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What does the United States think it's going to gain from decapitating the Iranian leadership?
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>> Well, that that's kind of obvious based on what the president has said. It's
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that >> on what the president has said. >> I'm I'm just saying based on what the
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president says. >> You can't trust anything that you're hearing right now. You can't trust
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anything that you're reading right now. Two to multiply. >> It's not paranoid. Absolutely. It is
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paranoid to suggest that everything is misinformation. Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon. So, it's not a nuclear
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threat. >> You speak a different nuclear language than I do. This regime is at its lowest
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lowest point. Why not strike it now? >> I mean, I can give lots of reasons why
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you wouldn't strike it. The ability to create their own. >> What are you concerned about? And what
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are the unintended consequences that you're foreseeing? >> There is a domino effect that happens
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with every decision that the United States makes. So >> guys, I've got a quick favor to ask you.
00:00:50
We're approaching a significant subscriber milestone on this show and roughly 69% of you that listen and love
00:00:56
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00:01:07
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00:01:11
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um if you do hit the subscribe button, I won't let you down. And we'll continue
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to find small ways to make this whole production better. Thank you so much for being part of this journey. Means the
00:01:28
world. And uh yeah, let's do this. Benjamin, Annie, Andrew, first and foremost, thank you for being here
00:01:38
today. I I have to start with the question that's been on my mind as somebody that doesn't know a huge amount
00:01:43
about geopolitics, which is what the hell is going on? And I and I say that because that's exactly what I mean. What
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is going on and what context do I need to understand this sort of historical context of the actions we're seeing in
00:01:56
Iran with this war right now? Benjamin, I know you've got a a personal connection to Iran because your family
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fled Iran, I believe. >> Yeah, I was uh I was 2 years old when we left in March of 1979. Um uh a few
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months after the sha had left and uh just after Hani had arrived. >> What is the sha and what is hermeni?
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Yeah, sorry. The sha uh the former monarch of Iran um the Pathfi dynasty which came into power in the 1930s
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deposing a previous dynasty that had been around for a couple hundred years and um the he his father brought in that
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dynasty and then it was eventually he was deposed by the British and the Americans who felt he was getting too
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close to the Nazis during World War II concerned about supply routes for the Nazis, oil and his son was installed on
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the throne at a very young age, I believe 18 or 19 and Um he ruled Iran from uh from that period 1941
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1942 around that time all the way through 79 a great ally of the United States over over time eventually um and
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uh was depos was um overthrown on a revolution and uh by Kumeni who was a senior cleric who had been a thorn in
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the Shaw side since the 60s was exiled first to Turkey then Iraq then ultimately to France right outside Paris
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actually from there he basically led the revolution ution that led to the sha's
00:03:16
uh removal um after 79. >> And how was Iran different when the sha was in power versus when her was in
00:03:23
power? >> That depends on who you ask. Um it was a constitutional monarchy. The sha had
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powers that exceeded beyond what we think a constitutional monarchy has today like in Great Britain. Um he was
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he ruled with an iron fist when he needed to. He was an authoritarian, but he also was one that was rapidly
00:03:40
modernizing Iranian society, wanted to make it more like the West, using Iran's
00:03:44
immense oil resources and wealth to really accelerate development, building of social institutions, healthcare, uh,
00:03:51
literacy, modernization, all of those things. That was his focus. Make Iran more like the West. And, uh, in that
00:03:57
sense, he succeeded, but it came at the expense often times of civil liberties for many people. It came at the expense
00:04:03
of freedom for those who wanted to essentially practice religion, Islam, Shia, Islam in their own way. The Sha
00:04:09
was not hostile to religion, but he he his policies were inconsistent with where the traditional religious Iranians
00:04:16
wanted to go. And it sort of created a schism in society. And you also had um a wealth gap, an income disparity.
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Immense wealth poured into the country, but it didn't trickle its way downward
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into the sort of the village and rural poor. And so there was a lot of frustration, a lot of disenchantment
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with his policies. And that led to sort of this populist backlash of wanting something that was more democratic, more
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accountable, uh more like the West uh ironically. And uh and that sort of was the beginning of of where that cycle
00:04:46
led. >> And so how did Hani take power of Iran? He led a movement, a mass populist
00:04:54
movement, not a religious one, but meant to um go across multiple socio-economic
00:05:00
and political divides and unified the opposition under this idea of removing the monarchy, removing dependence on the
00:05:07
west. He specifically said Iran uh the United States was to large part to blame for Iran being in the state that it was,
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for people not having the the the the things they needed to live, the freedoms, the liberties. He blamed the
00:05:19
Shaw's um use of the secret police and torture methods on the United States and
00:05:24
on Israel who he claimed, you know, taught the secret police how to do these things. Um there's a complicated sort of
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history to that. And he basically promised them salvation from a what he did what he portrayed as a puppet tyrant
00:05:37
of the United States and the masses bought into this. But both the left and the right really the right consisted of
00:05:44
the the black the Islamists. So you had the red which were sort of the the Marxist socialist uh followers. You had
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the black and then you had sort of that middle in between and they all coalesed around this one charismatic religious
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figure very um austere man um one who didn't really have a lot of luxuries himself led a simple life but was
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consistent with his opposition to what he saw uh tyranny and despatism and people bought into it
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>> and the Americans didn't like this. The Americans didn't know what to make of
00:06:16
it. And there was a failure, and I think Andrew can talk about this as well, over
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a failure by the State Department, the CIA in the 70s to see where the threat was. They saw the threat coming from the
00:06:24
Soviet Union. They they were still afraid of Soviet encroachment in the Middle East, particularly through Iran.
00:06:29
Their concerns were with the Marxists, the Communist parties. They did not carefully look at the black. They didn't
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look at the Islamists. They didn't see them as a threat until it was too late.
00:06:39
The Shaw himself blocked or really didn't give the CIA full access to Iran. There was limited information that was
00:06:46
coming out. He relied on his own u intelligence which fed him information he wanted to hear which is that
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everything is going great. The country is doing well. The people love you. They're all happy until the discontent
00:06:58
and the the protest became they reached a threshold and it was too late to do anything about it.
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>> Yeah. The United States was kind of at their peak period of meddling in foreign
00:07:07
governments at the time. Um kind of uh in a strange way that we've come full
00:07:11
circle. This idea of of controlling an entire country by controlling the figurehead of the country. That's where
00:07:17
we were in the uh late '7s at the kind of brink of the Cold War, right? Nobody
00:07:22
knew that the Berlin Wall was going to fall. We were all concerned with the spread of communism. Nobody was paying
00:07:28
attention to the Islamist threat. Nobody was paying attention to really any other
00:07:31
kind of threat at all. was very much the the unfettered, uncontrolled, unsupervised CIA running around with no
00:07:40
oversight and with very deep pockets. >> And that changed at some point. >> That changed in 2001 when uh al-Qaeda
00:07:47
successfully carried out the 911 attacks in New York. And all of a sudden, the threat that we had all been ignoring was
00:07:53
on our doorstep and had grown so wealthy and had spread so vast across the world
00:07:58
that Islamic extremism became almost overnight a household term. Now, there's
00:08:03
still a difference between al-Qaeda, Islamic Shia extremism, and what is practiced in the Shia faith and with the
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outcomes that the Shia militants are trying to pursue uh in support of Iran. But it's hard to differentiate that in
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the United States where we don't understand the difference between Sunni and Shia.
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>> Annie, what do you think this war is really about? >> Very interesting what you both said and
00:08:30
I think what I would add to that to that which very much speaks to today is that
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the CIA in fact had many ups and downs over the decades from its creation right after World War II until this moment in
00:08:44
time and then on 911. And so it's been like an accordion experience of power
00:08:50
being taken away from the CIA and then being grabbed back because the CIA has always historically been the president's
00:08:59
hidden hand. It has been the way in which the White House can execute executive power without having to follow
00:09:08
the laws of war that the military does. So military is a code called title 10. CIA is a code called Title 50. And while
00:09:16
that may sound a bit wonkish, it is important to understand because Title 50 essentially, as Andrew can speak to,
00:09:23
gives the president authority under classified presidential directive to change any rule he wants that suits him
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for an operation at hand, which gets us precisely to where we are today. >> So, as far as I understand, there was
00:09:39
the Sha, the sort of royal leader who was in power. He was overthrown in the late 1970s by Hermeni. Hermeni
00:09:46
galvanized people to believe in his way and he's been in power ever since. >> It gets complicated because homi with an
00:09:53
O was the original leader of the revolution and was later replaced by Hy with an A. Okay, there's two and but no
00:10:00
that's that is >> the supreme leader the you know and this speaks to the revolutionary nature of
00:10:07
Iran which has been you know taking place since 1979 you know in the news today people hear the um IR you know the
00:10:17
Iranian revolutionary guard and it's so important to understand that word revolution because and you can speak to
00:10:25
this better than any of us but Iran has been holding on to this idea uh that or rather the regime has that we are the
00:10:32
revolutionary force against America. That is why the chant is always death to America. The wound of 19 of pre-1975,
00:10:42
the wound of America meddling and having the shaw as its puppet is as inflamed or
00:10:49
was as inflamed two days ago as it was the day after the revolution in 1979. >> I think that's probably important
00:10:57
context. we m missed which was the US got involved in the sha and how he governed Iran.
00:11:04
>> It's a fascinating period in 1951. So basically under the Iranian constitution
00:11:09
the sha the king has the authority to select the prime minister with the consent of parliament. The consent part
00:11:14
is really nominal and so Mosad who is a senior member of parliament and also a member of the previous royal dynasty is
00:11:22
distantly related. this um elderly statesman who the sha out of sort of courtesy after having gone through a
00:11:29
successive list of prime ministers says okay I'm going to appoint him prime minister so he wasn't democratically
00:11:35
elected he was the he was elected to parliament but from there the sha selected him to be prime minister
00:11:40
mosadak nationalized the oil company the Anglo-American oil company which was owned primarily by the British this
00:11:46
angered the British who in turn blockaded Iran's ports and basically shut down its oil um industry and
00:11:53
creating a national crisis. Um, and Mosatk was sort of amassing additional powers within himself uh for himself
00:12:00
basically overstepping the authority that he had even though he had the support of a good deal of the public as
00:12:05
it became obvious that this was a a bad move especially in the eyes of um Iran's
00:12:10
international trading partners and it was causing Iran to be um isolated. There was push back towards him and then
00:12:18
he was removed. The British had wanted MI6 had wanted to overthrow him, basically get him removed and they um
00:12:25
try to recruit the United States to help. Um President Truman refused to engage in this earlier. Eisenhower comes
00:12:31
in is more receptive under CIA CIA director Alan Dulles to actually engage in this called operation TP Ajax led by
00:12:39
Kermit Roosevelt who is the CIA agent uh officer tasked with this. And then the Americans and the British basically help
00:12:46
ferment a crowd that is a part of the movement that removes mosatk. Now whether it's a common I think a
00:12:53
misconception that the US CIA was behind it. The British had a bigger role in in
00:12:57
this. The um Americans were more of the junior partner but they became sort of the public face of it.
00:13:03
>> But Moad was not this overwhelmingly popular democratically elected figure
00:13:07
either. The history is more complicated. And regardless um there have been many prime min there were many prime
00:13:13
ministers after him. Um and so he was known as a nationalist because he believed that Iran's oil should be
00:13:18
nationalized and not really beholden to British interests and that created a lot
00:13:22
of u resentment and animosity. But that began the US Iranian relationship really
00:13:28
solidified when the sha returned. He didn't leave really he just sort of took
00:13:32
himself out of the country for a bit but he never stepped down. Um and while this
00:13:36
was all being resolved then he comes back and then the the US Iranian relationship continues all the way
00:13:41
through 79. >> So the UK and the US have been meddling in Iran for a long time and kind of you
00:13:45
know exerting their will. >> The UK since the 19th century by far the UK has been the dominant colonial force
00:13:53
in in modern Iranian history. >> And they lose that power in the sort of 1980s early 1980s because the Hani comes
00:14:00
in. The British lose that power with the fall of pretty much the fall of the empire in the 1940s after World War II
00:14:06
and the United States in 79. Exactly. >> And then since then, the UK and the US
00:14:10
haven't been able to sort of exert control and their will over Iran and >> zero zero. There's not even an embassy
00:14:16
there because of course they took our embassy or they took over the embassy. I mean, it's been it's been like ground
00:14:21
zero of nothing for the CIA's power, for any American power, really for any Western power.
00:14:26
>> You call it a black box. >> It's a rogue nation. It's a black box of
00:14:30
information. A rogue nation is a is one of a handful of countries around the world that follow no international
00:14:35
norms. Um, North Korea is a rogue nation. Uh, Bellarus is a rogue nation. Cuba is a rogue nation. Venezuela was a
00:14:41
rogue nation. These countries that completely stand separate from the the norms of an international society. And
00:14:51
in Iran's case, it also became this black box where it did not allow foreigners in, especially not
00:14:55
Westerners. It closed down its embassy. the traditional methods for collecting intelligence were very difficult and
00:15:01
geographically it's so far away and so far outside of the the sphere of influence for the United States that in
00:15:09
terms of intelligence and military prioritization it just fell to the bottom of the list
00:15:14
>> and yet look exactly where it is it's right in the middle of the east and to
00:15:18
Benjamin's point oil it's always about oil there's always a component of oil
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>> and there are so many other oil options in that region besides Iran right? Saudi
00:15:28
Arabia, UAE, uh Bahrain, Qatar, they they've they've got the United States
00:15:33
could partner with other Arab countries to get what they wanted without having to deal with Iran.
00:15:39
>> So, explain to me in simple terms why Trump right now has decided that this is
00:15:45
the best time to attack Iran. I want to start with you, Andrew. What's your point of view on that? The full picture
00:15:51
of what his motivations. I think the question that you just asked is the most preient question that we will talk about
00:15:58
today. Why? Why now? Why is it being communicated the way it's being communicated? Why was it executed the
00:16:04
way it was executed? So why is now the very the best of all times? I frankly don't think it is. I think that's the
00:16:11
narrative that's being communicated to the world and to the public. Um, what
00:16:17
Donald Trump did in attacking Iran goes against what the ODNI report assessed for the big the most likely threats
00:16:24
against the United States in her 2000 in the ODNI's 2005 threat assessment. It
00:16:29
goes against the uh Department of Wars 2026 national defense strategy and it goes against the White House's national
00:16:36
security strategy. These massive doctrinal >> annual assessments for how the United
00:16:42
States will will protect national security. The attack against Iran goes contrary to all three of those in terms
00:16:48
of priority and action. So why now? Why the way that we've done it? I can't
00:16:55
answer it in any kind of logical way. >> What's the non-logical answer?
00:16:59
>> It's a distraction. It's international pressure with Israel. It's a cheap win
00:17:06
after a series of losses. It's uh a lastditch effort before he understands he that Donald Trump and and
00:17:13
his party will lose control of the House in the midterms this year. >> I have a little bit of a different take,
00:17:21
shall I? >> Um I believe the current administration is led as a completely top-down situation.
00:17:31
In other words, like sole presidential authority. this current president is very enraptured with power and with um
00:17:42
prowess, with effectiveness. And on the heels of Maduro and maybe even the cartel leader in Mexico, I believe that
00:17:52
the current president saw a moment of of intense weakness that had been building,
00:17:59
no doubt. And in waring in general, when when looking at it theoretically like someone like myself, the decapitation
00:18:08
strike is the ultimate strike. It's literally like it sounds when you can it
00:18:13
comes from cut off the head of the snake. And that is exactly what just happened.
