00:00:00
You've been running simulations on a war with Iran. >> Yep. Every strategy for 20 years and
00:00:04
it's playing out right now. So I can tell you that we are losing control of the situation. Like we don't know where
00:00:12
that nuclear material is, but they have the material for 16 nuclear bombs and we've given them every incentive to
00:00:20
develop them. >> Professor Robert Pap might be the single most important credible person we all
00:00:26
need to listen to right now. The Supreme Leader that we took out was against nuclear weapons. The new Supreme Leader,
00:00:32
and he's way more aggressive. >> He's advised two decades of presidents
00:00:36
in the White House. President Trump is really stuck, but he thrives in chaos and spent 30 years building the
00:00:43
curriculum that trains the Air Force for the exact type of war that's taking
00:00:47
place now in Iran. And one of the most mind-blowing things I've learned is that
00:00:50
there are three stages to this conflict. Unfortunately, Professor Robert Pape, who has two decades of being correct
00:00:58
with his predictions, gives a 75% chance that Trump is about to escalate to stage three. In this episode, we're
00:01:06
going to explain exactly what this means. Guys, I've got a quick favor to ask you.
00:01:14
We're approaching a significant subscriber milestone on this show, and roughly 69% of you that listen and love
00:01:20
the show haven't yet subscribed for whatever reason. If there was ever a time for you to do us a favor, if we've
00:01:26
ever done anything for you, given you value in any way, it is simply hitting that subscribe button. And it means so
00:01:32
much to myself, but also to my team because when we hit these milestones, we go away as a team and celebrate. And
00:01:36
it's the thing, the simple, free, easy thing you can do to help make this show
00:01:39
a little bit better every single week. So, that's a favor I would ask you. And
00:01:43
um if you do hit the subscribe button, I won't let you down and we'll continue to
00:01:47
find small ways to make this whole production better. Thank you so much for being part of this journey. Means the
00:01:52
world. And uh yeah, let's do this. Professor Robert P. What the hell is going on in the world?
00:02:03
Now, I should ask I should ask first, who are you and what have you spent the last several decades of your life
00:02:10
studying and doing and how does that relate to what's happening in the world
00:02:13
right now? >> We are going through a crisis uh more very intense right now, but it's a
00:02:19
crisis that we have been through before. um 20 years ago with the Iraq war. Uh even before that um we saw the bombing
00:02:27
of Gaddafi, we saw the reactions there. Now I have been studying military strategy, air power, international
00:02:35
terrorism, now terrorism inside the United States and also political violence in the United States. It's not
00:02:40
related to particular groups. So I've been studying political violence for 40
00:02:46
years. What is the headline that people need to be aware of when you've looked
00:02:50
at 30 years of these types of wars? >> That bombs don't just hit targets, they
00:02:56
change politics. >> What does that mean? >> That means that before the bombs fall
00:03:01
and even as the bombs are falling now, we tend to focus on the tactical success of bombing. We tend to ask, did the
00:03:09
bombs hit the targets? And it's with the smart bomb age, it's almost mesmerizing.
00:03:15
They hit the target and destroy the target crater build crater dirt crater concrete destroy buildings 90% of the
00:03:23
time. The problem is wars are not just about the hardware. They're not just about the military operation of putting
00:03:31
a bomb on a target. They're about politics. And when the bombs start to fall, the politics in both the target,
00:03:40
the enemy change and the politics in the attacker, the initiator change. And that
00:03:49
threshold is the beginning of what I'm calling the escalation trap because you
00:03:54
get at stage one tactical success. Often what's missing here is the next consideration which is politics. who
00:04:04
have you advised and at what level have you advised them on strategy, war, etc.,
00:04:10
etc. >> So, uh, in the when I finished my PhD, uh, right away we started to fight the
00:04:16
first Gulf War, which was an allair power war and I found my work from the 1980s suddenly more relevant than ever.
00:04:23
I was in the Washington Post, USA Today, frontline uh, designing the stories because, uh, we didn't have the talking
00:04:30
military heads at the time. And then I get a call from the US Air Force and they're asking me to come in and help
00:04:37
not just teach but to build the curriculum. Then what happens as time goes on, I end up I end up advising
00:04:44
every White House from 2001 to 2024 uh including the first Trump White House. >> I also heard that you've been running
00:04:53
simulations on a war with Iran. >> Yep. The last class of every strategy for 20 years. In fact, we did it just
00:05:00
last uh uh last um uh May uh just before we started the bombing and 90 minutes. So we the the class goes a whole quarter
00:05:09
uh strategy in all kinds of different ways and we ended with the bombing of Iran and what did that mean? That meant
00:05:15
we uh look took out the whole target. We have the target set laid out. We have the attack plans. We really go through
00:05:22
the bombing of Natans, Ford, uh Esfon there. there's a number of these facilities and so forth. Um, and then we
00:05:30
play out and then we look at what's going to happen and what you see right away is 90 plus% those B2s are going to
00:05:38
destroy those targets. >> B2s being the aircraft >> these stealthy aircraft that can
00:05:43
penetrate the airspace very few risk of small risk of loss and then you see but we don't know where the nuclear material
00:05:52
is. The whole point of this is not to destroy a building. It's to get at the
00:05:58
5% 20% 60% enriched uranium. That's the material for bombs. And last May, it was
00:06:07
very clear they had the material for 16 bombs. Now, not to >> 16 nuclear bombs.
00:06:15
>> One six >> nuclear bombs. >> Yes, nuclear bombs. Not to produce them
00:06:18
all in a single week, but over a period of months. And then at after we did that
00:06:25
simulation, we didn't know where a single ounce was. And we weren't going
00:06:29
to know for months after. So at the end of every I make some predictions. I say what's going to happen? What's going to
00:06:37
happen is after about a year, we are going to panic because that material could be dispersed anywhere in Iran,
00:06:44
anywhere in that country. And that country, look how big that is compared to the United States.
00:06:50
could be dispersed anywhere now. And how many of those are are actually developing toward a bomb? We will not
00:06:58
know. So what will we do? Regime change. >> From all of your years in I mean 31
00:07:04
years old you start teaching about air power and and war in this regard. And you are 65 now.
00:07:11
>> Yeah. What is the from everything you know 30 30 plus years studying this
00:07:15
stuff Iran running simulations on Iran advising the White House being a master and probably arguably the most informed
00:07:22
person in the United States right now about air attacks like the one the US performing on Iran? What is the headline
00:07:29
that you're trying to send to the world at this moment in time? Like what is it
00:07:32
we're missing? Because we're seeing Trump come out and Trump say it's going
00:07:34
well. Everything's amazing. We've taken out all their guys. What is what what
00:07:38
are we missing? We're missing that. We're stuck in a trap of our own making.
00:07:43
I'll explain what that trap is. But the key consequence of the trap is we're
00:07:48
losing control. We are losing control of the situation. And what you were seeing
00:07:55
with President Trump is he's trying to regain control. Now the problem is that
00:08:02
starting not just a week ago Saturday but starting back in June when we took out Natan's fore we started to lose
00:08:11
control and what are we losing control of knowing where that nuclear material is and we now have civilian satellites
00:08:21
and you can see them moving things. What would they be moving around the nuclear
00:08:26
areas? I wonder you think they're moving the the the the you know what are they
00:08:30
moving here? It's most likely going to be that nuclear material cuz they're
00:08:36
planned for this war just as we have except they've been preparing for how to be
00:08:44
resilient, how to now lash back in increasingly aggressive ways. They are winning the escalation part of the war
00:08:54
and that's not an accident. this you can see coming in stages. >> But for anyone that doesn't know, we've
00:09:00
got leaders that have different levels of sort of uh information and knowledge here. I'm going to try and summarize
00:09:06
this and butcher it in the most uh indelicate way I possibly can. So earlier last year, last year the United
00:09:14
States suspected that Iran were very close to enriching uranium. They're at 60%.
00:09:20
>> They're at 60 already. >> If they get to 90%, they have a bomb. Uh
00:09:24
yes, but possibly even with the 60% Stephen. It depends on just how good their scientists are and we're not
00:09:31
really sure. So there's somewhere we're at 60%, we're already very worried. You
00:09:36
go to 90, it's a gimme. >> And then the United States dropped these big bunker buster bombs. They flew those
00:09:41
B2 um airplanes in, dropped these bombs, >> smashing up the site. >> Yeah.
00:09:47
>> And then it felt like it was over. And then we the United States went into
00:09:51
negotiations with Iran to try and get some kind of deal done >> to get the material we didn't get. You
00:09:57
see, why are we even talking to them? If this is really obliterated the program,
00:10:01
why are we bothering to talk to them? What exactly are we talking about here? Do you notice the inconsistency here? So
00:10:08
when you say we thought it was over, that's the public. Okay. Now the public
00:10:13
need to understand they're very busy people. They're playing for the price of
00:10:16
eggs. Okay? So, this is they're not supposed to be able to be up on us. >> It's a good point. I've never thought
00:10:21
about. >> Yeah. Why would we be talking to them? >> Why Why are we talking to them? You see,
00:10:26
so right from the get-go, and and by the way, all of the um it's the Israelis, uh
00:10:32
we have a thing called the Defense Intelligence Agency. Um their reports that were done after the bombing, uh
00:10:38
were leaked and they all say the same thing, which is we created holes. We probably shook these underground
00:10:46
chambers. We're not sure because we had no eyeballs on that, but we have no idea
00:10:51
where that enriched uranium is. And we have good reason to worry they got them out because we actually have a satellite
00:10:58
picture that shows two days before we bomb Ford, there's a bunch of trucks moving stuff out. Gee, what do you think
00:11:08
you might move out if America's about to bomb your site again? I I don't think
00:11:13
they're moving out the popcorn. So, um, and it's pretty this material can be
00:11:18
moved in what look like large scuba tank. They call them scuba tanks, but I I I I try to show pictures of this, too.
