engineer who claims that we simply don't
01:23:34
have the physical minerals necessary to support a completely solar and wind-based
01:23:41
energy system. He's got people who criticize his analysis definitely, but we still are using far more physical
01:23:49
resources than we're aware of at the moment on the planet. And the availability of various critical
01:23:55
elements that we need for the system we have right now, it's much less abundant
01:24:01
than we would like it to be. So, a lot of these things about, you know, robotics taken over, do we have the
01:24:06
minerals for it? Solar power, do we have the minerals? The answer is is not is not yes. Okay. Sometimes the answer is
01:24:14
no. Other times it's it's dubious. But I think that energy requirement alone is a
01:24:19
problem. >> You're saying that we're going to have we're going to have to cut back on our
01:24:22
energy consumption. >> But I mean the direction of travel has been we've been able to produce more and
01:24:26
more and more and more energy >> and we're dumping it into the environment. The planet the problem
01:24:30
about the use of energy is it's happening on a planet. Okay. Can the biosphere cope with the waste that we
01:24:37
dump into it as a result of using that energy? And that is something which economists are completely stupid on
01:24:44
beyond stupid. They've trivialized the dangers of the amount of resources we
01:24:49
use and the amount of energy we use. So I don't think that energy future is possible on this biosphere at the
01:24:54
moment. It's possible in the future if we get off the biosphere. So in that sense I'm even more of a space cadet
01:25:00
than Elon Musk is. I think we have to plan to take production off planet, but while we're constrained on the
01:25:06
biosphere, the biosphere's constraints will stop us using as much energy as we
01:25:11
used wish to use. >> What are you what are your closing statements on this whole situation with
01:25:15
the war and Iran and everything that's going on from a geopolitical perspective?
01:25:19
>> Basic thing is our system is far more fragile than we've convinced oursel that
01:25:23
it is. And we can make observations about potential futures which presume a robustness we don't have. And if that
01:25:31
robustness is destroyed either by military conflict or by overextending what we put into the biosphere, then we
01:25:40
can fall off what's called the Senica cliff. We can go from an abundant future
01:25:44
to a collapse. >> And what would you say the people at home should be doing to course correct
01:25:49
the path that you think we're on? >> Stop electing fools. Um, electing Trump was an enormous
01:25:56
mistake. We've got politicians who follow what's called neoliberal political philosophies. Therefore, put
01:26:04
us in this problem. It hasn't worked. We need to reverse back to having a humanoriented and physically realistic
01:26:11
view of how the economy managed should be managed and how the biosphere should be managed. We have to take care of our
01:26:18
home and in a central sense we're destroying our home and thinking we can keep on doing that indefinitely. We
01:26:24
can't. Our poem is planet earth. Planet earth has got physical restraints. We
01:26:30
haven't respected them. Planet earth will tell us what it thinks of that this
01:26:34
century. >> And which leaders do you think we should be electing? Do you think we should be
01:26:37
electing? >> I don't think I I think even lifting leaders itself is a mistake because what
01:26:42
we then do is end up getting we we pander to narcissists. We pander to people who believe they can solve all
01:26:50
our problems. We end up with megalomaniacs making decisions. If you look back at where Athenian democracy
01:26:58
came from, Athenanian democracy didn't use elections. It used a process of like
01:27:03
random number generators to select intelligent people to fulfill essential roles in those societies. And they they
01:27:12
weren't even people you got to know by name in that sense. We know Trump here,
01:27:15
we know Star here, we have Albanesei over here. We end up getting narcissists and megalomaniacs
01:27:22
directing us and they're the last people you need to make decisions. >> When you're thinking about your own
01:27:27
money as an economist, what are you doing to protect your >> I'm not doing much. I mean, I I've been
01:27:33
I've been a a crusader for reforming economic theory. For my whole life, I've
01:27:38
sort of neglected this side of things to my detriment, I've got to say. Um, but I
01:27:46
really am focused on what's sustainable for everybody rather than what I can
01:27:49
make as my own cut. And I don't think we've got a sustainable economy at the
01:27:53
moment. We have a philosophy of economics which leads to breakdowns. >> I'm asking that cuz I've got so many
01:27:58
friends and listeners that ask me often like, should I be buying a house right now? Do you think I should be investing
01:28:02
in gold? Do you think I should be saving my money? Should I be, I don't know,
01:28:06
investing in technology companies? >> Yeah. >> And I'm wondering if you had a
01:28:09
perspective for them. >> Not on that. No. like I've I've really left that area alone. I'm I'm actually
01:28:14
looking at the overall system and saying how do we make the system sustainable so
01:28:18
that people can live within it and what we've got is an unsustainable system and
01:28:22
you're asking me how do people survive within an unsustainable system? Answer
01:28:26
is they don't. We always think we can do something at the individual level to
01:28:29
cope with what's happening in the system around us that only works if the system
01:28:33
around us is stable. >> What is a better system then? Uh I think I think what China has done is a better
01:28:39
in a better direction. They have a they have a collective focus as well as an individual focus.