00:18:18
>> Why? Why though? Why? Why did he do that? >> Well, I cannot tell you why, but I can
00:18:22
tell you what what we all know that this happened. So if you reverse engineer what happened I think it become there's
00:18:30
only one conclusion which is that I would think the current president had wanted to do this and was waiting
00:18:40
till he had the intelligent the good the intell and the intelligence part of it is beyond remarkable like how they how
00:18:47
the CIA and NSA and you know probably DIA and NGA all of these intelligence agencies, of which there are many, not
00:18:56
just the CIA, were able to get that information to the president in that exact moment, and make that strike and
00:19:03
decapitate the leadership that has been in power since 1979. >> When they talk about the motives here,
00:19:10
Trump will often site nuclear weapons as the motive, saying he didn't want uh
00:19:15
Iran to get nuclear weapons. Is is that what's going on here in your point of
00:19:19
view? The 2025 National Threat Assessment that was produced by the ODNI in March, so less than a year old,
00:19:26
specifically says that Iran was unlikely to pursue the development of nuclear enrichment or nuclear weapons. That was
00:19:32
the assessment of the the ODNI and that instead their primary concern was that Iran was going to focus resources into
00:19:39
the research of biological and chemical weapons. So the fact that in March of 2025 the ODNI the assessment of all
00:19:46
intelligence agencies said Iran is not working on a nuclear weapon and then after the strike in June of the same
00:19:52
year where we dropped bunker busters and in Fordo further obliterating their nuclear enrichment capability and
00:19:59
obliterating their program. We have two documents that say they're not developing it. We have another series of
00:20:04
attacks that says it's obliterated and yet we're still saying that we need to
00:20:09
attack Iran because of WMD. We've heard that story before. We've heard that WMD
00:20:14
is a just that the concern of WMD is a just cause for war and that was when we invaded Iraq in 1992.
00:20:20
>> So what do you think the real motivation there is? Therefore is >> it's very similar to what Annie is
00:20:24
saying that that we have a current administration that is president down. It's fascinating if you read the
00:20:29
official documentation because when you read the department of wars national security strategy what you hear more
00:20:35
than any other word is Donald Trump. Our President Donald Trump is leading America through our President Donald
00:20:41
Trump, the great Donald Trump. Like the it's incredible when you hear the speeches that come out of Marco Rubio's
00:20:46
mouth or Pete Hex's mouth. What do you hear more than any other term? You hear
00:20:49
the name of the president. Usually you hear we or the government or this administration. It's not around a
00:20:56
personality. So, it's a very interesting situation because it there's so much of
00:21:01
a person at stake here and everybody surrounding the office of the president is only there because they are
00:21:09
respecting kissing the ring of the personality in the center >> and I'm going to add to that further
00:21:14
just for a moment if I may because on that point the button on that is that if you I watch the president the current
00:21:20
president's speeches to sort of you know discern things and you can often See,
00:21:27
get your answer right there. And in one of the speeches either this morning or yesterday, he mentioned that the
00:21:33
Ayatollah tried to kill him. And it's to me it's like, oh, that's the
00:21:40
tit for tat, you know, again, top down or you could say school boy sandbox. I say that as the mother of two boys. you
00:21:49
know, this human behavior that is way outside the norm of, you know, intelligence reports and assessments and
00:21:57
these long monographs that may or may not actually be effective. I mean, you know, the biggest surprises of the past
00:22:03
40 years, the Berlin wall falling and 9/11 were completely unseen by any intelligence report. So there is an
00:22:12
argument that those intelligence reports are as good as a coin toss. So I want to
00:22:17
come to that point because the very fact that we have an Islamic Republic is a direct result of a failure of American
00:22:23
intelligence to see that threat as early as 197677. A failure to inform then President
00:22:30
Carter to do the necessary take the necessary steps to support the Sha and to neutralize that threat. So the United
00:22:36
States track record in Iran for the last 40 or 50 years is abysmal when it comes
00:22:41
to intelligence uh and when it comes to statecraftraft. And so there's that legacy, number one. Number two, October
00:22:49
7, 2023, the Hamas attack against Israel changed the dynamic entirely. That attack surprised Israeli intelligence.
00:22:56
It surprised Americans. It surprised almost anybody watching. Nobody thought Hamas was going to do that, when they
00:23:01
did it, and the means in which they did it. So all of a sudden, that forced a recalibration, a recalculation of what's
00:23:07
at stake, what could happen. If we wait for an imminent threat till we see actually the sign outside the door, it's
00:23:13
too late. So from the president's perspective to answer your original question, why now? Why do this? I
00:23:18
believe the October 7th attacks and it's not at the behest of Israel necessarily.
00:23:22
It's the idea that Iran we know finances Hamas, subsidizes Hamas, trains Hamas,
00:23:27
equips Hamas, provides um logistical support of on on many levels so that Hamas can be what it was. And Hezbollah
00:23:35
also. You have these destabilizing non-state groups in the Middle East wreaking havoc, destabilizing, causing
00:23:42
uh causing chaos. You're the United States. You're also dealing with a nuclear threshold state. So Iran may or
00:23:48
may not have a nuclear weapons program, but they exceeded the 20% enrichment that they were allowed to do under the
00:23:54
nonuclear non-proliferation treaty. They they violated IAEA safeguards. They they
00:23:59
lied. So you take all of this together, this is a regime that can't be trusted,
00:24:04
that chance death to America, which is more than Saddam Hussein ever did, and is funding groups that had a that up
00:24:10
until 911, Iran was behind more acts of terror that cost American lives than any
00:24:15
other state or non-state group in the world. 911 changed that, but up until that, the Marine barracks bombing um in
00:24:21
in the 1980s, terrorist attacks throughout Europe, South America, US embassy, absolutely the USS Cole, right?
00:24:29
So this is a we've we've been at war from the president's perspective with
00:24:33
Iran since they took our hostages for which they've never atoned for. They've
00:24:37
never been held to account for. So if you take that calculus and then now we're in a post October 7th world with a
00:24:43
nuclear threshold state what happened that changed was last year's 6 day a 12-day war in June created an
00:24:50
opportunity weakened Iran enough and its proxies Hezbollah Hamas weakened. If there's an opportunity to finally
00:24:56
address this 47year-old conflict, this was the window to do it. That is why I believe rightly or wrongly the president
00:25:04
took the action when he did. >> That doesn't make it the best window. And that's what we're being told is that
00:25:10
it was the last best window. >> I don't think it was the last best window, but it was a window or at least
00:25:14
from their perspective, it was it was a window. You've got everyone weakened.
00:25:18
You've got the the regime less popular than it's ever been. I mean, we saw the
00:25:21
protest in January that led to the the, you know, the the blood bath that, you know, upwards of 30,000 people killed on
00:25:28
January 8th and 9th. This was, you know, this this regime is at its lowest lowest
00:25:33
point both in terms of domestic credibility and soft power and ability to to use proxies to carry out its will.
00:25:40
Why not strike it now would be the logic. >> I mean, I can give lots of reasons why
00:25:45
you wouldn't strike it. It's it's it's violating international law. It sets a
00:25:48
dangerous precedent. It creates instability. There are Americans dead, Maradis dead, uh Saudis dead for what?
00:25:57
For for for something that was already on the precipice of dying itself. >> It's been dying for 40 years.
00:26:02
>> So why not let it run its course? >> Because because what more damage is it
00:26:06
going to do? What more October 7th can we see? >> Arguably less than anything that's
00:26:11
already been done. So, it's like taking action on it's like putting down the
00:26:15
dead dog after it's done all of its >> Well, you I don't think that you could
00:26:19
say to the families of the 30,000 some people who were murdered by the regime just earlier, you know, in January that
00:26:26
it's a dead dog. I don't I think they would disagree. >> That's it's their country. It's their
00:26:31
people. It's their it's their decision. It's their right to self-determination.
00:26:36
>> I'm not saying it's correct what was done. I'm I'm just simply telling saying
00:26:40
the facts of that which I agree with you know unilaterally that that the weakened
00:26:44
situation was perceived by this administration as the moment to strike and what is done is done.
00:26:51
>> Agreed. >> And so I think what's more interesting to me is you know observing how America
00:26:58
is dealing with this. I mean we are in our own crisis America our own serious crisis and there are crises around the
00:27:06
world particularly in this area and without having a crystal ball none of us know and I think that what will happen
00:27:13
in the next two weeks will be profoundly telling interestingly people will say this was a good move or this will was a
00:27:20
bad move which in and of itself is a bizarre theater because your point is correct you've got you America taking
00:27:29
action in a place that's not its not its sovereign country. >> Yes. And to your point, you've got, you
00:27:36
know, decades of a menace that is now off the table. >> I would disagree with that. Exactly. We
00:27:43
don't know. And and the worst part is that in the leadup to this, Iran's
00:27:47
relationship with the with Russia and China and and other countries that are successfully countering American
00:27:54
influence worldwide had grown closer than ever before. I think they're fair weather friends that just turn on them
00:27:59
in a second. >> What are you concerned about, aren't you? >> So, so there's a number of things here.
00:28:04
So, first of all, with the removal of Maduro in Venezuela, which happened less than 60 days ago, and now the killing,
00:28:11
the assassination of a of a leader, >> the decapitation of the regime, >> which was the same thing you did here
00:28:16
when you rendered Maduro, right? It's a decapitation of a regime. >> That's different. I I would say if
00:28:20
you're going to, you know, extract someone, you haven't killed them. So,
00:28:25
that's not decapitation. basically swapping out the CEO. This is completely reforming the company or
00:28:30
>> I agree with that because because they were different countries. They operated
00:28:33
in different ways. But when you attack the leadership, >> when you attack the head of state,
00:28:38
>> that is protected under international law because because when you do that,
00:28:42
you open the gates for everyone. >> Of course. >> What is it? What is at the heart of your
00:28:46
concern? Because it sounds like you're saying that this wasn't the right time
00:28:48
to do this and and so what are the unintended consequences that you're foreseeing? So there is a domino effect
00:28:56
that happens with every decision that the United States makes. And now that we have essentially taken this military
00:29:03
action against a sovereign country, it opens the door for all sorts of other countries to just unilaterally choose
00:29:10
when they're going to take action against another sovereign independ. We have created more opportunity for more
00:29:16
rogue nations which is a greater abandonment of an international community which destabilizes our global
00:29:22
trade, our economics, our sense of personal security. The Americans are less secure now than they were 4 days
00:29:30
ago. They are targeted now more than they were 4 days ago. And if we if we are coming to the conclusion that we
00:29:37
need to make things worse before we can make things better, that's a conversation I guess we can have. the
00:29:42
debate we can have. But with with the crisis that we have here at home, with the concerns that exist, with the stated
00:29:49
priorities, >> crisis here at home, >> we have an economic crisis here at home,
00:29:52
an immigration crisis here at home. We have a crisis of politics here at home. Like the United States is
00:29:58
>> I would just say it's tribal warfare here at home. I mean, I watch it and
00:30:01
it's just very, very, very dangerous. Keep going. >> No, no, no. It's just now we have just
00:30:05
exacerbated that even more. And we've exacerbated that more with an ally in the Middle East that just got done
00:30:14
carrying out one of the most destructive attacks in history against Gaza. >> You you brought up something. You talk
00:30:20
about sovereignty. Um with regards to the January 8th um the violence committed against the
00:30:28
protesters. You said that that basically it's their own people's self-determination. How do how does the
00:30:32
international community deal with acts of state violence against its own people?
00:30:36
>> That's so we have a a word for that and it's called intrastate conflicts. Okay.
00:30:41
Conflict inside of a state, a civil war, >> right? >> Mhm. >> The international community has no
00:30:45
responsibility for stepping into a civil war. >> So that was this is a great point. This
00:30:48
is the debate that the uh that the four allied powers had at the end of World War II when they were convening the
00:30:55
Nermberg trials. You had this idea that we don't have laws to account for how a
00:31:00
country or state treats people within its own sovereign borders. The idea is that Germany could do what Germany did
00:31:06
within Germany proper. Forget about occupied Germany. Within its own borders, it can mistreat anybody because
00:31:11
that was German law. And the push was that that's not the world we want to live in anymore. We want to live in a
00:31:16
world where basically nations cannot do that to people. And that's where the
00:31:20
basis of the Nuremberg tribunals came. And that's where we got international
00:31:23
law of war crimes, crimes of aggression, genocide, so on and so forth. So the idea is that just because Iran is
00:31:30
sovereign, we we sit back and allow them to do that. It's it wasn't a civil war
00:31:33
because one side was fighting with with with knives, machetes, assault rifles. The other side had spoons, wooden sp,
00:31:39
you know, I mean, that kind of thing, right? It was so lopsided. It was such an abuse and a asymmetric battle.
00:31:45
>> Under the Clinton administration, we chose to not be part of the International Criminal Court. We pulled
00:31:50
ourselves out of the very same conclusion that you're talking about. >> Yeah. But Nuremberg was not but but
00:31:55
there's also the ICJ. There is a UN framework that's independent from the
00:31:58
ICC and the Rome treaty. So all I'm saying is we do have international law that addresses what nations can do to
00:32:04
their own people. >> And we violated international law by by running by attacking a head of state. So
00:32:10
what what is the there's no continuity. There's no consistency. We choose to do
00:32:14
what we choose to do. We choose to support what we choose to support. and we choose to abandon what we choose to
00:32:18
abandon. And how how do you make sense in a world like that? How do you predict the future? How do you manage even
00:32:25
raising a family? How do you know where you can travel? How do you decide on investments? How do you you can't that
00:32:30
is a great point and I think that's the that's a you know that's a point to be
00:32:33
made here is that there's an absence of the enforcement of law internationally
00:32:37
and it's victor's justice and the dominant will essentially exercise whatever will they want. The law be
00:32:43
damned. Do you think this is part of Trump's what his motivations are linked
00:32:49
to his personal legacy? And I say this a lot because I think sometimes you got to
00:32:52
kind of follow the incentive structure, especially of a president that can't be
00:32:55
reelected, who has talked a lot about wanting to win the Nobel Peace Prize, although he's probably never said it
00:32:59
directly. And you, it almost looks like a Trump that's thinking about his legacy
00:33:04
ahead of time. And one's legacy is going to be determined by like the wars you
00:33:08
you start, the people you take out, the Venezuela situation, the economies seems
00:33:11
to be really important to him. Do you think this is he's motivated more so by
00:33:15
his legacy than say someone else? >> I do believe that we are in a position
00:33:18
where this is the first president we've ever had, and I would love to be wrong.
00:33:22
Please disagree with me on this, but I think this is the first president we've
00:33:25
ever had that's more focused on personal legacy than professional or political
00:33:30
legacy. I think he's thinking about Donald Trump and the name Trump and the Trump fortune and the Trump future more
00:33:37
than he's thinking about the image of him on children's bookmarks as a as a
00:33:42
president of the United States for the rest of the existence of the United States. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't
00:33:47
feel like he's motivated by country by service. He is supposed to be >> it's not it's not country over part or
00:33:56
party over country. It's brand over country. The Trump brand. I would agree with that. Yeah,
00:34:02
>> I've never heard a president talking about, oh, I might take Greenland, might
00:34:04
might go to Venezuela. Um, >> he he fancies himself a dealmaker. He wants a Nobel Peace Prize. He he prides
00:34:11
himself on the number of wars that he's he's he's u ended um conflicts that he's
00:34:16
solved. I think ideally he would have wanted Iran to end up with a diplomatic solution. He came with terms. I don't
00:34:22
think war was a preferred option. I he would be much happier if there was an agreement that, you know, allowed
00:34:26
everything to kind of stay in place. Iran would abide by nuclear restrictions, missile restrictions,
00:34:31
proxy restrictions and then a Trump casino gets built in you know that would have made him happy because yeah that is
00:34:37
about the personal that is about the brand that and it's also he sees that as
00:34:40
benefiting the United States benefiting uh the US's global partners in the region so but but I think a lot of this
00:34:46
is personally driven I I I would agree. >> I also find it quite fascinating that
00:34:50
our prime minister in the UK K Dharma is not being asked about any of this stuff
00:34:55
ahead of time. I think if we go back a couple of decades, the UK and the US were allies. Now it seems like the US is
00:35:01
kind of acting as a lone force in the world. And it's funny cuz you know I watched Karma come out after the attacks
00:35:07
have happened and he clearly had no idea what's going to happen. Same in Venezuela. Once upon a time you would
00:35:11
have briefed us. The president did go to the prime minister about I think using Diego Garcia in other bases um and was
00:35:19
turned down if I'm not mistaken. Right. That that so there was some awareness
00:35:22
that something was being planned and and the prime minister said that the that the UK government would have no part in
00:35:27
any of that. >> What's going on here? What's the the macro picture of in terms of the
00:35:32
declining world order that we once knew where we had where it wasn't just United
00:35:36
States running around doing whatever they liked and other people might be briefed or asked.