00:11:25
They're they're they're actually like as large as this table. So, you need
00:11:28
basically trucks. Trucks like that satellite photography shows they took out. So, so we can't say for sure, but
00:11:36
what you see is these are the indications that you worry they've dispersed the material even before we
00:11:43
hit the site. So, >> and then we attack. >> Yeah. >> The United States attacks in February.
00:11:48
February 2026, which is >> No. Feb. Yep. February 2026. February 2028. We start again. This time with
00:11:54
regime change. Notice we don't go even after the physical m the nuclear material. We don't know where it is. So
00:12:00
for the average person, the average person would think if you take out the supreme leader, then the war is over.
00:12:06
Drop the bomb on the person and the war is complete. >> Yeah. So let's talk about your your
00:12:11
Jenga thing here because what what I find Stephen. So keep in mind I am advising teaching some of the most
00:12:18
brilliant minds in the in the country. Now a lot of these smart people though, they don't know that they they've been
00:12:24
given like one inch deep briefings, maybe even one sentence briefings. So their image
00:12:32
is often like this and it's wrong. This is what they think the regime looks like. And they think that because
00:12:40
they've been given b they basically have been consuming probably for years one or
00:12:45
two sentences about the structure. They know there's a supreme leader. They might know there's nuclear facilities,
00:12:51
missiles command. And so it looks like, oh my goodness gracious, that if you could just simply take out the right
00:12:58
node, you would be able to make this whole thing fall down. Okay, but that's
00:13:05
the wrong image, Stephen. This is the way smart people think. The problem is this is a false image of most regimes,
00:13:15
even the bad ones, and certainly the Iranian regime. Let me just focus on the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime is
00:13:22
more like a matrix. It's more it's not brittle the way this is. So you can keep
00:13:29
trying to pull things out but with a matrix or uh I think the corporate structures now are built to be adaptive
00:13:38
to change because you have so many changes that happen. The structure needs to adapt to change. That is basically
00:13:46
the structure of revolutionary regimes going back to before World War I. >> Okay. I want to ask a dumb question.
00:13:53
>> Y >> when they took out the supreme leader in Iran, I who's going to give out the
00:13:59
instructions? >> The adaptive system adapts and fills in the holes. It fills in the holes usually
00:14:09
with what's left. And in this case, the supreme leader that we took out this
00:14:15
particular hole, this was the guy who had two fought was they're called these
00:14:21
are religious edicts. It's like a people uh edict >> against nuclear weapons. It's a
00:14:28
religious he's the leader of essentially the religion a little bit like the Shia
00:14:33
pope >> and he um is actually issuing religious doctrine >> and as and that's called a fatwa and as
00:14:41
a religious doctrine he issued two that said Iran should not have nuclear weapons. The guy we killed was one of
00:14:50
the guard rails against nuclear weapons. How does that He was He was developing them in his
00:14:56
>> No, no, he's developing the enrichment material. They hadn't been fashioned yet
00:15:01
that we know of as nuclear weapons. Okay. So, we're worried about again this
00:15:06
enrichment going from 5% to 20%, to 60%. But they hadn't actually taken that next
00:15:13
step, which is more of an engineering step to develop the nuclear weapon. Now we took out the person who at the
00:15:22
very tippy top was balancing the hawks and doves and he had decided for decades to issue this these fatwas. He did it
00:15:30
not just once but twice. His son who took over the new supreme leader no fatwa yet. That fatwa died with this
00:15:39
guy. So will the new leader come in? uh it's not clear he's got the religious
00:15:45
authority to do anything like what his father did. This is this is a very different world and he's known to be way
00:15:51
more aggressive than his father. Uh he's been in charge of the the bosi the uh
00:15:56
basically the uh the the police that like to go and kill the protesters. He's
00:16:02
been the guy who's who's been very very uh strongly uh supporting if not leading
00:16:07
that particular effort. And last night it was announced that he has been appointed as the new leader of
00:16:13
>> the new supreme leader. >> Did did Trump expect this? >> I think that he u expected it because he
00:16:19
kept trying to talk the Iranians out of it. This is what he meant by uh last week when President um Trump was saying
00:16:28
that he wanted um uh not this guy. He specifically said not the sun. And then he he had a problem because people kept
00:16:36
pushing him and they said, "Okay, well, if you don't like the son, who who would
00:16:39
you pick?" And he said, "Well, it is a problem because when we killed the
00:16:43
Supreme Leader, we killed around the leader 20 or 30 others who we actually thought were better. So, we actually
00:16:49
took out the best alternatives when we killed the when the Supreme Leader was killed." And every So, everybody's
00:16:56
scratching their heads going, "What are we talking about here?" So, so we
00:17:01
actually helped the by killing the competitors to the sun, >> we made it more likely the sun. And so
00:17:08
what I'm trying to explain, Stephen, is this adapts. Okay? So that you're not
00:17:12
really taking these uh pieces out. You're rearranging them and you are moving up in this case.
00:17:22
You're moving up >> the next Supreme Leader. Well, it's there's the Supreme Leader, but what
00:17:26
we're not showing here, you're see you're seeing the target sets that are
00:17:31
being discussed. You're not seeing the Revolutionary Guard. >> What is that?
00:17:35
>> That is part of the army. The Iran has a million men in arms. A million. That's
00:17:42
is that's as many as we have in our 300 million people. They have 92 million.
00:17:47
They have a million in arms. And about 150 or 200,000 of them are what are called the revolutionary guards. These
00:17:55
are the most aggressive, the most uh well-trained. Um these are the most dedicated to the regime. The news the
00:18:04
son who just we just uh just took over is the prime candidate for that group. So when we took out a link here, it's
00:18:14
not just being replaced by another It's being replaced by a very aggressive individual who's backed by some of the
00:18:22
most aggressive part of that millionman army. So this is what I was trying to explain in my substacks where when you
00:18:30
take out the leader, you may kill the leader, but you get in its place a harder regime, a more resilient regime,
00:18:38
a tougher regime that wants to lash back even more aggressively >> because you killed dad.
00:18:44
>> You killed dad. And also, if you don't lash back, how does the new leader get
00:18:50
his credibility with everybody else? If he's a wimp, why doesn't he get a bullet
00:18:55
in the back of the head? You see the new just because he's appointed a new leader, he's still just just like when
00:19:01
you're the head of a new uh company like let's say you take over a there's a
00:19:05
company that's in shambles and they get rid of their CEO and they bring you on.
00:19:10
Okay? Well, you got to have a plan. You see, and if you don't have a plan to
00:19:14
turn that thing around pretty soon, you know, Elon Musk had to have the big plan. If you don't have that plan, guess
00:19:20
what? You're out. Same here. So you have incentive structure here for not just
00:19:27
replacing not just wimpy replacements certainly not pro-American replacements. You have incentives for lashing back
00:19:37
against the attacker. Which is why when we tried to kill Gaddafi in 1986, he lashes back and uh takes out Panama
00:19:46
Flight 103, killing 271 civilians, 190 Americans. When we try to take out the Malloic regime to degrade it in uh March
00:19:56
99, Malloic lashes back, sending 30,000 ground forces into cleanse, that is get rid of a million civilians in Kosovo. uh
00:20:07
this over and over. >> I mean you have written books about suicide terrorism.
00:20:13
>> That's right. >> I've got one of them in front of me here
00:20:15
called dying to win. So I mean you know a lot about this subject and this is one
00:20:19
of the concerns that actually my fiance had said to me. She said I explained to her I was like you know Iran they really
00:20:23
just have drones at the moment so I think that's fine. And then she posed a question to me. She was like yeah but
00:20:28
what about suicide terrorism? >> Let me just explain. So here we are. It is uh here is of course Iran and imagine
00:20:37
it's back in June. So I'm going to start the story in June. This is the beginning
00:20:41
of the smart bomb the escalation trap stage one. We hit uh Foro which is right around there and then we hit Natans uh
00:20:49
and some other sites right around here. And what does Iran do here? They lash back. And who are they lashing back
00:20:57
against? Israel here. They have their missiles focused on Israel. They're not
00:21:03
really hitting our bases here. They're hitting Israel and they send 3,000 Israelis to the hospital, the most since
00:21:11
the 73 war. So, a long time. That is stage one. Okay. Now, what happened when in February 28? February 28, they're
00:21:23
lashing back a bit against Israel for sure, but now they're at stage two. This
00:21:28
is why I published this piece today in foreign affairs about how Iran's winning
00:21:32
the escalation war. So it just came out just a few hours before we came on. And what's happening here is called I call
00:21:39
it horizontal escalation because what they're doing now is they're using
00:21:43
drones mostly a few missiles but mostly drones. This was almost all missiles no drones and they're using their drone
00:21:50
capacity which they have a lot of and it's precision. These drones are like precisiong guided weapons. They go right
00:21:58
to the target and what they're trying to do is break this coalition. >> For anyone that can't see at the moment
00:22:05
that they counted with horizontal escalation against Saudi Arabia, the UAE, >> the coalition that had been formed
00:22:12
against them, they're trying to break the coalition, you see. >> Um, and they may well do that.
00:22:18
>> Why Why would they want to break that? Why my friends are escaping Dubai at the
00:22:21
moment? And I've got a friend staying in my house in Cape Town because he doesn't
00:22:23
want to be >> because they want these countries to kick the Americans out of their country.
00:22:28
>> Okay? >> Get rid of the uh embassies. Get rid of the bases. If you can then we don't have
00:22:34
the platforms to plaster them. You see, these are our basically groundbased aircraft carriers. I thought they were
00:22:41
they were attacking Saudi Arabia, for example, because that will make Saudi Arabia call Trump and say, "Listen,
00:22:46
stop, please. We're losing our tour tourism. We're shutting our airports."