01:28:45
>> What's their system called? >> It's called communist. >> So you think communism is better than
01:28:49
capitalism? >> I think a system which reflects the need for a cohesive society as well as
01:28:56
individual gain is needed and the system in China is closer to that than the system in America. in in China. Listen,
01:29:03
I don't know a ton about this, but they have a leader who stays in power and
01:29:07
>> that's one that's the potential weakness >> and suppresses the people's decision-m
01:29:12
entrepreneurialism. >> Equally, you've got a system to get into the Communist Party. You've got to have
01:29:18
uh highly you've got to be educated to get in and you have to perform to some
01:29:23
extent in the region in which you begin your role. >> But you're not saying you think the West
01:29:27
should adopt communism, are you? No, I'm saying that is west should adopt a system which reflects the need for a
01:29:33
cohesive society. >> Is that socialism? >> Socialism is closer to it. I mean I the
01:29:37
words are all tainted. Okay. If you go back, you know, do you eat Cadbury's chocolate?
01:29:43
>> I try not to. >> You have, haven't you? Okay. Cadbury's was a socialist enterprise. Okay. It was
01:29:48
formed as a a belief we have one who could work as the best possible situation while also selling a
01:29:54
profitable product. Mondreon in Spain is another cooperative started by a Catholic priest. Uh of all things we
01:30:01
tend to be very binary in the west. We say you either have competition or you have cooperation. Okay. Well, you need
01:30:07
to be more like the east in the sense of the idea of ying and nang. You have to have both. Okay, cooperation and
01:30:13
competition. >> And so that view is the closest thing is socialism. >> The closest to socialism. And what China
01:30:19
has done that better than Russia. You go back to the USSR. uh that was they they
01:30:24
were disastrous in terms of product development. China's been extremely successful on that front. They've
01:30:29
learned from the mistakes of being too centralized and too top down in Russia to have both the top down and the bottom
01:30:35
up dynamic going on. >> What's wrong with capitalism? And capitalism is what the UK and the US
01:30:40
have adopted as their sort of economic model. >> It's seeing competition absolutely
01:30:45
ruling and ignoring cooperation. Now the real the successful society combines both. You have cooperation, you also
01:30:52
have competition. And we've pushed it far too far in the competitive end and
01:30:56
not enough in the cooperative. And what comes out of that as well is this cooper
01:31:01
competitive tends to be short-term focus. What can I make a profit out of in time that the money that I've
01:31:06
borrowed is I'm going to be able to make more of a profit than the interest I'm
01:31:11
paying on the money I've I've created. And if the interest if the longer it
01:31:14
takes to get the the repayment, the less likely you are to make the investment. So what you get is a focus upon
01:31:20
short-term with just a market system whereas with the long term you say what's going to last for 100 years and
01:31:27
like and what that means is you build the infrastructure for the long term while you allow competition to occur in
01:31:32
the short term. It's getting the balance right. We've got the balance extremely
01:31:36
wrong. >> Professor Steve, thank you. I highly recommend people go check out your
01:31:42
YouTube channel where you make videos all the time about what's going on in the world. to give your opinion on
01:31:46
economic issues, political issues, the Iran war. So, if people are listening and they want to learn more from
01:31:50
Professor Steve, then look down below and you should see his YouTube channel linked um next to our name because we're
01:31:56
going to try and collaborate on this post and I'll put you the the link to your channel in the description below
01:32:01
for anyone that wants to check you out and subscribe. It's so fascinating, especially the stuff about around the
01:32:05
raw materials coming out the straightforward because I really had no idea. I it's just it's quite staggering
01:32:10
to me that we're so dependent on one region of the world and I think from watching your videos over the last
01:32:14
couple of weeks, >> it's really made me understand the unintended consequences of war
01:32:19
generally, but specifically this war in Iran. >> Um, so thank you for turning the lights
01:32:23
on for me. I really, really appreciate this and I hope we can meet again soon and have a conversation and hopefully,
01:32:29
you know, this all resolves itself in a way that's good for everybody. >> I hope so. I I'm having my 73rd birthday
01:32:34
tomorrow. Oh, I might have 74th as well, but I think there's a question mark over
01:32:38
that now. >> Well, I did hear it was your birthday tomorrow. >> I think the team have gotten you a
01:32:45
little something. >> Okay. >> Happy birthday to you. >> I'm embarrassed.
01:32:51
>> Happy birthday. >> Oh my god. >> Happy birthday. >> My god. Thank you.
01:33:01
Happy birthday to you. >> Holy hell. I'm missing. >> Thank you. Should I blow the candles
01:33:08
out? >> Yes, you should. >> Okay, you get a wish. >> You blew them all out, so you get a
01:33:12
wish. >> Well, I wish for peace in the Middle East. >> Okay, >> that's probably the main thing to say
01:33:18
about right now. >> That is a gorgeous cake. I have to say >> it's a marvelous cake. Yeah,
01:33:21
>> that's marking our own homework, but >> this better be eaten by the crew cuz I'm
01:33:25
not going to eat all this myself. Okay, you want to get out a knife and start slicing up? My god,
01:33:30
>> thank you. Thank you so much. We're done. >> Thank you. >> YouTube have this new crazy algorithm
01:33:33
where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the
01:33:39
algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check
01:33:46
this video out and I bet you you might love