00:35:41
I mean, I'm interested in looking at outcome, you know, and then kind of looking backwards at how we got there.
00:35:48
And I'm also very interested in how divided America is because I really do see it as the greatest weakness. So, you
00:35:55
can show strength in what just happened, but if you are extremely vulnerable at home, then, and I'm not talking
00:36:03
necessarily about Hezbollah terrorist cells being, you know, activated, which may or may not happen. I'm just talking
00:36:11
about the the clash of political parties in the United States. And to that end, I
00:36:20
often look at the past and like so we're talking about you mentioned, you know,
00:36:26
being friendly and having our allies and our and I can't help but look at the
00:36:31
reaction of the opposing party right now at this action for better or for worse,
00:36:36
but bringing up the Iraq war and talking about how we got our allies involved. We
00:36:45
went to Congress and I as a historian can't help but think, but wait a minute,
00:36:52
the Iraq war was built on faulty intelligence. The Iraq war led us into a 20year
00:37:03
absolute misery with so many people in this area killed and so many more problems metastasizing as a result. And
00:37:13
so to to be selective about what works and what what doesn't work is to me as
00:37:21
dangerous as a situation as we are in now. And I know that's a little bit skirting away from, you know, giving you
00:37:28
an answer as to why what was done was done or whether it's a good idea or a bad idea. It just simply is very
00:37:36
interesting to me because I can't help but see, you know, being a subject matter expert on the history of the CIA
00:37:42
in particular. I see these actions where it is presidential authoritydriven since the end of World War II. And to
00:37:52
me, that's what this action looks like. So, we're in the new era where we are
00:37:56
in, which I find interesting, is where the president of the United States can essentially take what would historically
00:38:04
be a covert action operation. You wouldn't even know about it. That would be the idea. Instead,
00:38:11
announcing it as a military program. So, he's merging the legal authorities of
00:38:16
Title 10 and Title 50. And of course, the average person in the United States isn't like, "Oh, wait a minute. He's
00:38:22
merging those authorities because What is what are the title 10 and title 50? >> Well, title 10 is the military must
00:38:28
follow certain laws of war. Okay. >> Okay. And title 50 says if the president
00:38:33
decides it is a national security threat, he can use the CIA's paramilitary,
00:38:40
that is an actual mil military force. They sheep dip tier one operators over from the military and take the patches
00:38:48
off their shoulders, put them in non-military clothing and send them out to do military type work.
00:38:55
>> So he's using the military how he wants to use them. >> Yes. And
00:38:58
>> he has that right as the commander-in-chief, as the chief executive of the United States, the DoD
00:39:06
or now the DO and CIA fall under the executive branch. They don't fall under
00:39:10
the legislative branch. they don't fall under the the judicial branch. So, the
00:39:13
president has and always has had the ability to take these types of actions and write executive orders. What's so
00:39:21
different here is that while we're talking about CIA and CIA being used um by the president in his exercise of
00:39:29
authority, what we're all not talking about, what we're missing is that CIA
00:39:34
has been gutted. This is the same president that went to war with CIA in his first term. CIA has gone through
00:39:41
massive attrition since then. They were defunded under his first presidency. So,
00:39:47
Director Rackcliffe is the least used director, the least referenced director. You never hear about him.
00:39:53
>> Is he the head of the CIA? >> He's the head of the CIA. And and what I
00:39:56
am concerned about is that the CIA I left in 2014 was already missing intelligence on
00:40:06
Venezuela and and Iran. Since then, it's gotten smaller. It's gotten marginalized
00:40:12
more. It went to it's been treated hostily by the by the US president. And the CIA that I had started hearing
00:40:20
rumors about in the early 2020s, 65% of the intelligence that they were producing was coming from foreign
00:40:26
allies. >> They didn't have the ability to create their own its say is that every CIA
00:40:33
sadly, you know, has nostalgia for the former CIA if you look at history and believes that their CIA was better than
00:40:41
the current CIA. That's just the nature of >> I'm not saying it was better or worse.
00:40:45
I'm just saying the intelligence that the CIA is using now. I I would argue that we keep talking about CIA and you
00:40:52
keep seeing CIA in the headlines and it's actually not >> exactly. But hang on, ODNI didn't or at
00:40:59
least according to, shall we say, the New York Times, which must have come from the White House. CIA provided the
00:41:05
intelligence. So there you go. >> Fake. I don't think that's real. I don't
00:41:09
think CIA here's the thing. CIA. >> How do you think why do you based on
00:41:13
>> CIA is the central intelligence agency which is by design it means that every
00:41:18
other intelligence that comes from every other agency inside the DoD inside uh the national security infrastructure has
00:41:24
to come through CIA only CIA produces the final product for the president. So therefore
00:41:30
>> everything is CIA and CIA contain and CIA is the one that's in charge of
00:41:35
maintaining foreign relationships with foreign intelligence services. So when Israel has an intelligence report that
00:41:40
they share with the US president, it goes through the CIA. So all credit and all blame always goes to CIA. That
00:41:48
doesn't mean CIA actually had the intelligence themselves. >> So what who do you think had the
00:41:52
intelligence and why does this matter? >> The number one most informed country in
00:41:57
the world on the goings on in Iran is Israel. Tell me if I'm wrong. >> No, I would agree with that. There's no
00:42:02
way the United States would have been able to launch against Iran without close coordination and incredible
00:42:07
intelligence support from Israel. >> And I'm going to disagree. >> Why does it matter?
00:42:11
>> Because it means that Israel could be directing the activities of the US
00:42:15
military by the intelligence they select to give to the president. >> So I wouldn't take that step.
00:42:22
>> I don't think Israel has a monopoly on intelligence provided. Um we know that
00:42:27
uh MI6 has also historically been very active and very capable probably more so than CIA has been and in large part
00:42:33
because the British government has a embassy has diplomatic ties um has trade and economic ties with Iran. Um and it's
00:42:41
and the Islamic regime has seen the UK as a effective sort of pipeline or conduit to the United States and has
00:42:47
used that in the past um sometimes you know to to better effect than before. But I I think that there's a I think
00:42:54
there's sources of intelligence that the United States gets. And Israel is influential, but I don't think it is the
00:43:00
sole influencer or the one that pushes it over the edge one way or the other. >> I wasn't saying that they're the sole,
00:43:04
but but when it came to Iran, and I think we're saying the same thing, they are they don't have the monopoly, but
00:43:11
they have the >> they're the biggest game in town. >> Exactly. when it comes to understanding
00:43:14
what's happening in Iran. >> I mean, I'm going to disagree because I
00:43:18
think that, okay, look at past situations where the United States attempted to do a decapitation strike
00:43:25
and then have a regime change. You can look at Iraq. We tried to kill Saddam Hussein, failed, and then a disaster
00:43:32
blows up. Libya tried to kill Gaddafi, fails, a disaster blows up. Iran tries to kill the regime or take
00:43:44
decapitate the regime and succeeds. So you are you saying that you believe that's because in the other situations
00:43:53
the intelligence was coming from the CIA who didn't have such great intelligence
00:43:59
and in this situation the intelligence was coming from Israel who did. No, I'm
00:44:05
saying that that a big piece of the opportunity of Iran is tied to the opportunity that was
00:44:13
presented to us by our allies in the region. I don't think it's just Israel.
00:44:17
Saudi Arabia wants to see the end of Iran. UAE wants to see the end of Iran. Jordan wants to see the end of Iran.
00:44:22
There's multiple allies in the region that want to see the end of Iran. But when it came to who had the longest,
00:44:29
most reliable human intelligence source network inside Iran, I don't think anybody came even close to comparing
00:44:36
with with Israel. >> And you're saying that was used selectively, meaning
00:44:40
>> because all intelligence that's shared with an ally is selective. >> Of course,
00:44:44
>> I have 10 pieces. Do I give all 10 pieces to my ally or do I give just the
00:44:48
three pieces that I think will move them off the X? >> Right. Well, you had to they had to have
00:44:52
those 20 individuals tagged to do their find, fix, and finishing. Period. End of
00:44:57
story. It couldn't have happened without it. And I believe that the United States, the CIA aggregates all that
00:45:04
intelligence, you know, sigage, all the ins to know that. I can't imagine how
00:45:10
Israel knew that more than the United States. I just I I that's my that's where I was.
00:45:17
>> So, I mean, just to give you a very quick example, right? You're 100% right
00:45:20
that people have to be tagged. >> When you tag a cell phone, let's just
00:45:23
say we're talking about cell phones. Cell phones give you a geo a geo location. Every cell phone signal sends
00:45:28
a geo tag, >> but only on the service network that controls that phone. The United States
00:45:34
doesn't have access to most of the service providers in the Middle East. So, you already have to have someone to
00:45:40
interlocute the Middle Eastern service provider with the West. And then on top of that, you then have to be able to
00:45:46
identify that that selector, that cell phone belongs to that person. Again, if you think that the United States is so
00:45:52
powerful, it has every cell phone of every person around the country, around the world, they're not
00:45:57
>> I think there's biometric tagging that is not necessarily electronic based.
00:46:03
>> So, you're saying that it I I appreciate your point of view. The point is that
00:46:10
Iran, according to every prioritized list that we have, is on the low end of our priorities. Russia's above them.
00:46:18
China's above them. Uh the cartels across Mexico are above them. So somehow we had such refined
00:46:26
intelligence on >> What's your conclusion here, Andrew? Because I feel like there's there's a
00:46:31
second half of your point that's missing. Like a conclusion that you're you're pointing towards, but not saying.
00:46:36
>> Isn't it? Isn't it just the lowest of the hanging fruits of all the ones you
00:46:39
mentioned? Also, >> correct. It doesn't. So, what I'm saying is I it doesn't make sense that we would
00:46:44
take this action unless we are really just acting on the behest of our allies for some other kind of gain, a personal
00:46:54
gain for the Trump brand, if you will, some sort of uh hedgeimonyy that the United States is desperately grasping
00:47:01
for because we realize that we don't have that power and influence anymore. And as a result of these actions and
00:47:06
actions like what we took in Venezuela, we have now empowered and validated some
00:47:12
of the worst regimes in the world that we've always held accountable for taking
00:47:15
the same kind of actions that we take. >> And who are you concerned about as it
00:47:18
relates to other regimes? >> China, Russia, this Russia. I believe that a big part of the reason
00:47:23
that that Zalinsky hasn't been assassinated by Russia is because that would be crossing a red line. That would
00:47:30
that would infuriate Europe and the United States because you don't attack world leaders. We just gave them
00:47:34
permission to do so. The same thing in Taiwan. We can ass now China has free reign to just assassinate one person in
00:47:40
Taiwan. And then that's just them. We're not even talking about Pakistan and
00:47:44
India. We're not talking about any of the border disputes that are happening
00:47:47
anywhere else across Asia or warlords in Africa. We just validated these these illegal inhumane
00:47:56
extrajudicial processes all over the world. So unlike these other world leaders, Kam was his his his his
00:48:04
philosophy, his entire ideology was was is built on death to America among death
00:48:11
to other things. You don't have other world leaders, you don't have the president of Taiwan saying death to
00:48:16
China. You don't have Zillinsky even saying death to Russia. He might want Putin dead, but he's not sort of he
00:48:21
doesn't want the demise of the entire Russian Republic. Uh and so I think this
00:48:25
is where Kam stands apart where it is it is a a a movement which became a system
00:48:31
of government predicated on the demise and the destruction of of the United States. What's interesting how do you
00:48:38
counter that? Yeah. >> Interesting with the term stands apart is I was imagining therefore a spectrum
00:48:43
and the minute it becomes a spectrum it becomes somewhat subjective. So, you know, one might say, well, we think they
00:48:49
wanted to hurt us. Whereas before in my head when when I grew up, I always used to see these wars and go, why don't they
00:48:53
just they know where the guy lives? Like, I know that sounds like a simplified, but they know where he is.
00:48:56
Why don't they just take him out? And and it was always it always felt to me
00:48:59
that that was off the table in war. You can't just assassinate a leader because
00:49:03
you don't like them or you're having a sort of geopolitical disagreement. And
00:49:06
it's actually only in the last sort of year or two that I thought, okay, maybe
00:49:10
it is free reign to just fly in and snatch someone out of bed with their wife, which is what happened in
00:49:14
Venezuela. and then seeing this that you can just drop a bomb on them wherever they are. It does kind of make you, you
00:49:20
know, wonder maybe this is now on the table. I've never really seen that in my
00:49:23
lifetime. I mean, I know there was some things that went on Libya and in Iraq and so on, but to snatch a prime
00:49:28
minister out of bed with his wife and fly him over with photos of I wow, this is this is a new type of uh geopolitical
00:49:37
action. >> It's what the it's what our secretary of state is calling the golden era of the
00:49:43
United States. the old world is gone. Like these are the this is the narrative coming out and and being spread by the
00:49:52
representation of the free world. France there the macaron just this morning stated that to be free you must be
00:50:00
feared. This is the world that we're creating. Death to America. Guess how much I care
00:50:07
about that. Guess how much I care that a poor broke ass far away pitily dank country says death to America.
00:50:14
Guess how afraid I am of that? Zero. And guess how afraid? Multiple people who have led the United States have been
00:50:19
afraid of that. They They're not. You can say it all you want. Doesn't matter.
00:50:23
And when you do when you do carry out an attack, >> right, >> against the USS Cole.
00:50:29
For every one attack that's successful, 25 of them are thwarted. That's the
00:50:33
That's the benefit of being the most powerful military in the world. You don't have to worry about everybody who
00:50:40
chants in the streets. How many people disown their kids because they say, "I
00:50:44
hate you." When they're teenagers, you don't care. You're like, "Give it time.
00:50:47
They'll grow up. They'll be fine." They've got to go through their
00:50:50
before they realize what it's like to be grown-ups. That's what we say about our
00:50:53
children. >> The other You can say the same thing about a country that just came to power
00:50:58
in 1979. They're less than a hundred years old. What What do they know about how to
00:51:05
actually be a country? What do we know? We're only 250 years old. Um, >> I mean it's hard it's hard to swallow
00:51:13
that like, you know, it's okay if you have like a horrible, you know, murderous, brutal regime making women
00:51:19
run around in hijabs and ruining entire thousands of years old Persian civilizations.
00:51:24
>> Have you been to this part of the world? I >> I have not been. >> That's what they That's normal life
00:51:29
there. That's what do you think is happening in the in the hermit kingdom in North Korea? I mean, shoot, look,
00:51:35
Afghanistan. We left Afghanistan and knew that that's what exactly what the Taliban was going to do.
00:51:39
>> Right. But what's happening here is not since 79 is not normal. But but just to
00:51:44
go back to one step for a second, who do we know launched the missiles that killed the Supreme Leader and all the
00:51:49
other um in the uh hierarchy? >> The I think the credit is going to the United States.
00:51:54
>> No, no. The credit is going to Israel. >> So So Israel is the one that essentially
00:52:00
pushed the button, pulled the trigger, what have you. The US provided the >> Exactly. In which case then does Israel
00:52:06
have the prerogative to take out a head of state that was you know essentially the only nation state might I remind you
00:52:12
that came out in support of the October 7 attacks was only Iran not even North Korea came out and said anything no one
00:52:19
else did absolutely said this was you know >> on October 8th he directed Hezbollah to
00:52:24
join the war >> therefore is a fair is he a fair target for Israel >> that's a great question is he a
00:52:29
combatant >> if if authorizes, funds, motivates, endorses, and basically encourages and
00:52:38
shoves out the door your attacker. Do you then have a right to go after them? >> That's I think that's maybe that's the
00:52:44
$10,000 question here. Okay? Because because if you are will if you're willing to see the the leader of every
00:52:50
country as an as a combatant, they are the heads of the military. The president is the the commander-in-chief of the
00:52:56
military. If they are combatant, they are a legal target. So if they're a legal target, why is it against
00:53:01
international law to attack head of state? And even more, what's the acceptable collateral damage? Because
00:53:06
Israel is notorious for assassinations around the world. It's it's what makes
00:53:10
them so difficult for other people to ally with because we don't support assassinations. And most assassinations
00:53:16
are not legal combatants. They're scientists. That's a civilian. They're
00:53:22
experts. That's a civilian. They're heads of industry. That's a civilian.