00:22:50
But well they do want to they are threatening the tourism hitting the economic nodes they're hitting uh hotels
00:22:57
uh they're hitting the airports what they are trying to do is by threatening
00:23:02
tourism which it varies from 5% to 10% of the GDP of these countries. It's not
00:23:10
trivial amounts here. They're basically trying to drive wedges between these
00:23:16
countries and America. And America right now, I don't see any movement through
00:23:21
Congress. I where where is this hundred billion dollars going to the region to make up for their lost tourism? I I
00:23:28
don't remember seeing that bill come through Congress last week. So, um, I'm
00:23:31
just putting a little humorously to point out these countries are losing a fair bit right now and that tourism may
00:23:37
not come back for a while. >> I've got friends that are that have moved.
00:23:41
>> I've got friends that one of my friends was thinking about leaving is now in my
00:23:45
house in Cape Town and he's been there for 5 years. He's leaving and he's going
00:23:49
to move to America. I've got so many friends that have called you >> and imagine that we have 500,000
00:23:54
American citizens here and we have the State Department on CNN. call this number, we'll help you escape.
00:24:02
>> It's even the media in the UK, you see it. It's like it's they're showing like
00:24:05
the BBC are showing like evacuations of UK citizens as they're being greeted in
00:24:08
the airport, putting microphones. >> So, this is putting a lot of pressure
00:24:12
here and there's something else that's not widely known, which is there's a big
00:24:17
gap between what the leaders of the countries want willing to support US and Israel and their publics. You see, this
00:24:25
coalition that's been built against Iran here is not clearly going down well with
00:24:32
Publix. These are publiclix. They may not like Iran. They may be Sunni and Iran Shia, but they don't want to be
00:24:39
part of an Israeli expansion plan where Israel is going to conquer more and more
00:24:43
territory and so forth. And so this is this is this is where the soft underbelly here of this this isn't just
00:24:51
about the tourism. That's the short term. The longer term is bottomup pressure. Uh Sadat, he was a leader of
00:25:00
Egypt in the 1970s. He cut a deal with uh Israel. It's called the Camp David
00:25:05
Accords. Peace uh uh for land. There was but it was very favorable. Well, after Saddat did that, the president of Egypt
00:25:13
in 1981 in a military parade, his own security guards at the military parade marched with their guns, came up to his
00:25:22
place, and they shot him dead. So, you don't this is the real world here. So, this is very, very dangerous
00:25:30
for these leaders. Now, that's stage two. Now, what what happens if we decide
00:25:36
to have one of these limited ground uh uh deployments here? Because after all, we still don't know where this material
00:25:43
is. >> What does that mean? So, for anyone that doesn't know anything about the war,
00:25:45
what does a a ground deployment mean? Cuz I I saw Trump being asked about this on the plane yesterday, and he didn't
00:25:51
seem to deny it was going to happen. It means you try to control a limited amount of space, say the space around
00:25:58
Fordo or the the nuclear facility that you bombed in June, and you would send the say 82nd Airborne in to control the
00:26:06
space. >> This I don't know what any of this stuff is. >> I see. So 82nd Airborne is is a division
00:26:11
that we have that's especially equipped to uh go into hostile area and land and
00:26:20
control say airports control space. Think about controlling all the size of LAX.
00:26:25
>> Mhm. >> So if you want to control LAX, you bring in the 82nd Airborne. They will have
00:26:30
5,000 men and women, not just guys now. And they will come in and they will control that space LAX, but they will
00:26:38
also be doing this probably not for a day, not for even a week. They're going
00:26:42
to have to spend weeks and weeks to search for that material because we don't know where it is and it's all
00:26:49
deeply buried and a lot of the stuff has been the the entrances have been blown up. So this means this means long-term
00:26:58
presence there. You might also take some of the oil fields to cut off some of the
00:27:02
um money uh here for the uh uh for the regime. That is where that book comes in.
00:27:09
>> Do you think it's likely that America will put boots on the ground, American
00:27:13
soldiers in Iran? >> I think it's at least 50/50 if not immediately. So people keep expecting
00:27:20
the escalation to be continuous and then when there's a pause uh as there was
00:27:26
between June and February, they think, "Oh, it's over. I'm going to go now
00:27:30
worry about something else." And then believe me, there's plenty else to worry
00:27:33
about. So we got Minneapolis. We got plenty to worry about here, even with violence. But that's not how escalation
00:27:41
operates. Escalation can happen have a ratchet effect that has that's spaced out by months of what
00:27:50
seems like peace only to come right back and you're stuck in that escalation
00:27:56
momentum >> which is what we've seen >> which is exactly what we've seen and for
00:28:00
the reason I'm telling you we don't know where that nuclear material is that has
00:28:06
been the $64,000 weakness in this entire entire idea of using air power not just in the last 10
00:28:15
days going back to June. It's not just even about the regime change. It's about
00:28:20
how are you going to get that nuclear material out. We had a deal this deal with Obama. Trump did not like it. But
00:28:29
with that deal that held and Iran took out almost all virtually just only a tiny bit was left. They not enough for a
00:28:38
bomb. all out of the country and we watched it. We monitored it. We had 24/7 cameras to monitor this. We had human
00:28:46
on-site inspections to monitor this. 2018, Trump just ripped it up, walked away unilaterally, and from that point
00:28:55
on, it's been pedal to the metal by Iran in upgrading that enriched uranium. And
00:29:00
that's how you got to that material that would be enough for the 16 bombs. And
00:29:05
right now, we don't know where that is. So >> yeah, >> stage one is
00:29:11
>> okay stage one you are beginning the escalation trap. In this case it's a
00:29:16
smart bomb trap but it because it's with smart bombs where you have tactical
00:29:21
success near perfect call it 100% because it it really is but that doesn't mean you have strategic success tactical
00:29:31
success plus strategic failure. Then that strategic failure weighs on you over time because the enemy still
00:29:41
got the thing that you wanted to get in the first place. Now you do stage two, which is regime change because after
00:29:48
all, you've already hit the targets. You can make the rubble bounce, but what
00:29:52
more? That's why we didn't bomb them in the last 10 days. We might go back and
00:29:56
bomb for some more. Okay, but we already bombed that. So, so there's only watching the bubble, but now we're in
00:30:02
stage two because what are your options? The only other option is well let me get
00:30:06
rid of the regime because then the regime I will control and the next regime will just give us the material.
00:30:14
That's not working now. And you hear today Trump is dancing trying to figure
00:30:18
out what to say. He doesn't want to say the war's over. Okay. Doesn't want to
00:30:23
say the war is going on. But the bottom line is we don't even he won't even be
00:30:27
clear about why we're fighting the war anymore. And I'm telling you there's a
00:30:31
real problem. The nuclear material is still there. and it can still be fashioned into those
00:30:36
16 bombs over time. So this is where then you get this horizontal escalation where now they've really really working
00:30:44
on this because now it's a long war. >> They start attacking their neighbors
00:30:48
>> and tried to make it a uh the consequences go on for months. So just imagine when are your friends exactly
00:30:53
going to move back? So let's say the war is over tomorrow. Are they moving back
00:30:57
tomorrow? And when was uh last time uh have you started to plan for your next vacation in Dubai? I've been I was I was
00:31:03
planning speaking there in a month's time, but it's been cancelled already.
00:31:06
>> Well, just Yeah, just starting to think about that and you know, minor thing
00:31:09
like a drone attack could suddenly come out of nowhere. You know, you're not
00:31:12
even you think it's I'm just trying to point out that this is this is the world
00:31:15
now that a lot of people this was a luxury market. This was the playground of the rich and famous here. This is
00:31:22
really now changing and it may come back a year or two from now, but it took two
00:31:27
years for air travel to come back after 911. Just think about that. this. Now, we haven't gotten to stage three yet,
00:31:34
which gets to your girlfriend's point. >> How do we move from stage two to stage
00:31:38
three? >> Oh, well, because you still don't know where the the nuclear material is,
00:31:42
>> and we don't have to move to stage beyond uh to stage three this week. We
00:31:48
could do it a month from now, 6 months from now. The problem is we've now put
00:31:53
in place a much more aggressive leadership, much more aggressive regime. We've taken away some of the uh what may
00:32:00
have been guardrails. who can't say for sure for the nuclear weapon. This this
00:32:04
new regime much more likely and we've given them every incentive to develop the nuclear bomb. We're killing them.
00:32:12
So, so what exactly is their incentive? They're they're their best way to
00:32:16
survive is to have a nuclear weapon. And you'll say, "Well, we're going to kill
00:32:20
them." Well, we're already killing them. So, we've taken away their incentive not
00:32:25
to have a nuclear weapon. So, we will start to worry as each week goes by. Not because we have great intel, not because
00:32:34
our human well, it's because of the opposite. We don't have the exquisite
00:32:39
intelligence we had with the Obama deal to know we had frozen the program. Now, that we have Swiss cheese at best. And
00:32:48
what we will see in the holes of the Swiss cheese are indications of nuclear development. And that will make us worry
00:32:55
because what happens with the nuclear weapon is it going to go to Hezbollah and is Hezbollah going to help put it in
00:33:01
uh uh uh Hifa? What's going to happen with these? Are we going to give is are
00:33:06
they going to give it to the Houthies? So these are the kind of worries we will have that will push us to the ground
00:33:13
options and that that is with stage three the retaliation approaches the homeland
00:33:24
>> is that realistic >> if ISIS with its 30 to 40,000 uh remember ISIS was not a state Iran is an
00:33:32
actual state with 92 million people so if ISIS can fment commander directed inspired suicide attacks and other
00:33:41
attacks in San Bernardino, just to kind of bring it a little bit closer to home here across the United States. Paris,
00:33:48
remember the big Paris attack. So why exactly is Iran not if I mean ISIS was a lot weaker than Iran?