00:53:26
They're generals, but not in a hot conflict. that makes them a non-combatant.
00:53:29
>> The spaces you're talking about, the line between civilian and someone who
00:53:34
works for the government or is on a government funded weapons program or something of that nature, those lines
00:53:39
are blurred in the Middle East. We know that >> those lines are blurred everywhere. A
00:53:42
civilian who works for a company that's hired by the US military, is that person
00:53:46
a combatant? Okay. But it but those distinctions are are are far more subtle in the Middle East and especially when
00:53:52
you're a scientist working for a state nuclear program >> that you're being forced to work for
00:53:58
because you're one of the few scientists that can do it. >> I I don't know. Are they forced to work
00:54:02
for? I mean I mean there are there are defectors. There are those who who who opt and then there are those who double
00:54:07
down and become religious cheerleaders supporting what the government's doing.
00:54:11
I mean, the point I'm making is that you saying it doesn't give you the international under international law
00:54:16
the right to take out a head of state. What if it was self-defense? >> That's not what it was.
00:54:21
>> I have a counternarrative here. Just just to throw it out and kind of switch
00:54:24
up the the discussion here. You know, this administration is very interested in in social media. And for that reason,
00:54:31
I am too. And I look at I saw a meme that was going around immediately after this um decapitation event so quickly in
00:54:43
fact it made me wonder like who pushed that out that quickly. And it's a white
00:54:49
sheet of paper with all the months of the year of 2026. And January there's a
00:54:54
picture of Maduro. February there's a picture of the Mexican cartel leader. March, one day
00:55:01
off, there's a picture of the supreme leader of Iran and then there's a question mark in the other months. And
00:55:07
it made me think and sort of wonder speculate, is this messaging to Putin that he better start negotiating with
00:55:17
Trump? >> Nope. Putin's a whole different beast. What what that's a message to is the
00:55:21
leader of Cuba. >> Yeah, Cuba, I was going to say, is next. And if you follow what the United States
00:55:27
considers to be the four state sponsors of terrorism, the only one that remains after Cuba is North Korea.
00:55:33
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w.ai/steeen. It will be a game changer for you. >> Why does the US care about Cuba? What's
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the context there? What what does the US want with Cuba? >> Well, Cuba's 90 miles off the coast of
00:57:47
Florida for starters. So, geographically, it's very dangerous. Cuba was where the Soviet Union put
00:57:56
nuclear missiles there, you know, almost bringing the United States to the brink of nuclear
00:58:02
war during the Kennedy administration. It's one of the only countries in the
00:58:05
Western Hemisphere that does not fall under the United States's sphere of influence.
00:58:09
>> I actually saw this yesterday. >> The Cuban government is talking with us
00:58:14
and they're in a big deal of trouble as you know. They have no money. They have
00:58:19
no anything right now, but they're talking with us and maybe we'll have a
00:58:24
friendly takeover of Cuba. >> Exactly. >> So Trump says that maybe we'll have a
00:58:30
friendly takeover of Cuba and he said that two days ago. Mhm. >> So, Cuba's next and then North Korea.
00:58:37
>> Do they wouldn't North Korea have nuclear weapons though, don't they,
00:58:40
Annie? So, >> yes, they do. >> I I I always wonder that actually does
00:58:43
getting to a a point where you have nuclear weapons kind of mean the US will leave you alone?
00:58:47
>> Absolutely. I think that part of all of this is the the sort of elephant in the
00:58:51
room is that you cannot, you know, the United States will not let anyone else join the
00:58:59
nuclear 9. North Korea was the last example of that mistake during the Clinton administration being told by the leader
00:59:09
of North Korea, "Oh, no, no, we're not going to have a nuclear program." And
00:59:13
then him not, you know, deciding by sort of committee and all his sage advisers and following and talking to Congress
00:59:20
and all of that, we're not going to attack North Korea. That would be unacceptable. That was the Democratic
00:59:25
President Clinton's position. And as a result, North Korea developed nuclear
00:59:31
weapons and now has nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons systems to strike the United States and has demonstrated,
00:59:39
you know, a desire if provoked or actually has said if provoked it would do so. And so, you know, you that was
00:59:48
not going to happen with Iran. Certainly not on this watch and probably not on any watch. Is there a bit of an unspoken
00:59:55
rule geopolitically where if you get to nuclear weapons, you can do whatever the
00:59:58
hell you want and >> it's the ultimate deterrence. >> Yeah, absolutely. You can't mess with
01:00:02
somebody who has a nuclear weapon and you and you and you don't. >> One of my friends was asking me this
01:00:06
morning whe how the situation with Iran getting nuclear weapons is any different
01:00:10
from the situation with North Korea having nuclear weapons or is it the same? >> Well, it's the same thing. only perhaps
01:00:16
were well now this regime is is it is up we don't know what will happen with it
01:00:20
but having you know an esh correct me on this pronunciation you know the idea that the Shia idea that the sort of
01:00:30
apocalyptic end is not necessarily a bad thing >> oh the arrival of the mai and and and
01:00:37
that whole thing right sort of creating the conditions for that to come about >> yes there's a there's kind of a a
01:00:42
undergirling the Islamic regime's thinking being is this idea and that's
01:00:47
very dangerous to the idea that we don't want to have a nuclear war >> though that regime is not suicidal. I I
01:00:54
I will sort of state that Kame was was prepared to die for his cause but he was not suicidal in the sense that he would
01:01:00
go out and sort of you know um if he could I don't think start a nuclear war
01:01:04
that he knew his country was going to get destroyed fighting. Uh that is I think you know one distinction and I'm
01:01:10
not saying North Korea is suicidal but definitely what remains of the government there is not is not suicidal.
01:01:15
Um I don't think there is ideological dieards as we saw in the founding fathers of which Kam was the last one.
01:01:21
So that changes it a little bit now that he's dead you know um there's uh the um
01:01:27
a philosopher Eric Hoffer he sort of wrote that great causes start as movements then they become businesses
01:01:32
then they become rackets. Okay. So, Humeni M Humeni's movement that started in the 70s that was the movement. It
01:01:39
became a business, a enterprise of which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps profited immensely till it became a
01:01:45
racket and now we're at the racket phase of it and the only one really left are
01:01:48
the racketeering leaders you know and because the the the spiritual leaders are now gone. Um what happens next I
01:01:55
think is sort of and you know we're now in very much in unknown territory with
01:01:58
that. Andrew, to that point of nuclear weapons, if Iran had already violated um many of the things they'd said around
01:02:04
nuclear weapons and they I think they'd enriched uranium to 60% roughly, they
01:02:08
would have theoretically continued to go because they know that if you want the US and other people in the region to
01:02:12
stay away from you, you got to get nuclear weapons. And once you get that to that point, then you no one's going
01:02:18
to mess with you. >> So I think the assumption is that no one will mess with you with nuclear weapons.
01:02:22
I don't think that that is going to be the assumption for much longer. I think
01:02:25
that that Iran recognized that if it could get a path to a deployable nuclear capability, whether it's a rocket or
01:02:34
whether it's a missile or even if it's a truck with a nuke in the trunk, they had
01:02:38
options. 60% enrichment, they have options there. I mean, with just nuclear waste,
01:02:45
they have options to cause real damage. But enriched militaryra sustainable kind of permanent state
01:02:54
nuclear capability is a much higher level of enrichment than that. And that's arguably what they have in North
01:03:00
Korea. Their deployability, their capability for actually putting it on a rocket and having the rocket hit where
01:03:05
it's supposed to hit and not blow up on the launch pad is a little bit different. And for that reason, I think
01:03:09
we have to take seriously the fact that if the United States wanted to demonstrate their power against the
01:03:15
nuclear capable country, they could do it against North Korea. There's also this concept that our current military
01:03:21
doctrine under Hegsth has applied that no other president has ever applied and no other department of defense,
01:03:26
Department of War has applied and that's this idea called burden sharing. According to the Department of War,
01:03:33
their doctrine now is a doctrine of burden sharing, which means they will force the burden of a national security
01:03:39
interest on American allies. An example is they go into Iran with a small naval force. They bomb Iran knowing very well
01:03:50
that Iran is going to spread the pain across our allies in the Middle East. To the United States Department of War,
01:03:55
that is us, that is our allies sharing the burden. If they want to be our allies, they have to do this. Same thing
01:04:02
is happening with Ukraine and with Russia. If you want if Europe, if you want to counter Russia, you must share
01:04:09
the burden with the United States. It also gives the the United States now cart blanch to go anywhere it wants with
01:04:15
a limited force, stir up a hornets nest, and then let everybody else pay the price. Well, in terms of the Middle
01:04:21
East, it certainly was an effective move because, you know, all of these six countries that Iran has now bomb, you
01:04:30
know, attacked in the past 48 hours are now very angry with Iran. So, the burden
01:04:38
sharing has gone from kind of like this is a fight that we're not in to this is
01:04:43
a fight we are in. I don't think that anybody has taken any offensive actions
01:04:48
against Iran except >> but they're not happy with it. >> They weren't happy before.
01:04:53
>> No, they but the the the statements they've put out are some of the
01:04:56
strongest that we've seen. >> I mean, we've never even seen anything.
01:04:59
>> We've never seen the Gulf States put out what they've basically, you know,
01:05:02
condemning Iran and holding it responsible. It it's now any pretense that there was a reproma, there was some
01:05:07
sort of a a coming together is is now shattered. And and that's a setback for
01:05:11
whatever is left of the Islamic Republic. >> Huge setback. the the power that Iran
01:05:15
has over the Middle East is a power of agriculture. All of the countries that we look at,
01:05:20
all the oil collegiate countries can't make their own food. Iran makes their
01:05:23
food. So, they've always had this weird relationship where they disagree with
01:05:28
them politically. They disagree with them religiously. They disagree with them militarily, but they're still
01:05:33
allies because of food. The United States has sanctions all over Russia, except in one area, space. We still
01:05:40
cooperate with Russia. It's a carve out because we don't want to lose their
01:05:44
access to the space program. >> Do you think we're closer to nuclear war
01:05:49
now because of this action? >> 100%. >> So you you think this has moved us
01:05:52
closer to that? >> 100%. And and I've got there's proof of that all over the headlines today
01:05:57
because France is deploying air launch nuclear warheads. Air launched nuclear warheads. That means small warheads that
01:06:05
fit on the ends of airplane rockets. They're deploying them all over Europe.
01:06:10
That means France is now taking its nuclear arsenal and spreading it across its European allies. The more nuclear
01:06:16
proliferation, the more risk of nuclear that's just Ukraine and >> that has nothing to do with Iran.
01:06:23
>> Yeah, >> that has nothing to do with Iran. It happened two days after Iran. It has
01:06:27
the threat of nuclear war comes from the conflict in my opinion comes from the conflict in Iran from the war in Ukraine
01:06:35
and comes from Russia >> because you have an actual superpower president who has threatened the use of
01:06:43
nuclear weapons. Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon. So it's it's not a
01:06:48
nuclear threat. >> You speak a different nuclear language than I do. Russia is launching
01:06:54
intercontinental ballistic missiles that can't be intercepted. It's got the
01:06:56
archnik. What the hell is it going to be afraid of? A warhead on the tip of an airplane.
01:07:02
>> It's not. That's a tactical nuke. That's a battlefield. >> What is your point?
01:07:06
>> My point is that we the deployment of a nuclear weapon >> is nuclear war. The deployment of a
01:07:12
nuclear weapon. If you're talking about >> Hang on, >> mutually assured destruction.
01:07:16
>> Are you talking about the use of a nuclear weapon or are you talking about
01:07:19
putting a warhead on a aircraft? No, that's that's been technology for a long
01:07:23
time. Using it in the battlefield, >> but it's not being used in the battlefield. I agree with you a
01:07:26
thousand%. >> You don't think it's being you think it is being used in the battle?
01:07:29
>> No, I'm saying it's being deployed. Is that getting us closer to nuclear war?
01:07:32
Yes. >> Yes, but it's not but it's not because of Iran. >> It has nothing to do with Iran. And what
01:07:37
are you talking about being deployed? Because in you're talking about France
01:07:41
maneuvering where its weaponry is. >> That's the definition of a deployment.
01:07:45
>> That is well then we're talking about it. I'm talking about nuclear use. I
01:07:49
mean, the United States deploys its nuclear forces all the time by President Trump
01:07:57
saying, "I'm moving our submarines," >> which is just talk because they're
01:08:02
moving anyways. It's it's the same as it's threatening when Putin says, "I'm
01:08:08
moving at my nuclear or when he tests, you know, Norway by popping up right offside outside of their shores." Those
01:08:18
are maneuvers that are very dangerous. I I absolutely agree. >> But in this particular case, has the
01:08:24
even from a Russian perspective, has this war in Iran increase the probability that a Putin would use a
01:08:30
nuclear? >> In my opinion, absolutely not. No. In my opinion, no. In my opinion, what it does
01:08:35
to Putin is it makes him say, "Wow, this president is unpredictable." And to some to an
01:08:46
authoritarian person like Putin, that's a match for him, not someone for him to walk on. And
01:08:56
I think that I'm not I'm not saying that's a great way for world diplomacy
01:09:01
whatsoever. It's not diplomacy. It's just, you know, it's just strongarmming
01:09:06
one another. But but we are not I do not feel at all that this situation makes us
01:09:12
closer to a nuclear threat whatsoever. >> I agree. I think it's a combination of
01:09:18
Ukraine and China's um military exercises and action in the South China Sea and the whole sort of you know what
01:09:25
we're not seeing. There's this argument that China's watching what's going on
01:09:27
with the US and Iran. Here we are depleting our interceptors, our munitions. is China's meanwhile
01:09:33
stockpiling, you know, its resources and is does this put us at a disadvantage if
01:09:38
and when the day comes where China decides to take proactive aggressive action visav Iran? That's something to
01:09:44
think about and I think that then I'm worried about the risk of nuclear war in
01:09:48
that instance. I don't think Iran by itself in a vacuum is is moving the needle on that sort of nuclear risk
01:09:55
meter. To your point, what this is a boon for is the defense contractor world, is the military-industrial
01:10:00
complex. Because, for example, part of why Iran is so weak is because they've
01:10:07
used up so many ballistic missiles in their conflict with Israel. I I read today the interceptor to missile ratio
01:10:14
something like 25 to1 that the interceptors needed to to to catch these ballistic missiles that Kuwait, the UAE,
01:10:21
Israel is using, they're like upwards of of 10 15 times more expensive. >> Yes.
01:10:26
>> Um and and these drones are relatively cheaply made, these shahed drones that
01:10:29
they're using. So, you know, there is that aspect of it too that Iran can just
01:10:33
fire like a madman all these sort of um expendable um munitions and meanwhile we're spending three, four, five, 10
01:10:41
times as much to intercept them. >> Yes. Although you do see in any kind of
01:10:44
conflict like this, you always see new weapons on the battle and and that's what happened now. And America actually
01:10:50
has been copying the Shahed drones, these cheap, we call them the Lucas, these cheap systems that can just go in
01:10:58
and, you know, cause havoc without precision. And we deployed them. So I think this was I think this was a long
01:11:06
time. >> Sorry to interrupt you, Stephen. >> Well, I think this is one of the big
01:11:08
questions that a lot of people are asking, which is how long can Iran fight for in this war? Um, and what does that
01:11:14
fight look like? um that here in these jars you have I think it's the relative
01:11:19
amount of soldiers that each country has. Now obviously soldiers are just goes back to what Obama said about
01:11:24
horses and bayonets. They're one form of um combat but I was quite surprised at
01:11:29
how big Iran's military is relative to even the US but other um countries in
01:11:36
the region. I think they have the biggest military in the region. Is that correct?
01:11:38
>> So we have to separate between the IRGC and the National Army. They serve two
01:11:43
different functions. >> What are those two things? the IRGC, uh, which Annie brought up earlier. So, the
01:11:48
I stands for Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, not Iranian. What does that mean?
01:11:52
It's protecting the Islamic Revolution. It is an ideological army that sits outside of the main structures of power,
01:11:58
accountable only to the Supreme Leader. The National Army really goes through the office of the presidency and others
01:12:04
and you know, even though the Supreme Leader has a say in it, but the the army's job is to protect Iran's borders.
01:12:10
The IRGC's job is to protect the revolution and the ideology and the proxies and everything else that we have
01:12:16
come to know about Iran. So if we look at the if we look at those if we look at what's in the jar, we have to separate
01:12:22
what the national army which is only its job is to defend the borders versus the
01:12:26
ideological army. I'm curious what that would look like if we took out the national army and are left with the
01:12:32
ideological force. Iran have the largest stockpile in the Middle East of missiles, drones, and air defenses,
01:12:37
possessing thousands of ballistic crews, missiles, and kamicazi drones. This is their primary offensive strength. Um,
01:12:44
and they have quite a significant defense budget as well. But I guess the question I'm trying to get at is like
01:12:48
how long can they fight for? And how does that fight look over time? Because I know they shot they shot hundreds and
01:12:53
hundreds of ballistic missiles over the weekend. Yeah, Israel claims that in the
01:12:56
in the July in the June war of last year, it it um eliminated about half of Iran, what it believes to be Iran
01:13:02
stockpiles, but also batteries, launchers, basically capability. So, if you whatever it was, let's say they have
01:13:07
half of that left. Um I I've seen statist statistics saying that really they can't go at this rate um Iran for
01:13:14
more than two to three weeks before they're completely depleted. >> Well, there's also an interesting move
01:13:18
that the United States did. While we didn't kill the Supreme Leader, what we
01:13:22
did do was send our B2s to take out missile underground missile systems which Iran has.
01:13:29
>> Which are the aircrafts, right? >> No, they're underground. They actually
01:13:32
call them missiles. Yes, they came from the United States. And this is a consider considerable
01:13:39
damage because the two ways in which these sort of rogue nations whether it's
01:13:45
North Korea or Iran work their missiles is they have them on what are called road mobile launchers so that they
01:13:51
cannot be tracked and targeted or they bury them deeply underground. And one of the only things that can take out those
01:13:58
deeply buried missile sides is a B2 and that's what the United States sent. So,
01:14:03
how do you how how do you think this plays out over the coming weeks and months? Because at some point, yeah,
01:14:08
they might run out of missiles, but that doesn't necessarily mean the war is
01:14:10
over. I'm presuming that the US don't want to throw soldiers on the ground in
01:14:15
Iran either. So, what how like how does this play play out and how long? >> And and that's one of the major
01:14:21
strategic errors that we made in attacking Iran. They have the benefit of time, not us. They can choose how to
01:14:27
react, when to react, in what way to react. We don't know if they have a dirty bomb that they're finishing up in
01:14:33
some underground bunker right now that's just going to sit there and wait until
01:14:36
American boots on the ground show up. The fact that you guys think that that current nuclear deployments have nothing
01:14:42
to do with what's going on Iran, it it's I I want to respect that opinion, but to
01:14:48
me it shows just a lack of military experience and actual strategic intent to kill. Like when you look at how
01:14:58
military and intelligence operators are trained to think, we are trained to think through a lens of maximum damage.
01:15:04
>> Iran is thinking through the same window right now. And they're watching what we
01:15:08
just did in Afghanistan. Don't forget, we killed Osama bin Laden, who was an
01:15:12
ideological figurehead of al-Qaeda in 2011 and didn't leave Afghanistan until
01:15:18
2022 when we were when we gave up. That's another 11 years of war after the guy that we were supposed to kill to end
01:15:26
the war. How is Kmeni is different? Kmeni is different. But how different? I don't know yet. And what are we going to
01:15:34
do? The the new leadership in Iran, what's it going to be? Is it going to be
01:15:38
a leadership that that cowtows to the United States, that cowtows to to Israel? Is it going to be another shadow
01:15:43
government like the Sha? Are we going to place somebody else and the Iranian people are going to love it? Or are we
01:15:47
leaving a vacuum that China and Russia are going to step into? And now we're
01:15:51
going to we're going to see a strengthened Iran that's strengthened by our largest adversaries in the world.
01:15:57
This is the reality of what we've got to figure out because because the whether
01:16:00
they launch all their rockets in the next two weeks, that doesn't mean that's
01:16:03
the end of the fight. For all we know, it's going to come back and bite us in 6
01:16:07
months when some Hezbollah cell lights New York on fire. We don't know. But when it happens, arguably, it's going to
01:16:15
be justified. >> To Andrew's point, Iran can wage a war of attrition. It's harder. A war of
01:16:20
attrition is basically low-level warfare. Think of like death by a thousand cuts, right? I'll just keep
01:16:26
poking at you enough to eventually wear you down, destabilize you, weaken you. Whereas what you can do is massive
01:16:32
retaliation and these big sort of, you know, theatrical strikes. War of attrition is basically grinding for the
01:16:38
long haul and wearing you down. This is something that to to his point, Iran is capable of doing and is probably willing
01:16:44
to do and sees is the only way that it can survive this is the war of attrition. the war. It's it's it's
01:16:49
whatever remnant is left. >> It's how Russia has survived so long. It's the war of attrition.
01:16:54
>> But but like I'm like who's the lead? Do you need a leader >> or is it just lots of different pockets
01:16:58
of people? >> Time will tell and you know Hezbollah's sort of cells around the world will tell
01:17:03
us what happens. But I think another way of looking at it, I saw a a former member of the National Security Council
01:17:11
commenting that like yes, cells could be activated in America or they could just
01:17:18
fade away. And this is where I don't have a crystal ball and I'm just observing what's happening. But I do
01:17:25
think that the that all of this hangs on the razor's edge of public opinion because you know we time will tell
01:17:34
whether or not this regime falls whether what you're saying if it's either or but
01:17:39
I don't I don't think that we I don't think that we can know. >> Haven't we been here before to some
01:17:44
degree? >> Too many times. Too many times. >> What is the lesson from history that
01:17:47
everyone seems to have forgotten >> that we are shitty learners of history.
01:17:51
That's that's what the lesson is >> to to your point of you know who the
01:17:54
leadership would be. Something else that that philosopher I quoted Eric Hoffer had said that you know mass movements
01:17:58
they don't need a god but they do need a devil. So to that effect the leader
01:18:03
doesn't matter as much as having an enemy does. >> That is the so so basically so long as
01:18:08
we the United States or the western world is framed as the enemy that is enough to keep a war of attrition going
01:18:15
absent any figurehead or charismatic leader. And he was a religious figure versus just a political figure.
01:18:22
>> He was a religious figure >> to your point. He was a rakateeer at the
01:18:25
end. >> Yeah. I mean he was running I mean effectively. Yeah. >> And everyone in most people knew that.
01:18:31
>> Yeah. Absolutely. >> Thousands of people have gathered in public squares in Toronto to openly weep
01:18:34
and mourn his death. Roughly 20% of the population are staunch ideological supporters of him.
01:18:39
>> Yeah. 20% of 90 million. Yeah. Yeah. >> And it's interesting because you one can
01:18:42
imagine that that 20% might grow especially if the the coming months make their lives worse in some way. They
01:18:50
experience I don't know poverty or whatever else and and then you know friends die because of this war. It
01:18:56
doesn't take long for narrative to turn. And >> so that's what everyone's been warning
01:18:59
about that you strike Iran. This was a warning last June. You strike Iran, you're going to get rally around the
01:19:04
flag. the people that are secularists now are going to turn and they're going
01:19:07
to start supporting the regime and we're going to set back the cause of let's say
01:19:10
freedom or democracy. It didn't happen. It turns out that basically the people
01:19:14
in Iran blamed the regime for their own for the misery that was that was um put upon them. And so I think that 20% will
01:19:21
get even smaller as a result not just of this. It would have gotten smaller anyway as a result of this. I think
01:19:26
it'll get even smaller still because their salvation is not at the end, you know, of a of a of a turban or a robe.
01:19:32
It basically comes with the liberty and freedom that this government, this regime won't give them. And so that is,
01:19:38
I think, evident now to the 80% of Iranians, all of whom of that mean that, you know, 80 80% of the population is
01:19:44
born after 79. They don't know the old regime. All they know is this one. And
01:19:48
what they know is they don't like it. They don't like living under it. And
01:19:51
they want anything other than what this is. >> You feel differently. >> I think that that's an overly idealistic
01:19:56
way of thinking about it. We failed to convert Iraq when we took out Saddam Hussein. We failed to to to convert
01:20:02
Afghanistan when we took out the Taliban. >> Iran is not Iraq and Afghanistan,
01:20:05
though. It is not. >> I'm not saying it's the same. I'm saying
01:20:08
that when you when you change a government from the top down, that doesn't do anything for the people.
01:20:14
>> No one's changing it. There's no nation building. We're not going in to do
01:20:16
Ragnarok. So, what's going to build it? What's going to change it? The people. The
01:20:21
people that have been slaves for basically the last what 40, 50 years. The people who have had no education.
01:20:26
The people who have been marginalized. You think they're just going to understand how organize themselves
01:20:31
incredibly educated very very highly I mean it's it's one of the most educated
01:20:34
populists in the world and I have and and they are very the the people that are not regime supporters are very
01:20:40
western thinking I mean we see this we see this in in the culture they produce the media they produce when they go and
01:20:46
they speak around the world so the populace is there the capability is there the will is there all they need is
01:20:52
basically not to be you know not to be facing the barrel of a gun >> we are about to find out if that's true
01:20:57
and that is what that is what we are all writing on right now is whether this this intellectual minority in a
01:21:03
poverty-stricken economically defunct country is going to even stay there or whether they're going to take
01:21:09
their brains and their success and their opportunities somewhere else. >> The the diaspora and everything we're
01:21:15
hearing says they are the people are cannot wait to help rebuild the country. >> Why do you trust what you're hearing?
01:21:20
>> Well, his family's there, so he's probably wor the worst thing you can do is trust
01:21:26
the people that you have a personal relationship with. They're the least objective people that you can talk to.
01:21:31
>> So, who are there 80% of the population? >> Who do you talk to? >> Exactly. Who do you trust?
01:21:35
>> You can't trust anything that you're hearing right now. You can't trust
01:21:38
anything that you're reading right now. The information landscape is two to multiply.
01:21:44
>> It's not paranoid. Absolutely. It is absolutely paranoid to suggest that
01:21:48
everything is misinformation. one would believe, at least I certainly believe that I have a faculty up here to be able
01:21:56
to take information and try and discern what might be information misinformation
01:22:03
and what isn't and then also be willing to stand corrected. That's a very
01:22:07
important part of it and that goes back to my tribal problem is once you have a horse in the race and you become
01:22:13
convinced and I am hearing a little convincedness from you that you know then I believe
01:22:19
you lose your ability to be able to go oh wow maybe I was wrong maybe this and again I'm not condoning what the
01:22:27
administration did whatsoever I'm just listening to Benjamin and saying that is
01:22:33
to my eye a much better source I'm a journalist. I'm going to listen to what
01:22:38
people on the ground are saying there. Certainly family members because their opinion is going to be legitimately, you
01:22:47
know, heartfelt and not propagandized. >> Again, we speak a completely different
01:22:52
language. When you talk to me about opinion, heartfelt, and family, and belief, >> none of those are objective. None of
01:23:01
those are rebellions are born on those things. By the way, >> I agree. And and that that doesn't make
01:23:06
it objectively correct. It was a rebellion that ended up in the Iran that we just saw fall apart.
01:23:12
>> That was a revolution. That was a rebellion. >> Andrew, where does your skepticism come
01:23:16
from? What's it rooted in? Because you did spend almost a decade as an undercover spy for the United States in
01:23:21
the CIA. Where where is the skepticism coming from? Why shouldn't we believe
01:23:25
people on the ground who are saying what they're saying? >> I have seen this stuff firsthand. I've
01:23:28
been trained in how this stuff works. I've had to uh deploy this in in pursuit
01:23:33
of American goals and ambitions in the past. And and what you're saying isn't
01:23:38
inaccurate as to how people react. People be we just trust the opinion of the people
01:23:44
that we we trust the opinion of the people we trust more than we trust the opinion of others only because it's our
01:23:52
opinion that they're trustworthy at all. >> So who do you trust to get your
01:23:56
information from? I want to take my information from as as far opposite sources as possible and then see where
01:24:03
the information confirms itself, where it correlates. Because if you if you see anti-American
01:24:09
people saying the same thing as anti-Iranian people, where their messages are the same has corroboration,
01:24:15
the number of dead leaders, as an example. There's that's a corroborative
01:24:18
point because you're hearing both the Iranian state media say that and pro- US
01:24:23
western forces talk about that. But what if it's to your point a black box and
01:24:26
you can't get information from the sources you're used to getting from? >> Well, that's it's that's exactly right.
01:24:30
It is a black box. So, if we know it's a black box, we have to question every
01:24:35
source that comes out. Every piece of information that comes out. What we're
01:24:38
seeing a lot of right now with Iran is called circular reporting. It's one single source of information that comes
01:24:43
out that gets multiplied over and over again. We're seeing it happen in the White House, too, because the White
01:24:48
House has kicked out so many journalistic legacy media outlets. So now one story gets multiplied over and
01:24:54
over again and we're seeing stuff that's that's repeated. >> I have to say something. I am I am a
01:24:58
little bit skeptical about what is true. I'm like the furthest from ever being a
01:25:02
conspiracy theorist, but a little bit skeptical of what's true because I did a
01:25:06
post about this subject and obviously I've spent 15 years in social media. So
01:25:10
our whole business was building scaling huge social media audiences. And what I received in my DMs was like I've never
01:25:16
seen before. >> About what? I've heard people talking about bots for decades and most of the time that
01:25:22
they're actually they're wrong. It's something else going on with the
01:25:25
algorithm or maybe something they don't like they saw so they call it a bot. I
01:25:30
received thousands and thousands and thousands of DMs when I posted about this subject matter. And some of those
01:25:37
accounts when you go on the page and you look at their posting history, their engagement, you look at certain patterns
01:25:41
which we've built tools before to kind of um spot. >> Some of these accounts aren't real. And
01:25:46
I I said to my friends, I was like, "What the I posted about this issue and then I had thousands and
01:25:50
thousands and thousands and thousands of these accounts DM me encouraging me to post more about certain things. First
01:25:57
time in my life ever I go, "Oh, that was definitely it was so a >> influence operation." Okay. So, what
01:26:02
were they what were these bots pushing you to post on? I'm conscious whether I
01:26:07
should say or not because I don't want to infer >> by doing so you're
01:26:11
>> I'm like inferring that a particular but I'm just saying I've never felt what I
01:26:17
experienced then and I have I mean every this trailer will come out we'll see
01:26:20
loads of bots we have systems but this was in my DMs it was encouraging someone like me who has a big platform to push a
01:26:25
certain narrative and the the only reason I noticed is because of the sheer volume and then the narrative was almost
01:26:31
identical and I think well 1,700 different accounts of all asking me to do the same thing.