00:33:55
>> Do you think in Iran at the moment they're working on that? They're working
00:33:59
on a terrorist attack. Well, I don't I think that my work tells me that it's
00:34:05
most likely to come with the presence of the ground forces by us. Doesn't mean
00:34:10
it's it's a necessary condition, but it's just most likely. Russia in 96 with
00:34:16
our help, we played a trick on them. Assassinated the Chchin leader. It's a leader of its republic in uh in Russia
00:34:23
called Cheschna Dunv. Only a million people. And Russia um killed the guy. And we actually have pictures of him
00:34:32
seeing the the missile hitting him because we can put the cameras right in the nose cone.
00:34:37
Then the new guy took over. His name was Bazv. And he uh launched within three months, not the next week, Operation
00:34:46
Jihad. And his operation jihad was much more vicious tactics. Kick the Russian forces. Russia is a big country. You
00:34:57
know, hundred almost 200 million people compared to this little province of a million. Kicked the Russians out after
00:35:04
three months. Launches a waves of suicide attacks, massive kidnappings here. This really went on for years and
00:35:12
years. So when you say, are they planning it? I I don't think it's quite
00:35:17
right, Stephen. It's not like they have the detailed plan they're about to
00:35:21
execute. they have the next wave of possibilities which would come I think most likely
00:35:29
with stage two so stage three so as this is expanding as the war expands it will
00:35:34
go global >> really >> you are already seeing it global with the supply chain and you're seeing it
00:35:39
with the oil so that's already happening so um what Iran said today the the uh
00:35:45
response to Trump's press conference today that just literally happened before we came on is okay we will allow
00:35:52
Gulf States your oil tankers to come through if you kick the Americans out. So kick the Americans out and we'll let
00:36:00
you pass. >> If you don't, >> if you don't, we got drones. So they
00:36:03
didn't put that in there, but everybody knows they got drones. >> And again, for if you were explaining
00:36:07
this to a 16-year-old. >> Yeah. >> Just to keep it super simple, there's
00:36:11
this passageway across the water where a lot of the oil tankers go. >> Yep. It's straight of Hormuz.
00:36:18
>> Hormuz. And it sounded like the tankers are refusing to go through there at the
00:36:22
moment. >> Sure. Because one has been hit, but it only takes one to be hit with a drone.
00:36:27
Only one. Because the people driving those tankers here, they're doing it for
00:36:32
a paycheck, not a bullet. They're not really wanting to die for this. This isn't a nationalist cause to ship the
00:36:39
the oil. >> Explain why it matters to the world. If if oil doesn't go through this straight
00:36:43
of Hummus, what matter? What happens? >> Yeah. Well, we can talk about it in like
00:36:48
technical terms, but the big thing to say is this is what's going to increase
00:36:52
the price of gas at the pump and it's already gone up. When you cut the flow
00:36:57
of the oil, it has global effects. It doesn't just affect this little region
00:37:04
here. It doesn't just affect China over here. It affects everybody. And that's
00:37:09
why the Europeans are starting to freak out because this they're already every
00:37:14
government worries about we talk about affordability. That's about to change.
00:37:18
>> And is this your point about how it changes the politics at home because
00:37:22
people someone goes to the pump today, they go why is the oil higher? >> That's right. Why is the we just came we
00:37:28
we now have 4.4% unemployment. Um if we and and President Trump was trying to say it's all getting better, the
00:37:36
interest rates are going down. Well, that all predicated on us not having inflation. You see, when the oil is cut,
00:37:44
the inflation goes up, the affordability becomes a problem. That is what is panicking a lot of the businesses right
00:37:53
now because they're going to lose business and and it's a problem of risk.
00:37:58
It's not just about the damage. So, a little a few of these drones can have an
00:38:04
inordinate effect on risk. Now let's bring in another piece which is Russia we find out is providing targeting
00:38:15
intelligence to Iran much the way we provide targeting intelligence to Ukraine to hit uh uh targets in Russia.
00:38:23
And what does that mean? That means those drones which are precisiong guided now can more easily find exactly which
00:38:31
ship to hit. So >> we know that Russia are doing that. because we've got it pretty well
00:38:35
confirmed from Yeah. It's you would hear much more push back here. And what you're hearing from Secretary Hegsth is
00:38:43
not it's not happening. You're saying, "Oh, no. Well, let's not overw worry."
00:38:46
No, it's happening. And they're worried because that's the that's the again the
00:38:51
dancing around. They're not denying the fact that it's actually happening.
00:38:55
>> I think Trump actually when asked said something words to the effect of, "I
00:38:59
wouldn't blame them because that's what we do to them." >> Exactly. Exactly. And why is he talking
00:39:04
to Putin today? He's not talking He was just on the phone with Putin before he
00:39:07
did his press conference. What's he talking to Putin about? Bad intel, I'm
00:39:11
sure, and maybe cutting a deal, which is we'll deny the Ukrainians the intel if
00:39:17
you deny. You see, this is the this is this is the the cascading effects of the politics dominates the tactics.
00:39:27
>> And that's exactly what Trump said. He said on March the 7th when asked about
00:39:31
Russia teaming up with Iran on intelligence, he said, "If we asked them, they'd say, "We do it against
00:39:38
them." Wouldn't they say that we do it against them? It's almost justifying it.
00:39:44
>> Trump often just speaks his mind. Uh sometimes he kind of hides things, but
00:39:48
some often he speaks his mind. And what you're seeing here is of this is the
00:39:53
natural thing. Russia is uh what's good for the goose, good for the gander. They're doing the same thing to us that
00:40:00
we've done to them. And they have and they're doing it to hurt us, you see. So
00:40:05
rather than just spasmotically or spasm response here, which we often think the the foes we're up against are stupid. We
00:40:13
essentially think they're dumb. We call that irrational. But what's really
00:40:18
happening, Stephen, is um since the Vietnam War, we have been up against foes that have understood something
00:40:24
about America, which is the way to get at us is polit politically. Make it a long war. Play the politics. You can't
00:40:34
go toe-to-toe with us on the battlefield. We'll just clean their clock over and over. They don't often
00:40:39
try. They don't go toe-to-toe with us. We lost the Vietnam War with never losing a battle. How did we lose? We
00:40:48
lost the long game. 58,000 dead, no end in sight, a forever war. What are we doing this for? That is how the North
00:40:58
Vietnamese won. And that's how the Afghan Taliban won. That's how the bad
00:41:04
guys typically beat us. They don't always win, but the bottom line is we have a soft underbelly. It's not the
00:41:12
military. Much of the reason most people haven't posted content or built their personal
00:41:17
brand is because it's hard and it's timeconuming and we're all very very
00:41:21
busy and if you've never posted something before there's so many factors
00:41:26
in your psychology that stop you wanting to post what people will think of you am
00:41:30
I doing this right is the thing I'm saying absolutely stupid all of these result in paralysis which means you
00:41:36
don't post and your feed goes bare I'm an investor in a company called Stanto
00:41:42
which you've probably heard me talk about and what they've been building is
00:41:44
this new tool called Stanley that uses AI, looks at your feed, looks at your tone of voice, looks at your history,
00:41:49
looks at your best performing posts, and tells you what you should post, makes those posts for you. You can also just
00:41:55
use it for inspiration. And sometimes what we need when we're thinking about
00:41:59
doing a post for our social media channels is inspiration. Building an audience has fundamentally changed my
00:42:04
life, and I think it could change yours, too. So, I'm inviting you to give this
00:42:08
new tool a shot and let me know what you think. All you have to do is search coach.stand.store. store now to get
00:42:14
started. One of the smartest things a business can do is build like a bigger company without actually hiring like
00:42:21
one. But the problem we all face is that most companies don't have every skill in
00:42:25
house. So when I look at the businesses seeing real success today, the consistent pattern with all of them is
00:42:31
how quickly they move. They bring in specialists with skills and emerging areas to keep themselves ahead. Even in
00:42:36
our company, we've spent the last year pulling in talent across areas like AI
00:42:39
native strategy, no code builds, and product workflows. And we find this talent through our longtime partner,
00:42:44
Fiverr Pro. Their premium service only shows you vetted talent. So, you've always got the safeguard that anyone you
00:42:51
pull in to help you with a complex project, has the skills that you're after, and will deliver to the same high
00:42:57
standards as your internal team. And most importantly, they'll keep up with the pace. It's a simple strategy, but it
00:43:02
lets us stay agile without compromising on quality. So, if you need these kind of skills in your business, head to
00:43:07
pro.fr.com to find pioneering talent to fill your business's gaps. That's
00:43:11
pro.fr.com. >> What do you think happens next? If you had to, no offense sitting. Yeah.
00:43:18
>> If you had to predict what you think happens next, what would you predict?
00:43:21
>> Well, I say this at the end of the foreign affairs article that just literally came out a couple hours ago,
00:43:26
which is President Trump is on the horns of a dilemma and he has no golden offramp. He's looking for offramps, but
00:43:34
there's no golden one where he comes out politically ahead. So, he's got a
00:43:38
choice, sometimes called a Hobbesian choice, a Hobsonian choice where you cut your losses, accept political loss now.
00:43:47
And right now, if he pulls back, and what does it mean to pull back? You got to pull your forces back. It's not
00:43:53
enough to say you're just doing a pause. If you want to stop, if you want to stop
00:43:57
for real, you take those aircraft carriers and you send them out somewhere. You send them to Asia. You
00:44:03
send them here. You got to actually make you got to do something here. So, choice
00:44:07
one is you stop your bombing campaign. You cut your losses. You do your best to say we just wanted to destroy missiles
00:44:14
even though nobody will believe it. Okay. Um but that means you accept a a modest loss now. Or the other is you
00:44:23
double down and you go on for more weeks. go on for more weeks hoping you'll kill this leader and maybe the
00:44:30
next one won't be so bad or you'll you'll have some other sort of uh
00:44:34
outcome that you can't imagine. And Trump is nothing I call him a chaos kid.