01:26:37
>> So you have final control over the the edit of this. Yeah. >> So there's no if you don't if you don't
01:26:42
want what you say to get edited to get to get aired then it'll get cut. But one
01:26:46
way or the other whatever you say like I I want you to say what you saw because >> if the narrative was anti-Iran,
01:26:52
>> then you were attacked by Western forces, >> Western bots attacking a known
01:26:56
Westerner. Mhm. >> If you were if you were propped up by pro-Iranian cyberbots, then now you're talking about
01:27:03
a cyber capacity, a cyber capability in Iran that nobody's talking about. So,
01:27:06
one way or the other, >> or maybe an ally or someone else or whatever it might be, I don't know. But
01:27:10
I just it made what it's my point was that it's made me skeptical about my own
01:27:15
information chamber. And I'll be honest, before I realized what was going on,
01:27:20
very persuasive. >> Very persuasive. you were persuaded by the bots before you realized they were
01:27:25
saying nice things to you and then they're encouraging you to continue to >> to push a certain narrative and it just
01:27:30
took it took me a second to pause and thought actually maybe wouldn't that be
01:27:33
a perfect strategy in these moments to get people who have big platforms to just bump bond their DMs and tell them
01:27:39
that you know like why aren't you standing up for us and please use your voice to um to speak on this particular
01:27:45
issue and I thought actually maybe I need I need my information from somewhere else. Well, I think the point
01:27:51
that you're making, which is very important, it has to do with, you know, mimedics or popularity. In other words,
01:27:58
what we don't know the outcome of the situation yet. We don't know if the
01:28:02
Hezbollah sleeper cells will be activated. Are they waiting to see whether what they do will be welcomed or
01:28:11
will be demonized? And I think that there's an profound influence in social media
01:28:19
and that is true in this administration and and previous administrations about the rise of pushing public opinion. I
01:28:27
mean that to your point that's what you worked on at the agency or you at least
01:28:31
saw happen. >> The fact is and I'm glad that you're seeing it for yourself. You can't trust
01:28:36
what you see. First of all, if you're a single language person, you only see
01:28:40
what's in your language. you don't see what's in a different language. And then
01:28:44
we all have an echo chamber around us. And the the the fact that we have so much technology just amplifies our echo
01:28:50
chamber. Our our algorithm sees what we see. It sees what we like. It sees what we pause longer on than something else.
01:28:57
And it gives us more of that. And people become very wealthy and very successful
01:29:01
understanding the behavior that people prefer. And you give people more of what they already prefer. And then it makes
01:29:07
them happier. And they don't even realize they're sitting inside of an echo chamber. So for all of these
01:29:12
reasons, I don't trust the information I see. I don't trust information unless
01:29:15
multiple sources of conflicting values and conflicting priorities and conflicting goals where they say the
01:29:21
same thing. I'll give that more credence. >> And if you can't get those sources
01:29:24
because information, >> then you can't have a conclusion. >> So you can have a living assessment.
01:29:30
>> Do you not operate? If you're a foreign policy decision maker, if you're a
01:29:33
president, if you're a national security adviser, you have to give advice and
01:29:37
consent. You have to figure out something. You can't say I have a lack of evidence or I have a lack of um
01:29:42
opinion or lack of information and therefore because I can't cooperate or verify there's no ven diagram of u
01:29:48
overlapping views. >> That's when you have you have to use time as a tool. You have to use time to
01:29:54
to be the tool that you use to collect more information. If you if you give up time you give up one of your most
01:30:00
important tools which is what we're giving up with this attack. We're giving
01:30:04
up time so that we can potentially just fit a tal a calendar January, February, March. Like that's why what what did we
01:30:12
actually gain? What how did the United States actually tangibly benefit from what just happened in Iran?
01:30:19
>> If the United States, how did we >> if in four months from now before the
01:30:22
midterm elections there is new leadership in Iran, entirely new, if there is regime change,
01:30:28
>> in other words, if there is by the president's own metrics victory. Okay.
01:30:33
>> Will you change your tune on this this goal of what did we gain? What if it's
01:30:36
not evident right now? What if it isn't four months? >> I Yeah, I it's a living assessment. So,
01:30:41
of course, if for all for all we know, the president's decision is going to work out. But for all we know, it's
01:30:45
going to get worse. For all we know, it won't be four months. It'll be four
01:30:48
years of of of a of a drought and povertystricken and Iranians dying, civilians dying because they can't find
01:30:55
food and water. >> The 79 revolution took two years to happen. Really began late 77. And then
01:30:59
you had a sort of reign of terror almost like the you know thermodorian robes Pierre period in early Iranian uh in the
01:31:06
uh early 80s where it took really four or five years for all the dust to settle. But but so the question is do
01:31:11
you want where are my results? Right? It's only been >> No. Where what are we gaining? What do
01:31:16
we even think we're going to gain? What does what does the United States think
01:31:19
it's going to gain from from decapitating the Iranian leadership? >> Well, that that's kind of obvious based
01:31:25
on what the president has said. It's that >> on what the president has said.
01:31:28
>> I'm I'm just saying based on what the president says. I'm not But if you ask
01:31:31
what the point was according to the president because he's the one who authorized the operation. It was putting
01:31:39
an end to Iran's nuclear program and regime change. >> Based off of what the president said,
01:31:45
the nuclear program was obliterated in June of last year, >> but there's attempts to reconstitute it.
01:31:51
They were looking to rebuild these facilities. They have satellite footage of this. Why are you why are you
01:31:55
disregarding previous narratives to adopt the current narrative? >> Because if I've learned nothing from 79
01:32:01
is that the previous narratives were wrong. The assessments were wrong. So I don't trust the assessments either. But
01:32:07
there's satellite imagery that shows, oh, there's reconstruction happening at
01:32:11
um Esvahan or Natans or wherever. We can see trucks moving. We can see buildings
01:32:15
coming up, right? Something is going on. They chose to share that satellite. It's
01:32:19
impossible to not see. I and >> it's impossible to to practically say no no no no Iran
01:32:28
didn't want a nuclear weapon. They just wanted to have electric power. I mean
01:32:32
nuclear power, you know, that's that's not that's not really not a plausible
01:32:40
assessment. >> That's what the ODNI put into their official report. >> How do you explain that they're going
01:32:44
beyond 20% enrichment? Then why are they doing that? >> They don't need more than 20%. So why?
01:32:48
So how >> and it's Iraq. It was a racket. It is a racket. >> And we're talking about Tulsi Gabbard as
01:32:53
the head of DNA, which Exactly. Exactly. Which is a great point because she is a
01:32:57
Trump supporter. >> Silence. Well, you have not heard from her. >> Is are you are we not Gabbert has been a
01:33:02
lot of things in her career? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> But do you think there was any risk of
01:33:06
Iran developing ur uranium to the point that they could use it as a nuclear weapon? Because if you look at the
01:33:10
timeline here, >> of course, >> um, which I'll throw up on screen, which
01:33:13
is just a screenshot, by 2021, they're at a dangerous threshold. Iran begins
01:33:17
enriching uranium to 60% purity, which is a short technical step away from the 90% needed for a weapon. And by 2023 to
01:33:24
2025, we were told that they were theoretically weeks away from being able to create a weapon, which is when Trump
01:33:31
decided to attack. You think that's false? >> We only know what we're being told and
01:33:36
what we're being told isn't even consistent between what's publicly being
01:33:39
released by our own government and what we're being told in mainstream media.
01:33:42
Yeah, but everybody >> So what you think is the There's clearly >> you have some kind of Is it false? Is it
01:33:47
Is it false? >> I don't know. I don't know if it's false. >> Well, just look at North Korea if you
01:33:51
want to know if it's false. I mean, I interviewed Bill Perry, the Secretary of
01:33:53
Defense, who went there and got the guarantee and the promise from the dear leader. There was no chance they were
01:33:59
going to develop a nuclear weapon. Fingers crossed behind the back, thermonuclear weapon. And look where we
01:34:05
are now. And so I think it would be foolhardy for this administration or any former administration to think that that
01:34:13
Iran wasn't doing the same thing. >> It has every incentive to do it. If I
01:34:17
were Iran, I would absolutely, you know, absolutely build one >> because look what it did for North
01:34:22
Korea. >> We're we're getting lost in the wrong question. I I'm not trying to say that
01:34:27
Iran wasn't creating nuclear weapons. I'm saying that the official stance of
01:34:30
the ODNI was that it was not. >> The official stance they want you to see to go to Right. Now we're getting now
01:34:36
we're getting now we're getting closer to the same point. >> Why would the president say something
01:34:41
different than what the ODNI is saying to the public? >> That is a failure in narrative control.
01:34:46
>> So there's an inconsistency there and that's the question. >> We agree on that. We agree.
01:34:49
>> We absolutely agree on that. Yeah. >> So what do you think is actually going
01:34:52
on? I asked you this at the top, but clearly you're pointing out some some sort of ulterior motive. So I think
01:34:58
what's happening here is that we are seeing an administration that doesn't
01:35:03
actually know how to govern and they're they're trying to find a way to grapple
01:35:10
back some sense of success in the face of overwhelming contributing failures, economic
01:35:17
failures, alliance failures, power struggles all over the world. We are we are seeing a transition to a strong man
01:35:24
multi-olar world when we've only ever lived in a unipolar world. >> What's a strongman multipolar world?
01:35:30
>> It's what she was just talking about with Putin and Russia, right? You when
01:35:33
you act in strong authoritarian ways and people respect your authoritarian behaviors by giving you safety and
01:35:40
giving you security, then that's strongman diplomacy. >> And why does that matter? What happens
01:35:45
next? >> Because that's not cooperative. That creates conflict. That creates more
01:35:48
opportunities for conflict, less opportunities for communication, less shared common interest, which is a
01:35:54
pathway to more what we call interstate war, which is conflict between states because they're not communicating,
01:36:00
they're not sharing, they're not even reliant on each other. Therefore, it's
01:36:03
easier for war to break out. I have a sort of pessimistic thought here which is an alternative to the what was you
01:36:12
know what was hap what is happening in Iran right now which is what would happen what could happen and what might
01:36:17
happen in the United States and to your point that where you said this administration doesn't know how to
01:36:23
govern I would separate from that whether that's true or not I would say this administration thinks very
01:36:31
futuristically about surveillance systems and systems of control. And you can see that with ICE
01:36:38
and with Homeland Security and my concern would be that red teaming or roundtabling all the
01:36:46
different blow possible blowback. Well, what if we have Hezbollah sleeper cells,
01:36:51
you know, set off a dirty bomb in the United States or do something that that is in the eyes of some a perfect
01:36:59
opportunity to create more of a surveillance state in the United States to use biometric surveillance platforms,
01:37:08
ISR, against United States citizens because it's the only way to control people and to to really know where the
01:37:17
bad guys are and that is a concern of mine. So >> can you can you be a bit more explicitly
01:37:22
clear that so you're saying that >> well that you you in other words bio
01:37:28
sort of I always just look at things because I consider weapon systems a lot and understand where we have come from
01:37:34
you know nuclear weapons are the weapons of the past um surveillance systems are the weapons
01:37:40
of the present and drones what's the weapon systems of the future I mean you
01:37:44
there's a serious motivation you can just look at what happened with anthropic and open AI in the defense
01:37:49
department the day before all of this went down. >> So, you're saying they're using this as
01:37:53
a way to introduce surveillance mechanisms potentially on United States? >> And I'm I'm not saying that per se. I'm
01:38:00
saying one hypothetical scenario that I can see is red teaming a bad outcome is not necessarily a bad outcome. Like if
01:38:08
there were a problem in the United States as a result of this, we could counter that with
01:38:15
legitimate reasons for more surveillance systems. Do you think people sit around
01:38:19
and say that? >> I know they do. >> Really? >> I mean, I don't think you can ever
01:38:23
forget that the Department of Homeland Security, which by the way was like the big issue in the United States, you
01:38:28
know, just a couple weeks ago, ICE, DHS, Department of Homeland Security, for those of the younger generation, did not
01:38:35
exist before 9/11. It was an absolute byproduct of America being attacked. So you're thinking that this Iranian
01:38:44
situation could give them cover to track and surveil US citizens more. It would create a justification.
01:38:51
>> I would change the word from cover to opportunity because I do think that's
01:38:55
the way the systems work inside the you know executive branch. And I think that there is a always an extremely powerful
01:39:08
hidden hand that has to do with weapons developers. And this sets us up for a false
01:39:14
dichconomy. It's basically you could have security or liberty. You can't have
01:39:17
both. >> So, which one do you want? >> You're biting your tongue there a little
01:39:24
bit. >> No, he's 100% right. And and the the the consternation that I'm feeling about
01:39:28
this whole situation is really tied to the fact that we had a chance to not exacerbate
01:39:36
the security situation of our planet by just not attacking Iran. We could have not exacerbated the security conflict
01:39:44
for every other country. Only Iran was struggling with their own decision about what they were going to do with
01:39:49
themselves. Now we have put dozens of countries at risk. Active current risk, near-term risk. There are people dead
01:39:57
today that would not have been dead had we not sent bombs into Iran. There's
01:40:02
been property damage. There are markets damaged. There are lifeight like livelihoods are being damaged. There are
01:40:07
30,000 dead today who wouldn't have been dead if we' done this in 1980. >> You're never going to hear me say that I
01:40:13
really care that much about an Iranian life compared to an American life. That's just not how I roll. This is my
01:40:19
priority. This is my citizenship. >> I don't I don't begrudge you of that, by
01:40:23
the way. I I totally and it's not that my loyalty is elsewhere, but I'm saying
01:40:26
you're not saying there are people that are dead. You're talking about the four
01:40:29
Americans. You're talking about Arab citizens of the various cities. >> Absolutely. The four Americans, but also
01:40:34
the Arab cities, right? And if we want to start counting death toll, >> we start to lose sight of the fact that
01:40:42
we all have to live in a prioritized world. It's like we talk about the 30,000 dead Iranians. We we haven't said
01:40:47
anything about the Palestinians that died in Gaza, right? There's a lie. A life is a life. Practically speaking, a
01:40:53
life is equal. A life is a life. It's a tragedy to lose any human being. But you
01:40:56
still have to prioritize that on top of another. >> So, can we interchange them with the
01:41:00
four potential lives that were lost as a result of the Austin shooting that happened yesterday? Sure.
01:41:06
An American life that's lost is an American life that's lost and the priority should be on protecting
01:41:10
American life, >> including protecting Americans from themselves. >> Absolutely. That's one thing that we're
01:41:15
not resourcing right now because our resources are going somewhere else, >> which is my point about I think, you
01:41:21
know, the real place to look at this is is is surveillance in the United States.
01:41:25
>> Surveillance in the United States is is 100% a guaranteed future. Mass surveillance has already happened. It
01:41:32
will it will just get exacerbated, expanded, and legalized. It's already there.
01:41:37
>> It's just the government has to buy their data from your Apple phone. They
01:41:40
can't just pull it on their own. >> I think it's probably worth introducing
01:41:43
the Anthropic PC here just because some people won't have context. Um, in July
01:41:47
2025, Anthropic, who are a big AI company, one of the biggest in the world, the most exciting in the world,
01:41:51
and one of the most advanced in the world, signed a $200 million deal to build AI tools for US national security.
01:41:57
Um, in February 2026, which was last month, the Pentagon demanded Anthropics AI be available for all military
01:42:04
purposes, but Anthropic refused to allow autonomous weapons or mass surveillance
01:42:08
of American citizens. This dispute started after the US military used Claude um in its raid to capture Claude
01:42:16
is a tool made by Anthropic, an AI tool made by Anthropic. They used Claude in a
01:42:21
raid to capture Venezuelan President Nichol Nicholas Maduro in January. um which Anthropics had said violated its
01:42:27
terms of use. The defense secretary Pete Hegs threatened to cancel the contract and brand Anthropic a supply chain risk
01:42:34
unless it dropped its safety restrictions and stopped telling the US how to use Anthropics AI. And that
01:42:40
started a big conversation which is raising raging online around mass surveillance which is one of the things
01:42:46
anthropic said it didn't want America using with its AI. I mean, I think it's a convenient
01:42:53
narrative to position one giant AI company as somehow moral because it went up against the defense department and
01:43:01
another one not because it didn't because like you said in there, Anthropic was part and parcel to the
01:43:08
Maduro raid. So, I don't I don't believe that corporations, certainly AI
01:43:13
corporations, you know, are sitting around with a violin for American surveillance. I just
01:43:19
don't I mean Americans sort of general well-being you're not altruistic.
01:43:24
>> No, of course not. And I think that narrative is dangerous. >> There was a research piece done by
01:43:28
King's College in London where they ran simulations on Cold War Star War games
01:43:32
using chat, Claude, and Gemini, which are three AI tools. Each played the leader of a nuclear armed superpower.
01:43:38
And in every single simulation, at least one of the AI models escalated the crisis by threatening to use nuclear
01:43:44
weapons. Claude, which is owned by Anthropic, recommended nuclear strikes in 64% of games, which was the highest
01:43:51
rate among all three of those AI models, but stopped short of advocating for a full strategic nuclear exchange or
01:43:57
nuclear war. >> Bingo. >> Wasn't that the plot of the war movie War Games 1980s?
01:44:02
>> Bingo. I mean, that's Skynet. And so, these are major concerns. um many of our
01:44:08
former generals who were heads of um you know cyber and NSA are on the boards of
01:44:16
these companies. I've had conversations with a number of them about this. I think smart people are and and and
01:44:23
learned people are on are aware of like this is an absolute cliffhanger precipice.
01:44:32
>> What you doing? Uh, just making myself a delicious coffee >> from the freezer.
01:44:37
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order of Cometier coffee if you go to cometier.com/stephven. We have finally caved in. So many of you
01:45:37
have asked us if we could bundle the conversation cards with the 1% diary. For those of you that don't know, every
01:45:43
single time a guest sits here with me in the chair, they leave a question in the
01:45:45
diary of a CEO. and then I ask that question to the next guest. We don't release those questions in any
01:45:51
environment other than on these incredible conversation cards. These have become a fantastic tool for people
01:45:56
in relationships, people in teams, in big corporations, and also family members to connect with each other. With
01:46:02
that, we also have the 1% diary, which is this incredible tool to change habits in your life. So many of you have asked
01:46:08
if it was possible to buy both at the same time, especially people in big companies. So what we've done is we've
01:46:15
bundled them together and you can buy both at the same time. And if you want to drive connection and instill habit
01:46:20
change in your company, head to the diary.com to inquire and our team will be in touch. What is your most likely
01:46:26
scenario that would lead to a nuclear war? Like cuz you you wrote the book on this stuff that you know you're you're
01:46:32
you're the person everybody thinks of when we think about the scenario that nuclear war could break out. Of all the
01:46:38
potential routes there, which one do you think is the most likely? I do think that North Korea is very dangerous. I
01:46:45
think Putin is I would have told you five years ago that Putin would you know he's an int former intelligence officer.
01:46:52
He's familiar with history. He know he knows better and now I would I have a
01:46:56
changed opinion about that. I think it's very dangerous and I think that he you
01:47:02
know his use of the archeneck was sort of like a like that that was a ballistic missile that is capable of carrying a
01:47:08
nuclear warhead. There wasn't a nuclear warhead in it. He did notify the State
01:47:12
Department prior to the launch of that, you know, 30 minutes prior, but that's
01:47:17
like incredibly dangerous. So everything is dangerous. Any nuclear armed nation that, you know, threatens nuclear
01:47:25
weapons is dangerous, but AI is its own extraordinary level of danger and the article that you wrote speaks to that.
01:47:33
Now my understanding is currently everybody knows that you know air quotes and then when you learn when I learned
01:47:42
about the department of war anthropic AI late at night battle over using AI in these systems I was I was surprised.
01:47:52
>> Why? >> Because I thought there was more restraint on that and what I see in this
01:47:58
administration. >> Yes. and to see sort of the the same bravado that we do agree on is coming
01:48:05
out of this administration about exerting power about um just being able to do a decapitation strike
01:48:14
effectively using AI. I I go, "Wow, that is not what I expected." The interesting
01:48:21
thing with Trump generally is that he has a reputation of saying and doing things that at one point we would have
01:48:28
all gone, "Oh my god." But we've almost become so used to these things that
01:48:32
there's almost a desensitization to some degree. >> Shattering of norms they call it, right?
01:48:36
>> He also contradicts himself. I mean, that's not even I mean, he's spoken on
01:48:40
the record about how I mean, I think he put out a video in 2011. I might be wrong on the date like attacking Obama
01:48:49
for you know and saying that he was going to attack Iran >> 20 in 2013. There's there's a there's a
01:48:54
tweet that he posted saying attacking Iran is showing that you failed at negotiations and you know something to
01:49:00
that effect. >> So here we are talking about how important it is to change your mind
01:49:03
maybe if you're not the maybe not if you're the president of the United States. I think the slippery slope is is
01:49:08
so gradual that sometimes you don't see where you're you're heading towards. And
01:49:12
in terms of sort of military action and the use of AI and all these things and autonomous weapons, it we feel like
01:49:16
we're going down a slippery slope here in a way that I haven't felt for the
01:49:20
other 33 years of my life as it relates to geopolitics and war. And also generally when you think about some of
01:49:24
the actions that and speeches at Davos where the eur the US leaders were saying to the Europeans, listen you guys are
01:49:30
weak now and we it was sounded to me saying like you guys are weak. Get your together. Figure out your energy
01:49:35
situation. we don't need you anymore. Listen, we're not going to quit. We're
01:49:37
going to run this now. And this whole idea of special relationship, blah blah blah, it seems to have gone out the
01:49:42
window. So, you've got an emboldened United States military and leadership who seem to be able to do what the
01:49:47
they want. If you don't let us use your AA how we wish, we'll smash your
01:49:51
company. We'll take away that 200 million contract and we'll cut you off
01:49:54
from the rest of the supply chain. And we get used to it, you know, we hear the head and go, "Oh, that's crazy that."
01:49:58
And then we kind of get desensitized again as humans do. >> But the direction of travel is something
01:50:03
sometimes what you want to look at. M yeah >> versus just this this sort of static
01:50:07
state of where we are. >> That's the concern. I think you have hit the nail on the head with that.
01:50:11
>> I agree. I think you've got I think you've got a a much clearer picture than
01:50:15
most, Steve, on what's going on here. The United States, it has to pursue AI far more
01:50:23
aggressively than what what the what the CEOs of these companies want. I actually
01:50:28
do believe there's quite a bit of altruism in the CEOs and the founders of these AIs. They didn't create these AIs
01:50:34
so they could be wararmongers. They created these AIs for some techy beautiful vision of some utopian future.
01:50:40
>> That's like saying Zuckerberg didn't create Facebook for to to to cause teens
01:50:44
to feel bad about themselves. He created it for way people to connect >> for something else. Exactly. Right.
01:50:48
Right. >> But look what happens. >> That's Yeah. consequences. >> Yeah.
01:50:53
>> So regardless of what the United States's opinion is about AI, it also
01:50:58
has to very realistically look at how China is developing AI. And China is already 10x more aggressive than the
01:51:03
United States is. And if they crack the code on certain types of AI like like uh
01:51:08
artificial general intelligence or recursive uh recursive self-improvement, if it breaks the code on these first,
01:51:16
it's an exponential head start over the United States and all of their AI, everything that we have some sort of
01:51:23
reticence about using automated or autonomous weapons, mass surveillance, China's already using. So the the number
01:51:29
one strategic priority consistently in all documentation is China. So the United States has to aggressively pursue
01:51:36
AI. It I I understand that mindset. It is absolutely ludicrous to think that one day an AI helps us take the leader
01:51:45
of Venezuela and then the next day we claim it's a supply chain risk. That's
01:51:48
just that's the kind of lunacy that we live in every day. >> That's a good point.
01:51:52
>> But but the my my bottom line concern here is that the United States used to
01:51:56
be the leader of the free world. We're not a leader of the world at all. We're
01:52:00
adopting more autocratic behaviors because we're seeing other countries succeed with autocratic behaviors. And
01:52:06
we're abandoning Europe, which is the only place left trying to say that democracy still counts. Like we are we
01:52:12
are not leading anymore. We are mimicking. We are reacting. We are petulant. But we are not leading.
01:52:19
>> I'm still thinking about your doomsday scenario with deathbed Vladimir Putin
01:52:22
and what he might do. >> Is that like realistic? Is it realistic? You know, it's like
01:52:28
from hell's heart I stab at thee. I mean, it it it I don't know what's realistic anymore. I
01:52:35
again, these norms that are shattered, these restraints, these these guard rails that we think, no, a leader
01:52:40
wouldn't do this or someone wouldn't do that. I'm beginning to question all of
01:52:44
it, too. Um I don't know anymore what what someone is or isn't capable of. And
01:52:48
I think humans have a discomfort with cognitive dissonance where, you know, holding two opposing viewpoints at once.
01:52:55
We've gotten I think worse at it um evolutionary over over time and our politicians are the worst yet or our
01:53:00
world leaders are are the worst at it yet. And so that's a cause of concern for me.
01:53:04
>> I always think like what has someone got to lose and what have they got to gain?
01:53:07
And if you've got a couple of days left of your life or a couple of days left in
01:53:10
office and you're I don't know Trump's going to be what 83 by the time he gets
01:53:13
out of office or something. >> Yeah. Why does he care if he pushes a button and does whatever
01:53:17
>> at which point you know and the same with Putin. And at some point he's going to be old and he's
01:53:22
going to have a couple of, you know, couple of weeks left in his life and he's going to be reflecting on his
01:53:26
legacy and he's got nothing to lose. Trump's got nothing to lose with there's
01:53:30
no second term. Well, well, he he I watched him the other day taking great admiration to the fact that
01:53:38
Zalinski can't be there can't be elections in Ukraine because there's a
01:53:42
war going on. And I think he cracked a joke saying that he would kind of like that that if there was a US war going on
01:53:47
then there wouldn't be elections. And I It sounded like a joke, but a lot of things have sounded like jokes before
01:53:55
that he said. So, what is your um what do you think happens next? And also, I I wanted to get your take on, you know,
01:54:01
we've got this map here which shows where Iran can strike with their missiles. I've got friends in Dubai.
01:54:07
Never in my life did I think bombs would be dropping on Dubai or any strikes or drones would be happening in Dubai. And
01:54:12
one of my best friends was in a in the basement in a bunker the two nights ago because of what's going on. That whole
01:54:17
region has been hit. The Dubai airport has been hit. Saudi Arabia has been hit. Um, Bahrain's been hit. What does this
01:54:24
do? Qatar's been hit. What does this do to the region? And why are Iran hitting
01:54:28
these places? >> So, this is part of the burden sharing strategy that the United States military
01:54:35
doctrine has put in place. And I think to a certain extent, all of the region already knew they were on Iran's radar.
01:54:42
They they've all had this weird hostile collaborative relationship with Iran out
01:54:47
of necessity because Iran is the bread basket of the Middle East. So they've
01:54:51
known that there's always the risk, but I don't ever took that that particular
01:54:55
risk seriously. >> Why Iran Iran doing it? >> Yeah. >> Why do they care about messing up Dubai
01:55:01
or making people in Dubai scared? >> They are lowering the pain threshold.
01:55:04
The deputy foreign minister said, "We can't strike Americans in America. We
01:55:09
can maybe strike Americans at their bases in these Arab states and we can also strike the states that are that are
01:55:14
hosting Americans, American civilians, American military, American contractors, you name it. They're all complicit and
01:55:21
it's lashing out because what happens is if you make it miserable for everybody,
01:55:26
then United States is pressured to bring this to an end. >> Okay. >> What does Iran have to lose to back to
01:55:32
your sort of doomsday scenario? They're about to be destroyed anyway. What do
01:55:35
they have to lose? They're going to take everyone down with them because only if
01:55:38
that threat is real will the United States say, "Okay, you know what? We're
01:55:41
going to pause and see if we can get back to diplomacy." >> And it might work.
01:55:46
>> If the Arab states, you know, decide that, okay, we're not going to sustain
01:55:50
this. We're not going to fight back. We need this to end. United States, you
01:55:52
have to stop what you're doing. >> So, we could see a lot of the conflict
01:55:55
actually taking place in some of these neighboring countries, terrorist attacks, etc.
01:55:58
>> It's working. It's working. It's causing pain >> to these sort of peripheral countries
01:56:03
that are not central to this conflict. Look what the United States has done arguably, right?
01:56:08
>> Yeah. And one of the unintended well maybe intended consequences is if I turn
01:56:12
on the news in the UK right now, the narrative is that this region, Dubai, all of these places, Abu Dhabi, it's all
01:56:19
unsafe. And what that means is they're showing that Sky News are going up to
01:56:23
families in Dubai and going, "How are you feeling?" And they're going, "I'm
01:56:26
stuck. I just want to get home." And this region have spent a lot of money building their reputation over the last
01:56:30
couple of decades. >> Their tourist economy. And this is going to even if the the war was to stop
01:56:36
today, there'll be a big cohort of people that choose not to go there on holiday and choose not to go and
01:56:40
relocate there and that will reverberate. Um, one could argue that it's actually in, you know, this
01:56:47
narrative that the Middle East is unsafe. One could argue that that's actually in the interests of the UK and
01:56:53
>> it's going to drive down the price of real estate. >> Yeah. Yeah. and drive up our tax
01:56:57
receipts because we have a lot of I think it's the biggest place that UK taxpayers have gone to and millionaires
01:57:02
have gone to is this region. So, did you have any thoughts on that? >> No, you're not. I don't think you're
01:57:07
wrong. I think that there's uh whether or not I I don't believe that Western
01:57:12
countries want to see death and destruction in the Middle East. I don't believe that. Um, I do think that when
01:57:20
they plan for blowback, they account for that and they try to make the best opportunity out of the blowback that
01:57:26
they already expect and that does make sense. Um, but at the at the end of the day, Iran has to do something to react
01:57:34
and it knows that it can't just send all of its rockets at the fleet that's off
01:57:37
the coast of Oman because the fleet that's off the coast of is going to be able to intercept most of those rockets.
01:57:41
So if they want some kind of effective response, the most effective response they can have is to share the pain and
01:57:47
create some sort of international resistance against what the United States has done.
01:57:52
>> How long do you think this goes on for Angie? If you had to guess, >> if I had to guess, I would say that
01:57:56
there's going to be an active hot conflict with Iran that lasts a few weeks. Hot conflict meaning every day we
01:58:02
wake up and we see new rockets being launched and new new attacks, new new air sorties being launched. But uh but
01:58:09
the actual reverberations of this from Hezbollah, from Hamas, from the Houthis, from whatever loyal stansions still
01:58:18
exist in Iran, we could see that for years. There there's no guarantee that Iran's going to bounce back from this in
01:58:23
a better place. I hope it will, but hope is not the same thing as reality. Hope is just hope. I hope that it will, but
01:58:31
in the vacuum, we could see the biggest adversaries to the United States flood in and support Iran, like the biggest
01:58:36
adversaries in the world flood in and support Afghanistan. We might see that we have even less influence over the
01:58:41
region in the future than we do now. >> Is there some an issue of the distraction this is causing to what's
01:58:46
going on in Ukraine and in other parts of the world where there was already conflict and there was already turmoil?
01:58:51
Like are people now not going to pay attention to Ukraine? So that that gives Putin some cover to be more aggressive
01:58:56
there. It absolutely it emboldens every authoritarian ruler out there because now they've it's been it's validating to
01:59:03
them that they're not actually doing anything wrong. If the president of the
01:59:06
United States can do it then certainly the Putin can do it and Xiinping can do it and and any warlord in Africa can do
01:59:12
it. It's certainly it's allowed >> or on the flip side it's showing that if
01:59:15
you act outside of international norms that the United States president will not hesitate to decapitate your entire
01:59:22
leadership which is something maybe we didn't think was conceivable a couple
01:59:25
weeks ago. So there's that inverse message. >> Is it conceivable that both might occur?
01:59:29
>> Yeah. Yes. Both can probably It sounds to me like that might be the most likely
01:59:33
outcome that you're probably going to go one of either ways. You know, China
01:59:36
might just say now's a good time to get Taiwan because I mean I mean objectively
01:59:40
speaking people are distracted. >> It's a perfect time for someone to try
01:59:44
to assassinate the president. >> But then Cuba might say, you know, we're going to behave.