00:44:39
He thrives in chaos and he often comes out of this with something happening like when you know sort of down the road
00:44:47
you didn't expect it. He probably didn't expect it. But in this case, the price
00:44:52
is more likely going to be a political failure of the first order because we have the midterms coming. So if if he
00:44:59
he's got a choice, stop now, cut your losses, accept a limited political defeat, or double down, go on for a few
00:45:06
months, go through more stages of this uh smart bomb trap I'm explaining, and
00:45:11
you're really now in Lynden Johnson territory. Remember I mentioned before where in Vietnam he kept escalating,
00:45:19
kept moving up the escalation ladder. Every rung he said, "Well, no, we have
00:45:22
escalation dominance. We're just going to double down. We're going to hit them
00:45:25
harder the next time. We're going to do this the next time." Sound familiar? And
00:45:29
then what happened is it became absolutely clear uh that this was going nowhere and the 68 election came was
00:45:37
coming and Lynden Johnson's own Democrats said, "Mr. president, we can't
00:45:44
ride your horse into that. We got to do something. And the problem is they didn't pull the plug fast enough here.
00:45:50
That's how they lost. They don't they they don't pull the plug fast enough.
00:45:52
So, you end up having a bigger loss later. >> When you talk about the the um
00:45:57
underbelly that the United States has where they can't prolong these wars, am
00:46:01
I right in thinking this is basically a function or a a consequence of living in
00:46:05
a democracy where every four years >> I I think it's a function of a war of
00:46:09
choice. So when we were attacked in Pearl Harbor, we were attacked. >> We were reluctant to get in World War II
00:46:19
and we were we didn't get in until we were actually struck at Pearl Harbor. That was enough to really make us angry.
00:46:26
We were pissed off as a country. Okay? And we were going to get payback not just for a month, but we were getting
00:46:32
some real payback here. And that's how vicious that island hopping campaign was
00:46:36
and why it was so vicious here. And that went on and on. And when we ended the war um in in dropping those atomic
00:46:44
bombs, 22% of the American public wanted us to forget the Japanese surrender and
00:46:50
drop more atomic bombs. 22%. We are that angry. So when we are attacked first, we
00:46:58
have the politics and our advantage. When we do a war of choice, we can make up all the reasons why it was a good
00:47:06
idea to start throw the first punch. They were going to hit us. We were gonna But when we throw that first punch
00:47:12
first, that's a war of choice. And this puts the politics in the other camp's
00:47:18
advantage. And that's the problem that we're facing here. Iran didn't hit us
00:47:24
first. They didn't hit us first in June. They didn't hit us first before that.
00:47:29
>> So on this point of war of choice, >> y there's really two questions I have
00:47:36
front of mind. One is was Trump right that if he didn't attack then they would
00:47:41
have enriched uranium they would have made a nuclear weapon and that would have put not just the region but the
00:47:46
world at danger in your view and then the second one is this sort of ongoing debate around the role of Israel in this
00:47:53
war and I think it was Marco Rubio that came out and I think maybe accidentally said that the reason why they attacked
00:48:02
Iran was because they heard that Israel were about to attack Iran. >> So, so let's go back to the Friday, the
00:48:09
day before we start the bombing campaign. This is February 27, literally 3:15 Washington time. That's when Trump
00:48:17
makes the go decision. But what's in his what what is he choosing between? He has
00:48:23
an offer on the table from Iran for a better deal than the Obama deal for America. And it is uh it's not
00:48:31
absolutely perfect. They still want to have some minor enrichment to but that uh verification lots of things here. Now
00:48:40
maybe it's still not perfect but President Trump has a choice on that Friday afternoon. He can go back and he
00:48:48
can work this deal. He can, you know, after all dealmaker, right? Let's let's
00:48:52
assume he's good at dealmaking. So he can go back and work the deal. But that's not what he does. What he does is
00:48:58
he throws that deal away. And also the supreme leader when he killed that's the
00:49:04
supreme leader was on board with that deal too. And what do we do instead? We we go through regime change. So the
00:49:11
choices here Stephen were before we got to stage two we were in stage one. Stage
00:49:19
one we had hit fore it it would there were were negotiations and Iran's coming
00:49:26
up with a better deal than the Obama deal. And what does he do? he goes to stage two instead. So I don't think this
00:49:34
is this this story you're hearing they were gonna do X Y or Z is there was a
00:49:40
deal on the table and >> why did Rubio say that then? Why did he say that they attacked? Because Israel
00:49:46
were going to attack. >> Okay, I want to play this video which is what I'm referring to.
00:49:50
>> Okay, >> if we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we
00:49:56
would suffer much higher casualties. And so the president made the very wise decision. He we knew that there was
00:50:02
going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew
00:50:07
that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks,
00:50:11
we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even hire those killed. And then we would all be here answering questions
00:50:17
about why we knew that and didn't act. >> So what that shows you is that it's the
00:50:23
tail wagging the dog that Israel is going to attack. as I'm saying just happened in June. It's a replay of what
00:50:30
happened in June. Israel may well have We don't know why Israel decided to attack and kill the Supreme Leader. It
00:50:36
was actually Israeli bombs who killed the Supreme Leader. Uh and also those other replacement leaders as well. But
00:50:42
Israel may well have been thinking that my goodness, Trump is getting too close to a deal. That's what happened in June.
00:50:49
Trump was on the edge of a deal with Iran and then Israel goes and kills the negotiators. You see? So just think
00:50:56
about that for a moment. They're ne Trump is negotiating with the Iranians and then they say, "Well, okay, come
00:51:04
back the next day and what is there the next day? Israeli bombs killing them."
00:51:09
>> So I mean, that's not a good that's not a great way to handle a partnership.
00:51:12
>> Well, it's just it's just showing you we had another choice. We could have told
00:51:16
Israel not to do it. We could have told Israel if you do this, we're going to
00:51:19
cut off all your military aid for the next three years. That would be put some pressure on Israel. now then Trump would
00:51:25
have to pay a price politically. So I'm not saying that's an easy thing to do.
00:51:29
Don't get me wrong, but we need to understand that that Trump these are the these are the pressures for escalation
00:51:37
in the escalation trap. So I'm trying to explain why this isn't just randomly
00:51:44
happening, Stephen. It's not like, oh my goodness, I can't follow what's
00:51:47
occurring. So that's why when Trump says in today's briefing uh talks about
00:51:52
stopping the air campaign, is he going to stop Israel's campaign? That's the
00:51:57
question that did not come up today. It's in my I put on my accent. The one of the big questions that did not come
00:52:03
up is President Trump, are you going to call Netanyahu and tell him to stop bombing Iraq?
00:52:09
>> Does Trump control Netanyahu in your view? >> Well, again, it's about pressures here.
00:52:14
It's about what are the uh what are the ways you you you you don't it's not
00:52:18
about a matter of like a personal loyalty relationship. This is politics of the first order. That's what I'm
00:52:24
trying to explain. So for President Trump to stop Netanyahu from doing this, this will be paying a price. He will
00:52:31
have a there are a big part of his MAGA constituency is very pro not just Israel
00:52:36
pro-Netanyahu version of Israel. So, this is the tension in and the politics that I'm
00:52:43
trying to explain, which is why you don't really want to start the trap in the first place.
00:52:48
>> And I asked you a second ago, no fence sitting, what happens next in this war
00:52:53
based on everything you've studied for the last 30 years, the 20 years of doing
00:52:56
>> I think it's more likely than not that maybe not in the next week or two. I've
00:53:00
said uh on my substack it's more likely than not we will get to a limited um uh
00:53:05
ground deployment here because of the fizzle because of the I'm keep saying because of the the enriched material
00:53:11
that is floating around and we know it's dispersing. We know it's dispersing. We
00:53:17
don't know where it is. And there could be literally hundreds of rooms not much
00:53:23
bigger than this size, maybe two or three times this size that we're in. That could be used to uh fashion an an a
00:53:32
fat man style a bomb. Not to miniaturaturize it, to put on a warhead. That would be more sophisticated. But if
00:53:38
what you want to do is you want to have a Hiroshima bomb that can kill 75,000 people in a second or 10 seconds, that
00:53:47
is what they are in the the the the that's what we're talking about here.
00:53:52
We're not talking about can they put miniaturaturize the bomb to put it on the nose cone of a war of a missile.
00:54:00
This is they don't need to. That's very sophisticated stuff. We couldn't do that
00:54:04
for 10 years. >> So I guess there's two there's two questions that come to mind. The first
00:54:08
is to understand someone's behavior, you have to like understand their motivations. And I I think a lot about
00:54:15
like where Trump is in his career, legacy, how how much that matters to him. It appears from what
00:54:24
I've seen, the whole thing around him wanting to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the the Peace Board, the being the
00:54:29
president that stops all, it appears that he's thinking about how he's going
00:54:32
to be remembered. And when I'm looking at some of his interviews recently, he's
00:54:35
saying things like, "I don't want it to be the case that in 10 years time or in
00:54:39
5 years time, the US have to go back in again because like I didn't do a good
00:54:43
job." And it made me start to believe that actually one of his one of the reasons why we might escalate this war
00:54:49
further from a United States perspective is because legacy changes in hindsight. And if we
00:54:57
think about George W. Bush, >> I think you're putting your finger on it, Stephen.
00:55:00
>> George W. Bush's legacy now is like completely tarnished because of this one
00:55:04
war and actually how it ended. >> Yeah. But also >> it's a mistake in hindsight.