01:59:47
>> Exactly. Because look what happens if we don't. >> What do you think, Annie, on this
01:59:50
subject of what happens next and what's likely? I mean I'm to that end I would say how fascinating
01:59:57
is it that what happened with Maduro in January still shocks me 150 paramilitary
02:00:05
or military and intelligence officers go in gra sovereign leader and his wife in a
02:00:12
heavily fortified military base take out his you know guardsmen who are actually Cuban I mean there's just So
02:00:22
many things to unpack in what I just said about what just happened. And yet that's
02:00:29
just old news. That and that to me is more interesting than what might happen in the future. Not be because I'll
02:00:41
I can I can try and wrap my head around the past, but I can't predict the future. But I am I do believe they they
02:00:51
correlate with one another and only after time you know it's the old hindsight is is is 2020 it will makes
02:00:58
how Iran unfolds you know maybe we'll get the ban back together in 5 months and have a
02:01:06
discussion and we'll all be wrong. I I don't know. >> Separate question. But do you think
02:01:10
Trump's going to leave office? >> I mean the Constitution says he is. >> Do you think he will? The Constitution
02:01:18
says he is. >> But do you think he will? >> I don't have a crystal ball.
02:01:22
>> Do you think he'll leave office? >> I do. >> Do you think he'll leave office?
02:01:24
>> I do. You do? >> I have more confidence after last week's um learning resources Supreme Court
02:01:29
opinion that we saw two justices who Trump appointed who basically defied a policy that was the signature of his of
02:01:37
his second term, you know, his campaign, his his tariffs and saying that you don't have that power.
02:01:42
>> I was emboldened. I I would have been more pessimistic, but after seeing that,
02:01:46
I it gave me a little bit more hope that that that there is still sort of a guard
02:01:51
rails and separation of powers. It's still a thing. >> What do you think happens next in the
02:01:54
region? >> I'm with Andrew. I think 3 to four weeks is the timeline I see for the actual
02:01:59
kinetic war. And then after that, um, every one of these Iranian leaders, whoever's left, whoever steps in and
02:02:04
fills a role of a whether it's a military huna that takes over, whether it's a symbolic supreme leader, these
02:02:09
are all marked men. They're all going to be targeted for assassination. there is
02:02:13
no by Israel by primar but pretty much anybody that considers um them enemies even maybe now some of the Arab states
02:02:20
for that matter at the end of the day >> uh it doesn't pay to be uh a political
02:02:26
or religious figure in Iran so at this point I think what we're going to see in
02:02:30
the months to come is a slow fracturing of that support and I not surprised if we start seeing defections from the IRGC
02:02:37
and people just like we saw during 1979 saying you know what it's not worth it
02:02:41
there's nothing there's no there's no long-term gain here because this regime
02:02:45
has lost any credibility domestically. There's none left, zero. And it's losing
02:02:49
credibility in the region. It violated an unspoken agreement with its Arab neighbors that they don't directly fight
02:02:54
each other in this way. And its allies, so-called allies, have abandoned it. It has nothing left. So when you have
02:03:01
nothing left, what is there to fight for? That's why, but that's going to
02:03:04
take a few months up to a year to play out. What is the most important thing that we
02:03:08
should have talked about that we didn't talk about, Andrew, >> as it relates to all of the stuff we
02:03:12
talked about today? >> I think for me, what I'm always what I always come back to is what is the
02:03:19
future for the average American? What does it look like for us? I'm not sure how this plays out. I I'm
02:03:26
not sure that we improved the state of the average American very much in the last few days. I don't know that we will
02:03:33
see much improvement in the next few weeks. I don't know that we will see much improvement in the next few years
02:03:38
um because of what actions we took in Iran. But I do confirm I agree with what the other two have said like the United
02:03:43
States administration has shown it's powerful in Venezuela. It's powerful in
02:03:48
uh in Iran. Cuba's already being more than whispered about as the next the next transition in government.
02:03:59
How how much chaos are we going to see to the existing world establishment before Trump then leaves office
02:04:06
>> and somebody else has to come in and pick up the mess? And I've always been
02:04:10
concerned not about Donald Trump, but about who comes after Donald Trump. >> Why? Because if Donald Trump paves the
02:04:16
way for this authoritarian type of shift and if he has support through his final
02:04:20
days in office, then whoever comes next will have even more legitimacy to come in with a strong hand from the beginning
02:04:27
and potentially a world where only authoritarian actions work. And that just continues to take us down a road of
02:04:34
pain. I've been talking to you about this for the better part of three years
02:04:37
that I believe the United I believe the world and especially the United States is is coming into one of its darkest
02:04:43
decades ever. This is the world that we live in now. A world where it's not unipolar, a world of AI technologies we
02:04:51
can't predict, of conflict that we can't anticipate, of mass surveillance, of of
02:04:57
the breaking of international norms. This is the world we are coming into now. It's the world that our children
02:05:02
are going to be developed in. It's the world that one day they will have to create their own future in and and our
02:05:07
grandchildren will inherit whatever is left of it after that. It's it's sad to
02:05:12
me to see that this is where we are and unless we take some sort of responsibility for our own future, we
02:05:18
will keep following this authoritarian trend. >> But isn't this better than the past?
02:05:22
>> I would say no. A unipolar world where the United States is a supreme power as
02:05:27
an American, that is a better world. >> But at least you won't die of dissentry
02:05:31
out in the wilderness, right? >> Yeah. I mean, that's kind of what people
02:05:34
say, right? They say, "Well, babies aren't dying anymore at child birth and,
02:05:38
you know, people less people are struggling with poverty." So, so it's a better depends what metric
02:05:44
you're measuring, I guess. But on on that point of the transition after Trump leaves, would it be worse if a
02:05:53
weak leader came in? Because I'm I'm wondering, look, we know Putin's still going to be there. We know
02:05:58
a lot of these other powers are still going to be there. Biden didn't strike me as the the
02:06:04
scariest guy in the world, the mo the toughest guy in the world. Didn't strike
02:06:08
me as the toughest guy in the world. So, if another figure like Biden came into power after Trump once with that war
02:06:14
raging over there and with, you know, China um thinking about Taiwan, etc. Is that not even more dangerous?
02:06:21
>> I think there's a difference between a strong leader and a strong arm. A strong
02:06:25
leader can chart a path, keep a vision, make hard decisions, balance priorities,
02:06:30
keep people focused, >> where a strong arm is out to win. And Donald Trump, his entire career, he's
02:06:38
been the man who's out to win. Again, I don't think this is a Trump issue. I
02:06:41
don't think this is a Trump problem. I don't think Donald Trump is some villain
02:06:45
of the world. I just think Donald Trump is the manifestation of how most Americans felt at the time that they
02:06:51
elected him, which was like, we want to win. And now we're realizing that two
02:06:57
years after the second time that we wanted to win, there are other secondary consequences that we hadn't considered.
02:07:03
And that's why so many of the kind of groups that supported Donald Trump have
02:07:08
changed flavor about him. That's why his approval rating is so low because he's
02:07:11
found a way to ostracize so many of the groups that used to support him because they didn't realize that he was more
02:07:17
complex than what they had originally thought back in that November booth. >> Annie, most important thing we should
02:07:23
have talked about that didn't >> I'm going to pick up on Andrew's
02:07:29
thought about a strong leader versus a strong arm because it's so important to
02:07:33
think about moving forward and is that even possible? you know, yes, we absolutely cannot have a weak leader. I
02:07:39
mean, look what happened with Putin moving into Ukraine, taking Ukraine, attacking Ukraine. And I I I think that,
02:07:48
you know, who wants to be president? There's also this idea of you, you know,
02:07:53
you look at the records of how people say come into office, how they how they campaign, saying what they are, I'm
02:08:00
going to get rid of these dangerous nuclear policies. I'm going they have all kinds of optimistic ideas about
02:08:06
things and then something happens in that first briefing. Something none of us know. It's so mysterious and they
02:08:14
never talk about and then their policies and their their perspective deeply changes. And I think people move from an
02:08:23
idea that they can be a strong leader to the idea that they have to be a strong arm. And I think that's that's deeply
02:08:30
depressing to me. And I am an eternal optimist. So I want to see that change. >> Presumably they're being made aware of
02:08:36
the real threats that they face that the US faces and suddenly what was I don't
02:08:41
know theoretical becomes very real >> perhaps. And so the I who loves narrative the question is what is that
02:08:50
narrative? And anything that is kept absolutely secret I want to know about. And I I no one knows that answer. No
02:08:57
president has ever spoken of it. So, what is that narrative? What are they told? It's definitely not aliens.
02:09:06
>> That's a conversation for another time. >> Benjamin. >> Um, here, right here, Taiwan. So, I've
02:09:15
been working on a simulation, a war game that looks at something that's become up
02:09:20
in the news now. What happens if we don't need China to invade Taiwan? We need China to just blockade and
02:09:25
completely cut off 90% of the chips and microprocessors and and um all the things we need in this AI age into the
02:09:32
West. What the hell do we do under that scenario? We don't have the infrastructure, the capacity, the
02:09:36
resources to bring everything back online that we need to to fabricate and make these chips. Um we talked about
02:09:43
China a bit, but I'm really worried about this what happens here is so because we rely so much on that little
02:09:48
island. Um and we don't need it invaded, we just need it blockaded kind of. So
02:09:52
what we see in the Straits of Hormuz happening right now, 20% of the world's
02:09:55
oil, OPEC can increase production. It'll take a few weeks to bring it offline,
02:09:59
stabilize the markets. We don't have that luxury here, not when it comes to the very things that powers the next
02:10:05
generation of warfare and diplomacy and economic development. >> I don't think the average person
02:10:11
realizes how much the West relies on that little island. >> 90% of our at least here in the United
02:10:17
States, 90% as I understand it, that comes from from that one island. the chips that are in our electrical
02:10:24
devices. >> Why don't they just move it over here? >> They're trying.
02:10:27
>> They're trying. Not They're trying, right? >> It takes years. It takes years to get it
02:10:31
cleared. It's very environmentally damaging. The infrastructure takes time. The expertise isn't here. All the IP
02:10:37
that's on that island comes from the United States, but the actual factories
02:10:41
have been there and will be there. >> I guess there'll be a big labor cost
02:10:44
impact as well. >> Absolutely. regulations, all kinds of things we have to work our way around
02:10:48
and figure out how and then you know training the workers to be able to fabricate them do it as efficiently
02:10:52
yield um you know results that are that are high enough. >> So that's your
02:11:00
concern. >> Huge concern. I I I mean our communications could shut down, our cars
02:11:04
could I mean so many things can go wrong if we lose the capacity to power the devices that we need.
02:11:11
>> What advice would you guys give? This is my last question I promise. What advice
02:11:13
would you give to the average person? You know, cuz we've talked theoretically
02:11:16
about geopolitics and the average person sat at home can't do a lot about that.
02:11:20
But if you were to give advice to the average person who's thinking about their family, about their future, about
02:11:24
their work, >> what would you say? >> We are not helpless. It's not out of our
02:11:30
control, but we do have to assert our control. There's a midterm election that
02:11:36
could effectively quasi effectively block the decisions that the president can make
02:11:41
unilaterally. If if we exercise our right to vote, we create either a blue senate or a blue
02:11:51
house of representatives. Arguably, we have demonstrated our ability to exercise our right to vote and taken
02:11:58
back some semblance of control in our country. But unfortunately, I think people don't like waiting. They don't
02:12:04
like taking a seven months before they can take an action. They want to do something right now. And and we live in
02:12:10
a country in a democratic process where we get a chance to exercise our power every two years. So, we have to actually
02:12:19
show up and exercise that power. >> What are you doing for you and your family?
02:12:22
>> We're leaving the United States. >> Why? because the United States is not
02:12:26
going in the direction that I believe is the most conducive to the kind of citizen that I want to build in my
02:12:33
children. I don't want my children to grow up in a country that is either afraid or angry.
02:12:40
I don't want my children to grow up in a country that's constantly compromising
02:12:42
its own democratic principles. I don't want to raise my kids in a country that
02:12:46
puts capitalism before all other things. I want my children to grow up as global
02:12:51
citizens, to recognize that we're all interconnected, to value every human life. I wasn't given the privilege. I
02:12:56
was the perfect candidate to sit here and tell you that American lives are more valuable than everybody else.
02:13:01
That's not what I want to pass to my children. I want my children to look at
02:13:04
lives around the world as valuable, independent, individual blessings. And I can try to teach them that, but that's
02:13:10
not the message that they get. >> So, where you going to go? >> That's for me to know. in Costa Rica.
02:13:15
>> I remember this one. I remember this from >> Absolutely. Read as much as you can
02:13:23
across the broadest spectrum that you can find and have conversations about what you think you know and what you
02:13:32
want to know with as many people as you can across the broadest spectrum you can. And don't be afraid to have a
02:13:40
little bit of friction like we had here today. Mhm. >> That that's the way it works and that's
02:13:46
how the mind stays fluid and flexible and you can always realize that you're
02:13:52
wrong. >> Amen. I think that's increasingly important in an age of um misinformation, disinformation is to be
02:13:57
able to have conversations like we had today where you have an opinion but you're open-minded to listen. And um
02:14:03
something that I I think is increasingly important but increasingly rare. Um even
02:14:07
as a podcaster, you're kind of forced to fit somewhere. you're pushed to be on
02:14:11
the right or pushed to be on the left or pushed to believe this or pushed to believe that. And it takes, especially
02:14:15
in the modern world with algorithms hitting you every day, it takes some restraint and thoughtfulness to try and
02:14:20
remain open. Um, so I love that message and I hope for our audience that listening, I hope that that's what they
02:14:26
do as well. like even if they don't like a guest we have on the show or they have
02:14:29
a different of opinion, I hope you can at least bring yourself to listen and fight the the cognitive dissonance which
02:14:34
is very natural in human instinct to to hear them out and to allow those ideas to clash with your own to arrive at your
02:14:39
own conclusions. Benjamin, >> I'm going to echo a lot of what Andy said. Um stay curious. I think podcasts
02:14:46
like yours and I think others do a great job of exposing people to different things they didn't think of. So continue
02:14:51
to feed that curiosity. Um, and cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable, but it is a good thing because it forces
02:14:57
us to think of opinions that we wouldn't otherwise. And I try to teach my students the power of u empathy, which
02:15:04
basically means you don't have to like the other side. You can hate the other
02:15:07
side, but just see the world as they see it for a moment before you do. >> So, I think empathy is critical.
02:15:13
>> Where do we find more of your work, Benjamin? some >> um I mean um for me it's it's I'm
02:15:18
building out ways to be able to find more of it but um on on socials on X and on Instagram I try to post as often as I
02:15:25
can and I give talks when I can. So >> you haven't written a book yet?
02:15:28
>> Not yet. I'm I'm designing a simulation platform. That's sort of my work product
02:15:31
but it's not available to the masses yet. >> And Annie, >> where books are sold.
02:15:37
>> I mean you've got a lot of them but you write fantastic books. Um any particular
02:15:41
one you would like people to read? >> Start at the beginning. Okay. Or >> start at the end.
02:15:47
>> The Annie anthology. >> I'll link them all below in the description so people can find them. Um,
02:15:51
and Andrew, >> you can find me at everydayspy.com, the business that I own. You can find me
02:15:55
everywhere at as my name, Andrew Bamante. And uh, and yeah, >> YouTube. And you've written this great
02:16:00
book, Shadow Cell, which has been a smash hit with New York Times bestseller, wasn't it?
02:16:05
>> Yes, sir. >> It was. Uh, and this is I mean, we talked about this in our last episode,
02:16:08
but uh, took a long time to get this book declassified, I believe, and get permission from the CIA to release it.
02:16:13
It's a fascinating story of um uncovering a mole within the CIA which is fascinating. So, thank you again all
02:16:20
of you for getting together and demystifying a lot of this stuff for me. It's helped me to build my own
02:16:23
perspective on what's going on in the world. And um I uh I hope we can have you all back again soon once we figure
02:16:29
out what actually happens. So, thank you so much. I appreciate a lot. Thank you.
02:16:34
>> YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you
02:16:38
would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the algorithm says that this video is the
02:16:45
perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check
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this video out and I bet you you might love it.