00:55:08
>> But also now mirror image that to the Iranians. Why aren't they thinking about
00:55:13
their legacy? >> Think about that for a moment. Why would the Supreme Leader 86 years old decide
00:55:21
he's not going to take too many more precautions? How many more months does he had cancer apparently? How many more
00:55:26
months does he got? How does he want to go out? How does he really want to go out? What's he want to be remembered
00:55:31
for? A coward or does he want to be remembered as somebody who stood up for Iran, the revolution, the whole thing he
00:55:38
built his whole life for? You talk about Trump where so when I get into behind when the cameras go off and I get a
00:55:46
chance to uh again, let's just say go to the West Wing. I'm not seeing people
00:55:51
being picky, minor, petty. I see them worried about their legacy. the national security adviserss, their
00:56:00
assistance. They're worrying about their legacy. Do they want to go down in in
00:56:05
the history of American history as X, Y, or Z? And this is how humans are. It doesn't stop uh with like how much money
00:56:16
do you have? It's what's going to happen with your legacy. >> So with that in mind, if you think Trump
00:56:21
is legacy motivated, does that increase the >> in part? I want to be careful in part.
00:56:27
it's always he can't be reelected. So I'm like that's not motivating him
00:56:29
because you know you play differently if you think you can win a second term which I knew would be important to him.
00:56:33
But the if he is legacy motivated now when you think about which direction he's going to grow go in it does appear
00:56:40
on the balance of things that he's not going to want it to be left a mess. And
00:56:45
the biggest mess that could really embarrass him and his legacy uh in with international is if Iran has a nuclear
00:56:54
bomb and they detonate a test say next September. Let's just imagine what would happen
00:57:01
next September. So people need to think about see the discussion of Iran and nuclear bombs here is not very
00:57:09
strategic. It's to scare you. It's oh they're going to get a bomb and the
00:57:13
first one's going to go on Tel Aviv. The second one's going to go on New York. I
00:57:17
don't think that's the sequence. Why would they? Why? If they're willing to
00:57:22
commit suicide to take out Tel Aviv, they don't need 16 bombs. Okay? If they're willing to have their entire
00:57:28
population destroyed by they just need one bomb, take out Tel Aviv, they're done, right? That's not what's going on.
00:57:34
They're following the North Korea plan. The North Korea plan that North Korea
00:57:39
figured out when we went through this with North Korea in the '9s. Okay? the
00:57:42
very same thing except we didn't do the bombing cuz cuz it was not going to we
00:57:46
didn't get we we avoided the trap. What they want is multiple bombs at the same
00:57:51
time. So what they want to do if they can do this is have say five bombs working at the same time and the first
00:58:00
bomb goes off as a test in the mountains. In the mountains and then what do we say? Oh, they blew it.
00:58:08
They're stupid. They blew their one test and then they do a second test. Still in their mountains. Okay. When we
00:58:17
dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima, wasn't clear we had any more. When we dropped the second one, nobody needed to
00:58:24
wait for a third or fourth. Nobody really we they knew more would come. You see what I mean? So with Iran the this
00:58:32
is again we're talking about now um you know let's let's call it the brown belt
00:58:37
or black belt strategy here that they are and notice they have been very smart in their escalation.
00:58:44
What you would do is the North Korea strategy which is again you want multiple bombs and then you want to do
00:58:50
some tests and even if one doesn't quite work you want to have another. You want
00:58:54
to have multiple bombs so that you can do multiple tests. You see, and that is how North Korea basically stopped Trump
00:59:05
trying to kill the leader. So notice that Trump wants to say it was just his winning personality because, you know,
00:59:11
Trump is so charming here. But North Korea now has 60 working nuclear weapons as, you know, best we can tell. And the
00:59:20
idea that uh we're going to start killing leaders in North Korea anytime soon, I'm not sure that's going to
00:59:26
happen. >> They're kind of immune now, right? Well, and notice that Ukraine had a bunch of
00:59:30
nuclear weapons in the 90s, gave them up, and there's a lot of people in Ukraine right now are saying, "Boy, I
00:59:35
wish we had those nuclear weapons back or else we wouldn't be fighting this war." So, you start to look at the
00:59:40
history. Why does America have nuclear weapons here? Are we an evil country and the reason we have is because we're
00:59:46
evil? We want it for our security. So, why doesn't Iran want it for their security? So, this is the strategy part
00:59:54
that we have to the politics. Steve and I keep trying to talk about. >> So you're saying your prediction is that
01:00:01
we're going to move to stage three where Trump >> Okay, I'll go 7525.
01:00:06
>> 75% which way? >> That we will put we will send in some ground forces to get that dispersed
01:00:12
material. Um the only 25% would be if somehow magically the Iranians gave it to us.
01:00:18
>> So >> So that's where the 25% comes from because there is some chance
01:00:22
>> that there there's some I don't want to I mean we live in the real world um
01:00:25
here. So I but I think the problem we're going to face is it's going to become
01:00:30
more and if you're in Iran right now exactly why aren't you fashioning the
01:00:37
nuclear weapon? We're already killing you. We can pause for months and say we
01:00:42
won't kill you and then you wake up one day and you're dead. This we've done
01:00:46
this movie now several times on Iran. Your best chance of survival is a nuclear weapon. And so we now know that,
01:00:55
our intel knows that, Israel now knows it, we've taken these options. Uh so unless Trump will make a deal, that's
01:01:04
that 25%. So I I think if he makes a deal, then there's a chance that Iran will go forward here.
01:01:12
>> If the 75% path plays out, >> Yep. >> we put boots on the ground.
01:01:17
>> Yep. >> What happens then? >> Now we're at stage three. Now we've
01:01:23
moved to stage three because we have to search very not just so we will start by
01:01:31
deploying ground forces in a very limited area. Say we're going to go to Esphon it's called that's that's the the
01:01:38
uh do we have a >> I mean you could try and write on there does that work?
01:01:41
>> Um the thing I'm trying to explain yeah assume this is Iran. Yeah. Okay. We will
01:01:46
start by putting in um a small footprint and again we have several options here to do it. Um and so the hunt will be for
01:01:56
the enriched material. But let's say that we even find it Stephen, how do we
01:02:03
know that in the intervening almost a year since the bombing, 10 months since the bombing, how do we know they haven't
01:02:11
enriched more somewhere else? Because this is what happened with um the WMD and Iraq and Sodom Hussein in the '9s
01:02:22
through 2003. We had inspectors in. We could never be sure. There wasn't material.
01:02:31
And the problem was over time the fear got worse and worse and worse. And the fear is a nuclear handoff or the
01:02:41
radiological handoff. You hand off some of that material to Hezbollah to the Houthis. They
01:02:48
>> who are Hezbollah and the Houthies? They're like >> they are terrorist groups.
01:02:51
>> They we call them terrorist groups. Um and the uh and Hezbollah uh which is
01:02:56
this famous terrorist group started in 1982. How did Hezbollah start? Where'd
01:03:01
it come from? >> Is it the CIA again? >> No, it's Israel. Israel invades southern
01:03:06
Lebanon in June of 82 with 78,000 combat soldiers. 3,000 tanks and armor vehicles. So, think about that. That's
01:03:15
like invading Chicago with 78,000. So, just or LA with 78,000. Okay? So, they invade uh southern
01:03:23
Lebanon with 78,000. Israel does. One month later, Hezbollah is born as resistance movement. So, Hezbollah was
01:03:33
born out of resistance to Israel. They have hated Israel from the beginning because that's how they were born. You
01:03:40
see? So what you have is you have a group that's hot been radical since and since 82 this has been going on since
01:03:48
82. Israel just can't put that country that Hezbollah group out of business. And
01:03:53
what are they doing literally this week? They're trying to depopulate this Beirut, the city of Beirut. Because what
01:04:00
happens when you go up against terrorist groups, which we haven't described, but
01:04:04
the terrorist group here is like a group that's in a sea of people. Okay? and you
01:04:09
keep saying all I want to do is get rid of that terrorist group. The problem is that in all that effort, military effort
01:04:17
to get rid of the terrorist group, you do kill them, but they regenerate and they regenerate and they regenerate just
01:04:24
as Hezbollah has for God 45 years almost. Okay. And so what do you then push to do? Get rid of all the people.
01:04:33
>> So you think I'll just genocide? >> I don't want to use those terms because
01:04:37
I've written about that. That's a that that has certain very spec. So that's a
01:04:41
whole conversation here. But I just want to point out how is it that Israel got itself into the idea they were going to
01:04:48
cleanse expel um large portions of the 2 million out of Gaza. That happened because they got
01:04:57
into stage three of the escalation trap in Gaza. So this isn't just about America. So we're only talking about the
01:05:04
escalation frameworks with respect to this one conflict. really it applies much more broadly. I've developed these
01:05:12
since I taught for the Air Force because I needed to find a way to help our government, our military understand
01:05:21
how the transition from the bombing or the military piece to the outcome. And what's in the middle
01:05:29
is the military, the bombs change politics. They change politics in the enemy. They change politics for us. For
01:05:40
us, we don't want to lose. And that's why we got stuck in a for in two forever
01:05:46
wars. Um, and now we may well just get right back into another one. Not because Trump wants to. He's being sucked into
01:05:54
it. >> So, what happens after stage three? >> After stage three, this is what America
01:06:01
has faced in Vietnam. And President Biden faced this in spades here. When you try to pull out after you're in
01:06:09
stage three and end these ongoing conflicts here, usually it ends poorly for your legacy. And you saw that with
01:06:16
Lyndon Johnson. And you saw that with um President Biden. President Bid actually
01:06:22
President Trump is the one who was negotiating with the Taliban to pull out. >> But President Trump wouldn't leave. Not
01:06:29
leave. He didn't leave before. Who who did he hand it off to? He handed it off
01:06:33
to Biden. Biden pulled out. And what has Biden's legacy been? It's been negative
01:06:39
ever since. If you look at his opinion polls, pres President Biden, you will see he was riding high until he withdrew
01:06:46
from Afghanistan and he never recovered. Yes, inflation hurt too. The bigger hit
01:06:53
was the Afghanistan problem. And this is where this is why President Trump is really stuck. You see, he's on that
01:07:00
horns of the dilemma. Does he want to accept the short-term price, which is real, or does he want to go and double
01:07:07
down? And then you face the potential long-term price of becoming LBJ and President Biden.
01:07:16
>> This company that I've just invested in is grown like crazy. I want to be the
01:07:19
one to tell you about it because I think it's going to create such a huge productivity advantage for you. Whisper
01:07:23
Flow is an app that you can get on your computer and on your phone, on all your devices, and it allows you to speak to
01:07:28
your technology. So, instead of me writing out an email, I click one button on my phone and I can just speak the
01:07:33
email into existence and it uses AI to clean up what I was saying and then when I'm done, I just hit this one button
01:07:39
here and the whole email is written for me and it's saving me so much time in a
01:07:44
day because Whisper learns how I write. So, on WhatsApp, it knows how I am a little bit more casual. On email, a
01:07:49
little bit more professional. And also, there's this really interesting thing
01:07:51
they've just done. I can create little phrases to automatically do the work for
01:07:55
me. I can just say Jack's LinkedIn and it copies Jack's LinkedIn profile for me
01:07:59
because it knows who Jack is in my life. This is saving me a huge amount of time.
01:08:02
This company is growing like absolute crazy. And this is why I invested in the business and why they're now a sponsor
01:08:07
of this show. And Whisper Flow is frankly becoming the worstkept secret in business, productivity, and
01:08:12
entrepreneurship. Check it out now at Whisper Flow spelled w lw.ai/ Steven. It will be a game changer for
01:08:21
you. We have finally caved in. So many of you have asked us if we could bundle the
01:08:28
conversation cards with the 1% diary. For those of you that don't know, every
01:08:32
single time a guest sits here with me in the chair, they leave a question in the
01:08:35
diary of a CEO and then I ask that question to the next guest. We don't release those questions in any
01:08:40
environment other than on these incredible conversation cards. These have become a fantastic tool for people
01:08:46
in relationships, people in teams, in big corporations, and also family members to connect with each other. With
01:08:52
that, we also have the 1% diary, which is this incredible tool to change habits in your life. So many of you have asked
01:08:58
if it was possible to buy both at the same time, especially people in big companies. So, what we've done is we've
01:09:04
bundled them together and you can buy both at the same time. And if you want to drive connection and instill habit
01:09:09
change in your company, head to the diary.com to inquire and our team will be in touch.
01:09:14
>> I have to ask then, you know, you said when you're in the White House, they're
01:09:17
very smart people. >> Yeah, pretty smart. Presumably Trump knew this stuff or someone around him
01:09:23
knew that by the way when you drop bombs these sort of very specific bombs we have now that can hit a hit a very
01:09:29
narrow target and take out a leader um you get into an escalation trap. Surely he knew this.
01:09:35
>> I believe I believe General Kaine told him almost this this in so many words. I
01:09:40
believe and I don't have the exact evidence for it but we have some inklings of it.
01:09:44
>> What do you think he thought was going to happen? I think he I I've described
01:09:48
Trump um as the ultimate chaos kid. There are people who thrive in chaos. They feel the best when they're in a
01:09:56
chaotic situation. And I think that he um believes he can navigate the chaos better than anybody else. So what I want
01:10:05
to the the answer to the question I was looking for is what did he think was going to happen? Did he think I'll drop
01:10:10
these bombs, Hermione will be out, someone else will come in, then we'll negotiate with that guy and then we'll
01:10:15
get a better deal? I think that's not quite I think that's too specific.
01:10:18
People keep looking for that. In my experience here, it also um is that's too narrow of a way to understand what I
01:10:26
think happened here. And again, we're reading quite a bit into very few tea leaves here because this will come out
01:10:31
over time. But um I believe that what you're seeing with President Trump is he
01:10:37
likes to do what's called mixing it up. He wants to get the chaos going and then
01:10:42
he um he reads the chaos very well and and when it's um a media storm, man, there's very few people that have beaten
01:10:49
him. Just think about that. That's why he's president twice. He's he's beaten
01:10:53
quite a few black belts at this, right? But this is a different story. So if you
01:10:58
take that same MO and you apply it to political violence, now you have these other actors. You have this other set of
01:11:05
momentum. you have Israel uh playing this big role. You have the Iranians playing a big role. You're suddenly uh
01:11:13
now have more players that can trap you in the chaos. And this is I think what has happened. Um now with Venezuela, he
01:11:23
also went through the first stage of the trap. And notice that with Venezuela, he
01:11:29
just said, "Oh yeah, we're just going to forget about developing the oil." No
01:11:32
second stage. Okay. So in in with Venezuela, there's a reason why that has paused. It's because he didn't go to
01:11:40
stage two because the oil company said, "We're not going to die for you to build
01:11:44
that oil." So he is basically um he took out one person, just literally one
01:11:49
person. That person's not even dead yet. And he's not really developing any of
01:11:53
those oil fields in Venezuela. They're just not being developed. >> He said he has a good relationship with
01:11:58
the Venezuelan government. Now the >> as long as because he's not doing any
01:12:02
the the Venezuelan government, he's leaving them in place. He's basically
01:12:06
declaring victory and moving on. >> He removed Maduro, kept the others in and it sounds
01:12:13
>> and kept the regime. >> It sounds like that might have somewhat inspired his move to Bomaran because it
01:12:18
appears on the surface that Venezuela kind of didn't go too badly. It kind of
01:12:22
was a uh political victory. >> Chaos Kida chaos >> snatched him out of bed with his snatch.
01:12:29
But then he stopped. So this would be the equivalent would be last June. So last June, okay, he went through stage
01:12:38
one and he tried to stop. What made the difference here? It wasn't Trump. It was
01:12:43
the intel he got from Netanyahu. The phone call from Netanyahu, which is uh President Trump getting ready. We're
01:12:50
about to assassinate the supreme leader and about 20 of his associate the other leaders here. you decide how you want to
01:12:57
handle this, but we're we're taking off. And so that is that did not happen with
01:13:01
with uh with um uh the Maduro regime. So just imagine that there was another country that had after Trump took out
01:13:09
Maduro decided they were going to keep assassinating u the regime in uh Venezuela. Now you would be in a
01:13:17
different story. >> You made a quite famous prediction, professor. You predicted in 2009 that
01:13:22
America's era as the world's only superpower was ending. >> Oh yes, and I think that is true. We
01:13:28
haven't talked about China, but I believe that since Trump has come into office, he's making China number one.
01:13:34
His tariffs have done nothing but um uh help China. Uh China's been on charm
01:13:41
offensive since the tariffs have have been and and they're picking up all the
01:13:45
pieces. I was just spent two weeks in China in June while we were bombing um Iran. I said I had to learn how to do
01:13:52
social media. I toured Advanced Industries in China for two solid weeks. One of the most amazing visits uh trips
01:14:02
I've ever had in my whole career and it was stunning. So Stephen, since co almost nobody has gone to uh China. Now
01:14:11
if they have they've gone to Beijing or Shanghai. They haven't gone to Wuhan.
01:14:16
They haven't gone to Shenshen. Visited the BYD uh electric car factories. Um
01:14:22
seeing the robots that are now doing the metallergy and you can't see it very
01:14:27
well on the web because China's keeping it to themselves. They don't want to
01:14:31
brag about it. They're going they're motoring ahead. So Wuhan, to give you an
01:14:36
example, Wuhan is kind of like Pittsburgh. It's a bigger version of Pittsburgh. It's an old steel area.
01:14:43
That's not Wuhan today. Wuhan today is the AI. It's it's developing not just a
01:14:50
robotic company. They're uplifting 9 million people in Wuhan. Their uh medicine is improved. Their
01:15:00
infrastructure is improved. They have more construction jobs than ever before because they have to build so much to
01:15:08
uplift the whole 9 million people. This is what Pittsburgh should have been and hasn't been. And I know I'm from Western
01:15:16
Pennsylvania. It's heartbreaking to me to watch what's happened to Pittsburgh
01:15:20
over the last 30 or 40 years. Wuhan, exactly the same trajectory. An old steel uh um city is now one of the lead
01:15:29
areas here in they have a robotic Silicon Valley there that I visited um and so forth.
01:15:35
>> And why does this matter? Why does it matter if the US are no longer the
01:15:38
world's superpower? What what then does history tell us is the consequence of
01:15:41
that? >> The consequence is first of all you get enormous tension here uh for violence.
01:15:50
So when you see big hegemonic shifts >> hegemonic >> uh that means when one leader the the
01:15:57
world's number one becomes uh replaced by another bad things happen. This is
01:16:03
what happened how you got the wars between Britain and France when they were fighting theirs wars. This is how
01:16:08
you got world war essentially world war I because of the the rise and fall of Germany versus uh uh Russia versus
01:16:17
Britain. So these rising and fall they make a huge difference. Doesn't always
01:16:22
happen. The one time it was peaceful was when America replaced Britain as number
01:16:27
one. So just think about that. But other times have been very tense. >> So how does China feel that the US are
01:16:34
now at war with the Middle East? So, what's interesting is to get ready for coming on here. I listened to the All-In
01:16:41
podcast, and I hope that's okay to talk about somebody else's podcast. I love
01:16:44
that. >> I think they're brilliant, by the way. I love it. But what they said just in the
01:16:48
most recent is that that Trump's playing a game for China. What they said is
01:16:51
China shaking in its boots and that what this is about is uh it's it's kind of
01:16:56
Venezuela plus Iran is all about to cause shei to be shaking in his boots in in April so that um he will somehow make
01:17:04
some bigger deal with Trump. I think this is just wrong. I think that it may be that there's some uh uh you know,
01:17:11
China does absolutely buy 90% of Iran's oil. There's no we're not disagreeing
01:17:16
with the facts of the matter. It's the interpretation and the consequences for
01:17:21
who's going to be number one down the road. So my assessment here is China uh
01:17:28
is probably thrilled that we're on the verge of getting into another quagmire
01:17:33
in the Middle East and that they would gladly give up. They have about 20% of their GDP that turn energy not GDP 20%
01:17:42
of their energy it's a much smaller fraction of their GDP that turns on the oil issue. uh most of their energy is
01:17:48
not generated through through oil. And so I think they would really if they had to give all of the Middle Eastern oil up
01:17:55
to suck us in to a another forever war with Iran that would go on for years and years. Oh my goodness gracious. Because
01:18:03
they see themselves as growing through Asia and spreading their wings through Asia. And so to get us pinned down in
01:18:14
the Middle East with an even bigger problem than we had with Iraq, this is mana from heaven for China. And that's
01:18:21
what I they told that's what I saw when I was there. >> If I was Putin or if I was running
01:18:25
China, based on everything you've said and based on everything I know, I would
01:18:28
really want this war to go on for a long time. >> Oh, for sure. >> I'd really so I'd really be helping
01:18:33
Iran, you know, prolong this thing. And also because Russia are in their own situation at the moment with Ukraine.
01:18:40
So, it's quite a distraction from whatever Putin's objectives are in Ukraine. No one's really talking about
01:18:45
Ukraine this week. >> And it's bad for the Ukrainians because what's happening is by by by the little
01:18:51
bit that Putin has gotten himself involved here, there is a chance he set the stage for a deal, which is again
01:18:58
America stops the intel to the Ukrainians, if Russia will stop the intel to Iran. That is much much much to
01:19:05
Putin's advantage with Ukraine. So, I think that you have a situation here, Stephen, where Putin, it's not so much
01:19:12
he's he's itching to get in the fight, is he's trying to do it in ways that he
01:19:17
gets something out of it in his in his relations war with Ukraine. >> Think about that with President Xi. I
01:19:23
don't think the Chinese want to get in the fight. I think, in fact, right now,
01:19:28
if I'm if I'm assessing this correctly, they're probably not wanting to get in
01:19:32
the way of an enemy who's shooting himself in both feet. So right now, America's damaging itself a lot more
01:19:39
than China could. And if China inserts itself, there's a very good chance then
01:19:44
that would help Trump again pull a rabbit out of a hat. I don't think they want to do that. I think right now you
01:19:50
just look at this from we're running out of what's called standoff PGMs.
01:19:54
Remember, Secretary Heg said, "Well, yeah, okay, we're running out of standoff PGMs, but we got to do
01:19:59
something from the from the the the bombs that we can drop more over country." Well, that's the problem for a
01:20:05
problem for Taiwan. If we're going to defend Taiwan, we've got to do this with
01:20:10
long standoff precision weapons. And we all everybody who studies this knows that. So, if we're really running low on
01:20:19
standoff precision weapons, she's just licking his chops thinking, "My goodness, how much better does this
01:20:25
get?" >> If Trump was listening, probably not the case. I think he just
01:20:31
watches CNN and Fox News. >> Um, but if Trump was listening, what would you say to him?
01:20:36
>> What I would tell him is take the deal. I would say stop right now and do
01:20:40
everything possible to go back to the deal you rejected the day before you started bombing. And what your goal
01:20:46
should be is to get as much of the 60% enriched uranium out of the country as possible. If uh you could also get the
01:20:55
20% enriched uranium out, that would be good, too. But you're probably not going
01:21:00
to get as good a deal. Uh because the supreme leader you were dealing with is gone and you now have a much tougher. So
01:21:07
you might have to accept President Trump a worse deal. >> Are we just kicking the can down the
01:21:11
road here? Because if you're an Iranian, like you've said, you've watched bombs
01:21:15
drop. You've you've realized that the reason why you are such a target is
01:21:18
because you don't have these nuclear weapons. So is there not an element where Iran getting nuclear weapons is um
01:21:25
inevitable in some way? So Stephen, this is the myth of 100% security. So we see
01:21:30
this in not just America but in lots of uh conflicts in history where the idea that you don't have 100% security leads
01:21:39
you to essentially do things that look like suicide for fear of death. So so we know that that there is a long-term
01:21:48
problem out there. And sometimes a really good solution is to freeze it for 20 years. just freeze it for 20 years.
01:21:56
And you know what? It's you're right. You didn't permanently take it off the
01:21:59
table. But if you can freeze a problem for 20 years, that's actually a lot of
01:22:05
you might get lucky. You might get something good like the Soviet Union might just fall apart on you, you know,
01:22:10
out of the blue. It might just fall apart on you. And not because you did anything. It's just because something
01:22:16
else changed in the world. So the way to think about this, Stephen, is not this idea that we're going to take an action
01:22:22
and have 100% security. This is how big powers lose wars. Big powers are up against these little
01:22:31
countries. And think about how often they lose. We lose to Vietnam. That's how I got into this business in the
01:22:39
first place. I wanted to understand that. And so this idea of the search for perfect security is often getting us
01:22:45
into trouble. kick a can down. You You're right. It's only 20 years. I'll take that. That's
01:22:52
better than where we are right now. Professor Robert Pap of all the things that we've talked about um
01:23:01
>> which has been a wonderful conversation by the way >> and very diverse but really focused on
01:23:05
this subject of what's going on in the world at the moment with Iran and Trump
01:23:07
and America as decline. What is the thing that we should have talked about that we didn't talk about? The big
01:23:13
thing, well, we're finally getting to it at the end, is the real consequence of
01:23:19
what President Trump has done since coming into office. uh the real consequence of the tariffs, the real
01:23:26
consequence of not just uh threatening um uh discussion of Greenland, but but becoming very aggressive with our
01:23:34
European allies on Greenland, being very aggressive to the point of um um a taking out a leader from Venezuela,
01:23:41
which is uh in our Western Hemisphere. So, it's creating what this is really
01:23:46
doing is it's threatening America's primacy. So I am a big believer that
01:23:52
America should be the strongest most secure state on the planet. I think that is good for us.
01:23:59
That means that it does make it is valuable to be the top dog to be the number one strongest economic military
01:24:07
power. But in order to do that you have to be the world's number one economy for
01:24:12
real. And with $40 trillion in debt, um with uh us pushing away our trading partners, with us uh engaging in hostile
01:24:24
actions here which are scaring the rest of the world to further drift away from us and maybe not side with China, but be
01:24:32
neutral. Oh my goodness gracious. And and again, as I said before, China is motoring ahead on the AI revolution.
01:24:41
We're talking AI, but are we really doing Wuhan? Are we up to Wuhan? I think
01:24:47
it would be interesting for uh for uh folks to go to Wuhan um and actually visit uh or go to Senchan uh and visit
01:24:56
um or go to Hang Cho and visit and see where uh Alibaba is and see uh that it's
01:25:03
it's not just one company here. It's not just deep seek that there's clusters
01:25:08
that are being built that are uplifting 10 million people at a swath. And my goodness, why aren't we doing that in
01:25:17
America? We certainly need that in the restaurant belt. >> We're too distracted.
01:25:20
>> We're too distracted, which is what I'm trying to say is to China's advantage.
01:25:25
And I think this is the real long-term price, which is are we actually eroding our position as the world's number one?
01:25:37
And I think our primacy is in is in danger. >> Professor Robert Pap, we have a closing
01:25:42
tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving
01:25:47
it for. Ah, >> the question left for you is what is the prediction you have for the future that
01:25:54
most people do not want to hear? >> Well, this is going to lead into the conversation. So, I have a book coming
01:26:02
out in September called Our own Worst Enemies. As bad as all this problem is, Stephen, as bad as it is, I have spent
01:26:12
the last several years focusing on what's happening with political violence in the United States and its
01:26:19
normalization. And the most the biggest danger that we face, even bigger than Iran and all the
01:26:28
problems we've just talked about, is the normalization of political violence in
01:26:33
our own country. And by political violence, you mean >> I'm I'm talking about in the last 10
01:26:38
years, we have seen a surge of violent riots. We have seen a surge of political assassinations
01:26:49
that we haven't seen since the 1960s. On top of that, we've just had Operation
01:26:54
Midway Blitz in my city, Chicago. That is the surge of militarized um enforce immigration enforcement. Oh,
01:27:04
>> which surged ice which surged into neighborhoods over over almost 300 times.
01:27:11
>> Crazy. >> Not just a small. And then what happened after they left um uh Chicago is they
01:27:18
did even more of that in Minneapolis. So these this trajectory Stephen that we're on where we are
01:27:28
seeing the incredible normalization of political violence and it's happening on
01:27:33
both the right and the left. It's not I'm not trying to make moral equivalence
01:27:36
but it is h and the book will explain this is probably the greatest danger that we face because if we are our own
01:27:46
worst enemies. Think of what that means for us being that great power that that is so important for us and the great
01:27:55
future we want for our families and our our our communities here. We are in danger of becoming our own worst
01:28:03
enemies. Not for a day, not for a month, but for years. >> Professor, thank you so much. Um, if
01:28:10
anyone wants to go and read more about many of the things we've talked about
01:28:12
today, where do they go? Substack. I'll link below. >> I would I would go you can read my books
01:28:16
on it. You can get them from Amazon. I would go to Substack. And then, and that's the escalation trap. Um, and I
01:28:23
would also just be aware that there will be uh more discussion of political violence. So, it's not just political
01:28:28
violence abroad and it's not just political violence at home. It is both happening at the same time.
01:28:35
>> Professor, thank you so much. >> Thank you very much. Really, really
01:28:38
enjoyed it. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. That was fantastic. >> YouTube have this new crazy algorithm
01:28:42
where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the
01:28:48
algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check
01:28:55
this video out and I bet you you might love it.